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�or/6 9 -
Presented in Memory of
Dr. Moncure D. Conway
by his children, July
Nineteen hundred C? eight
�LIBRARY
South Place Ethical Society
Rec’d...... .19.0.3...............
Ack’d................................. .....
Source
R...QPN..tr.folf;
1970,.. in detail
Class
Cat.
�KEYNOTE S.”
BY
ARBOR LEIGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1876.
Price Sixpence.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY C. "W. REYNELL, LITTLE RUMENS Y STREET,
H4SXARKET.
�“KEY
NOTES.”
UPWARD.
What is the tireless key
Of the unheard chorus of things ?
Of the ceaseless autumns and springs ?
Of the ebbing and flowing sea ?
Answer : that we may join in thy chorus, Eternity!
What shall we do to-day
To lessen the total strife ?
To forward the total life ?
To help the worlds on their way ?
To live by the last-learnt law is more than to praise
or to pray.
Why is the fit thing best ?
Why is the best thing fit ?
We work, and we cease from it;
Do we work for work or for rest ?
Daily the light comes up in the East to hide in the
West.
Never, never in sight,
The Perfect we long to see:
The Perfect we long to be :
The final, immutable Bight.
Nay : for the Perfect grottos, with growth that is
infinite.
Over the verges fair
Of the best we can feel and think,
Ever just over the brink
Of the best we can do and dare,
Till we ask—“ Are there ends at all, to Purposes
everywhere ? ”
�4
“ Key Notes. ”
From stars in the solemn sky,
From the tender flower at our feet,
Certain, and clear, and sweet,
Comes the same eternal reply :
“ Upward 1 upward, 0 man! for Progress can never
die I ”
UNTO THIS PRESENT.
i.
Free and yet fast: fast, and for ever free :
Led in the line of law to liberty :
Sweeping the spirals of invariant space:
On flees the little earth around her sun.
For ever tending to his fiery breast;
For ever tending to the outer cold;
So held, unfettered, ’twixt her two desires,
From either doom ; and of her impotence,
Driven, where hindrances are least, along
The curves of gentler possibility.
0 little planet! fated to be free,
And have thy leisure for an seon’s space
To bud, and bloom, and grow a teeming thing:
Cooling, yet lifewards ;—darkening unto sight
That wakes in many eyes of many lives;
And lights the living into wider light;—
0 little planet! Chariot of mankind,
Force-drifted from impalpability
Into thy rounded being, and the form
Thy children know thee by,—how sternly kind
Is Force, new-differenced as Life, as Love,
As Fitness for a freedom yet to be.
Free, and yet fast; fast, and for ever free!
Thy history is writ in parable :
Man’s tale is one with thine, 0 little world of
Man !
�“Key Notes.”
5
n.
I looked into the green sea yesterday,
And dreamt in outline of that sum of Cause
Which brought it there, and me to watch it curl
Its never-sleeping mystery to my feet.
Although so far agone as now appears
Like Never, yet I think there was an hour,
Down the dim reaches of a cosmic Past,
Ere the beginnings of the growth of things,
When Fact stayed, poised, and centred everywhere ;
And for one pregnant moment of suspense
The awful Infinite had nought to do :—
When universal forces nowhere clash’d,
And all thro’ Space hung equal formlessness :
When, wreck’d, some all-dissolved, older Past
Yielded its untired atoms for new work—
Or play—at System-churning; till there went
Slow, doubtful whirlings through Immensity,
And sameness grew new-focuss’d, here or there,
With glimmering, gassy nuclei. So, anon,
These, settling into fluid balls of fire,
Flung forth, all wildly spinning into space,
Planets; and these, all spinning, flung their moons,
Until, among an unguessed myriad more,
This little thing we live to call our world
Grew individual, and puny shone
Among the millions : thence, self-centred, roll’d,
An isle of gleaming chaos, thro’ the cycled years.
in.
The young world’s radiance ebb’d away to night,
And a slow-settling darkness veiled her curves,
As she, a vaporous mantle for awhile
Drew round her broodingly. And in that gloom
The mystery, Motion, learned a strange new art
In subtle particles. Change after change
Smaller and stiller grew, and more complex—
As Life began in darkness. For ’twas then,
�6
“Key Notes.”
Under a heaven all murky with the breath
Of young creation rising hot and thick,
Sprung that, which, lighted, had been loveliness.
Fem-forests, haply, at the steaming poles
Spread to the darkness beauty unbeheld;
And forms most gracious in the eye of Day
Were born unheralded, and died in night.
Nor so were wasted! What, though living eyes
That turn ethereal quiverings into light,
And use the light to find out loveliness—
Not yet were focuss’d from a vaguer Force :•—
Men, retrospective, in this later age,
Learn, by the trace of what they never saw,
A lesson worth the learning. Let it pass.
Dawn conquered e’en the long primeval night,
The blackness thinn’d, and wept itself away,
And let the light through from the parent sun,
And life began to know itself as life
In sentient things that joyed in some degree.
New inter-adaptation everywhere,
Among material bent on issuing
At last, in that supremest noblest thing,
Achieved by all that has been—Consciousness—
The being, who not only lived a life,
Loved, joyed, and suffered, slept and woke again,
But noted it, and recognised himself,
And found some words and said, “I am a man.”
rv.
In yon far distance, where the sea and sky
Make of two meeting edges one thin line,
A boundary seems where yet no boundary is.
Being persists : and, grandly gradual,
All aspects melt in one-ness as we move,
And, spite of all our severing, ill fit names—
Cause, as effect, retains its force unspent.
One fact grows smoothly on, through changing
lights,
�“ Key Notes.”
7
Stable alone in instability,
Unchangeable in constant changefulness.
In thine own piteous, piteous ignorance,
Break not the calm continuous tale of growth,
Told by the tacit truthfulness of things,
With theory of breach—0 petty man !
Pause with thy rounded story in mistrust
Of its full-blown completeness ! In the face—
The awful face—of deep, unfinished Life,
Cast they neat sketch of things aside awhile :
Forget thy need of headings to thy page,
Or final flourish hinting all is said.
Learn of thy planet home, man-dazzled man I
The life of man is mot the end of things.
For, not till earth hid all her fires away,
And gave but borrowed splendour to the night,
Knew she of greater glory than her own,
And, in her children’s vision, learnt to see the
stars.
?
v.
Strong, sanely conscious, sweet Philosophy I
I see her dealing with the fevered screams
Of angry over-certain ignorance ;
She measures men by what they tend to be,
Endures all honest lies right patiently,
Knows them for lies, but knows she knows them so,
By knowledge that would make the liar true
Could he lay hold of it. A day shall dawn,
When error, proved, shall be no longer held,
And battled for, as somehow, somewhat good
And beneficial, error though it be.
Grand, unrebellious, sane Philosophy !
Crowned and calm I see her sit aloft,
Upon the apex of things knowable ;
Her heart the stiller that it is so vast;
Her deed emergent from her gravest thought,
As it illumes and tempers to the Fact
�“ Key Notes”
The deepest of her feeling. And around—
Above her, spreads the measureless abyss :
Time both ways endless :—all ways endless,
Space.
0 strongly patient, fair Philosophy !
She reads the midmost truth betwixt extremes,
Dreams of the far point whither truths converge,
And with a question in her thoughtful smile
Ponders the poetry of paradox—
How highest knowledge waxes negative,
How he who soars the farthest in his thought,
Basks in a beatific ignorance,
Knows by his knowledge he can never know,
Sees by the light of sight that he is blind,
And loves the largeness of the total sum,
That lured him to be ignorant and wise.
0 just, harmonious Philosophy I
She links, and interlinks the sciences,
Finds the coherence of a Universe,
And one-ness in the varied wide-lived All;
Reads in a lump of dirt the very law,
That rules the being of Society,
Kinship between the atoms and the suns,
And reason for a Virtue foreshadowed in a clod.
VI.
There is a sense in which the Universe
Is pivoted upon a molecule ;
There is a sense in which Eternity
Hangs on each moment. Read that truth reversed,
The softest dimple on a baby’s smile,
Springs from the whole of past Eternity :
Tasked' all the sum of things to bring it there,
And so was only barely possible.
Yet ’twas so one and equal with its cause
’Twould need that whole of past Eternity,
Cancell’d and changed, and every motor force
And every atom through Infinitude,
�1
<f Key Notes.”
9
Set otherwise a-going to hinder it.
The Future lies potential in the Now :
The Necessary is the Possible,
The two are differing names for one stiff Fact,
That Fact—the Being of whatever is.
Is this dogmatic ? ’Tis the normal voice
Of soughing breezes, and of singing birds ;
It comes to me thwart distant silences
Of inter-stellar vacancy at night,
It comes to me from human influence
Drifted through centuries, half-unperceived ;
And in it is an all-embracing Code,—
And in it is an all-inspiring Creed,—
In what has been man learns the law of life,
And finds his Revelation writ as Genesis.
VII.
But now what says Philosophy of Self ?
What thinks her follower of the man he is ?
Can he, in presence of the symphony
That rolls around him, played by viewless Cause
On suns for instruments, with Life for Key
And the For Ever we can only name
As metronome to beat out rhythmic bars,
Great eeons long, in number infinite—
Can he revert to his small destiny,
As wjth a moment’s stopping of his ears,
While that sweet thundering of the huge “Not
Self,”
Challenges him to listen while he may ?
Aye, for his egotism is not killed,
But only stunn’d, by vastness : now forgot
In the strong consciousness of larger things,
But yet, anon, assertive ; full of rights ;
Measuring worth by “What is that to me ? ”
And so we look about us for a god,
Whom we may bind in trust to work our welfare
out.
fl
�IO
“ Key Notes.”
VIII.
The tacit flux of unexplaining fact
That deals one recompense to one offence
Whether we call the doer, “ fool,” or “ knave ; ”
The steady tendency that draws the child,
Playing too near a precipice, to death,
And holds in safety every wretched life
That fails of chancing on the way to die—
This tacit fact, this steady tendency
Breeds our experience, and makes us wise ;
Breathes on our wisdom then, and makes us good.
0 man! thou mad ! thou blind ! thou self
engross’d !
Let thy poor blindness be chastised to sight,
Grow acquiescent in the utmost ward
Of Nature’s fine impartiality :
Learn that what is must measure what thou dost,
That on thy knowledge hangs thy highest fate
And all thy virtue grows of the outer Cosmic
growth.
IX.
Daily we die, eternally to live,
Each in the measure of his deathlessness
In the undying life of that strong Thing,
That once was Chaos and that shall be God,
But now is Man, and needs the lives of men
To learn its Being,—weave its Future by.
Freedom is born of fetters. Joy of pain.
For he who feels the gain of greater things
In his own loss, makes of his loss a gain;
And masters so the stern Necessity
That so apportion’d. When thy will is one
With what must be, with or without thy will,
Thy will grows helpful, and thy will is free.
For mastery is service perfected,
And, being won, yields back obedience
To laws of larger life. ’Tis thus we grow
�“Key Notes.”
ii
And feel a world-pulse thrill our hopeful soul,
And feel our bark of life lift on the wave,
With progress, joyous, sure and palpable.
Free, and yet fast; fast, and for ever free !
Lured by a love-like law in lines of Liberty.
x.
Now'shall we worship ? Aye : but name no name.
A thousand G-ods, outgrown of growing man,
Strew with their martyr’d prophets, all the past.
Man’s spirit is the father of his God,
When, seeking in his misty ignorance
For sign of meaning in the drift of things—
For trace of purpose in his little life,
His hope,—his trust sends forth blind, yearning
cries,
Which echo back from the mysterious face
Of outer things, transfigured as Reply.
Is this so piteous ? Nay : but it is well!
Such dreams have brought man up the slippery
steep
Of half-learnt rectitude, and made him man.
But now we worship with our faces hid,
And name no name, since All we cannot name :
Our homage to the awfulness of Law
Lies in the meekness of the earnest act,
Which, with sweet constancy in its reward,
Deals with us well, and turns our awe to love.
The end lies hid in future victory,
Won by the faithfulness of man to man.
We know not of that end, and yet we wait,
And worship, acquiescent, for we feel it must be
great.
Amen.
�12
“ Key Notes.”
•SUMMER SONG.
i.
0 sun, that makes haste to be early to look on thy
self-kindled morn,
And to see the most beautiful brightness of dewdrop
fill’d daisies at dawn ;
0 tears of the gladness of greeting when earth
shakes her short sleep away,
And turns her to meet the long future of one more
intense summer day;
0 fullness of life in the flowers, of joy in the
fledgling’s new flight,
There is left no work for the heart at home, when the
earth is so full of delight.
ii.
I will hark to the innocent secret, in whisp’rings of
tall, flowr’d grass,
I will read the white lesson of daylight, in breezewreathed clouds as they pass,
And with fullest surrender of spirit to the free
efflorescence of things,
I will think not a thought that is duller than glint of
the dragon-fly’s wings.
My heart shall be tender and trustful, and hold not a
heavier care
Than a butterfly, flutt’ring ’mid roses at noon, might
carry, nor know it was there.
in.
There are harebells that, nodding and swaying, defy
the full sunshine to fade;
There are oaks, in their gnarled firmness, dividing the
noon from the shade ;
There are beetles that shimmer and vanish among
little stones by the bank ;
�“ Key Notes”
13
There are hummings of flight that is seeking, and
perfume of blossoms that thank.
Things seem all youthful and faithful, and life all
earnest and glad:
Who can believe ’tis the same old earth men say is so
sinful and sad ?
IV.
So busy the flowers are blowing, so busy and so
untired ;
So certain the bee is of finding the sweetness her life
has desired;
So steady the sky stands over, to bless all the
kindling and birth
Of a thousand new things in a minute, on the
teeming summer-day earth.
0 breezes, aglow with the sunbeams ! ye’d utter it all
if ye could—
The tending of things to be conscious of life: the
tending of life to be Good.
MORNING.
What’s the text to-day for reading,
Nature and its being by ?
There is effort all the morning
Through the windy sea and sky.
All, intent in earnest grapple,
That the All may let it be :
Force, in unity, at variance
With its own diversity.
Force, prevailing unto action :
Force, persistent to restrain:
In a two-fold, one-soul’d wrestle,
Forging Being’s freedom-chain.
�14
“ Key Notes."
Frolic! say you—when the billow
Tosses back a mane of spray ?
No; but haste of earnest effort;
Nature works in guise of play.
Till the balance shall be even
Swings the to and fro of strife ;
Till an awful equilibrium
Stills it, beats the Heart of Life.
What’s the text to-day for reading,
Nature and its being by ?
Effort, effort all the morning,
Through the sea and windy sky.
AFTERNOON.
Purple headland over yonder,
Fleecy, sun-extinguish’d moon,
I am here alone, and ponder
On the theme of Afternoon.
Past has made a groove for Present,
And what fits it is: no more.
Waves before the wind are weighty;
Strongest sea-beats shape the shore.
Just what is, is just what can be,
And the Possible is free :
’Tis by being, not by effort,
That the firm cliff juts to sea.
With an uncontentious calmness
Drifts the Fact before the “ Law,”
So we name the order’d sequence
We, remembering, foresaw.
�“ Key Notes.”
And a law is mere procession
Of the forcible and fit;
Calm of uncontested Being,
And our thought that comes of it.
In the mellow shining daylight,
Lies the Afternoon at ease,
Little willing ripples answer
To a drift of casual breeze.
Purple headland to the westward !
Ebbing tide and fleecy moon !
In the “line of least resistance,”
Flows the life of Afternoon.
TWILIGHT.
Grey the sky, and growing dimmer,
And the twilight lulls the sea.
Half in vagueness, half in glimmer,
Nature shrouds her mystery,
What have all the hours been spent for ?
Why the on and on of things ?
Why, eternity’s procession
Of the days and evenings ?
Hours of sunshine, hours of gloaming,
Wing their unexplaining flight,
With a measured punctuation
Of unconsciousness, at night.
Just at sunset was translucence
When the west was all aflame;
So I asked the sea a question,
And a kind of answer came.
*5
�16
fCKey Notes”
Is there nothing but Occurrence ?
Tho’ each detail seem an Act,
Is that whole we deem so pregnant,
But unemphasised Fact ?
Or, when dusk is in the hollows
Of the hillside and the wave,
Are things just so much in earnest
That they cannot but be grave ?
Nay, the lesson of the twilight
Is as simple as ’tis deep ;
Aquiescenceacquiescence:
And the coming on of sleep.
MIDNIGHT.
There are sea and sky about me,
And yet nothing sense can mark ;
For a mist fills all the midnight,
Adding blindness to its dark.
There is not the faintest echo
From the life of yesterday :
Not the vaguest stir foretelling
Of a morrow on the way.
’Tis negation’s hour of triumph,
In the absence of the sun,
’Tis the hour of endings, finished;
Of beginnings, unbegun.
Yet the voice of awful Silence,
Bids my waiting spirit hark ;
There is action in the stillness.
There is progress in the dark.
�“ Key Notes”
In the drift of things and forces,
Comes the better from the worse,
Swings the whole of nature upward,
Wakes, and thinks—a Universe.
There will be more life to-morrow,
And of life, more life that knows ;
Though the sum of Force be constant,
Yet the Living ever grows.
So we sing of Evolution,
And step strongly on our ways,
And we live thro’ nights in patience,
And we learn the worth of days.
In the silence of murk midnight
Is revealed to me this thing:
Nothing hihders, all ennobles
Nature’s vast awakening.
OCTOBER.
0 still, sweet mornings, silvery with frost!
0 holy early sunsets full of calm I
When the spent year has seen her utmost fruit,
And beautifully leans towards her doom.
I think if I could choose my hour to go
Into the unknown infinite, ’twould be
While earth is lying patiently bereft
During this yearning month—while summer holds
A failing hand across the narrowing days,
To meet the stern cold grip of winter : smiles
The last sweet effort of her life away,
And bids October mourn in gold and grey.
’Tis not quite hopefulness I gather there,
And yet methinks it is not quite despair,
But a resigning with a painless will,
Of what was lovely once, is lovely still,
17
�18
“ Key Notes”
And yet must go. 0 mystery of Death !
The formless blank that margins liveliest life!
We turn the weary face towards the wall,
We wish less vehemently hour by hour,
We let the thought-worn spirit ebb away
Into unconsciousness, and as we fail,
No more have energy to question God,
Or men, or things, but dimly think it strange,
That ever it had seemed to matter so.
Are there degrees of dying ? Or, when breath
Has ceased for ever are men all the same ?
Do varying intensities of Death
Mark of past lives which most deserved the name ?
When noble purpose, unfulfilled, subsides
With the out-ebbing of a human life,
With the slow-slacking beat of noble heart
That erewhile did conceive it, is no sign
Vouchsafed, to mark the lapse from death of such
As all his life long kept his soul asleep ?
Each did his nothing. One from lack of days,
Or lack of God’s-help—opportunity.
The other from the lack of purpose, or
Of force to wield it: now it seemsall one :
Each dies his death: the nothing that is done
Has less of satire for the self-wrapt fool,
Than for his loftier brother.
Earth’s fair things
Perish so unresistingly ; the while
They meet the autumn as they met the spring,
Lovely, and acquiescent: for the year
Seems never surer,—less indifferent
Than when the woods are withering and aglow,
And oaks in calmness let their acorns go,
To fare as they are able, in the dark.
Let the true aspirant endure to leave
His precious noblest thought. Aye ! bear to die,
Not seeing it prevail. Thou feeble man !
Meet the inevitable with strong trust
�“ Key Notes.”
’9
That waste is not, but fitness everywhere;
And though thy thought had seemed so very good,
Its worth might well have won thy fame for thee,
Mistrust that love of it as thine own thing,
In measure of its fitness, not as thine,
’Twill rule the life-blood of posterity,
And make of man meet master of his ways.
Good is too strong to need thy consciousness;
But, having blest thy vision, lets thee die.
0 prophet I live the flowering future through
In present days, however chill and few ;
Catch the vast measure of the march of man,
And read a cycle in an hour ; for he,
And only he, may live immortally,
Who lives, the while he lives, in tune with life
That lives for ever. Prophet! having lived
And quickened with thy word some further soul,
And sent a-ringing through eternity
The chord thy hand was formed to strike, and
leave,
Thou shalt October-wise, resign thy breath,
Glad with faint echoings from a future life,
Grown beautiful and great beyond thine hour of
death.
DECEMBER.
Winter; and loveliness of frosty hours :
Winter, and frost; and sorrow of the poor :
More than one-half of all the men alive,
Forced, by the struggle ’twixt the hurling power
Of orbit motion, and the strong, stiff pull
Of yon white sun,—to be immersed in cold.
Snow crystals! tiny, perfect, everywhere :
Man’s work and nature’s crisply fringed with hoar
That sends a gem-hued sparkle through the eye
Into the gladdened consciousness behind,
�20
“Key Notes.”
A.1X& helps the poet to sufficient theme
For kindling song where prose was yesterday.
What ? will he glibly, gaily dare extol
The levelling force of whiteness ; and the robe
Of Beauty, thrown alike o’er hut and hall,
And miss the lesson of it ?—Let him pause!
A ledge exists where snowflakes can be lodged;
There they are lodged, and there their beauty is,
And, being snow, their coldness, tho’ the shelf
Be shoulder of a baby, scarcely clad,
And dying of it, or the cosy eaves
That hold the flakes away from ruder lives,
Fitter to weather winter circumstance—
Admiring and not dying of the snow.
I do not trust the unreflective praise
That would appropriate the fair “ must be ”
As man’s especial, heaven-sent heritage.
For he who calls the glory of this world
His own, his right, his message from a God
Intent on beautifying life for man,
Will find his logic sadly overset,
And all his music stricken out of tune,
When he, perchance, shall find his own delight
Hangs on that fact that strikes a brother dead.
We skim the surface of the Actual,
Daub it with moral, wall it round with names,
Fit puny, arbitrary adjectives,
Where Fact is subtle, mergent, and itself,
Until we see no more the real drift
Of Being, nor coherence in the tale
Perpetually uttered everywhere.
Meanings are made and fastened by our moods:
Things only mean themselves : each fact proclaims,
By its existence, but that it exists :
What is, not what it stands for, is the theme
Of Nature’s teaching. Let us learn that first.
Grave lessons learnt of cosmic constancy
Work in us, patience. Thence more safely true
�li Key Notes y
21
Live we our lives, law-tempered, soberly,
But ever law-rewarded. And, unchill’d
By doubt of irony in sun or sky,
We learn to smile up in the face of Fact,
And praise its Fitness, fitly. Let us learn :
For, certainty attained, we acquiesce ;
And acquiescence wins the way to Happiness.
SONNET.
A little brook doth babble, and doth dance;
And in its eddies traps a sunny ray,
And toys with it, and splits it every way,
Till thousand seeming gems dazzle and glance,
The summer earth lies in a lovely trance; •
While a blithe song-bird on th’ o’erhanging spray,
Trills forth his mirth all thro’ the livelong day.
And some have said this world is ruled by Chance!
0 broad, blue lift I wherein the sun is set—
Whence the stars peep and sparkle all the night.
Why do things seem, so love-ruled, purpose-set,
If blind Chance gave them birth, and holds them
right ?
Most happy Chance ! such beauties chance to be :
I, too ; with ears thathear and eyes that see !
MARCH.
Wild winds of March I ruthless, and stern, and cold :
Wild flowers of March ! that tenderly unfold :
Wind—as a voice of sovereign fury wild,
Flower, only so, as is a peasant’s child.
Why come ye thus together, wind and flower,
Linked hand in hand, a weakness, and a power ?
One speaks in both; and doth the storm-wind hold
That it hurt not His primrose, and His smile,
�io.
“ Key Notes.”
’Mid blustering bleakness, helps the flower mean
while
With courage to be lovely in the cold.
For God is everywhere if anywhere,
Ruling the strong and weak with equal care :
In the wild days when Nature’s voice is harsh,
Weaving the rudest breath of bitter March ;
Yet guarding, that its fragrance may not fail,
The weakest bud that opens in the gale.
One law demands the twain. We are so blind 1
Spite of the legend God is in the wind,
As in the still small voice with which meanwhile
The meek, pale primrose wakes into a smile.
0 little flower ! teach me to be bold,
And Eke thyself keep courage in life’s bitter cold 1
APRIL.
0 sights, and scents, and sounds of this fair earth,
When Nature has her way unmarred by man I
From the arched beauty of the rainbow span
That sheds its lustre thro’ an April hour,
To yonder lark’s intensity of mirth,
Or the mysterious fragrance of a flower,
There is no.imperfection. It is strange
That man alone has power to disarrange,
And, when he will, can mar. Who would suspect
This creature, called a “ crowning work,” with handsDoing the meddling will of intellect.
The more can do the more he understands
To dim the face of Nature’s loveliness,
And make the sum of all her beauties less!
Sweet April morning ! by what wide mischance,
Is it that things more lovely are, in fact,
Where men are few and steeped in ignorance
Than where a crowd of thinkers plan and act?
Yet for all this is Beauty’s self a lie,
�11 Key Notes."
23
Because she shrinks away and seems to die,
When rude man in the hurry of his need
Tortures her into usefulness : when greed,
By twisting fair and good things into gold,
Makes “ progress ” one with wealth, and young men
old?
’Tis well there are some feats beyond our reach,
’Tis well we cannot climb the rainbow’s arc
With earthy tread, to make its glory dark ;
’Tis well no art of ours can ever teach
The wind and song-bird trammell’d, thought-bound
speech.
Or build sick cities on the mighty sea,
Or make one billow’s curve less wildly free.
And though on earth we crowd achievement so,
That little flowers have hardly room to grow,
Price-labell’d prose may reach not very high,
We cannot “civilise ” and spoil the sky 1
Yet stay 1 we weep this beauty that we soil,
And shrink from turning all our play to toil;
But this fair thought may shine athwart our tears,
And hope gleam, April-wise, on gloomy fears.
The reign of fitness is not over yet;
We never wholly lose what we regret.
If he be man who blots the sunny sky
With.breath of avarice and smoke of gain,
Yet man he is who feels relenting pain
For Beauty’s sickness : hates to see her die.
The poet in the bosom of the best
Shall never starve; because the law is just
By which it lives,—in which we put this trust,
That all fair things from final loss Love’s Strength
may wrest.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PHLTBNEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Leigh, Arbor
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Arbor Leigh is the pseudonym of Louisa Sarah Bevington, English anarchist, essayist and poet. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
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Thomas Scott
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1876
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Conway Tracts
English Poetry
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241
TUDY
OF
jVALT
J/VHIT/VlANj
THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
By the Hon. Roden Hoel.
PART I.
I had just been reading Whitman for the first time, when I took up a
weekly review, which always speaks, if not as one having, yet as one
assuming to have, authority; and there I found it stated that Walt
Whitman was an obscure impostor, and that his poetry was no better
than Miss Codger’s prose. I had thought otherwise; but upon a
diffident person this unhesitating deliverance from our weekly oracle
of critical revelation might well have a staggering effect. Kot very
long after, however, I read in the same literary arbiter, which so
thoroughly fills among us the functions of any possible Academy (what
could Mr. Arnold and Mr. Proude have been thinking about when they
sighed for one ?), that Charles Dickens was a rather inferior writer, a
sort of Bavius or Msevius of his day, at least if compared with Mr.
Tennyson. Upon this, I felt that the critic was speaking out of a
sphere so entirely away from and elevated above mine, that, until he
should have communicated his own superior nature to me, I must
remain totally incapable of profiting by his revelations. Kot without
many a qualm, therefore, I betook myself again to my own feeble lights,
having really for the nonce nothing better that I could look to.
To me, then, I will begin by owning at the outset, Walt Whitman
appears as one of the largest and most important figures of the time,
Of those who have publicly expressed a somewhat similar conviction,
may be mentioned Mr. Rossetti, Mr. Conway, Mr. Robert Buchanan,
and (I believe) Mr. Swinburne.
I think that what delights and arrests one most is the general im
pression he gives of nature, strength, health, individuality—his relish
of all life is so keen, intense, catholic—the grasp of his faith is so
nervous and tremendous—as he says, ‘ My feet are tenon’d and mortis’d
in granite.’ One of the notes of a man of genius is, that through life
he remains a child; and there is something eminently childlike in
Whitman. He is full of naif wonder and delight—each thing, every
�242
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
time lie looks upon it, flashes upon him with a sense of eternal freshness
and surprise ; nor is anything to him common or unclean ; but an aerial
glory, as of morning, utterly insensible to vulgar eyes, bathes and
suffuses all. He is tall, colossal, luxuriant, unpruned, like some
giant tree in a primeval forest, whose feet root profoundly in a virgin
soil. He springs out of that vast American continent full-charged
with all that is special and national in it, in a supercmincnt degrees
representative of all that is richest and most fresh in that American
life which, more fully than any other, embodies the present age’s own
individual life. He is very far from being hopeless and disdainful of
his time ; he does not, as many really great writers of his country have
done, prefer distant lands, enriched with long and eventful histories, for
his theme ; he takes his own country and his own time, however ignoble
they may seem to some fastidious tastes ; he is by no means himself
uninfluenced by the special errors and special weaknesses of these;
but he is withal magnificently pregnant with all a seer’s half-articulate
previsions, with all a prophet’s triumphant anticipations of that larger
and more generous human future which is surely about to issue out
of these travailing loins and from these most ominous birthpangs of
the present. He is American democracy incarnate ; and however much
that leaves to be desired, yet it is great. As Mr. Buchanan has already
remarked, he is more prophet than artist. He very seldom retires to
create deliberate imaginative wholes, in whose many diverse forms may
be deposited the truths he sees and must utter, the mastering emotions
which dominate his soul. You never cease to see this man Walt
Whitman. But then it is a very noble, and I contend a very poetic,
personality you see—one in which, as in a magic crystal, all these men
and women of the wrorld, all the sights of city and of landscape, find
themselves mirrored with most astonishing distinctness. He is too
eager, too excited, to linger and to weave artistic poems out of his
materials ; yet in the flash of the dark-lantern he turns upon them for
a moment as he passes, though they too often appear isolated and
disjunct, they dart out upon you with all the marvellous solidity and
reality which their images have in nature. It is certainly a poet’s
glance which has been poured upon them—piercing, remaking them;
not the glance of an analyst, a practical man, or one apathetic and
indifferent. It is always one of intense enjoyment, from complete vision
of the essence and heart of a thing. And this atmosphere of keen
buoyant personal sympathy and pleasure is more marked in Whitman
than in anyone else, and is wonderfully bracing and refreshing to
breathe. All the stale heaps of common, familiar things seem to leap
up into their proper vitality as he passes : they glow like dingy metal
filings in some electric light. And if he were otherwise, more of an
ordinary artist, we should lose this refreshing novel sense of intense
yet catholic and impersonal personality which is so eminently charac
teristic of Walt Whitman. He seems to revel in his own life, and
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
243
equally in that of every man, woman, and child he meets or can
imagine. And now that so many people say and sing that they are
weary and tired and despairing, that the world is worn out, and that
yon must go back to the classics or mediaeval themes for any objects
of warm poetic interest, that life now is ‘ a suck and a sell, and its end
a bit of threadbare crape,’ this spectacle of a poet and a man like a
very child rejoicing in all the teeming forces and energies of this vulgar
world of ours—this surely is something at least novel and ‘ sensational.’
True it is,- however, that Whitman comes of the people; his past
life has been active, adventurous, healthy, varied, and broadly human
in experience. Tic dare nob set himself above them, above the meanest
of them, and look down from a height serenely benevolent upon them ;
he claims to be one with them; and what he sees more vividly than
they, glories in more supremely, is—that he is, not an elect, a very
intellectual or refined man, but a man, and has men and women
for brothers and sisters. This honest and unfeigned use of great
ness in rendering service rather than in exacting it—in pouring self
out for the enrichment of mankind rather than jn cunningly playing
upon the weaknesses of mankind for one’s own glory—this is after the
ancient type of heroism, after Christ, ‘ friend of publicans and sinners,’
the Divinest Son of Man, who ‘ drew all men to Himself; ’ and one can
well understand the personal fascination and influence which we are
informed Whitman is exercising upon so many of the youth of
America. The life familiar to him is the picturesque, free, unconven
tional life of the people—not the pale monotonous artificial life of literary
student, aristocrat, or plutocrat. He enters profoundly into all their
difficulties, enjoyments, sorrows, and eager aspirations. Then, too, he
has been in the great civil war, and been keenly penetrated with
the noblest (as well as the less noble, but still powerfully human) of
its principles and ideas. And in that war he was present personally
in the sublimes! and most heroic of capacities—he ministered constantly
to the wounded on both sides, on the field and in the hospital. Such
a man, therefore, has had exceptional advantages as man—and the
raw material being heroic, such is the result. We who stay at home in
the old country, with old traditions and prejudices rank in our blood,
nurtured under the grand yet somewhat chilling shadow of ‘ timehonoured institutions ’—we cannot pretend to call ourselves men of
the age as that man can call himself man of the age. But of book
learning, of refined inherited culture-inculcated accents, words, and
ways, this man has probably little—so far, he has not, perhaps, had all
advantages, though, whether they would not have cramped and injured
him, is to me very questionable.
There are those, I know, who affirm that a poet can never (except
quite indirectly) be a teacher or a prophet. This is again a critical
dictum so removed from me that I do not pretend to understand it. I
should have thought it depended on how he taught and prophesied—
�244
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
whether in doing so his whole nature was a-fire or not, his imagination
and his heart all a-glow about the chariot way of his reason ; for other
wise Isaiah and Jeremiah, Lucretius and Shelley, would be no poets,
which on the whole I rather take leave to doubt. But it resolves itself
of course into a dispute about words.
If, again, a poet must necessarily mean a metrist after our established
English models, certainly Whitman is none. His expression indeed
must be admitted to be often slovenly, inadequate, clumsy, and harsh ;
sometimes even stilted, bombastic, and inflated. But it is very far
from uniformly or generally this. I read indeed in the same review of
which I have before so reverently spoken, how it was now an axiom
unquestioned by any judicious person that subject-matter in poetry was
nothing, and style, expression, was everything. I felt terribly discon
certed at always having to believe exactly the opposite of all that is so
categorically and without argument laid down by this our supreme
authority in matters critical; hut really that did seem startling to the
uninitiated mind. Whether a poet has anything to say, to bring out,
to express, is of no consequence whatsoever. Whether it be nothing or
something, whether it be nonsense or wisdom, whether it be empty
wind or inspired revelations, gibberings of an idiot, pulings of a senti
mentalist, or utterances of sublime imagination and divine passion—all
this is of absolutely no account; if only there be sibilants and labials
and rotundities of sound in the slipping of any or of either of these
things off the tongue, he who gives vent to them is a poet, in either
case equally a poet; but if there be not quite enough of these sounds,
whatever else there be, by no means and on no account a poet. Well,
then, must not musical glasses be a poet ? And since it would certainly
be possible to weave intricacies of sound more exquisite and more varied
by discarding altogether that old-fashioned hampering obligation of
conceiving, imagining, and feeling with strength sustained enough to
keep coherence, harmony, and distinctness among the ideal links we
weave, would it not on these principles be well to lay down ex cathedra
the grand, if novel axiom, that true poetry can only and shall only
consist of nonsense verses ? On the contrary, I venture to believe that
expression implies meanings to be expressed, and that the most perfect
expression is that which most transparently and impressively fits and
shows off the meaning.
The charm of ‘ Don Juan ’ is surely in that wonderful adaptation of
the metre to all clear, luscious beauty of the pictures, all free, in
commoded movements of the story, all sparkling turns of the satire,
the humour, and the wit; there is here no deliberate concoction of
‘ blessed words like Mesopotamia,’ no triumphant exultation in the
invention of novel tricks for saying ordinary things that must be said
in a roundabout, coxcombical, and unintelligible manner, which now
(as in the days of Euphues and Darwin) appears to be considered the
one essential of great poetry. Wordsworth hoped vainly that he had
�THS POET 0> MODERN DEMOCRACY.
245
refuted that. I refuse to call him a great master of expression with
whom words, whether in prose or verse, are not before all a medium of
meaning ; if they are employed with all manner of tricks and artifice,
primarily for their own sakes, and the meaning has very much to take
its chance of sanity and wholeness among them (the effect being that
of a kaleidoscope, where bright broken fragments of ideas keep shifting
their combinations in an endless and bewildering fashion), whatever the
music of the sound be, it is not good expression, but the very worst.
Poetry in this case usurps the place of music, for words can never bo
mere sound, but always must remain symbolic sound with a determined
meaning. Just so precisely the latest fashion in music usurps the place
of language and stultifies the very idea and specific difference of music,
which implies sound for its own sake, spiritual suggestion only indirect
and indefinite : a similar remark applies to the last fashion in painting.
Shelley himself, for example, wonderful poet as he is, was often carried
into totally inadequate expression by his exquisite ear for melodious
sound. His melody and harmony are glorious when they rise spon
taneously into heaven, immediately responsive to the soaring and ex
panding impulse within, wholly obedient to the burst of impetuous ima
gination., to the divine stress and swell of immense human sympathies.
But of a poet—a maker, a seer, a singer—must first of all be demanded
if he can make and feel and see ; then afterwards, if he can sing. Yet
the chances are that if he answer ‘ yes ’ to the first question, you are
almost safe in leaving the other unasked. It is the very meaning and
essence of poetry that a man who can make in the region of the ideal,
who can feel and imagine (unless he be by nature impelled to some
other than verbal form of plastic expression), will necessarily be driven
to
form of rhythmical utterance. I do not depreciate the most
gifted in the region of melodious metrical expression. I glorify them.
If they have other things yet more essential, they are by far the most
perfect of our poets ; only Byron and Wordsworth, whose melody was
less perfect than that of Shelley or Coleridge, cannot on that account be
placed below the latter as poets; for they have abundantly filled for us
vast spaces in the area of poetry which could not have been filled without
them. They have ideal treasures not to be found in their contemporaries.
What were the early rhapsodists, the story-tellers, ballad-intoners,
bards, of an infant people ? It is generally conceded that poetry
among these is of the purest and freshest. Yet what do they know of
our elaborate involutions of phrase-mongering ? Therefore, especially
do I welcome Whitman. In spite of all his faults, he brings us back
to the matrix, to common sense and common nature, and makes us feel
what poetry originally, what at the root of the matter poetry even now,
really means and ought to mean. He is not himself indeed always an
artist a poet; but he is often a very great poet; and when he is,
he shows himself to be one, because he must be, not because he would
like to be, and can mimic those who are. He chants, declaims; when
�245
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
his soul and subject hid him, he sings, quite in his own fashion, as the
poets of a primitive people do.
After all, it is rarely that you find all poetic gifts perfectly balancing
one another in any poet whatever. Nor can I concede for a moment
that deficiency in the region of large vivid insight, affluent imagination,
broad human sympathy, or rush and fire of passion, can be more
perfectly atoned for by verbal daintiness and skill, or by a fine ear for
verbal music, than some defect in these last gifts can be by possession
on the part of a poet of those ideal gifts in ampler measure. Indeed, I
distinctly believe that the contrary rather is true. There is more hope
that a poet may be cured of hesitating utterance than that a mere
voluble versifier may sober and strengthen into a poet.
We did want some infusion of robuster and healthier blood among
the pallid civilised brotherhood of our poets. If admirers arise who
strive to imitate Whitman’s gait and form, they will probably make
themselves ridiculous, puff themselves out and collapse ; yet will he
certainly give our jaded literature the prick and fillip that it needed.
He at any rate is no closet-warbler, trilling delicately after the music
of other singers, having merely a few thin thoughts and emotions only
a quarter his own and a clever aptitude for catching the tricks of
another man’s manner.
He bears, however, a marvellous resemblance (I often think) to
Oriental prophets. He is in manner of life, as well as manner of
thought, feeling, temperament, marvellously like a reincarnation over
there in the West of that special principle of personality which has
been so much more frequently manifested in the East—in Derwishes,
for instance, and Sufis. He has so thoroughly assimilated Bible
poetry on account of his profound personal identity with the writers
of it. Yet is he very un-Hebrew after all. He is more Egyptian,
Persian, Indian. Pantheist is he to the back bone; a nature worshipper,
seeing God everywhere—God in all, even the meanest thing ; bowing
before good and evil as integral and correlative elements in the universal
scheme of things, all going (as Hegel demonstrates) by the principle
of identity in contraries. He is a desperate and shameless assertor of
the sacredness of the flesh, the body, beauty of form and colour, and
the fleshly instincts. This he is (let us freely admit and regret)
wantonly, inartistically coarse in asserting; unutterably shocking
of course to those who are unutterably shocked with nature for
making us of flesh at all, and who hold that the only way to remedy
her immodest mistake is to hush the fact up altogether.
The passages most capable of giving deep and permanent delight to
lovers of poetry in all ages are certainly those in which a profound
soul-moving spiritual signification rises without let or hindrance into
that perfect rhythmic cadence which is propel’ to it. Here doubtless a
careful training of the organ of expression has its place, as well as a
fine original instinct for expression, and a genius for grandeur and
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
247
melody of sound. In proportion to the completeness, magic sug
gestiveness, and special beauty of sound concordant with idea and
feeling, will be the penetration and lingeringly-inherent power of the
poem. But the condition implied is that the sound be verily an echo,
a reduplication of the sense. In that wonderful music of Coleridge’s
1 Ode to France ’ there is all the still floating of cloud, the long
roll of wave, the solemn music of wind and swinging pine by
night. In ‘Lewti,’ the delicious, how the mellow ripple of verse in
its own ‘meandering mazes’ reflects and multiplies for ever that
gleam of river-swans and the river 1 A marvellous and mysterious
fellowship among sights and sounds makes such a marrying of them
attainable. Not only is the word thunder next of kin to the very roll
of sound in heaven, but very twins also are blitz and the flash that
blinds. The name gleaming gently soothes the ear, even as soft tender
light does the eye. And when the whole subject has a pervading tone,
a characteristic movement, be it rapid tumultuous rush, solemn im
perial march, pathetic pause, or tripping buoyancy of the dance, then
must the true poet’s measure breathe antiphonal response in the
music. Take Shelley’s marvellously lovely prophetic chorus in
‘ Hellas,’ or the splendid music of his eagle-chorus in the same ; out of
Byron take the stern, sad warrior-lilt of his ‘ Isles of Greece ;’ out of
Burns the abrupt exulting tramp, the clarion and the battle-shout of
‘ Scots, wha hae.’
But in no case can I find that any great poets made poetry to con
sist in mere ingenious allurements for the ear, busied themselves first
of all about this, and let the spiritual fire fall into the midst of their
word-altar if it would, or if it could. Alas ! how often it will not, though
the priests of Ashtaroth cry aloud, and leap, and cut themselves with
knives! '
Coleridge’s 1 Kubla Khan,’ exquisite for music, even in spite of the
line which brings in that ‘ blessed word ’ Mount Abora, is far too shadowy
a vision from opium-land to be permanently remembered, as 1 Christabel ’
or the 1 Mariner ’ may be. To my mind, that sweetest little bit, called
the ‘ Knight’s Grave,’ is, for atmosphere of tender sentiment, undefined
yet far-reaching and profound, suffusing picture, thought, and melody
alike (surely the melody is magical to a degree), worth many ‘Kubla
Khans ’ and similar pieces, arresting only or almost only from the music
of the syllables.
So much I thought it well to premise, because in a day which
has seen really beautiful artificial melodies in poetry brought to a
pitch of rare perfection, the rough untutored guise of Walt Whit
man’s muse is likely to prove the most serious obstacle of all to
toy cardinal justice being done to his high poetic genius.
Yet in Whitman we shall often recognise that nobler kind of music
which is bound up with a poet’s language as a more thorough and
effectual expression of thought, image, and feeling.
�248
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
Turn, first, to his beautiful lament for the death of Lincoln, 1 When
lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed ’ :
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me,
The gray-browll bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang what seemed the song of Death, and a verse for him I love
Come, lovely and soothing Death !
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day in the night, to all to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death!
Praised be the fathomless universe
Por life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love. But praise ' 0 praise and praise
Por the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death !
Yet each I keep and all,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woo,
With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering odour.
For the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands . . .
And this for his dear sake.
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
Note here, too, the creation of a simple beautiful whole—a few
ordinary sights, scents, and sounds, flowing quietly as by accident
into his soul, and there taking a solemn tinge from the sublime
atmosphere of a manly grief ready to kindle into the gladness of a
triumphant faith—but nothing forced, nothing strained, nothing made
up; these messengers from without just taking on an aspect of
hallowed sympathy with the tone and temper of the soul they visit.
I note this particularly as one instance out of many in Whitman,
because what is most noticeable on the surface of him is a certain
fragmentariness, a certain tendency to rush rapidly through a whole
world of isolated details with an intensity of exhilaration, indeed,
which is itself poetic, but which yet fails of creating high art, because
there is no obvious wholeness, no sufficiently pervading idea or
purpose to impart unity. It is not with him a question of painting a
particular scene or even object with extraordinary lovingness and
minuteness of touch, the whole being poetical because every touch
helps to create, or indeed more strictly develop, a spiritual ideal of
scene or thing by flashing upon the bare matter, as it appears to the
cold unloving sense, a thousand tints and tones from kindred things
�The
poet
Of
modern democracy.
249
With which it has latent fellowship and sympathy. With Whitman
rather, in snch passages as offend many readers, it is a kind of rapid
excited stride through brilliant but heterogeneous stalls of a great
exhibition or bazaar, cataloguing objects with bare names as he goes.
And this is the notion he gives you always and everywhere. How
ever barren, or even stammering and inadequate his naming and
picturing, still he contrives to flash upon all a wonderful light of
freshness, and glory, and triumph in the bare existence of all things, as
he shoulders along, the great sane man, enjoying, praising, filled to
the very brim, in an age of nervous hesitation, and question, and
lamentation, with a faith as tremendous and unquenchable in the
ultimate excellence and right of things as ever burned in prophet or
saint of old. A faith not received by inheritance as an heirloom, and
conventionally valued as a property, a propriety, a matter of course—■
but a faith grown out of the very roots and breadths of his own per
sonality, and that the personality of a man who, with all reverence for
the past, yet lives in, and assimilates the fresh results yielded by the
present, sharing, according to the fuller measure of genius and un
wonted human sympathy, the hopes and aspirations of his fellows for
the future. His bright and large views of life may indeed be fairly
attributed in some measure to his splendid health and physique, as Mr.
Rosset ti remarks. And I think this rapid, often unsatisfactory, nakedly
prosaic cataloguing of innumerable isolated details, may be attributed
largely also to the poet’s exhilaration in the open air; he can hardly
stop to meditate and get the precise character of the object opened out
to him, he enjoys it so, and then so many other things everywhere
press themselves on him to be noticed and enjoyed. In this respect,
Ms fellowship with ordinary out-door, healthy men, his habit of loafing
»bout and basking, does a serious injury to his artistic expression.
For it should be well understood that accuracy of detail may be either
naked, cold, and mechanical, or intensely poetic because thoroughly
spiritualised. It is unjust to apply the phrase ‘ photographic ’ to this
Zasi kind of work. Coleridge and Keats always saw nature thus;
Wordsworth’s harder nature not perhaps always, though usually: and
what I mean by the poetic vision is a more real and intense, by no
means a less true, sight.
But generally Whitman’s description appears to me thoroughly
masterful. His epithets are few, yet precise and characteristic of the
broad general image which a thing, a scene, casts upon a quick,
passing, but piercing and sympathetic, observer. Thus :
In lower latitudes, in warmer air in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating
slowly, high beyond the tree-tops ;
°
below the red cedar festooned with tylandia j the pines ajid cypresses
Growing out of the white sand, that spreads far and flat ;
Ihe waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the
wind.’
VOL. II.—NO. VIII.
N
�250
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
But if Whitman be sometimes remarkable for incisive luminous
distinctness of vision and keenness of all sensation, at other times he
is no less remarkable for a certain magical, mysterious, half-Oriental,
half-German mood that anon possesses him, vague and dim, tender,
mournful, mystical.
‘ The Song of the Broad-axe ’ and ‘ Drum-taps ’ are poems that
are almost all wholes—exquisite pictures drawn writh a few broad
telling touches, and exhaling the profoundest pathos, yet seldom
morbid—a wind, as of bracing faith, blowing through all the sorrow
and the horror; a bracing atmosphere of personal unselfish heroic
endeavours, and most sterling human sympathy pervades them.
On the ‘ Drum-taps ’ Whitman might be content to rest his fame
with future generations. There is little philosophy or mysticism ;
there are few of those peculiarities in form or boldnesses of speech
which shock people most—the art is certainly more perfect. There
is here a definite theme through all the poems—the subject is large,
grand, full of energy and strife, one for which Whitman’s genius as
well as personal experience eminently fits him. Have there ever
been such a series of war poems written ? I do not know of any.
Here, however, not only the tender, loving, pathetic, as well as real
istic and idyllic power of Whitman appears, but also his own ardent
personal convictions, tastes, and aspirations, so that ever and anon
he breaks into passages of tremendous lyric fire. And, except in that
other great poetic figure of the day, Victor Hugo, I hardly know
where we shall look in Europe for the like ; for our verse does not excel
row-a-days in verve, and fire, and rapid rush.1 In that line is not the
following magnificent ?—
Beat! beat! drums. Blow ! bugles ! blow !
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid, mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump, 0 terrible drums ; so loud you bugles blow!
And in ‘ The Uprising,’ you can hear the surge, and whirl, and
shriek of the wind; the tremendous upheaval and welter of the
sea; the deep gathering overwhelming roar of a roused and mad
dening multitude. Then ‘ The Song of the Banner ’ is all alive with
spirit of battle. In the few lines 1 The Flag ’ there is a wild fierce
delight, electrically communicated, from the mere upheaval of a people
en masse to fight, it scarcely matters why or for what.
‘What we believe in invites no man, promises nothing, sits in
1 I wish to state that this essay was written more than a year and a half ago, and
has been lying by. I have since seen Mr. Swinburne’s ‘ Songs before Sunrise,’ many
of which are all alive with resonant lyric fervour inspired by great human emotions.
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
251
Calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discourage
ment, waiting patiently, waiting its time ! ’ That to me is grand ;
he cannot define, will not pretend to explain precisely, the in
evitable and Divine issue of all our strife, and hallowed endeavour
and success, and failure—but It is there, in the Future, in the For
ever ; patient, silent, grand, adorable, inevitably To be.
The short, "so perfect, pathetic pictures I spoke of in ‘ Drum-taps ’
are well worthy of study. ‘ A Letter from Camp,’ is the simple relation
of an affecting incident, without over-elaborate phrase, or prim
precision of ornament, after the manner of idyls which become a
little wearisome, but has the rare merit, for all its plain speech, of
dropping directly into our hearts and remaining there.
‘Vigil on the Field’ is exquisite for tenderness, sadness, and
large clear delineation of incident and scene. There is a rare fresh
ness of personal feeling about that: the charm of it seems to me un
utterable. He watches by a dying comrade whom he loved—a boy
-—on the field of battle, returns to find him dead, buries him in a
blanket in a rude dug grave there. ‘ The Wounded ’ is another graphic
picture. ‘ 0 tan-faced prairie-boy ’ and ‘ A Grave ’ are exquisite little
sketches. ‘ Camps of Green,’ too, is beautiful—the camps of the dead.
So is the ‘ Dirge for Two Veterans ’ and the ‘ Hymn of Dead Soldiers : ’
Sweet, are the blooming cheeks of the living, sweet ere the musical voices sounding;
But sweet, ah ! sweet are the dead, with their silent eyes.
And what shall we say of this, called ‘ Reconciliation ’ ?—
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war ancl all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever
again this soiled world ;
For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead.
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin ; I draw near,
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Or of this ?—He walks out in the dim gray daybreak, and sees three
forms on stretchers, covered with’ gray heavy blankets. ‘ Curious I
halt, and silent stand ’—then he lifts one blanket:
Who are you, elderly man, so gaunt and grim, with well-grayed hair, and flesh all
sunken about the eyes? Who are you, my dear comrade ?
Then to the second I step—and who are you, my child and darling ? Who are you,
sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming ?
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white
ivory,
Young man, I think I know you. I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ
himself;
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
I
We would now, before passing to consider shortly the general
character of Whitman’s philosophy and teaching, draw closer attentio n
N2
�252
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
to the nature of his music. We take another instance from the poem,
1 When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed ’:
0 how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone ?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ?
Seawinds blown from east and west,
Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till tlierff on the prail'iea
meeting:
These, and with these and the breath of my chant,
I perfume the grave of him I love.
0 what shall I hang on the chamber Walls ?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ?
But of all our author’s poems, surely the loveliest is ‘ A Song
out of the Sea.’ I only wish I could quote it whole, but it is too
long. I hesitate not to say that to me there is no lyric in the language
like it—out of Shelley.
There is a wonderful natural music running through this and
similar poems of Whitman’s : an outbreathing as in primitive times,
and among a primitive people, that can come from nowhere but from
the very depths of a poet’s, a singer’s soul. It is all his own—creation
of spirit, body, vesture. He is intensely original; has not been imbued
with the world’s rich inheritance of treasured poetry: works under no
strong (however flexible) traditions of art, speaks because he must, sings
because he must; yet, with all his rare personal mass and intensity, sings
only sometimes—would certainly sing more constantly did he condescend
to condense and concentrate more; in which some respect for established
forms would largely assist him. And yet in the links of poems where
there is confessedly no intensity of fire possible, if at least we require
that it shall be germane to the subjects, it is more than doubtful
whether the poetic barrenness should be scattered over with sham
flowers instead of real ones ; as the established forms, or at least the
standard poetry by which this English generation judges, appears to
require. So you get either fine sound with no meaning whatever, or
epithets ingeniously constructed in cold blood, which in either case
seriously interferes with the natural and lifelike development of the
poem. Pure honest prose, where prose is really proper, would be
infinitely better.
However all this be, here, in the ‘ Song of the Sea,’ and in similar
passages from Whitman, you do assuredly find, if you are sensitive
and competent, a certain artless harmony of sound that flows like a
spell upon jaded ears, somewhat sated with cloying artificial harmonies
from the study. One is reminded of some dreary nocturne, some
slumbrous mystic voluntary breathed in twilight within a vast
cathedral, or weird natural sounds we know not whence, wandering
phantasmal over lowland wildernesses by night.
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
253
It is like the very voice of the sea himself, entangled in strings of
the harper ; into the strain has passed the very plaint and murmur of
winds over barren sand and briny briar; rising alternately and fall
ing ; harsh, interrupted, disturbed ; caught up unaware smooth and
soothing; stealing upon us forlorn and melodious, from unfooted
wastes, and shadowy realms of some spirit land that is very far.
Just two personification-pictures, eminently rich in colour, firm
in outline, distinct and pregnant with symbol, yet small in compass
and condensed. One is from ‘ Old Ireland ’ :
Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave, an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tattered, seated on the ground ;
Her old white hair drooping dishevelled round her shoulders;
At her feet an unused royal harp,
Long silent—she too long silent—mourning her shrouded hope and heir :
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.
The other is from ‘A Broadway Pageant,’ written on occasion of
the reception of a Japanese embassy:
The Originatress comes,
The. land of Paradise—land of the Caucasus—the nest of birth,
The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of Eld,
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,
With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,
The race of Brahma comes !
[To &e continued.']
’
�
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A study of Walt Whitman, the poet of modern democracy. Part 1
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Noel, Roden
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 241-253 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (October 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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American Poetry
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Walt Whitman
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336
HITMAN,
THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
By the Hon. Roden Noel.
PART II.
We will now consider briefly Walt Whitman’s position as prophet and
teacher.
From the very extraordinary and powerful poem called ‘ Walt
Whitman’ (not reprinted by Mr. Rossetti, but a part of which is
quoted by Mr. Buchanan, and is therefore accessible to the general
reader) we may get a fair notion of its general character. Mr.
Buchanan gives an excellent description of it : ‘ Whitman is here for
the time being, and for poetical purposes, the cosmical man, an entity,
a representation of the great forces. And here he expresses with
immense power the infinite culminating worth of personality—how all
natural influences have been and are ever working up to constitute
and develop a man, a woman, a person. It is the broad dignity of a
man, as a man, he preaches : very little the special privileges of dis
tinguished men, or favoured classes of men. This is the very spirit and
truth of democracy :
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me ;
A far down I see the first huge nothing—I know I was even then ;
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me ;
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen ;
For room to me, stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me;
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me ;
My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could overlay it;
�A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN.
337
For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetable gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care ;
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me ;
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
In a poem of extraordinary vigour, though, one of those where he
puts down innumerable items—yet here for a great and distinct per
vading purpose—‘ Salut au Monde,’ after passing in rapid review, and
addressing with graphic characteristic epithet or two almost all con
ceivable inhabitants of the globe—great, refined, small, vulgar, bad,
good—he says :
Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless, each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth ;
I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands,
,
And, in ‘ Starting from Paumanok,’ he says :
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
I harbour for good or bad—I permit to speak at every hazard—
Nature now without check, with primal energy . . .
. . And sexual organs and acts ! do you concentrate in me.;
For I am determined to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you
illustrious ...
This last determination he carries out in a series of poems (not re
printed by Mr. Rossetti) called 1 Children of Adam.’ Again he re
solves :
I will sing the song of companionship,
I will write the evangel poem of comrades and love,
For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy,.
And who but I should be the poet of comrades ?
And this he does (as I think most nobly, and with real originality)
in a series called ‘ Calamus.’ Some of these, under a different heading,
Mr. Rossetti reproduces. Thus we have ‘ The Friend,’ ‘ Meeting Again,’
4 Parting Friends,’ ‘ Envy,’ 1 The City of Friends,’ ‘ The Love of Com
rades ’:
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble ;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon!
I will make divine magnetic lands
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
VOL II.—NO. IX.
S
�338
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along
the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies ;
I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.
‘ Fit Audience’ is another of these, and the charming £ Singing in Spring. ’
One is called ‘ Out of the Crowd’:
Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love, you ; before, long I die !
I hare travelled a long way merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once looked on you,
For I feared I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean, my love ;
I too am part of the ocean, my love ;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But it is, perhaps, too much to expect that this series of poems will
ever.be liked here. With us, men friends must like each other from a
very long distance, with many a formal grating between—may, indeed,
without gross impropriety, touch the tips of each other’s fingers ; any
warmer sentiment or demonstration of such—any love, for instance, into
which a sense of beauty and grace should enter, would be greeted among
us with a storm of most virtuous execration and horror. This, of course,
is a matter of idiosyncrasy—a question of national temperament : moral
axioms, indeed, are mostly founded on men’s temperaments; their
reasons (or no reasons) being invented as an after-thought. But those
who cannot quite go the whole length of the British Philistine in this
respect will admire Whitman’s ideal of manly friendship—warm, faith
ful, founded in mutual love as well as mutual esteem—and will believe
with him, that if there were more of it, States and peoples would be
nobler and stronger.
Atomism; solitary, self-supporting, self-seeking, competing, contend
ing isolation—each for himself—is our ideal; our ideal in private life,
our ideal in political economy. It is not the ideal of Christianity, as
understood by Christ and His disciples, and the early Church. But—
John P.
Robinson, he
Sez they didn’t know everything down in Judee.
And the most orthodox Christians now, though ready to roast any honest
person who says it, seem practically very much to agree with him.
One’s wife and children indeed, as part of one’s family, as belonging to
oneself; and sometimes even a poor relation, as coming within the
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
339
«nchanted circle—these may be regarded (in a married man’s case) as
one or two satellites revolving round that great centre of an English
man’s solar system—himself.
‘ To Working Men’ is a very characteristic poem. The great catholic,
all-yearning heart of the man who shrinks from no one, however de
ceived and degraded ; who longs to take each and all into his brother
man’s heart, solace and succour, and bring him nearer, not to his (the
lover’s) individual standard, but to his, the beloved man’s, own ideal
manhood—comes out finely here. Docs it not breathe the very spirit
-of Christ 1—
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake ;
If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I
'Cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds?
If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table.
Then he continues to expound his central conviction of the supreme
■worth of manhood—personality :
We consider Bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine ;
I say that they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still;
It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life.
Heaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed
out of you.
... The sum of all known reverence I add up in,you, whoever you are,
■The President is there in the White House for you ; it is not you who are here for
him.
.All doctrines, all politics, and civilisations exsurge from you ;
If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be ?
The most renowned poems would be ashes, oration, and plays would be vacuums.
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.
If we look for some one to lament over his age, how base, how lethargic,
how vulgar and prosaic it is, and how no one can possibly get the mate
rials of poetry out of it; evidently we must not go to Walt Whitman.
■If we have not great poetry, he would probably ascribe it, not to the
fault of the age, but to that of the poets who despise and despair of it.
There are low and grovelling and unbeautiful tendencies enough, God
knows ; but we need men to see what is good and great in us, and to
-.urge us on to nobler and richer life—hardly to stand by and curse us
unhelpfully, as Shimci did David. And though it is quite true that
Whitman is not an artist primarily—he is too indifferent in shaping
beautiful works of ark out of his rich materials : he does not care for
.art at all for art’s sake—yet he does abundantly prove the spirit in
s 2
�340
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
-which a poet may look even at this present age, and lift it np into the
regions of art, if he only will, faith, Hope, need not be extinct amongns ; there is a Future; let us help to shape it. Whitman intimates that
he looks to a wider, fuller life for all men, for average men and average
women; when love shall prevail, and individualities shall be allowed
fuller play; when each shall be reverenced and respected for what he is>
his place in the harmonious community admitted ; a richer community,,
made up from many types of person; when the dignity of flesh and its
impulses shall be acknowledged, under due restraint from those princi
ples which are yet higher in our nature—as, for instance, the sympa
thetic principle; when men shall reverence one another foi* what they
are—-not on delusive artificial grounds that afford no true reason for
Teverence, but serve only to confuse our truer instincts of veneration, to
render us superstitious and idolatrous.
Robert Buchanan among Englishmen has produced some noble poetry
out of these same unpromising materials, though shabby gentility and’
dainty academics may shuddei- at it as vulgar. And since Pope pro
duced poems unsurpassable of their kind out of the analytic critical
tendencies of his time, more unpromising than any, who shall pro
nounce, a priori, that Clough and Arnold must fail because they try to*
draw music from the mingled forebodings, foreshadowings, hopes,,
despairs, and speculations of oui- own? Surely this wondrous myste
rious twilight over a world that has fissures opening into Hell and vistas
that invite to Heaven, surely this twilight may have music of its own
•—music that shall be no frigid imitation of one that is no more.
Nothing, of course, can be easier, than to say, certain subjects are
Tinpoetical, unfit for art. Railroads are, manufactures are, mysticism
of any kind and philosophy—anxious questionings, wonderings, tremulous
fears and hopes—these are. For they are not in Homer, or Pope, or
some one else. I say it depends entirely on how they are touched, in
what spirit they are taken up and treated, whether they are poetical or
not; that we must judge honestly by poetical results, not judge the
works given forth by preconceived theories, and utterly baseless,
idiosyncrasies ; not even by the ipse dixits of a fraternity of critics : all
that passes—good work remains, and another generation acknowledges
it to be good. There is a mZei way of looking at every present epoch ;
only the old poets and prophets had a way of their own. Men and
women still live and love, and toil and suffer. Explorers and pioneers
open up new continents, bring the people of to-day face to face with
wonderful races of the past, isolated yet alive, or mummied in their
tombs; vast human problems press for solution : science enlarges heikingdom, and opens out new worlds to the imagination: Nature is.,
eternal around us : and while we wait expectant, as yet uncertain by
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
341
what Word the eruptive forces we hear rumbling, as they gather anew
deep down in the very depths of our humanity, shall become articulate
in human language, we can turn to Her, ever undisturbed, ever young,
■ever calm, and read in her countenance inexhaustible meanings by the
glimmers of light shed ever freshly upon her out of restless, ever-compli•cating labyrinths of our own human spirits. Enough if there be among
us an undercurrent of sterling life—a thankfulness for victories acheived,
.a looking for victories to come, a keen relish for life as it is, or a strong
■desire to make it nobler.
Now look a moment at the poem ‘Whosoever.’ Perhaps none serves
to bring out Whitman’s central doctrine of all personal worth so
thoroughly as this :
None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordi
nate you ;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond what waits
intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all;
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light.
IBut I paint myriads of heads ; but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-coloured,
light.
_ . . The mockeries are not you.
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk ;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you.
.. . . The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk others
they do not baulk me.
, . .. There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you ;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
... I sing the songs of the glory of none—not God—sooner than I sing the songs
of the glory of you.
Whoever you are, claim your own at any hazard !
All this is very striking, and is a vigorous proclamation of a great truth,
of the greath truth which the time is beginning to see more and more
clearly. Yet in this, as in the preceding passages quoted to illustrate
Whitman’s teaching on this score, there is (as is wont to be the case in
the proclamations of most prophets), a certain one-sidedness, exaggera
tion, looseness of thought. When he says above that all doctrines, poli
tics, civilisation, sculpture, poems, histories, 1 exsurge from you] (the
;average man, any man), the truth underlying this is that all these come
-out of human nature—out of individuals, indeed, but out of individuals
who could not have existed, as they were without the help of all pre
vious human and other history, without the moulding of their age, and
■of the average men and women from whom they spring, and who take
.their part in educating these more distinguished spirits. These last are
the mouthpieces of their time, and help to mould the future man, even
the present average man. But his nature, too, has a root identity with.
�342
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
theirs, has germs and rudiments of the same faculties ; and the life of
all great works derives continuous vitality from kindred spirits which
comprehend them, and kindred creations are roused through the con
templation of them. Now Whitman thus proclaims that men are ‘of
one blood,’ are kindred amid all their differences ; so that a man, any
man, may claim fellowship with the best and mightiest of his race, may
therefore enfold within himself the principles of sublimest heroic and
intellectual manhood; is anyhow and at worst a person, a self, in a
higher sense than any other creatures are, and may claim from all hisfellows to be acknowledged and reverenced as such ! from his society,
and all functionaries of his society (however powerful and dignified) may
claim such possible facilities as shall enable him to make the best of
himself and his special capabilities. Though, indeed, one would have
fancied that something of this kind was precisely what our Lord Jesus
Christ had proclaimed with some force more than one thousand eight
hundred years ago. Only such truths take a good deal of proclaiming..
His followers did not quite like them, and thought it, on the whole, for'
the advantage of the brute mass (and of themselves), if they could make
out that He had in fact proclaimed precisely the opposite of such truths.
They need, therefore, reasserting, and in a modern fashion. But the big.
people and the good people will not like them any better. What a
chorus of pious horror, when some one said that Christ was the first
Socialist ! Yet for all that magna est veritas et y/rcevalelnt.
Notwithstanding, I do think, when we are making a study of thesedoctrines, we ought to point out where they seem to need considerable
guarding and qualification.
Men are not individual only, but members of a community, of a body
politic. And Whitman accordingly would supplement this bold uncom
promising assertion of individual dignity by the inculcation of love,
of the most ardent and self-sacrificing spirit of fraternity. ‘ Liberty,
equality, fraternity.’ Here again he is Christian enough. But is equality
a truth in the manner in which he asserts it 1 I believe not; and if not,
it must be so far mischievous to assort it. That common manhood is a
greater, more cardinal fact than any distinctions among men which raiseone above another I most firmly believe. Still these distinctions do*
exist, and so palpable a fact cannot be ignored without very serious in
jury. If great men could not have been without average men, and owemost to the grand aggregate soul of the ideal unit, humanity—which is-;
a pregnant truth—yet, on the other hand, this grand aggregate soul
could never have been what it is, could never have been enriched with
the treasures it now enjoys, without those most personal of all personali
ties—-prophets, heroes, men of genius. If these men need to be re
minded, as they do, of the rock whence they are hewn, there is yet a.
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
343
danger of average men mistaking such a message as that of modern de
mocracy through so powerful a spokesman as Whitman, and insisting
upon paring down the ideal superiority of their great ones too much to
the level of their own chaotic uniformity, rather than acknowledging and
venerating what is verily superior in these; taking them for leaders in
regions where they are appointed by nature to lead, and generally aim
ing to raise themselves so far as possible to the standard of a higher ex
cellence thus set before them.
In order to satisfy this law of inequality among men, I do not believe
that the mere proclamation of friendly love as between comrades (any
more than of sexual love and equal union between man and woman) is
at all sufficient. Veneration, reverence, also must be proclaimed, as
equally necessary; and the great point we ought to aim at, in helping to
solve the momentous question of the social future, seems in that respect
to be this—that mankind be taught, and gradually accustomed, to place
their reverence where reverence is indeed due, and not upon mere idols
of popular superstition. It is said (and, alas! with some truth) that if
you tear people from before one false shrine, they may only grovel before
a baser one. Bnt I say this should be the end kept steadily in view—to
stir up that which is noblest in ourselves, in order that we may be able
to venerate that which is most venerable in others, and may ourselves
be raised more near to their standard. That every man, whatever he
now, is to be supremely satisfied with himself as he is now, is of course
not in the least what Whitman means; but there is a danger of his
sometimes vague and unguarded language being so .understood by the
natural average man, who is already well disposed to be satisfied with
his lower habitual self, and make himself the measure of the standard
to which the Universe on the whole will do well to conform. This may
too readily result in the tyranny of a blind and prejudiced and ignorant
majority; by no means selecting men in any department of the State or
of private occupations for their special fitness to guide and manage in
such particular positions, and to introduce a higher ideal of life or of
work, but rather jealous, hostile, or indifferent to these, and basely sus
picious of their higher manly worth, their larger knowledge, and their
vaster power. We must worship something; and what we most tend to
worship is any larger and more successful incarnation of our meaner, less
noble selves. The average Briton, for instance, has a sort of complacent
air about him as if he was quite sure, not only that the.Deity is like an
average Briton, but even that the Deity ought to be very thankful for
being so. Utter individual freedom and self-assertion, unbalanced by
any counterbalancing principle of deference, humility, and reverence, has
far too much tendency to resolve itself into this, which just makes real
progress impossible, and might throw humanity far back awhile, even in
�344
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
the very midst of democracy and perfect political freedom. But what
Whitman does see so clearly is that, even when men have themselves
elected a ruler, or been concerned in the choice of a form of government,
there is a sort of glamour of the imagination which immediately invests
any actual depositary of power, and bows them in a kind of unreasonable
stupor before it. He therefore reminds them—you, the people, are the
source of such power, and government exists for you, not you for govern
ment. Obey it intelligently; modify it when reason requires.
Wealth, honour, and rank have the same way of casting a glamour
over the imagination, so that men do not concern themselves with en
quiring what the source of such wealth may be, or how far wealth and
rank may involve personal qualities which are indeed worthy of some
reverence. But these are accomplished facts on the surface, vague
powers; and we are apt to be enslaved by them, because we have not
been educated to enshrine a true God in the place of these usurpers—
usurpers, that is, if they assume the highest place, as they so gene
rally do.
It behoves, therefore, to look a little closer at such broad statements
as those we have quoted from Whitman. Architecture, sculpture,
religions, &c., are a great deal more than what the average man does to
them when he thinks about them. They were much more in the
creative genius of those who invented them, or at least gave the final
and complete form they took. And as to their being ashes and vacuums
now but for the average man, this is far more than anyone may presume
to say. There may be some persons who do comprehend them nearly
as they were—one or two even may cause them to take on now a pro
founder and more general significance than they wore of old, though
they are never again precisely the living foremost products of the
moving world-spirit which they were then. But, at any rate, their
significance must be quite infinite, and in proportion, moreover, to the
place that they then filled in the history of the world. The pulsations
that they caused may no longer be visible in the shape of circling
waves, but their effect can never cease. That is a law in physics, and
shall it be less a law in the higher spiritual sphere ? Assuredly not.
It is well to remind men that they may enter into all these things if
they will claim their privileges ; still it will be well to remember that
every man does not, will not, and this verily because he cannot, enter
into them. It is after all, and ever will be, the privilege of some.
Each has hisfunction, each is excellent, viewed from a higher standpoint;
even the cruel and the base are. But certainly we must not suppose
that we can all have the same place, and fill equally well the functions
. of everybody else. Such a principle can only lead to endless confusion
and mistake. Rather does the true principle of human dignity consist
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
345
in learning and acknowledging the worth and necessity of every func
tion, so that no one shall henceforth be ashamed of his post, however
humble, and that no one shall foolishly look down upon him for filling
it—look down on him only if he refuse to fill it, or fill it unworthily
and carelessly. Society must see to it, indeed, that each man at his post
be regarded as man, his other human claims not being disregarded. But
his position as worker in any capacity is to be esteemed honourable;
nor need everybody be in such a desperate hurry to become something
which he is not, and which all assuredly cannot be, to the detriment
and ill-being of those who do not succeed in this general scramble for
pelf and consideration, but remain, as they must, a vast majority of
condemned pariahs on the lower rungs of the social ladder. To wear a
black coat, and win the estimable privilege of making one’s workmen
fight as fiercely with oneself for bread as one fought with one’s own
master before !—-that is what political economy says we must all make
haste and do. In this light, this unguarded proclamation of the abso
lute equality of man appears to be somewhat confounding and dangerous.
An ideal social scheme would rather consist in every man claiming his
own, and acknowledging the special aptitudes of his neighbour. And as
to religions, poems, architecture, and civilisations, even supposing they
did not live in their infinite proportional effects, they have lived, they
have been, whether the average man knows to-day anything about them
or not.
But it is fair to admit that Whitman does now and then distinctly
acknowledge the claims of greatness to lead mankind, and insists on
the supreme worth of ideal manhood—strong mastering personality; and
these passages are to be set against the others. In the ‘Song of the
Broad Axe ’ he does this finely. And nothing can be nobler and more
complete than his description of an ideal great city or state. In it he
goes dead against the too prevalent worship of material resources and
material power. It is where the most virtuous, most loving, most
independent citizens are; where the fullest life of intellect, heart and
.soul is; where the happiness and good of each one stands sacred and
.■secure, so far as the community can secure it.
That each person to himself is a centre of the whole as no other
creature can be, that to that person the whole universe centres in
himself, and that all really has worked up to me, and for me, with my
marvellous consciousness, which creates not only a Me, but at the same
.moment creates over again in me the whole world so far as I know it—
this most strikingly our author asserts. Only there is peril of our not
.remembering that there are other selves, and some selves much greater
dhan ourselves, especially when we are assured that there is 1 no better,
no master, no god over us beyond what exists intrinsically in ourselves.’
�346
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN,
From a poem called ‘Greatnesses,’ however, we may set the following
against that :
Great is Justice !
Jiistice is not settled by legislators and laws—it is in the soul;
It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, gravity;
It is immutable—it does not depend on majorities—majorities or
What not come at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal.
So that we see the truth to he, Whitman believes the ideal manhood
to be whole in each man, only waiting, hidden in some; and he calls meh
up to this, out of their basei- everyday selves. In this again, he does not
surely differ much from the teaching of the most illustrious Christian
teachers. This is precisely what William Law and Mr. Maurice pro
claim; only it is true their doctrine is otherwise put. Whitman says ’
that the ideal man is in every man. Christian teachers more platonically assert that every man rather is in the ideal Man. Readers
may think that makes not so very much difference. Still, there is a
radical difference in the way of looking at the question; for it makes
a great difference whether we are to look into ourselves, and ourselves only,
for spiritual elevation above our ordinary selves, or whether we are to
look out of ourselves to a possible source of higher self-hood, which yet
at present is by no means present in ourselves. But to understand
Whitman better when he says that he ‘sets no god over anyone,’ let us
look for a moment at the most metaphysical or quasi-theological piece he
has written, called ‘The Square Deific.’ If I rightly apprehend him,
though the piece is none of the plainest, he makes the Divine All to«
consist, as it were, of a square, a four-sided figure. The first mani
festation, which he calls ‘ God] appears to be in the character of natural
laws as they incessantly, inexorably manifest themselves in time, in all
phenomena. ‘Relentless I forgive no man; whosoever sins, dies. I will
have that man’s life. Have the seasons, gravitation, the appointed days;.
mercy? No more have I.’ Secondly comes 1 the Saviour] of whom
Christ is the most prominent embodiment. It is the spirit of love and
self-sacrifice and mercy, as it exists among men. Thirdly comes Satan,.
‘Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt. Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorantr
with sullen face and worn brow;’ in short, the principle of ignorance,
suffering, hatred, selfishness, baseness, as it appears among men. Finally
comes the Spirit, ‘including Life, God, Saviour, Satan, Essence of Forms,
Life of the Real Identities, Life of the Sun and Stars, the general soul.’
Well, here all appears to me to be what we call phenomenal, with
nothing positively transcendental in it. I mean that this simply enumerates as divine and constituting God—(1) The natural external laws of
nature (whether of spirit or matter), (2) Love as it is in men, (3) Hate,
and suffering, and ignorance, as they are in men, (4) The one essence.
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
347
inclusive of all these, founding and giving them existence. Now I think
with Whitman this latter principle is merely an abstraction; it is simply
all the others, with the special characteristics of each left out. I
doubt from the language if Whitman means here to assert a iranscmdented ground, cause, principle of cdl that is in time, itself away from time,
not to be prisoned in the forms of intelligence, but by the very structureof intelligence demanding to be believed in and worshipped; worshipped
as source of all life and power, as well as worshipped in phenomenal
effects, personalities, and things. It may be otherwise; but he seems
to me not distinctly to conceive and believe in such a divine principle;
simply to deify men and nature as we see them—now regarding them as
separate entities, now viewing them as partakers of one identical yet
divinely manifested life. That is true, but to me it is not all—only
half. And if he held the other half truth, why should he distinctly say
that he places no god over any of us ? Whereas the fact is, that the
development of any personality (as of any other thing that begins to be
and changes, while retaining a certain mysterious identity from moment
to moment) were absolutely inconceivable, without admitting a principle
of such successive existence entirely out of the sphere of antecedent or
present phenomena. For when anything begins to be seen for the first
time, it is evident that nothing whatsoever which was before (being by
the very conditions of the case different and other) can possibly be
accepted as its efficient, but only as its condition, or occasional cause.
Yet the common sense of mankind and the consciousness of every man
insist that there must be an efficient cause for all that begins. Invaria
ble succession and order of phenomena have nothing whatever to dowith this, though the common fallacy is to suppose that the antecedents
are in an efficient sense causative of the consequents. Since, however,
all phenomena in their actual order are necessary to any special effect,,
the special causes of all these must be co-operative with its special causeto produce it : but these causes are alike transcendental. While, on theother hand, if intelligence and will in a divine person were taken as the
cause of phenomena, they would explain nothing, and fulfil the condi
tions of the problem no better, because phenomena as they are in time,
are not identical with them, as they would be in the divine ideas ; for
else they would have existed before, whereas they now begin to exist;
but it is this very beginning to exist which demands explanation, demands
an adequate cause. It remains, therefore, only to admit that such ulti
mate cause cannot be prisoned in forms of understanding; yet since it is,
it is the very source and essence of our, as of every other, life and
power ; and before this principle of special life and power comes forth to
constitute ourselves (as it does every successive moment we exist, chang
ing and modifying us) our special life and personality are to be regarded,.
�•348
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN.
■as folded up in God ; yet this is to be viewed only as a flexible adaptation
to our varying intelligence.
One more word. Whitman, I think, not obscurely intimates more
than once that he believes in personal immortality, but I do not think
the doctrine plays any important part in his system. And what he says
of death seems to me often very fine, quite independently of any such
doctrine of immortality. His notion of what the future life of a person
is to be, liow that person can strictly be said to live again beyond
death, is evidently of the vaguest; and so vague is it that nearly
all he says on this subject can be adopted thankfully and admiringly
oven by those who do not see their way to holding a strictly personal
immortality.
Thus, in 1 Nearing Departure,’ he says :
A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. .
0 book and chant ! must all then amount to but this ?
And yet it is enough, 0 Soul ?
0 soul! we have positively' appeared—that is enough.
In 1 Wherefore,’ too, he says, yielding for awhile to sadness, doubt,
■despondency, about the poor results achieved through incessant
.apparently useless struggle :—
What good amid these, 0 me, 0 life ?
'Then he ansivers:
That you are here, that life exists and identity,
That the poicerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse.
Such, indeed, is that of which at least we are certain. The least may
know that the eternities centre in him. Now, he is—they could not
possibly be without him, even as he is—and they diverge from him
•again; a seed he is of all Divine futurity. Surely, if we cease personally
to exist after this—this is something to know ; and we may make our
lives a conscious contribution, after our measure, to the sacred cause of
humanity, we may live out of the bounds of our own little selves, and so
inherit the ages. But in truth no one can cease to be ; for the essence
of each is eternal in God.
Again, in a wonderful little bit, ‘ To one shortly to Die,’ he says :—■
The suu bursts through in unlooked-for directions ;
-Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence—you smile !
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick ;
You do not see the medicines—you do not mind the weeping friends—I am with you,
I exclude others from you—there is nothing to be commiserated ;
I do not commiserate—I congratulate you.
Again, elsewhere, he says :
You are henceforth secure whatever comes and goes.
And why ?
Surely any one may say it.
�THE POET OF MODERN DEMOCRACY.
349
We are, we have been, what can change that? And, moreover, theefforts of us must continue, infinite, immense, in precise proportion to
what we are and have been. We cannot, even to-day, identify our
selves with the human creature that is popularly called ourselves in the
cradle. No self-consciousness now can unite the selves we are conscious
of with that life. Scarcely can we identify ourselves with the intelligent
children that we dimly remember ourselves to have been; we may com
pletely have shifted personality; and we may regard what others call
ourselves as more strange to us now than those persons of a bygone age,
who are dead indeed, but in whose souls and spirits we find to-day more
communion, more sympathy, than in any with whom, though living, wo
are in contact of mere proximity. There shall be a continuous con
sciousness not unlike ours; and other persons in the future may obscurely,,
yet rejoicingly, identify themselves with us.
In Mr. Lincoln’s Funeral Hymn, Whitman sings :
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning—thus would I chant a song for you,
0 SANE AND SACRED DEATH.
I suppose what will shock the majority most is Whitman’s admitting
evil and misfortune as part of the necessary order, entering as integral
elements into the Square Deific. Wherein he follows the small shoe
maker, and great philosopher, Jacob Behmen. Yet, after all that has
been said about it, thus it is. It affords, as imperfection, the necessary
stepping-stone to spiritual and moral progress; it affords the opposition
necessary to call out goodness, and kindness, love, virtuous strife, and
victory. All goes in this universe by a play of contraries, or where
would be the life, the advance, the infinite and harmonious variety ?
Without Satan, where would be the Saviour ?
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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A study of Walt Whitman, the poet of modern democracy. Part 2
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Noel, Roden
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 336-349 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November, 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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Poetry
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American Poetry
Conway Tracts
Poetry in English
Walt Whitman
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Text
A WINTRY WALK
AMONG THE MOUNTAINS
WITH SINCEREST APOLOGIES TO THE SHADE OF HIAWATHA.
LONDON:
F. B. KITTO, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHOUT.
1867.
�EXPLANATORY.
The following lines contain an accurate account of what befel
the writer during a ramble, on May 13th, 1867, over the summit
of Glyder-fach and down by Llyn Bochlwyd to Llyn Idwal,
returning by Twll-du and over Glyder-fawr, to Pen-y-gwryd.
Weather, densely overcast and strong gale from E. ; reached
the clouds and newly-fallen snow at about 2,000 feet above sea
level, and had the company of both to the summit, a further
height of 1,200 feet. The air temperature in the valley had fallen
twenty-five degrees since the evening of the 11th.
From several aneroid readings, the writer suspects Glyderfach, the Lesser Glyder, to be at least equal in height to Glyderfawr, i. e. to rise 3,275 feet or more above sea level; and from
Snowdon the former looks considerably the higher.
H. B. BIDEN.
Witton, Birmingham, '
June, 1867.
�A WINTRY WALK AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.
Scene—The Heart of Snowdonia.
MAY 13th, 1861.
Reader, let a rambler tell you,—
One who oft, the storm defying,
Converse lone has held with Nature
In her grandest, sternest aspect,
'Mid the crags of wild Snowdonia,
Or, with pleasantest companions,
Scaled her lofty peaks and ridges
Oft by roughest, untried circuit,
One incurably afflicted
With ^-oaetyetkes scandendiP'caccreiZu’s —
Though he ne’er beheld the wonders
Of the far-famed Alpine ranges
How, this day, alone, he wandered
O’er the newly snow-crowned mountains—
"Winter’s snows had gone in April*
Spite of Post, Gazette, or Record.
Senseless work, would say the Guide Books,—
Sapient, cockney-followed Guide Books,—
Yet most useful to the novice,
Thus “ without a guide ” (!) to wander,
Courting well deserved destruction !
How he scampered o’er the quagmires,
How he floundered through the Gwryd,
�4
More correctly called the Mymbyr,
Slipping off the treacherous boulders ;
Scrambled up the Lesser Glyder
Spite of clouds, of snow, and easter.
Wind beloved (?) and sung by Kingsley ;
Would that he could thus have felt it
Freezing his poor toes and fingers.
Reached the drifting, level, cloud-roof,
Plunged behind its dim grey curtain
Darkly stretched o’er lakes and valleys,
Blotting out all higher regions,
Hiding every well known landmark;
Reached the eighteen-inch-deep heather
Water-logged with snow half melted,
Half way up the lofty mountain ;
Onward, upward, floundering, scrambling,
Through the fog and furious east wind,
Steering now by faith and compass,
Reached unmitigated winter;
Clambered up by blocks and ledges
O’er the frozen cliffs and boulders ;
Gained a loftier, colder region,
Where the gale made wildest music
Howling o’er the crested ridges,
Through the obelisks and turrets,
Serried battlements and cannons,
Dimly seen through drifting mist wreath,
Outworks of the storm-rent summit:
Wondrous handiwork of Nature,
Nought like this is seen on Snowdon,
Though each scene alike be snowed on !
Reached Castell-y-gwynt, whose crags were
Pointed, edged with fairest frostwork ;
Frozen mist, on blocks and ledges—
Silvery plumage, icy feathers,
Pointed bristling to the tempest;
Hung with icicles of crystal
Glittering bright in rows and clusters
From each point and “ coign of vantage.”
Reached the lofty rock-strewn platform,
Where the snow lay thick around him,
Where the great Stonehenge-like ruins,
Ruins of no human structure,
■
'
�5
Lichen-marbled, sno w-besprinkJed,
Looming spectral through the cloud-rack
In their ever changing groupings,
Stood or leaned in solemn grandeur.
Porphyritic trap their structure ;
Trap indeed the writer found it
Once, too far the crags descending
Northward from the lofty summit
Recking not of cliffs beneath him ;—Novice then at mountaineering,
Yet compelled by his position
Down that wall of rock to scramble
To Cwm Bochlwyd’s deep recesses,—
Down, by clefts and narrowing ledges
Through the haunts of kite and raven.
Reached the pointed sharp-edged cap stone,
Bright with snow and silvery frostwork,
Thickly fringed with icy pendants,
Gleaming through the mist like daggers.
Crossed the rugged pile of “ ruins,”
Summit of the lofty mountain ;
Reached the rocky steep o’erlooking
Tryfan’s cone of blocks and pillars,—
Deep Cwm Bochlwyd’s wild recesses,
All concealed in clouds beneath him :
Whence the ravens’ dismal croaking
Echoed from the crags of Tryfan
O’er the hidden deep abysses
Reached his ear, in sudden chorus
Piercing through the eddying vapour,
IMwf loud in expectation,
Scenting, may be, feast most welcome,
Should the wanderer’s ice-numbed fingers'
Losing hold on crags or boulders,
Send him headlong down among them.
Corresponding members doubtless,
Of that “ Red-tarn Club,” so famous
Once, as holding nightly revel
In the wilds of far Helvellyn,
(Till disturbed by “Mister Wudswuth”)
O’er the bruised and mangled body
Of the luckless Obadiah !
(See Chris. North his “ Recreations.”)
�6
'fc
'fc
5|c
How, his purpose now accomplished,*
O’er the mountain crest returning,
Feet and fingers numbed and senseless
Struggling with the furious easter
And its six degrees of freezing,
Underneath his chin he carried
(Load unwonted for the season,
On this thirteenth day of fifth month)
Frozen mist, an icy burden
Hanging to his draggled whiskers,
Till each patriarchal “ Billy ”
In the depths of lone Cwm Bochlwyd,
In that rugged grey-goat valley,
Might have owned him as a brother ;
But, alas, the goats have vanished !
Passed again the “ Tempest’s Castle,”
Where on high, in snowy mantle,
Fringed and edged with frosted lace work
Stood the “ Sentinel ” gigantic,
Lonely ward and vigil keeping
Through the heats and frosts of ages
By the rugged block-strewn glacis
O’er the lofty Col du Gribin.
Floundered down the narrow couloir,
Waging cool war with the snow drift
By the eastern flank of Gribin,
Whose arête of stony columns,
Though by Ordnance-map constructors
Hardly indicated, rises
Rough with crest of spiny fretwork
(If the fog would let one see it ! )
Gained the scree, so loose and shelving,
Down the rugged steep descending.
Reached Llyn Boehlwyd’s sparkling fountain,
Dripping well of clearest water
Where the crystal streamlets trickle
From the high-ranged porph’ry columns,
From the cliff so grim and barren
Northwest face of Lesser Glyder
Down the screen of richest verdure ;
Golden rod and scented rose root,
Mountain rue, and kidney sorrel,
* Fixing a minimum thermometer among the rocks.
�7
Ladies’ mantle, starry cresses,
&®Men saxifrage, and mosses,
Glancing bright in silvery ripples.
Welcome sight when heats of summer
Parch with thirst the mountain climber ;
Beauteous now witli fairest frost-work
AM enframed in purest snow-wreath ;
Forty-two degrees its waters
Now, as in the heats of August.
Lost at length the whitened snow-field,
Left behind the realm of Winter,
Lost awhile the piercing east wind
In the lee of rugged Tryfan ;
Left above, the drifting vapour ;—
Saw the snow-crowned Carnedd Dafydd
Clear awhile from gloom and tempest;
Saw Llyn Ogwen’s rippling waters
Fifteen hundred feet beneath him ;
Saw the lengthening vale of Francon
Bask awhile in pleasant sunshine ;
Hastened down to ice-ground Bocblwyd
(See Professor Ramsay’s “ Glaciers : ”—
No connexion here writh Murray;
Safe in print the writer had it
In the “ Brum. Gazette ” of August—
Of the twenty-fifth of eighth month—
Eighteen hundred four and sixtyJ
Reached Llyn Bochlwyd’s sheet of silver ;
Stood beside its lonely margin
Sometimes reached by roving angler,
Scarcely known to guide-book maker,
Scene but rarely seen by artist;
Stood awhile, the view surveying.
Wild and gloomy frowned the valley,'
Dark beneath its roof of vapour
Stretched across from peaks to ridges,
From sharp Tryfan’s headless shoulders
To decapitated G ribin ;
While the crags of Lesser Glyder,
Seamed with lines of white, descending
Glacier-like from cloud-hid snow fields,
Closed the darksome rugged picture.
Glorious are these lofty mountains
�8
Scarred with precipice and cavern
In the full revealing sunshine
Of the pleasant days of summer ;
(All untrod by highway tourist
Only bent to “do” the country)
Yet most glorious, when the sunset
Breaking through departing tempest
Floods with sudden, radiant splendour
( Golden lights and ebon shadows )
“ Castle ” pinnacle and “ turret ”
On the lofty crested ridges ;
While the lazy snake-like cloud-wreaths,
Rank by rank in long procession,
Stained throughout with evening’s purple
Crawl athwart their lofty shoulders,
O’er the dim retiring valleys
Grey with cliff-entangled mist beds.
“ Scene of sternest desolation ; ”
Yet, amid its barren grandeur,
Gems of loveliest tint or verd ure
“ Waste on desert air their sweetness.”-—(Reader, please forgive this rendering
Of a somewhat well-worn passage.)
Oft they smile in welcome beauty
On the mountain rambler’s footsteps :—
Parsley fern in ell-broad masses,
Dots the screes with tufted clusters ;
Mountain thrift, the sea-green rose-root,
Gnarly rooted, golden blossomed,
Star, and mossy saxifrages,
Bladder fern in brittle lace-work,
Alchemilla, mountain shield fern,
Oak and beech ferns, stemless catchfly,
Golden rod, the pale green-spleenwort,
Fringe with green the rocks and ledges,
Line the mossy caves and crannies ;
While the bristling, bright fir club moss,
Sturdy little mountain climber,
Though it not disdains the valleys,
Dots with life the loftiest ridges ;
Or its grey-green Alpine cousin
Struggles through the close cropp’d herbage ;
Or vivip’rous Alpine grasses
Wave in air their tufted offspring
�9
Held aloft on wiry foot-stalk ;
Or, in damp and sheltered corners,
Golden saxifrage encases
Rocks and stones with richest carpet:—
“ Common ” plant, but yet how lovely
Glimmering blue-green in the darkness
Deep within some dripping cavern,
Roofed with darker olive fringes
Of the filmy fern of Wilson ;
Chiefly found in wild luxuriance,
In the darksome damp recesses
Of the huge and loose-heaped fragments,
Relics of moraines, dissected
By the hidden, tinkling streamlets ;
Or in more illumined aspect,
Spangled with the snowy blossoms,
Gold besprinkled, emerald tufted,
Of saxífraga stellaris.
(Ending now this long digression,)
On again the rambler started,—
Scrambled down to well known Idwal,
(See Smith’s, Brown’s, or Jones’s guide-books;)
Many a hundred feet descending
To Llyn Idwal’s southern angle ;
Thence by the moraine so rugged
Up the centre of the valley
Tow’rds the distant “ Devil’s Kitchen,”
Gaping high in air before him ;
Onward, upward, climbing, scrambling,
Round or o’er the ice borne fragments.
*
*
*
*
Hark, what sudden, sharp crack-crackling,
Like the sound of rifle volley
Or the snap of closest thunder,
Swelling now to noise “uproarious,”
Echoes round the rock-walled valley ?
Is His Sable Highness cooking
In the gloomy cleft up yonder ?
Has his kitchen Inter busted ?
Whence can come such startling clamour ?
See, from out yon crown of vapour
Resting on the lofty mountain,
�10
Lines of dust, with seeming slowness,
( Strange effect of height and distance,)
Creeping down that steep escarpment,
Glyder-fawr’s north-western angle ;
Gleaming now with sudden radiance
In the level sheet of sunshine
Streaming ’neath the drifting cloud roof,
From Elidyr’s lofty shoulder
O’er the twilight darkening valley ;
See, from out the lowering columns
Right and left, the glancing fragments
Leaping, crashing o’ei’ the ledges,
Hurling down the loosened boulders,
Now with headlong speed descending,
Score the cliff with lines of ruin :
Nearer, sharper, grows the tumult,
Louder, grander, roar the echoes,
Till the rushing, stony torrent
Clattering down by screes and gullies,
Spent and worn, has found its level
All its noisy life departed.
On again the rambler struggled,
Reached at last Twll-du’s dark fissure,
Tempting spot to plant collector-;
(See the trusty “ Guides ” aforesaid.)
Yet one little floral beauty
Well deserves a passing notice ;—
Purple saxifrage ; its blossoms,
Soon as winter’s snows have left it
Rosy-tinting rocks aud boulders
On the old volcanic ash beds;
Loveliest little Alpine creeper,
With its slender thyme-like branches
Threading all the rocks with crimson.
Looked into the “ Devil’s Kitchen,”
Too much water, now, to enter,
Though the writer oft has clambered
Up the fallen blocks and ledges
Ad sanctissimum sanctorum,
Underneath the fallen boulder ;
Whence, on looking back, the landscape,
Lake and mountain, bright in sunshine,
Seen along the darksome crevice,
�11
Framed between its gloomy portals,
Startles with its golden radiance ;
Like the light of moon or planets
Yellow in the midnight darkness.
—Climbed to Llyn-y-cwn’s morasses,
—Saw the dim grey sea horizon
Faintly gleaming o’er Carnarvon,—
O’er the tower of Penrhyn Castle
Down Nant Francon’s long perspective ;
Saw in faintest ghostly outline
Moel Eilio’s grassy summit
O’er the lakes of deep Llanberis ;
All things else in mist were shrouded.
Scrambled on by screes and ledges,
Near a thousand feet ascending
Up the slope of Esgair-felen
To the brow of the Great Glyder.
Reached again the drifting cloud roof,
Reached once more the reign of Winter,
Faced again the piercing easter
With its six degrees of freezing ;
Crunched again the frozen snow sheets,
Half a foot in depth, new-fallen ;
Hastened on again by compass
Through the all-encircling mist wreaths,
(Centre of a faint horizon
Scarce a hundred yards in compass),
Through the gathering shades of evening,
O’er the lofty rock strewn platform ;
O’er a mile of stony desert,
Sharp edged shingle, “ snow-denuded.”
Now, a howling wintry desert,
Tempest-ridden, fog enfolded ;
Yet, in brighter, clearer weather,
Scarce you’ll find a nobler station
Whence to view the lofty Snowdon :
Whence to see the mountain monarch,
Whence to watch the changing colours
On his peaks and winding ridges
In some clear north western sunset
Of the longer days of summer;
Whoa Crib-goch in fiery radiance
Glows along each stony saw crest,
�12
Down each scree, with streams of orange;
While Cwm-glas in deepening shadow
Veiled -with haze of grey and purple
Dimly shews its tiny lakelets
Dark with rock-reflecting shadows
O’er the gorge of deep Llanberis :
And Y Wyddfa, “ the conspicuous,”
Towering high, in gilded outline,
O’er Crib-ddysgyll’s darkening ridges,
Crowns the scene of mountain glory.
Lost in distance man’s “improvements,”
All unseen, those huts unsightly,
Yet most welcome to the climber,
Faint or thirsty with his scramble
Up some rugged mountain buttress :—
Up Cwm-dyli’s “ rush of waters,’*
By the knife-edged crest of Lliwedd,
Up the cliff from Bwlch-y-saethau :—
Up the screes, from Cwm-y-clogwyn,
Up from Cwm-y-llan’s recesses,
To the “ Saddleback’s ” dread (!) shoulder,
Scene of regulation terrors !—
O’er Crib-goch’s spiky ridges,
O’er its wearying screes unstable,
Each loose stone a “ friction-roller”
Set with knives of flinty sharpness,
Roughest peak in all Snowdonia ;
From Cwm-glas’ deep recesses
By the spiny crest of Ddysgyl.
(Routes most dangerous ! most improper ! !
For the guideless mountain rambler.)
Why deform a spot so glorious
As the crested cone of Snowdon
With excrescences so hideous ?
Wooden shanties, roofs of patchwork,
Rusty funnels, empty bottles ;
Why not build in style substantial
Honest stonework, plain yet sightly,
In some neighbouring sheltered hollow ?
Leaving free the narrow summit
For the crowds who come to study
(When the drifting mists allow them)
Scenes of oft recorded beauty.
�13
While (to Glyder fawr returning)
Snowdon’s lengthening three-forked shadow
Leaps Llyn Gwynant’s silvery mirror,
Stalks across the wood crowned valley,
Climbs the slopes of Cerig Cochion.
And the Glyders’ gloomy profiles
Slowly creep up sunlit Siabod.
Stain his golden-glowing shoulders
With their deep embrasured outline.
While the Lesser Glyder’s ridges
Cut the sky with crested ruins.
Wondrous mountain architecture
Shining bright in level sunlight.
Or, perchance, in broken -weather,
-Scenes below, in fitful fragments,
Lake and streamlet, rock and woodland,
Here and there by turns emerging
Lom the snowy, rolling vapour
Shine revealed in sudden clearness :
While the sea-horizon, gleaming
Far and wide in radiant silver
Floods the distant scene with beauty,
Mottled o’er with flying shadows,
Saowy cloudlets, floating islands,
Gliding o’er its shining level.
While, around, the parting mist-wreaths, Lingering yet, in playful wanderings
Race along the rocky desert,
Round its pinnacles and turrets.
Or some sudden pelting shower
Sweeping o’er the lofty ridges
Gilds the scene with new-born lustre
Flashing in the fitful sunshine ;—
Floats away o’er sharp-coned Tryfan—
Wreaths his head with sudden glories,
Radiant circles, full orbed rainbows,
Ro mere lowland “ arch triumphant,”
Each concentric ring, completed
In the yawning depths of Bochlwyd,
Standing forth in fairest colours
From the dark, retreating nimbus.
While old Snowdon’s western shoulder
Ploughing up the sea borne currents
�14
Into higher, colder regions
Forms a train of sweeping cloudlets
Visibly increasing, growing
Out of evening’s purest ether ;
Till the long cascade of vapour
Streaming o’er his pointed summit,
Gliding down Cwm-dyli’s hollow,
Floats across the vale of Gwynant ;
Vainly struggles, hither, thither,
Stands in heaps o’er Pen-y-gwryd,
Tangled in the threefold eddy
Streaming up, from deep Nant Peris,
Round from Gwynant’s curving valley,
O’er the slopes of Gallt-y-wenallt.
Sight of snowy sunlit beauty
To the rambler far above it ;—
Source of discontented grumbling
To the helpless “walking tourist”
Buried ’neath its surging billows,
Coffee room imprisoned, fearful
Of the mountain mist or tempest ;
Weatlier-bound, the silly fellow,
Ignorant of scenes so glorious
On the lofty crests above him.
Thus in plaintive doleful numbers
Pouring forth his lamentation.
�15
LAY OF THE IMPRISONED TOURIST,
AS HE LAY “ USED UP” ON THE SOFA,
Stranger, who by love for mountains
E’er shouldst chance to be allured
To this den of dreary horrors,
Soon your weakness will be cured:
All the skies in cloud extinguished,
All the earth by mist obscured,
Imps cerulean, dismal vapours,
Reign supreme at Pen-y-gwryd !
Here the heavens are ever pouring
Drenching streams from fog-bank lurid :
Tears of sympathy incessant
Angels high in ether pure hid
Weep for us, poor luckless captives,
In this wretched place immured.
Traveller, that’s the reason why it
Always rains at Pen-y-gwryd !
Walker! Mr. Walking-tourist,
Fudge and nonsense, cease your growling ;
Off with those eternal slippers ;
Out, and scramble up the mountains ;
Burn that fossil, last week’s paper,
Last resource of mind most wretched,
Come, and soon will soul and body
Rise superior to the vapours.
Come, and see what glorious pictures
Nature shews, in ceaseless beauty,
To the thoughtful, loving student
Of her ever-changing features,—
Not forgetting Nature’s Author,
’Mid such tokens of His power,
(With all reverence be it spoken),
In whose hands are earth’s deep places,—
Whose, the strength of hills and mountains,—-
�16
Whose the sea is, for He made it,—
Who the outspread land created :—
Whose, are Earth and all her fulness,
Hail and lightning, snow and vapour,
Wind and storm, His word fulfilling,—
Ministers that do His pleasure.
*
*
*
*
4:
Yet what strange ironic contrast
To all sunny recollections
Was the scene, this wintry evening,
On the crest of lofty Glyder !
Howling tempest, whirling vapour,
Piercing frost, and crunching snow-wreath.
Reached at length his eastern shoulder,
Hastened down once more from cloudland ;
Saw the face of Llyn-cwm-ffynnon
Shine like silver far beneath him—
Welcome landmark through the twilight.
Passed the darkened cliff of greenstone,
Reached the doubly ice-grooved platform,
Witness strange, of two-fold glaciers;
Hastened down by roches moutonnees,
’Mid blocs perches by the hundred ;
Passed the spring-fed Llyn-cwm-ffynnon,
Where of late the char have flourished;
Hurried on, well nigh belated,
Scrambled down, in almost darkness,
Gained the road at lone Gorphwysfa,
Pen-y-pass, of late its title ;
Pen-y-“ pass ! ” a mongrel nickname
Cymru should be all ashamed of.
Nothing loth, reached Pen-y-gwryd,
Ever welcome Pen-y-gwryd!
Thus did end an eight hours’ ramble
All alone, across the mountains ;
(No one else wrould face the weather)—
High-away-there ! o’er the Glyders.
WHITE AND PIKE, PRINTERS, BIRMINGHAM.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A wintry walk among the mountains
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Biden, H.E. [1832-1907]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "With sincerest apologies to the shade of Hiawatha" [Title page]. "The following lines contain an accurate account of what befell the writer during a ramble on May 18th,1867, over the summit of Glyder-fach and down by Lyn Bochlwyd to LlynIdwal ..." [Author's note].
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F.B. Kitto
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1867
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G5312
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Poetry
Nature
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A wintry walk among the mountains), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
Poetry in English
Sacerdotalism
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Text
CT EW
ADDITIONAL
MORAL & RELIGIOUS PASSAGES
METRICALLY RENDERED
FROM THE SANSKRIT.
WITH EXACT PROSE TRANSLATIONS.
By J. MUIR, D.C.L., LL.D., Pli.D.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�H? oSi' inrdpxei Siavolq. peya\oirp<hreia Kai Oeupla 7ra^ros ptu xpovov,
TKaff’ps 8e ovoias, olbv re ol'ei tootco ply a re SoKetv elvai rov dvdp&irivov
piov ;—Plato, Republic vi. 2.
“And do you think that a spirit full of lofty thoughts, and privileged
to contemplate all time, and all existence, can possibly attach any
great importance to this life?”—Messrs Davies and Vaughan’s
Translation, 1852.
“Can the soul then, which has magnificence of conception, and is
the spectator of all time*and all existence, think much of human life ? ”
—Prof. Jowett’s Translation, 1871.
r . '
A soul whose flight so far extends—
A soul whose unrestricted range
Embraces Time’with all it§ change—
All Being’s limits comprehends—
Can such a soul the life of man
...
Deem worth a thought,—this petty span ?
■ -
�ADDITIONAL
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PASSAGES.
73.
©rtat (Spirit.
No hands has He, nor feet, nor eyes, nor ears,
And yet He grasps, and moves, and sees, and hears.
He all things knows, Himself unknown of all;
Him men the great primeval Spirit call.
(See No.
74.
ioi,
in page 18.)
aWtsstb to ‘dishrtit bg fire
(From the Raghuvansa).
To Thee, creator -first, to Thee,
Preserver next, destroyer last,
Be glory; though but one, Thou hast
. .Thyself in act revealed as three.
..As water pure from heaven descends,
But soon with''other objects blends,
A -And various hues and flavours gains;
So moved by Goodness, Passion, Gloom,*
Dost Thou three several states assume,
While yet Thine essence pure remains.
* See the prose translation of No. 74 in the Appendix.
�4
Though one, Thou different forms hast sought;
Thy changes are compared to those
Which lucid crystal undergoes,
With colours into contact brought.
Unmeasured, Thou the worlds dost mete.
Thyself though no ambition fires,
’Tis Thou who grantest all desires.
Unvanquished, Victor, Thee we greet.
A veil, which sense may never rend,
Thyself,—of all which sense reveals
The subtile germ and cause—conceals :
Thee saints alone may comprehend.
Thou dwellest every heart within,
Yet fillest all the points of space ;
Without affection, full of grace,
Primeval, changeless, pure from sin;
Though knowing all, Thyself unknown,
Self-sprung, and yet of all the source,
Unmastered, lord of boundless force,
Though one, in each thing diverse shown.
With minds by long restraint subdued,
Saints, fixing all their thoughts on Thee,
Thy lustrous form within them see,
And ransomed, gain the highest good.
Who, Lord, Thy real nature knows ?
Unborn art Thou, and yet on earth
�Hast shown Thyself in many a birth,
And, free from passion, slain Thy foes.
Thy glory in creation shown,
Though seen, our reason’s grasp transcends :
Who, then, Thine essence comprehends,
Which thought and scripture teach alone ?
Ungained, by Thee was nought to gain,
No object more to seek : Thy birth,
And all Thy wondrous deeds on earth,
Have only sprung from love to men.
With this poor hymn though ill-content,
We cease :—what stays our faltering tongue ?
We have not half Thy glories sung,
But all our power to sing is spent.
75. JUntal at a future life anb of a (Sob; anb ribirule of the
bortrine of final liberation as nothing else than annihilation.
The scripture says, the bad begin,
When dead, with woe to pay for sin,
While bliss awaits—a happier birth—
The good whene’er they quit the earth.
But here the virtuous suffer pain,
The bad by vice enjoyment gain.
How, then, this doubtful case decide ?
Tell what is urged on either side.
Did God exist, omniscient, kind,
And never speak his will in vain,
�6
’Twould cost him but a word, and then
His suppliants all they wish would find.
If God to men allotted woe^
Although that woe the fruit must be
Of men’s own actions, then were he
Without a cause his creatures’ foe,—
More cruel, thus, than men, who ne’er
To others causeless malice bear.
In this our state of human birth
Man’s self and Brahma co-exist,—
As wise Vedantists all insist,—
But when this wretched life on earth
Shall end, and all redemption gain,
Then Brahma shall alone remain.
A clever doctrine here we see !
Our highest good to cease to be !
76. Im^axhmrnt, nnb ^irtbicatixm, nt the gibitu
(©rrbernment.
Draupadi speaks:
Beholding noble men distrest,
Ignoble men enjoying good,
Thy righteous self by woe pursued,
Thy wicked foe by fortune blest,
I charge the Lord of all—the strong,
The partial Lord-—with doing wrong.
His dark, mysterious, sovereign will
To men their several lots decrees;
He favours some with wealth and ease,
Some dooms to every form of ill.
�7
As puppets’ limbs the touch obey
Of him whose fingers hold the strings,
So God directs the secret springs
Which all the deeds of creatures sway.
In vain those birds which springes hold
Would seek to fly : so man, a thrall,
Fast fettered ever lives, in all
He does or thinks by God controlled.
As trees from river-banks are riven
And swept away, when rains have swelled
The streams, so men by Time impelled
To action, helpless, on are driven.
God does not show for all mankind
A parent’s love and wise concern ;
But acts like one unfeeling, stem,
Whose eyes caprice and passion blind.
Yudhishthira replies :
I’ve listened, loving spouse, to thee,
I’ve marked thy charming, kind discourse,
Thy phrases turned with grace and force,
But know, thou utterest blasphemy.
I never act to earn reward;
I do what I am bound to do,
Indifferent whether fruit accrue ;
My duty I alone regard.
Of all the men who care profess
For virtue—love of that to speak —
�8
The unworthiest far are those who seek
To make a gain of righteousness.
Who thus—to every lofty sense
Of duty dead—from each good act
Its full return would fain extract;—
He forfeits every recompense.
Love duty, thus, for duty’s sake,
Not careful what return it brings :
Yet doubt not, bliss from virtue springs,
While woe shall sinners overtake.
By ships the perilous sea is crossed;
So men on virtue’s stable bark
Pass o’er this mundane ocean dark,
And reach the blessed heavenly coast.
If holy actions bore no fruits;
If self-command, beneficence,
Received no fitting recompense;
Then men would lead the life of brutes.
Who then would knowledge toil to gain ?
Or after noble aims aspire ?
O’er all the earth delusion dire
And darkness deep and black would reign.
But ’tis not so ; for saints of old
Well knew that every righteous deed
From God obtains its ample meed :
They, therefore, strove pure lives to lead,
As ancient sacred books have told.
�9
The gods—for,such their sovereign will—
Have veiled from our too curious ken
The laws by which the deeds of men
Are recompensed with good and ill.
No common mortal comprehends
The wondrous power, mysterious skill,
With which these lords of all fulfil
Their high designs, their hidden ends.
These secret things those saints descry
Alone, whose sinless life austere
For them has earned an insight clear,
To which all mysteries open lie.
So let thy doubts like vapours flee,
Abandon impious unbelief;
And let not discontent and grief
Disturb thy soul’s serenity.
But study God aright to know,
That highest Lord of all revere,
Whose grace on those who love him here
Will endless future bliss bestow.
Draupadi rejoins:
How could I God, the Lord of all,
Contemn, or dare His acts arraign,
Although I weakly thus complain ?
Nor would I virtue bootless call.
I idly talk; my better mind
Is overcome by deep distress,
B
�IO
Which long shall yet my heart oppress :
So judge me rightly; thou art kind.
77. ‘Othe ^Jartitg erf gjatnan Ambition.
How many kings—their little day
Of power gone by—have passed away,
While yet the stable earth abides,
And all the projects vain derides
Of men who deemed that She was theirs,
The destined portion of their heirs !
With bright autumnal colours gay,
She seems to smile from age to age,
And mock the fretting kings who wage
Fierce wars for Her,-—for ampler sway.
“ Though doomed,” She cries, “ to disappear
So soon, like foam that crests the wave,
Vast schemes they cherish, madly brave,
Nor see that death is lurking near.
“And kinsmen, brothers, sons and sires,
Whom selfish love of empire fires,
The holiest bands of nature rend,—
In bloody strife for Me contend.
“O ! how can princes, well aware
How all their fathers, one by one,
Have left Me here behind, and gone,
For My possession greatly care ? ”
�11
King Prithu strode across the world,
And all his foes to earth he hurled.
Beneath his chariot wheels—a prey
For dogs and vultures—crushed they lay.
Yet snatched by time’s resistless blast,
He long from hence away has past;
Like down the raging flames consume,
He, too, has met the common doom.
And Kartavirya, once so great,
Who ruled o’er all the isles, supreme,
Is but a shadow now, a theme
On which logicians subtly prate.
Those lords of men, whose empire’s sheen
Of yore the regions all illumed,
By Death’s destroying frown consumed,
Are gone; no ashes e’en are seen !
Mandhatri once was world-renowned :
What forms his substance now ? A tale!
Who, hearing this, if wise, can fail
This mundane life to scorn, so frail,
So dreamlike, transient, worthless found?
Of all the long and bright array
Of kings whose names tradition shows,
Have any ever lived ? Who knows ?
And now where are they? None can say.
�12
78. “ ^s hating nothing, anb get possessing all things/’
(2 Corinthians vi. 10).
How vast my wealth, what joy I taste,
Who nothing own, and nought desire !
Were this fair city wrapt in fire,
The flame no goods of mine would waste.
79. “ Jfor toe brought nothing into this toorlb, anb it is certain toe
can carrg nothing out.”—(1st Epistle to Timothy vi. 7).
Wealth either leaves a man, O king !
Or else a man his wealth must leave.
What sage for that event will grieve,
Which time at length must surely bring ?
80. Hhe foolish biscontenteb ; the toise content.
Though proudly swells their fortune’s tide,
Though evermore their hoards augment,
Unthinking men are ne’er content:
But wise men soon are satisfied.
81. .Men shonlb think on their enb.
Did men but always entertain
Those graver thoughts which sway the heart,
When sickness comes, or friends depart,
Who would not then redemption gain ?
�i3
82. “ 2111 men think all nun mortal bni ihrmstlbrs.”
(Young’s “Night Thoughts.”)
Is not those men’s delusion strange,
Who, while they see that every day
So many sweeps from earth away,
Can long themselves t’ elude all change ?
83. SBhtr aw iht wallg blinb, btaf, nnb burnt) ?
That man is blind whose inner eye
Can nought beyond this world descry;
And deaf the man on folly bent,
On whom advice is vainly spent
The dumb are those who never seek
To others gracious words to speak.
84.
brbout tohtn in bistrws.
In trouble men the gods invoke;
When sick, submit to virtue’s yoke;
When lacking power to sin, are good ;
When poor, are humble, meek, subdued.
85. Impwtorment of time.
The sage will ne’er allow a day
Unmarked by good to pass away;
But waking up, will often ask,
“ Have I this day fulfilled my task ?
With this, with each, day’s setting sun,
A part of my brief course is run.”
�14
86. 31 mart mag learn front the humblest.
From whomsoever got, the wise
Accept with joy the pearl they prize.
To them the mean may knowledge teach,
The lowliest lofty virtue preach.
Such men will wed, nor view with scorn,
A lovely bride, though humbly born.
When sunlight fails, and all is gloom,
A lamp can well the house illume.
87. 'xEht prtrper aim of life.
He only does not live in vain
Who all the means within his reach
Employs, his wealth, his thought, his speech,
T’ advance the weal of other men.
88. <4ltten art formeb ba their assorxatrs.
As cloth is tinged by any dye
In which it long time plunged may lie;
So those with whom he loves to live
To every man his colour give.
89. (Hasting penrls before stoinc.
He only threshes chaff who schools
With patient kindness thoughtless fools.
He writes on shifting sand who fain
By favours worthless men would gain.
�i5
90. ^eira often spendthrifts.
How many foolish heirs make haste
The wealth their fathers saved, to waste !
Who does not guard with care the pelf
He long has toiled to hoard himself?
91. 0®hat energy ran effect.
Mount Meru’s peak to scale is not too high,
Nor Hades’ lowest depth to reach too deep,
Nor any sea too broad to overleap,
For men of dauntless, fiery, energy.
92. ^Self-respect essential to snccess.
A man should ne’er himself despise ;
Who weakly thus himself contemns,
The flowing tide of fortune stems,
Aid ne’er to high estate can rise.
93. 5® hat toill not men her to set ioeatth ?
Fo: gold what will not mortals dare ?
What efforts, struggles, labours spare ?
The hostile warrior’s sword they brave,
And plunge beneath the ocean wave.
94.
Ionia, bita brebis: TEhe essence of bcrrrhs; to be got.
The list of books is long ; mishaps arise
To bai the student’s progress ; life is brief;
�i6
Whatever, then, in books is best and chief,
The essence, kernel, that attracts the wise.
95. gDxrfie xrf home.
Not such is even the bliss of heaven
As that which fills the breasts of men
To whom, long absent, now ’tis given
Their country once to see again,
Their childhood’s home, their natal place,
However poor, or mean, or base.
96. Q hoxtse toithunt a tuffe is empty; ^eseripiion e£ a jjtmii itfife.
Although with children bright it teems,
And full of light and gladness seems,
A man’s abode, without a wife,
Is empty, lacks its real life.
The housewife makes the house; bereft
Of her, a gloomy waste ’tis left.
That man is truly blest whose wife,
With ever sympathetic heart,
Shares all his weal and woe ; takes part
In all th’ events that stir his life;
Is filled with joy when he is glad,
And plunged in grief when he is sad,
Laments whene’er his home he teaves,
His safe return with joy perceives,
With gentle words his anger stils,
And all her tasks with love fulfls.
�i7
97. ^os-criptirrn rrf a gnah king.
That man alone a crown should wear
Who’s skilled his land to rule and shield :
For princely power is hard to wield—
A load which few can fitly bear.
That king his duty comprehends
Who well the poor and helpless tends,
Who wipes away the orphan’s tears,
Who gently calms the widow’s fears,
Who, like a father, joy imparts,
And peace, to all his people’s hearts ;
On vicious men and women frowns,
The learn’d and wise with honour crowns;
Who well and wisely gifts on those
Whose merits claim reward, bestows ;
His people rightly guides and schools,
On all impressing virtue’s rules;
Who day by day the gods adores,
With offerings meet their grace implores ;
Whose vigorous arm his realm protects,
And all insulting foes subjects;
Who yet the laws of war observes,
And ne’er from knightly honour swerves.
98.
sshoxtlb bz slurton io ignorant uffenbrra.
When men from want of knowledge sin,
A prince to such should mercy show;
For skill the right and wrong to know
For simple men is hard to win.
�99. Compassion shanlb bo shobon to all men.
To bad as well as good, to all,
A generous man compassion shows.
On earth no mortal lives, he knows,
Who does not oft through weakness fall.
100. “ 'Hhe toxrlf alsxr shall ihotll tnith thr lamb,” otc.—(Isa. xi. 6).
With serpents weasels kindly play,
And harmless tigers sport with deer ;
The hermits’ holy presence near
Turns hate to love,—drives fear away.
101. Consoquonco of the krtutolebge of tho solf-oxistont (Soul.
The happy man who once has learned to know
The self-existent Soul, from passion pure,
Serene, undying, ever young, secure
From all the change that other natures show,
Whose full perfection no defect abates,
Whom pure essential good for ever sates,—
That man alone, no longer dreading death,
With tranquil joy resigns his vital breath.
�APPENDIX.
73. ’Svetasvatara Upanishad, iii. 19.
“Without hands or feet,
He grasps, and moves; without eyes He sees, without ears He hears.
He knows whatever is knowable, but no one knows Him. Men call
Him the great, primeval Purusha (Man or Spirit).”
74. Raghuwansa, x. 15 ff.—15. “Glory to Thee, who art first the
creator of the universe, next its upholder, and finally its destroyer;
glory to Thee in this threefold character. 16. As water falling from
the sky, though having but one flavour, assumes different flavours in
different bodies, so Thou, associated with the three qualities [Sattva,
Rajas, and Tamas, or Goodness, Passion, and Darkness *], assumest
[three] states [those of creator, preserver, and destroyer, according to
the Commentator], though Thyself unchanged. 17. Immeasurable,
Thou measurest the worlds; desiring nothing, Thou art the fulfiller of
desires ; unconquered, Thou art a conqueror ; utterly indiscernible;
Thou art the cause of all that is discerned.
18. Though one,
Thou from one or another cause assumest this or that condition ;
Thy variations are compared to those which crystal undergoes
from the contact of different colours.
19. Thou art known as
abiding in [our] hearts, and yet as remote ; as free from affection,
ascetic, merciful, untouched by sin, primeval, and imperishable. 20.
Thou knowest all things, Thyself unknown ; sprung from Thyself (or
self-existent), Thou art the source of all things; Thou art the lord of all,
Thyself without a master ; though but one, Thou assumest all forms.
21. Thou art declared to be He who is celebrated in the seven Samahymns, to be He who sleeps on the waters of the seven oceans, whose
face is lighted up by the god of seven rays (Fire), and who is the one
resort of the seven worlds. 22. Knowledge which gains the four
classes of fruit [virtue, pleasure, wealth, and final liberation], the
division of time into four yugas [ages], the fourfold division of the people
* See Wilson’s Vishnu Purdna, vol. i., p. 41 (Dr Hall’s Edition), where Rajas is
translated “activity,” and not “passion.”
�20
into castes,—all these things come from Thee, the four-faced. 23.
Yogins (devoutly contemplative men) with minds subdued by exercise,
recognize Thee, the luminous, abiding in their hearts ; (and so attain)
to liberation from earthly existence. 24. Who comprehends the truth
regarding Thee, who art unborn, and yet becomest born; who art
passionless, yet slayest thine enemies; who sleepest,* and yet art
awake? 25. Thou art capable of enjoying sounds and other objects of
sense, of practising severe austerity, of protecting thy creatures, and of
living in indifference to all external things. 26. The roads leading to
perfection, which vary according to the different revealed systems, all
end in Thee, as the waves of the Ganges flow to the ocean. 27. For
those passionless men whose hearts are fixed on Thee, who have com
mitted to Thee their works, Thou art a refuge, so that they escape
further mundane births. 28. Thy glory as manifested to the senses in
the earth and other objects, is yet incomprehensible : what shall be
said of Thyself, who canst be proved only by the authority of scripture
and by inference ? 29. Seeing that the remembrance of Thee alone
purifies a man—the rewards of other mental acts also, when directed
towards thee, are thereby indicated. 30. As the waters exceed the
ocean, and as the beams of light exceed the sun, so Thy acts trans
cend our praises. 31. There is nothing for Thee to attain which Thou
hast not already attained : kindness to the world is the only motive for
Thy birth and for Thy actions. + 32. If this our hymn now comes
to a close after celebrating Thy greatness, the reason of this is our
exhaustion or our inability to say more, not that there are no further
attributes of Thine to be lauded. ” These verses have not all been
rendered in verse.
75. Naishadha Charita, xvii. 45.—These words form part of the
speech of a Charvaka, or Materialistic Atheist, who is represented as
addressing Indra and other gods on their return to heaven from
Damayantis Svayamvara. He assails the authority of the Vedas when
they affirm that sacrifice is followed by any rewards, denies that men’s
good and bad actions are recompensed in another world ; recommends
unbridled sensual indulgence; says that adultery has the example of the
gods in its favour; and throws ridicule on the orthodox Indian doctrines.
* This, I presume, refers to the stories of Vishnu sleeping on the ocean in the
intervals between the dissolution of one world and the creation of the next.
t Compare the Bhagavad Gita, iii. 22. “There is nothing which I am bound to
do, nor anything unobtained which I have yet to obtain ; and yet I continue to act.
25. As the ignorant, who are devoted to action, do, so let the wise man also do,
seeking to promote the benefit of the world.”
�21
The following are the verses which have been metrically rendered
45. “ The Veda teaches that when men die, pains result from their sin,
and pleasures from their holy acts. The very reverse, however, is,
manifestly, the immediate consequence of those deeds. Declare, there
fore, the strong and weak points (in this controversy).” 77. “If there
is an omniscient and merciful God, who never speaks in vain, why
does he not by the mere expenditure of a word satisfy the desires of
us his suppliants? 78. By causing living creatures to suffer pain,
though it be the result of their own works, God would be our causeless
enemy, whilst all our other enemies have some reason or other for their
enmity.” 74. “ When the Vedantists say that in our mundane ex
istence both a man’s self and Brahma exist, but that after final eman
cipation, Brahma alone remains, and when they thus define that state as
the extinction of one’s self; is this not a great piece of cleverness ? ”
The Charvaka is briefly answered by the four Deities, Indra, Agni,
Yama, and Varuna.
For an account of the Charvaka system, see Prof. Cowell’s edition
of Mr Colebrooke’s Essays, Vol. I., pp. 426 ff., and 456 ff.
76. Mahabharata, iii. 1124 ff.—In this passage, the greater part of
which has been translated by me in the “ Indian Antiquary ” for June
1874, Draupadi complains of the hard lot of her righteous husband
Yudhishthira, and charges the Deity with injustice ; but is answered
by Yudhishthira. I give the verses, which I have attempted to render
metrically, as well as some others. 1139. “ God (I’sana) the Disposer,
allots to creatures everything—happiness and suffering, the agreeable
and the disagreeable, darting radiance before Him. 1140. Just as the
wooden figure of a woman moves its several limbs, according
as it is adjusted, so too do these creatures.
As a bird
bound and confined by a string is not its own master, so a
man must remain under the control of God ; he is neither the lord
of others nor of himself. Like a gem strung upon a thread, or a
bull tied by a nose-rope, a man follows the command of the Dis
poser, to whom he belongs and on whom he depends. Not' self
directing, a man yields to some conjuncture of time, like a tree which
has fallen from a river bank, and has reached the middle of the
current. Ignorant, and powerless to command his own pleasures and
sufferings, he must go to heaven or hell, according as he is impelled by
God. 1145. As the tips of grass are swayed by the blasts of a strong
wind, so, too, all beings are subject to the Disposer. Impelling to
noble action, and again to sinful deeds, God pervades all creatures,
�22
and it is not perceived that He is there. ... 1153. Acting accord
ing to His pleasure, this Lord, associating them, or dissociating
them, plays with living creatures as with a child’s toys. The Disposer
does not treat His creatures like a father or a mother, but acts angrily,
as any other being like ourselves. 1155. Seeing noble, virtuous, and
modest men in want, and ignoble men happy, I am,* as it were,
agitated with perplexity ; and perceiving this adversity of thine, and
the prosperity of Suyodhana, I blame the Disposer, who regards you
with an unequal eye. Bestowing good fortune on him who transgresses
the rules of conduct observed by noble men, who is cruel, greedy, and
a perverter of justice, what good end does the Disposer gain ? ”
The same sentiments are expressed in the following fragment of
Sophocles, No. 94 (in the edition of Dindorf):—
Aeivov ye roi/s pbv bvo’aefle'is koklov t’&tto
ftXaarbvTas, etra rovcrSe p.ev irpa.ff<rei.v KaXus,
roiis 8’6vras t<r9Xoiis £k re yevvaluv ap.a
yey&ras, eira Svcrrvxeis TrerpvKivac.
oil XPVP TO'S’ outco Salpovas dviyraiv irepi
irpdffffeiv exprjv yb.p robs pev ev<rej3eis (Sporcov
exelv ti K^pSos epcpavbs OeCov irapa,
tovs 8’ Svras ooIkovs T0i<r8e rr/v ivavrtav
8lkt)v kokGov Ti/M-ipbv epipavT) rlveiv,
KoiiSeis av ovtcos evrGxei kcikos yeyios.
“It is strange that those who are impious, and descendants of
wicked men, should fare prosperously, while those who are good, and
sprung from noble men, should be unfortunate. It was not meet that
the gods should deal thus with mortals. Pious men ought to have
obtained from the gods some manifest advantage, while the unjust
should on the contrary have paid some evident penalty for their evil
deeds; and thus no one who was wicked would have been prosperous.”
With verses 1140 ff. compare also Euripides’ Supplices, verses
734 ff- =—
Go Zev, rl opra roiis raXaiirGopovs flporoiis
(j>poveiv XGyovai; aov yap Q'qprqpeGa,
bpGoptv re rotavO’ &v <jij rwx<iv7]s 6£Xoov.
11 O Zeus, why do they say that wretched mortals are wise? For we
are dependent upon thee, and do whatever thou happenest to will.”
* I am indebted to Professor Aufrecht for suggesting the reading which gives
this sense, viz., vih’va.ldmiva for vihvaldn iva which the Calcutta text of the M. Bh.
�23
Yudhishthira replies:
1160. “I have heard, Yajnaseni (=Draupadi), the charming and
amiable discourse, full of sparkling phrases, which thou hast spoken;
but thou utterest infidel sentiments {n&stikyci}. I do not act from a
desire to gain the recompense of my works. I give what I ought to
give, and perform the sacrificial rites which I am bound to celebrate.
Whether reward accrues to me or not, I do to the best of my power
what a man should do, as if he were living at home. [The speaker is re
presented as being at the time in the forests.] . . . 1164. It is on duty
alone that my thoughts are fixed, and this, too, naturally. The man
who seeks to make of righteousness a gainful merchandize is low, and
the meanest of those who speculate about righteousness. The man
who seeks to milk righteousness (i.e., to extract from it all the advan
tage that he can) does not obtain its reward. ... I say it authorita
tively : do not doubt about righteousness: he who does so is on the way
to be born as a brute. . . . 1171. Vyasa, Vasishtha, Maitreya, Narada,
Lomasa, Suka, and other sages are all wise through righteousness.
For thou plainly seest these saints distinguished by a celestial intuition
(yoga), able both to curse and to bless, and more important even than
the gods. These men ... in the beginning declared that righteous
ness was continually to be practised. Thou oughtest not, therefore,
O fair queen, with erring mind to censure and to doubt the Deity and
righteousness. . . . 1183. Righteousness and nothing else is the boat
which conveys those who are on their way to heaven : it only is a ship like
that on which the merchant seeks to cross the ocean. If righteousness,
when practised, were without reward, this world would be plunged in
bottomless darkness; men would not attain to final tranquillity
(nirvana), would lead the life of brutes, would not addict themselves
to learning, nor would any one attain the object of his desire. If
austerity, continence, sacrifice, sacred study, liberality, honesty—if all
these things brought no reward, men now, and others succeeding
them, would not practise righteousness. If works were followed by
no rewards, this state of things would be an exceeding delusion.*
Rishis, Deities, Gandharvas, Asuras, and Rakshasas,—why should
these lordly beings have reverenced and practised righteousness ?
But knowing that the Deity was a bestower of rewards, unalterably
* This and what immediately precedes appears to be irreconcilable with the indif
ference to the recompense of works which is inculcated in the earlier part of
Yudhishthira’s discourse.
�24
attached to goodness, they practised righteousness; for that is the
source of eternal blessedness.
1194. The award of recompense
to works which are declared by revelation to be holy, and to such
as are wicked, as well as the production and dissolution of the world,
—these things are secrets of the gods. . . . 1196. These (secrets) of the
gods are to be guarded ; for the wonder-working power of the deities
is mysterious. Brahmans who have formed the desire, who are
devoted to religious observances, whose sins have been burnt up by
austerities, and who have a clear mental intuition, perceive these
(secrets). No doubts must be entertained regarding righteousness or
the gods, merely because the recompense of works is not visible. . . .
1199. Wherefore let all thy doubts vanish as a vapour. 1200. Be cer
tain that all (this) is (so): abandon the state of disbelief [nastikya). Do
not censure God, the Creator of living beings. Learn (to know) Him :
reverence Him: let not thy opinion be such (as thou hast declared it).
Do not contemn that most exalted (or, most excellent) Deity, through
whose favour the mortal who is devoted to him attains to immortality.”
Compare ALschylus, fragment 369 (Dindorf):—
’A.v8pQ>v yap e<mv evSiKoiv re Kai aotpGv
iv tois KaKoiai pur] re9up<3a0ai 0eots.
“For it is the part of just and wise men when suffering misfortune
not to be incensed against the gods.”
In the Supplices of Euripides, verses 195 ff., Theseus is introduced as
affirming the preponderance of good over evil in human life, as apparent
both in the gifts of reason and speech which distinguish man from the
lower animals, and in the support afforded to him by the fruits of the
earth, in the means which he has of protection from heat and cold, in
the exchange of products procured by foreign commerce, and finally in
the supernatural aids obtained by divination; and then as asking :—
ftp’ ou Tpvrpuip.ev, 0eou KaraTKeupv /3l<p
Sovtos TocadT7)v, o'taiv ouk tipKei rciSe ;
aXX’ 7] tf>p6vr]<Tts rou 0eov pei^ov cr0eveiv
friret, to yaupov 8’ ev (f>pefflv KeKrypevoi,
8oKovpev elvai 8ai.pt>vwv corpoyrepoi.
“Are we not, then, too fastidious, when we are not satisfied with
all this provision which a god has made for our life ? But our reason
seeks to be stronger than the god, and being possessed by conceit, we
fancy that we are wiser than the deities. ”
�25
Draupadi replies:
“ 1202. I do not scorn, or think lightly of, righteousness ; and how
should I contemn God, the Lord of creatures ? In my distress, I talk
thus idly; understand me so : and I shall yet further lament. Do thou,
who art kind, comprehend me.” She then goes on to pronounce a
long discourse, in which she acknowledges and enforces the value of
action and exertion; denounces dependence on fate or on chance,
though she does not appear to deny the influence of these causes
(verses 1233 ff.) ; and affirms that a man’s lot is the result of
his works, i.e., including those performed in a former birth.
The following are some of the verses : “ 1222. For God, the
Disposer, also determines his own acts according to this or that
reason, allotting to men the recompenses of their previous works.
Whatever act, good or bad, a human being performs, know that that
is the realization, fixed by the Disposer, of the recompense of previous
works.
This (present) body is the cause of the Deity’s action.
Just as He impels it, so it acts submissively.* For the Great God
ordains (the man) to do such and such acts: He constrains all creatures
to act, and they are helpless.” Here the man seems to be represented
as a mere machine, but the next verse says : “ Having first of all fixed
in his mind the objects at which he shall aim, a man of himself after
wards attains them by action, preceded by design: of this man is the
cause. ”
77. Vishnu Purana, iv. 24, 48.—The passage, a small part of which
I have versified, may be found in Professor H. H. Wilson’s translation
of this Purana, vol. iv., of Dr Hall’s edition, pp. 237 ff. I subjoin
my own version of the lines I have reproduced in verse. “48, 49.
These and other kings who, blinded by delusion, and possessed of
perishable bodies, claimed this imperishable earth as their own, (saying),
distressed by anxiety, ‘ How [shall she become] mine, and my son’s,
and my descendants’ property,’—these have all come to their end.
50. So, too, others who preceded, and those who followed them, and
those who are to come, and others who again are to succeed them,
shall (all) depart. 51. Beholding princes eager to march and strive
* The commentator translates these words thus : "The existing body is the cause
of the Deity’s action. As it impels Him, He acts submissively,” and remarks that
God and the body are mutually dependent; it, as the result of previous works,
necessitating Him to determine the man’s present lot.
�26
for the subjugation of herself,* the Earth, smiling with flowers in
autumn, appears to laugh. . . . The Earth once said : 52. ‘ How does
this delusion exist in kings, even in the intelligent, through which,
although in their nature (as transient) as foam, they are filled with con
fidence ? . . . 53. We shall thus at length (they say) conquer the Earth
with her oceans ; but while their thoughts are thus fixed, they do not
perceive Death, which is close at hand. . . . 55. On my account,
wars arise between fathers, sons, and brothers, whose hearts, through
exceeding delusion, are seized by selfish ambition. ... 57. How is it
that ambition, directed towards me, finds a place in the heart of the
descendant who has seen his ancestor, whose soul was possessed by the
same desire, following the road to Death, and leaving me behind ? . . .
62. Prithu,—who, unconquered, traversed all the regions, whose chariot
wheels tore to pieces his enemies,—he, smitten by the blast of time, has
perished, like the down of the ’Salmali tree when thrown into the fire.
63. Kartavirya, who invaded and possessed all the zones of the earth,
shattering the chariot-wheels of his foes, and who is celebrated in
narrative tales, is (now merely) a subject for affirmation and denial. +
64. Out upon the royal splendour of Da’sanana (Ravana) Avikshita,
and Raghava (Rama), who illuminated the face of all the quarters of
the globe ! how has it not been turned to ashes in a moment by the
frown of Death? (Or, according to the commentator, the second half
of this.verse may be alternatively rendered: “How has it not even
been turned to ashes,—how have not even its ashes been left,—by the
frown of Death ? ”) 65. Seeing that Mandhatri, who was an emperor
upon earth, has now his only embodiment in a story,—what good man,
even if slow of understanding, would indulge in selfish desire ? 66.
Did Bhagiratha, Sagara, Kakutstha, Da’sanana, Raghava, Lakshmana,
Yudhishthira and the rest exist in truth, or only in imagination ? And
where are they? We do not know.”
* Professor Wilson renders the words which I have so translated as follows :
“Kings unable to effect the subjugation of themselves
and Dr Hall would sub
stitute “harassed with the enterprise of self-conquest.” But on comparing the
parallel verse in the Bhagavata Purana xii. 3, 1, which, as explained by the com
mentator, means, “Beholding kings eager to conquer herself, this earth laughs,”
it appears to me that the word dtman in the line of the Vishnu P. also must be
rendered “ herself,” not “themselves.”
t Professor Wilson quotes as a parallel to this the concluding lines of the wellknown passage of Juvenal (x. 147) about Hannibal;
“ I, demens, et saevas curre per Alpes,
Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio has.”
�27
78. Mahabharata, xii. 529, 6641, and 9917.—This saying, ascribed
to Janaka, king of Videha, occurs in all the three passages here
specified: “Boundless, verily, is my wealth, though I possess nothing.
If Mithila [his capital] were burnt up, nothing of mine would be con
sumed.” In verse 9917 the words, “Most happily, verily, do I live,”
are substituted for “ Boundless, verily, is my wealth.”
79. Ditto, xii. 3892.—“Either, O king, a man must needs leave
his wealth, or his wealth leave a man. What wise man would lament
this?”
80. Ditto, xi. 75-—“Men, after reaching one and yet another dis
tinguished position of opulence, are discontented, and so act foolishly.
But wise men attain to contentment. ”
81. Vriddha Chanakya, 14, 6.— “ If those sentiments which men
experience when duty is expounded to them, or in a cemetery, or when
they are sick, were abiding, who would not be delivered from bondage?”
82. Mahabharata, iii. 17401.—-“Day after day men proceed hence
to the abode of Yama (the ruler of the dead); and yet those who re
main long for a state of permanence (here): what is more wonderful
than this ? ”
83. Dampati-siksha, 26.—“Who, now, are destitute of sight?
Those who do not perceive the future world. Say, say, who are the
deafest? Those who do not listen to good advice.”
Prd'snottara-mdld, 15.—•“ Who is blind? He who is bent on doing
what he should not. Who is deaf? He who does not listen to what
is beneficial. Who is dumb ? He who does not know how to say
kind things at the proper time.”
84. Subhashitarna'va, 163.—“Men in distress bow down before the
gods; the sick practise austerity; the poor man is humble; an old
woman is devoted to her husband. ”
Vriddha-Chdnakya, 176.-—“A man who is powerless will be virtu
ous ; a poor man continent; a sick man devout; an old woman devoted
to her husband.”
85. Sarngadhara's Paddhati, p. 4.—“ Constantly rising up, a man
�28
should reflect [and ask himself], ‘What good thing have I done to
day ? ’ The setting sun will carry with it a portion of my life. ”
86. Manu, ii. 238.—“Let a man accept with confidence valuable
knowledge even from a person of low degree, good instruction
regarding duty even from a humble man, and a jewel of a wife even
from an ignoble family.” See also in Bohtlinok's Indische Spruche,
No. 4440; Siibhashitarnava, 302, and Nos. 4439 and 5507; Hitopadesa, ii. 77 or 78 ; and Sdrngadharais Paddhati, Niti, 34. The latter
verse is as follows : “A wise sentiment should be received even from
a child. In the absence of the sun, does not even a lamp illuminate a
house ? ”
87. Mahabharata, v. 1272; xii. 11,023.—“A man becomes such
as those are with whom he dwells, and as those whose society he
loves ; and such as he desires to become. Whether he associates with
a good man or a bad, with a thief, or an ascetic, he undergoes their
influence, as cloth does that of the dye (with which it is brought into
contact).”
88. Bhagavata Purdna, x. 22, 35. — “What constitutes the birth of.
embodied creatures fruitful is this that they should with their life, with
their means, with their understanding, and with their speech, seek to
advance the welfare of other creatures in this world.”
89. Hitopade'sa, iv. 10.—“To address a judicious remark to a
thoughtless man is a mere threshing of chaff. And beneficence shown
to mean men is, O king, nothing better than writing on sand.”
90. Subhashitarnava, 64.—“Who is not ready to enjoy, and to
give away, the wealth which has been earned by his father ? But
those are rarely to be found who enjoy, or give away, the wealth
earned by their own arms.”
91. Vriddha Chcmakya (MS., p. 32) 5 No. 75^9> in B(Pittingk's
Ind. Spr.~“P\\e. summit of Meru is not very lofty, nor the infernal
world very profound, nor the ocean very far to cross, for men who
possess energy.”
�29
92. Mahabharata, iii. 1259.—“ No man should ever despise himself;
for brilliant success never attends the man who lowers himself.”
93. ’Sarngadharats Paddhati, Dhana-prasam' sa, 12.
What
suffering do not men undergo in their pursuit of wealth? They rush
on the point of the sword, they enter the ocean.”
94. Vriddha Chdnakya, xv. 10.—“Books are endless, the sciences
are many, time is very short, and there are many obstacles ; a man
should therefore seek for that which is the essence, as a swan seeks to
extract the milk which is mixed with water.” Compare a similar
sentiment in (Bohtlingk's Spruche, No. 243), Subhashitarnava, 92.—
“There are many books, the Vedas, &c.; life is very short; and there
are millions of obstacles ; let a man therefore seek to discover the
essence, as the swan finds the milk in water.”
95. Panchatantra, v. 49 (Bombay Edition).—“The same pleasure
is not to be enjoyed even in heaven, which is so delightful from the
contact of celestial objects, as men find in the poor place where they
were born.”
Ditto, iii. 92.—“Embodied creatures do not enjoy the same bliss
even in heaven as they do, even when they are poor, in their own
country, or town, or house.”
Compare with this, Odyssey, i. 57 :
avrap ’OBvcraebs
lepevos Kai Ka.irvw a-rroOpthcrKOVTa voTjaac
■fjs yalTjs, Qav^ecv lp.etpera.1.
“ But Ulysses, longing to see even the smoke rising from his native
country, yearns to die.”
96. Mahabharata, xii. 5497. — “Though crowded in every part
with sons, grandsons, daughters-in-law, and servants, without a wife
a householder’s house will be empty. 5498. It is not the house itself
which is called a house ; the housewife is declared to be the house.
A house destitute of a housewife is regarded as a desert. . . . 5501
f. That man is happy on earth who possesses a wife who is glad when
he is glad, and sorrowful when he is sorrowful, who is downcast when
he goes away from home, who speaks sweet words when he is angry,
who is devoted to her husband, who regards him as the centre of her
life, who seeks after his interests, and promotes his gratification.”
�3°
Compare Euripides, Troades, 649 ff., where Andromache says of
herself:
rXclxrcr^s re (fiyi-jv
r’ Jjavxov vbaet
Trapeixov'rjSeiv 8’ a/j.e XPVV vuccii' iroaiv,
Kelviii re viktjv &v /d expfy itapt,bva.t.
“And I offered to my husband a silent tongue and a quiet eye.
But I knew in what points I ought to gain the victory over him, and
in what points I should yield the victory to him. ”
97. Mahabharata, xii. 3450.—“An unskilful king is unable to pro
tect his subjects ; for regal power is a great burthen, and a thing hard
to exercise. 3340. To wipe away the tears of the poor, of orphans,
of the aged, and so to impart joy to men,—such is declared
to be the duty of a king.
3251. Let a king constantly promote
the welfare, and provide for the sustenance, of the poor, of orphans,
of the aged, and of widows. 3315- Harlots, and procuresses who
abide in drinking shops, loose men, gamblers, and the like, are to be
repressed by the king, for such persons ruin the country where they
dwell, and vex good citizens. 3238. Let the king put an end to all
offences in town and country. 3243. Let religious teachers, priests,
and family priests, (be) actively assisted. 3245. Let the king honour the
virtuous, and restrain the vicious. 3250. Let a king constantly offer
sacrifices, and give gifts, without inflicting suffering. 3303. Let a king,
devoted to righteousness, and seeking the good of his subjects, instruct
them in proper places, and at proper times, according to his under
standing and his power. 3436. When a king protects his dominions,
when he repels robbers, when he conquers in battle, he fulfils what is
declared to be his duty.
3548. Wherefore Manu Svayambhuva
enjoined that a warrior should fight righteously (or fairly). 3549.
The sinful Kshatriya, living by treachery, who is bound to fight
fairly (?), but who conquers his foe unfairly, kills himself.”
98. Ditto, iii. 1055.—“ Those offenders who have erred through
ignorance should be pardoned. For it is not easy for a man to be
wise in every respect. ”
99. Ramayana, vi. 115, 41.—“ A noble man should shew mercy to
men whether virtuous or wicked, or even deserving of death; there
is no one who does not offend.”
�100. Mahabharata, xiii. 651.—One of the characteristics of the saint
Upamanyu’s hermitage is thus described in this verse : “ Weasels play
with serpents, and tigers with deer, like friends, through the great
power of those saints of brilliant austerity, from the proximity of those
mighty ones.” Weasels are well known in India to be the enemies of
serpents, and frequently kill them. This verse is quoted as a parallel
to the text in Isaiah.
101. Atharva Veda, x. 8, 44.— “Knowing that soul, who is wise,
undecaying, young, free from desire, immortal, self-existent, satisfied
with the essence [of good, or blessedness], and in no respect imperfect,
a man does not dread death.”
As the soul (atmari} is masculine in Sanskrit, I have ventured to
put the relative pronoun “who ” in that gender
�
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Additional moral and religious passages metrically rendered from the Sanskrit. With exact prose translations
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
“_________________ -^££0
I
WREATHE THE LIVING BROWS.
I
ORATION
ON
BY
COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
Price Threepence.
■
*
^onbon:
i
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,!
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
OL
1890.
2
��# i2 I
Hi'S 8*2
WREATHE
THE
LIVING-
BROWS.
AN ORATION
ON
WALT
WHITMAN
BY
COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.O.
1890.
�INTRODUCTION.
The following oration by Colonel Ingersoll was
delivered in the Horticultural Hall, New York, on
October 21, 1890. Although the object of the meeting
was to raise a testimonial for Walt Whitman in his old
age, several halls had been refused, the proprietors and
lessees being too bigoted to allow the greatest orator in
the United States to enter their doors.
Walt Whatman sat in an easy wheeled chair on the
platform. Before the crowded assembly broke up he
spoke the following characteristic words :—
“ Only a word, my friends, only a word. After all,
the main factor, my friends, is in meeting, being face
to face and meeting like this. I thought I would like
to come forward with my living voice and thank you
for coming and thank Robert Ingersoll for speaking,
and that is about all. With such brief thanks to you
and him and showing myself to bear testimony—I
think that is the Quaker term—face to face, I bid you
all hail and farewell.”
�AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
I.
In the year 1855 the American people knew but little
of books. Their ideals, their models, were English.
Young and Pollok, Addison and Watts were regarded
as great poets. Some of the more reckless read Thom
son’ s Seasons and the poems and novels of Sir Walter
Scott. A few, not quite orthodox, delighted in the
mechanical monotony of Pope, and the really wicked
__those lost to all religious shame—were worshippers
of Shakespeare. The really orthodox Protestant, un
troubled by doubts, considered Milton the greatest poet
of them all. Byron and Shelley were hardly respect
able—not to be read by young persons. It was admitted
on all hands that Burns was a child of nature of whom
his mother was ashamed and proud.
In the blessed year aforesaid, candor, free and sincere
speech, were under the ban. Creeds at that time were
entrenched behind statutes, prejudice, custom, ignor
ance, stupidity, Puritanism and slavery ; that is to say,
slavery of mind and body.
Of course it always has been, and for ever, will be,
impossible for slavery, or any kind or form of injustice,
to produce a great poet. There are hundreds of verse
makers and writers on the side of wrong—enemies of
progress—-but they are not poets, they are not men of
genius.
,.
At this time a young man—he to whom tins testi
monial is given—he upon whose head have fallen the
snows of more than seventy winters—this man, born
within the sound of the sea, gave to the world a book,
Leaves of Grass. This book was, and is, the true
transcript of a soul. The man is unmasked. No
drapery of hypocrisy, no pretence, no fear. The book
was as original in form as in thought. All customs
�4
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
were forgotten or disregarded, all rules broken—nothing
mechanical—no imitation—spontaneous, running and
winding like a river, multitudinous in its thoughts as
the waves of the sea—nothing mathematical or
measured. In everything a touch of chaos—lacking
what is called form as clouds lack form, but not lacking
the splendor of sunrise or the glory of sunset. It was
a marvellous collection and aggregation of fragments,
hints, suggestions, memories and prophecies, weeds and
flowers, clouds and clods, sights and sounds, emotions
and passions, waves, shadows and constellations.
His book was received by many with disdain, with
horror, with indignation and protest—by the few as a
marvellous, almost miraculous, message to the world—
full of thought, philosophy, poetry and music.
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.
A great soul appears and fills the world with new and
marvellous harmonies. In his words is the old Pro
methean flame. The heart of nature beats and throbs
in his line. The respectable prudes and pedagogues
sound the alarm, and cry, or rather screech : “ Is this a
book for a young person ?”
A poem true to life as a Greek statue—candid as
nature—fills these barren souls with fear.
Drapery about the perfect was suggested by im
modesty.
The provincial prudes, and others of like mould,
pretend that love is a duty rather than a passion—a
kind of self-denial—not an overmastering joy. They
preach the gospel of pretence and pantalettes. In the
presence of sincerity, of truth, they cast down their
eyes and endeavor to feel immodest. To them the most
beautiful thing is hypocrisy adorned with a blush. .
They have no idea of an honest, pure passion,
glorying in its strength—intense, intoxicated with the
beautiful—giving even to inanimate things pulse and
motion, and that transfigures, ennobles and idealises
the object of its adoration.
They do not walk the streets of the city of life—
they explore the sewers ; they stand in the gutters and
cry “ Unclean !” They pretend that beauty is a snare ;
that love is a Delilah ; that the highway of joy is the
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
5
broad road, lined with flowers and filled with perfume,
leading to the city of eternal sorrow.
Since the year 1855 the American people have de
veloped ; they are somewhat acquainted with the litera
ture of the world. They have witnessed the most
tremendous of revolutions, not only upon the fields of
battle, but in the world of thought. The American
citizen has concluded that it is hardly worth while
being a sovereign unless he has the right to think for
himself.
And now, from this height, with the vantage-ground
of to-day, I propose to examine this book and to state,
in a general way, what Walt Whitman has done, what
he has accomplished, and the place he has won in the
world of thought.
II.
THE RELIGION OF THE BODY.
Walt Whitman stood, when he published his book,
where all stand to-night—on the perpetually moving
line where history ends and prophecy begins. He was
full of life to the very tips of his fingers—brave, eager,
candid, joyous with health. He was acquainted with
the past. He knew something of song and story, of
philosophy and art—much of the heroic dead, of brave
suffering, of the thoughts of men, the habits of the
peOple_rich as well as poor—familiar with labor, a
friend of wind and wave, touched by love and friend
ship—liking the open road, enjoying the fields and
paths, the crags—friend of the forest—feeling that he
was free—neither master nor slave—willing that all
should know his thoughts—open as the sky, candid as
nature—and he gave his thoughts, his dreams, his con
clusions, his hopes, and his mental portrait to his
fellow-men.
Walt Whitman announced the gospel of the body.
He confronted the people. He denied the depravity of
man. He insisted that love is not a crime ; that men
and women should be proudly natural; that they need
not grovel on the earth and cover their faces for shame.
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
He taught the dignity and glory of the father and
mother ; the sacredness of maternity.
Maternity, tender and pure as the tear of pity, holy
as suffering—the crown, the flower, the ecstasy of love.
People had been taught from Bibles and from creeds
that maternity was a kind of crime ; that the woman
should be purified by some ceremony in some temple
built in honor of some god. This barbarism was
attacked in Leaves of Grass.
The glory of simple life was sung ; a declaration of
independence was made for each and all.
And yet this appeal to manhood and to womanhood
was misunderstood. It was denounced simply because
it was in harmony with the great trend of nature. To
me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.
It was not the fashion for people to speak or write
their thoughts. We were flooded with the literature
of hypocrisy. The writers did not faithfully describe
the worlds in which they lived. They endeavored to
make a fashionable world. They pretended that the
cottage or the hut in which they dwelt was a palace,
and they called the little area in which they threw
their slops their domain, their realm, their empire.
They were ashamed of the real, of what their world
actually was. They imitated ; that is to say, they
told lies, and these lies filled the literature of most
lands.
Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the
purity of passion—the passion that builds every home
and fills the world with art and song.
They cried out: “ He is a defender of passion—
he is a libertine ! He lives in the mire. He lacks
spirituality !”
Whoever differs with the multitude, especially with
a led multitude—that is to say, with a multitude of
taggers—will find out from their leaders that he has
committed an unpardonable sin. It is a crime to
travel a road of your own, especially if you put up
guide-boards for the information of others.
Many centuries ago Epicurus, the greatest man of
his century, and of many centuries before and after,
said : “ Happiness is the only good : happiness is the
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
7
supreme end.” This man was temperate, frugal,
generous, noble—and yet through all these years he
has been denounced by the hypocrites of the world as
a mere eater and drinker.
It was said that Whitman had exaggerated the
importance of love—that he had made too much of
this passion. Let me say that no poet—not excepting
Shakespeare—has had imagination enough to exagge
rate the importance of human love—a passion that
contains all heights and all depths—ample as space,
with a sky in which glitter all constellations, and that
has within it all storms, all lightnings, all wrecks and
ruins, all griefs, all sorrows, all shadows, and all the
joy and sunshine of which the heart and brain are
capable.
No writer must be measured by a word or line or
paragraph. He is to be measured by his work—by
the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency
of all.
Which way does the great stream tend ? Is it for
good or evil ? Are the motives high and noble, or low
and infamous ?
We cannot measure Shakespeare by a few lines,
neither can we measure the Bible by a few chapters,
nor Leaves of Grass by a few paragraphs. In each
there are many things that I neither approve nor
believe—but in all books you will find a mingling of
wisdom and foolishness, of prophecies and mistakes—
in other words, among the excellencies there will be
defects. The mine is not all gold, or all silver, or all
diamonds—there are baser metals. The trees of the
forest are not all of one size. On some of the highest
there are dead and useless limbs, and and there may
be growing beneath the bushes, weeds, and now and
then a poisonous vine.
If I were to edit the great books of the world, I
might leave out some lines and I might leave out the
best. I have no right to make of my brain a sieve and
say that only that which passes through belongs
to the rest of the human race. I claim the right to
choose. I give that right to all.
Walt Whitman had the courage to express his
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OKATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
thought—the candor to tell the truth. And here let
me say it gives me joy—a kind of perfect satisfaction
—to look above the bigoted bats, the satisfied owls and
wrens and chickadees, and see the great eagle poised,
circling higher and higher, unconscious of their exist
ence. And it gives me joy, a kind of perfect satisfaction,
to look above the petty passions and jealousies of small
and respectable people—above the considerations of
place and power and reputation, and see a brave,
intrepid man.
It must be remembered that the American people
had separated from the Old World—that we had
declared not only the independence of colonies, but
the independence of the individual. We had done
more—we had declared that the State could no longer
be ruled by the Church, and that the Church could not
be ruled by the State, and that the individual could
not be ruled by the Church. These declarations were
in danger of being forgotten. We needed a new voice,
sonorous, loud, and clear, a new poet for America for
the new epoch, somebody to chant the morning song
of the new day.
The great man who gives a true transcript of his
mind, fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress
individuality. They wish to please the public. They
flatter the stupid and pander to the prejudice of their
readers. They write for the market—making books
as other mechanics make shoes. They have no
message—they bear no torch—they are simply the
slaves of customers. The books they manufacture are
handled by “ the trade ” ; they are regarded as harmless.
The pulpit does not object ; the young person can read
the monotonous pages without a blush—or a thought.
On the title-pages of these books you will find the im
print of the great publishers—on the rest of the pages,
nothing. These books might be prescribed for insomnia.
III.
Men of talent, men of business, touch life upon few
sides. They travel but the beaten path. The creative
spirit is not in them. They regard with suspicion a
poet who touches life on every side. They have little
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
9
confidence in that divine thing called sympathy, and
they do not and cannot understand the man who enters
into the hopes, the aims, and the feelings of all others.
In all genius there is the touch of chaos—a little of
the vagabond ; and the successful tradesman, the man
who buys and sells, or manages a bank, does not care
to deal with a person who has only poems for collaterals
—they have a little fear of such people, and _ regard
them as the awkward country man does a sleight-ofhand performer.
In every age in which books have been produced the
governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to
the works of real genius. If what are known as. the
best people could have their way, if the pulpit had been
consulted—the provincial moralists — the works . of
Shakespeare would have been suppressed. Not a line
would have reached our time. And the same may be
said of every dramatist of his age.
If the Scotch Kirk could have decided, nothing
would have been known of Robert Burns. If the good
people, the orthodox, could have had their say, not one
line of Voltaire would now be known. All the plates
of the French Encyclopedia would have been destroyed
with the thousands that were destroyed. Nothing
would have been known of D’Alembert, Grimm,
Diderot, or any of the Titans who warred against the
thrones and altars and laid the foundation of modern
literature not only, but what is of far greater moment,
universal education.
It is not too much to say that every book now held
in high esteem would have been destroyed, if those in
authority could have had their will. Every book of
modern times, that has a real value, that has enlarged
the intellectual horizon of mankind, that has de
veloped the brain, that has furnished real food for
thought, can be found in the Index Expurgatorius of
the Papacy, and nearly every one has been commended
to the free minds of men by the denunciations of
Protestants.
If the guardians of society, the protectors of “ young
persons,” could have had their way, we should have
known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
thrill the world would now be silent. If authority
could have had its way, the world would have been as
ignorant now as it was when our ancestors lived in
holes or hung from dead limbs by their prehensile
tails.
But we are not forced to go very far back. If Shake
speare had been published for the first time now, those
divine plays, greater than continents and seas, greater
even than the constellations of the midnight sky—
would be excluded from the mails by the decision of
the present enlightened postmaster-general.
The poets have always lived in an ideal world, and
that ideal world has always been far better than the
real world. As a consequence, they have forever
roused, not simply the imagination, but the energies—
the enthusiasm of the human race.
The great poets have been on the side of the oppressed
—of the downtrodden. They have suffered with the
imprisoned and the enslaved, and whenever and
wherever man has suffered for the right, wherever the
hero has been stricken down—whether on field or
scaffold—some man of genius has walked by his side,
and some poet has given form and expression, not
simply to his deeds, but to his aspirations.
From the Greek and Roman world we still hear the
voices of a few. The poets, the philosophers, the artists,
and the orators still speak. Countless millions have
been covered by the waves of oblivion, but the few
who uttered the elemental truths, who had sympathy
for the whole human race, and who were great enough
to prophesy a grander day, are as alive to-night as
when they roused, by their bodily presence, by their
living voices, by their works of art, the enthusiasm of
their fellow men.
Think of the respectable people, of the men of wealth
and position, those who dwelt in mansions, children of
success, who went down to the grave voiceless, and
whose names we do not know. Think of the vast
multitudes, the endless processions, that entered the
caverns of eternal light—leaving no thought—no truth
as a legacy to mankind !
The great poets have| sympathised; with the people.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN,
11
They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Un
bought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted
high the torch that illuminates the world'.
IV.
Walt Whitman is in the highest sense a believer in
democracy. He knows that there is but one excuse
for government—the preservation of liberty ; to the
end that man may be happy. He knows that there is
but one excuse for any institution, secular and religious
—the preservation of liberty ; and there is but one ex
cuse for schools, for universal education, for the ascer
tainment of facts, namely, the preservation of liberty.
He resents the arrogance and cruelty of power. He
has sworn never to be tyrant or slave. He has solemnly
declared :
I speak the password primeval—I give the’sign of democracy.
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.
This one declaration covers the entire ground. It is
a declaration of independence, and it is also a declara
tion of justice, that is to say, a declaration of the
independence of the individual, and a declaration that
all shall be free. The man who has this spirit can
truthfully say :
I have taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,
I swear I am for those that have never been mastered.
There is in Whitman what he calls “ The boundless
impatience of restraint ”—together with that sense of
justice which compelled him to say “Neithera servant
nor a master, am I.”
He was wise enough to know that giving others the
same rights that he claims for himself could not harm
him, and he was great enough to say: “ As if it were
not indispensable to my own rights that others possess
the same.”
He felt as all should feel, that the liberty of no man
is safe unless the liberty of each is safe.
There is in our country a little of the old servile spirit
a little of the bowing and cringing to others. Many
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
Americans do not understand that the officers of the
government are simply the servants of the people.
Nothing is so demoralising as the worship of place.
Whitman has reminded the people of this countay that
they are supreme, and he has said to them :
The President is there in the White House for you—it is not
you who are here for him.
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you—not you here for
them.
All doctrines, all politics and civilisation exurge from you.
All sculpture and monuments and anything inscribed any
where are tallied in you.
He describes the ideal American citizen—the one
Who says, indifferently and alike, “ How are you friend?” to
the President at his levee.
And he says, “ Good day, my brother,” to the slave that hoes
in the sugar field.
Long ago, when the politicians were wrong, when the
judges were subservient, when the pulpit was coward,
Walt Whitman shouted:
Man shall not hold property in man.
The least developed person on earth is just as important and
to himself or herself as the most developed person is to
himself or herself.
•
This is the very soul of true democracy.
Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain
the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand,
neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak
of truth runs the vine of beauty.
Walt Whitman utters the elemental truths and is the
poet of democracy. He is also the poet of individuality.
V.
INDIVIDUALITY.
In order to protect the liberties of a nation, we must
protect the individual. A democracy is a nation of
free individuals. The individuals are not to be sacri
ficed to the nation. The nation exists only for the pur
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
13
pose of guarding and protecting the individuality of
men and women. Walt Whitman has told us that :
» The whole theory of the universe is directed to one
single individual—namely to you.”
And he has also told us that the greatest city—the
greatest nation—is “ where the citizen is the head and
the ideal.”
And that
The greatest city is that which has the greatest man. or
woman.
...
. .
If it be but a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city m
the whole world.
By this test, maybe the greatest city on the continent
to-night is Camden.
This poet has asked of us this question :
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free
and own no superior ?
The man who asks this question has leftyio impress
of his lips in the dust, and has no dirt upon his knees.
He carries the idea of individuality to its utmost
height:
What do you suppose I have intimated to you in a hundred
ways
But that man or woman is as good as God ?
And that there is no God any more divine than yourself ?
Glorying in individuality, in the freedom of the
soul, he cries out:
Oh, the joy of suffering !
To struggle against great odds ;
To meet enemies undaunted ;
To be entirely alone with them—to find out how much I can
stand;
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to
face;
£
•,,
To mount the scaffold—to advance to the muzzle of guns with
perfect nonchalance—
To be indeed a god.
Walt Whitman is willing to stand alone.
sufficient unto himself, and he says :
He is
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune—I am good fortune.
Strong and content I travel the open road.
I am one of those who look carelessly into faces of
Presidents and Governors as to say, “ Who are you P”
And not only this, but he has the courage to say,
“ Nothing—not God—is greater to one than oneself.’’’
Walt Whitman is the poet of Individuality, the defender
of the rights of each for the sake of all—and his
sympathies are as wide as the world. He is the
defender of the whole race.
VI.
HUMANITY.
The great poet is intensely human—infinitely sym
pathetic-entering into the joys and griefs of others,
bearing their burdens, knowing their sorrows. Brain
without heart is not much; they must act together.
When the respectable people of the North, the rich, the
successful, were willing to carry out the Fugitive
Slave Law, Walt Whitman said :
I am the wounded slave—I wince at the bite of the dogs.
Hell and despair are upon me—“ Crack,” and again “ crack ”
the marksmen;
’
I clutch the rails of the fence—my blood drips, thinned with
the ooze of my skin ;
I fall on the weeds and stones;
The riders spur their unwilling horses—haul close ;
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me with the butts of their
whips.
Agonies are one of my changes of garment.
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I, myself,
become the wounded person.
’
I see myself in prison shaped like another man ;
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and
keep watch.
It is I, let out in the morning and barred at night
Not a prisoner walks handcuffed to the jail but I am hand
cuffed to him and walk by his side.
Judge not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling upon
a helpless thing.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
15
Of the very worst he had the infinite tenderness to
say : “ Not until the sun excludes you will I exclude
In this age of greed, when houses and lands, and
stocks and bonds, outrank human life ; when gold is
more of value than blood, these words should be read
by all :
When, the psalm sings, instead of the singer;
When the script preaches, instead of the preacher;
When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver
that carved the supporting desk;
When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and
when they touch my body back again;
When the holy vessels, or the bits of Eucharist, or lath and
plast procreate as effectually as the young silversmiths
or bakers or the masons in their overalls;
When the university convinces like a slumbering woman and
child convince;
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night
watchman’s daughter;
When warranty deeds loaf in chairs opposite, and are my
friendly companions;
I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them
as I do of men and women like you!
VII.
The poet is also a painter, a sculptor—he, too, deals
in form and color. The great poet is of necessity a
great artist. With a few words he creates pictures,
filling his canvas with living men and women—with
those who feel and speak. Have you ever read the
account of the stage driver’s funeral ? Let me. read it:
Cold dash of waves at the ferry wharf—posh of ice in the
river—half-frozen mud in the street—a gray discouraged sky
overhead—short-lasting daylight of twelfth month.
A hearse and stages—other vehicles give place—the funeral
of an old Broadway stage-driver—the cortege mostly drivers.
Steady the trot to the cemetery—duly rattles the deathbell—the gate is passed—the new-dug grave is hollowed out
—the living alight—the hearse uncloses.
The coffin is passed out—lowered and settled—the whip is
laid on the coffin—the earth is softly shoveled in.
The mound above is flattened with the spades.
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
Silence : and among them no one moves or speaks.
It is done. He is decently laid away.
Is there anything more ?
He was a good fellow—free mouthed—quick tempered—
not bad looking—able to take his own part—witty—sensitive
to a slight—ready with life or death foi’ a friend—fond of
women—gambled—ate hearty—drank hearty—had known
what it was to be flush—grew low spirited toward the lastsickened—was helped by a contribution—died aged forty-one
years—and that was his funeral.
Let me read you another description—one of a
woman:
Behold a woman !
She looks out from her Quaker cap, her face is clear and.
more beautiful than the sky.
She sits in an arm-chair under the shaded porch of the
farm-house.
The sun just shines on her old, white head.
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen.
Her grandsons raised the flax and her granddaughters spun,
it with the distaff and the wheel.
The melodious charactei’ of the earth.
The finished—beyond which philosophy cannot go and does
not wish to go.
The justified mother of men.
Would you hear of an old-time sea fight ?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars ?
List to the yarn as my grandmother’s father, the sailor, told
it to me :
Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you, said he.
His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or
truer, and never was and never will be.
Long the lower eve he came, horribly raking us.
We closed with him; the yards entangled, the cannon
touched.
My captain lashed fast with his own hands.
We had received some eighteen pound shots under the water,
and on our lower gun deck two large pieces had burst at
the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.
Fighting at sundown; fighting at dark.
Ten o’clock at night; the full moon well up; our leaks on the
gain; five feet of water reported.
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the hold
to give them a chance for themselves.
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ORATION WALT WHITMAN.
The transit to and from the magazine is now stopped by the
sentinels.
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.
Our frigate takes fire.
The other asks if we demand quarter,
If our colors are struck and the fighting done.
Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little Captain,
“ We have not struck,” he composedly cries, “ we have just
begun our part of the fighting.”
Only three guns in use.
One is directed by the Captain himself against the enemy’s
mainmast.
Two, well served with grape and canister, silences his mus
ketry and clears his decks.
The taps alone second the fire of his little battery, especially
the maintop.
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action,
Not a moment’s cease.
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the
powder magazine; one of the pumps has been shot
away; it is thought we are sinking.
Serene stands the little Captain,
He is not hurried; his voice neither high nor low.
His eyes give more light to us than our battle lanterns.
Toward twelve, there in the beams of the moon, they sur
render to us.
Stretched and still lies the midnight,
Two great hulks motionless on the breast of the darkness,
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass
to the one we have conquered.
The captain on the quarter-deck coolly giving his orders
through a countenance white as a sheet;
Near by, the corpse of the child that served in the cabin;
The dead face of an old salt, with long white hair and care
fully curled whiskers.
The flames, spite of all that can be done, flecked aloft and below,
The husky voices of the two officers yet fit for duty.
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of
flesh upon the masts and spars;
Cut of cordage, tangle of rigging, slight shock of the sooth
of waves;
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder parcels, strong
scent.
A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful, shining;
delicate sniffs of sea breeze, smells of sedge grass and
fields by the shore; death messages given in charge to
survivors.
B
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short, wild scream,
long, dull, tapering groan.
Some people say that this is not poetry—that it lacks
measure and rhyme.
VIII.
WHAT IS POETRY ?
The whole world is engaged in the invisible com
merce of thought. That is to say, in the exchange of
thoughts by words, symbols, sounds, colors and forms.
The motions of the silent, invisible world, where
feeling glows and thought flames—that contains all
seeds of action—are made known only by sounds and
colors, forms, objects, relations, uses and qualities—so
that the visible universe is a dictionary, an aggregation
of symbols, by which and through which is carried on
the invisible commerce of thought. Each object is
capable of many meanings, or of being used in many
ways to convey ideas or states of feeling or of facts
that take place in the world of the brain.
The greatest poet is the one who selects the best, the
most appropriate symbols to convey the best, the
highest, the sublimest thoughts. Each man occupies a
world of his own. He is the only citizen of his world.
He is subject and sovereign, and the best he can do is
to give the facts concerning the world in which he lives
to the citizens of other worlds. No two of these
worlds are alike. They are of all kinds, from the flat,
barren and uninteresting—from the small and shrivelled
and worthless—to those whose rivers and mountains
and seas and constellations belittle and cheapen the
visible world. The inhabitants of these marvellous
worlds have been the singers of songs, utterers of great
speech—the creators of art.
And here lies the difference between creators and
imitators : the creator tells what passes in his own
world—thé imitator does not. The imitator abdicates,
and by the fact of imitation falls upon his knees. He
is like one who, hearing a traveller talk, pretends to
others that he has travelled.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
19
In nearly all lands, the poet has been privileged—for the sake of beanty, they have allowed him to speak,
and for that reason he has told the story of the
oppressed, and has excited the indignation of honest
men and even the pity of tyrants. He, above all others,
has added to the intellectual beauty of the world. He
has been the true creator of language, and has left his
impress on mankind.
What I have said is not only true of poetry—it is
true of all speech. All are compelled to use the visible
world as a dictionary. Words have been invented and
are being invented—for the reason that new powers
are found in the old symbols, new qualities, relations,
uses, and meanings.
The growth of language is
necessary on account of the development of the human
mind. The savage needs but few symbols—the civil
ised many—the poet most of all.
The old idea was, however, that the poet must be a
rhymer. Before printing was known, it was said : the
rhyme assists the memory. That excuse no longer exists.
Is rhyme a necessary part of poetry ? In my judgment,
rhyme is a hindrance to expression. The rhymer is
compelled to wander from his subject—to say more or
less than hemeans—to introduce irrelevant matter that
interferes continually with the dramatic action and is a
perpetual obstruction to sincere utterance.
All poems, of necessity, must be short. The highly
and purely poetic is the sudden bursting into blossom
of a great and tender thought. The planting of the
seed, the growth, the bud and flower must be rapid.
The spring must be quick and warm—the soil perfect,
the sunshine and rain enough—everything should tend
to hasten, nothing to delay. In poetry, as in wit, the
crystallisation must be sudden.
,
The greatest poems are rhythmical. While rhyme is
a hindrance, rhythm seems to be the comrade of
the poetic. Rhythm has a natural foundation. Under
emotion, the blood rises and falls, the muscles contract
and relax, and this action of the blood is as rhythmical
as the rise and fall of the sea. In the highest form of
expression, the thought should be in harmony with
this natural ebb and flow.
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
The highest poetic truth is expressed in rhythmical
form. I have sometimes thought that an idea selects
its own words, chooses its own garments, and that
when the thought has possession, absolutely, of the
speaker or writer, he unconsciously allows the thought
to clothe itself.
The great poetry of the world keeps time with the
winds and the waves.
I do not mean by rhythm a recurring accent at
accurately measured intervals. Perfect time is the
death of music. There should always be room for
eager haste and delicious delay, and whatever change
there may be in the rhythm or time, the action itself
should suggest perfect freedom.
A word more about rhythm. I believe that certain
feelings and passions—joy, grief, emulation, revenge,
produce certain molecular movements in the brain—•
that every thought is accompanied by certain physical
phenomena. Now it may be that certain sounds, colors,
and forms produce the same molecular action in the
brain that accompanies certain feelings, and that these
sounds, colors, and forms produce first, the molecular
movements, and these in their turn reproduce the feel
ings in motions and states of mind capable of
producing the same or like molecular movements.
So that what we call heroic music, produces the
same molecular action in the brain — the same
physical changes — that are produced by the real
feeling of heroism ; that the sounds we call plaintive
produce the same molecular movement in the brain
that grief, or the twilight of grief, actually produces.
There may be a rhythmical molecular movement
belonging to each state of mind, that accompanies each
thought or passion, and it may be that music, or paint
ing, or sculpture, produces the same state of mind or
feeling that produces the music or painting or sculp
ture, by producing the same molecular movements.
All arts are born of the same spirit, and express like
thoughts in different ways—that is to say, they produce
like states of mind and feeling. The sculptor, the
painter, the composer, the poet, the orator, work to the
same end, with different materials. The painter
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
21
expresses through form and color and relation ; the
sculptor through form and relation. The poet also
paints and chisels—his words give form, relation, and
color. His statues and his paintings do not crumble,
neither do they fade, nor will they as long as language
endures. The composer touches the passions, produces
the very states of feeling produced by the painter and'
sculptor, and poet and orator. In all these there must
be rhythm—that is to say, proportion—that is to say,
harmony, melody.
So that the greatest poet is the one who idealizes the
common, who gives new meanings to old symbols, who
transfigures the ordinary things of life. He must deal
with the hopes and fears, and with the experiences of
the people.
The poetic is not the exceptional. A perfect poem,
is like a perfect day. It has the undefinable charm of
naturalness and ease. It must not appear to be the
result of great labor. We feel, in spite of ourselves,
that man does best that which he does easiest.
The great poet is the instrumentality, not always of
his time, but of the best of his time, and he must be in.
unison and accord with the ideals of his race. The sublimer he is the simpler he is. The thoughts of the
people must be clad in the garments of feeling—the
words must be known, apt, familiar. The height must
be in the thought, in the sympathy.
In the olden time they used to have May day parties,
and the prettiest child was crowned Queen of May.
Imagine an old blacksmith and his wife looking at
their little daughter clad in white and crowned with
roses. They would wonder while they looked at her,
how they ever came to have so beautiful a child. It is
thus that the poet clothes the intellectual children or
ideals of the people. They must not be gemmed and
garlanded beyond the recognition of their parents. Out
from all the flowers and beauty must look the eyes of
the child they know.
We have grown tired of gods and goddesses in art.
Milton’s heavenly militia excites our laughter. Light
houses have driven sirens from the dangerous coasts.
We have found that we do not depend on the imagina
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ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
tion for wonders—there are millions of miracles under
our feet.
Nothing can be more marvellous than the common
and every day facts of life. The phantoms have been
cast aside. Men and women are enough for men and
women. In their lives is all the tragedy and all the
comedy that they can comprehend.
The painter no longer crowds his canvas with the
■winged and impossible —he paints life as he sees it,
people as he knows them, and in whom he is interested.
“ The Angelus,” the perfection of pathos, is nothing
but two peasants bending their heads in thankfulness
as they hear the solemn sound of the distant* bell—two
peasants, who have nothing to be thankful for—nothing
but weariness and want, nothing but the crusts that
they soften with their tears—nothing. And yet as you
look at that picture you feel that they have something
besides to be thankful for—that they have life, love
and hope—and so th.e distant bell makes music in their
simple hearts.
IX.
The attitude of Whitman toward religion has not
been understood. Towards all forms of worship,
towards all creeds, he has maintained the attitude of
absolute fairness. He does not believe that nature has
given her last message to man. He does not believe
that all has been ascertained/ He denies that any
sect has written down the entire truth. He believes in
progress, and, so believing, he says :
We can consider bibles and religions divine. I do not say
they are not divine. I say they have all grown out of us and
may grow out of us still. It is not they who give the life.
It is you who give the life.
My thoughts are hymns of the praise of things ;
In the dispute on God and eternity I am silent.
Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme ?
There can be any number of Supremes. One does not
countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails
another.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
23
Upon the great questions, as to the great problems,
he feels only the serenity of a great and well-poised
soul.
No array of terms can. say how much I am at peace about
God and about death.
I hear and behold God in every object, not understanding
God, not in the least.
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than
myself.
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my face in
the glass.
I find letters from God dropped in the street and every one is
signed by God’s name.
The whole visible world is regarded by him as a
revelation, and so is the invisible world, and with this
feeling he writes :
Not objecting to special revelations—considering a curl of
smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious
as any revelation.
The creeds do not satisfy, the old mythologies are
not enough ; they are too narrow at best, giving only
hints and suggestions ; and feeling this lack in that
which has been written and preached, Whitman says :
Magnifying and applying come I;
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters ;
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah;
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son and Herkules his grand
son ;
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahm, and Buddha;
In my portfolio placing Manito alone—Alah on a leaf—the
crucifix engraved
x
With Odin and the hideous face of Mexitli and every ido 1
and image—
Taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more.
Whitman keeps open house. He is intellectually
hospitable. He extends his hand to a new idea. He
does not accept a creed because it is wrinkled and old
and has a long white beard. He knows that hypocrisy
has a venerable look, and that it relies on looks and
masks— on stupidity—and fear. Neither does h e rej ect
�24
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN,
or accept the new because it is new. He wants the
truth, and so he welcomes all until he knows just who
and what they are.
PHILOSOPHY.
Walt Whitman is a philosopher.
The more a man has thought, the more he has studied,
the more he has travelled intellectually, the less certain
he is. Only the very ignorant are perfectly satisfied
that they know, To the common man the great
problems are easy, He has no trouble in accounting
for the universe. He can tell you the origin and
destiny of man and the why and the wherefore of
things. As a rule, he is a believer in special providence,
and is egoistic enough to suppose that everything that
happens in the universe happens in reference to him.
A colony of red ants lived at the foot of the Alps. It
happened one day, that an avalanche destroyed the
hill; and one of the ants was heard to remark : “ Who
could have taken so much trouble to destroy our
home ? ”
Walt Whitman walked by the side of the sea “ where
the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,”
and endeavoured to think out, to fathom the mystery
of being ? and he says :
I too, but signify, at the utmost, a little washed up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves gathered together—merging
myself as part of the sands and drift.
Aware, now, that amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon
me, I have not once had the least idea of who or what I
am.
But that for all my insolent poems, the real me still stands
untouched, untold, altogether unreached,
Withdrawn afar, mocking me with mock congratulatory signs
and voices,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have
written or shall write,
Striking me with insults as I fall helpless on the sand.
I perceive I have not understood anything, not a single
object; and that no man ever can.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
25
There is in our language no profounder poem than
the one entitled “ Elemental Drifts.'’
The effort to find the origin of things has ever been,
and will forever be, fruitless. Those who endeavour
to find the secret of life resemble a man looking in the
mirror, who thinks that if he only could be quick
enough he could grasp the image that he sees behind
the glass.
The latest word of this poet upon this subject is as
follows :
(e To me this life with all its realities and functions
is finally a mystery, the real something yet to be
evolved, and the stamp and shape and life here some
how given an important, perhaps the main, outline to
something further. Somehow this hangs over every
thing else, and stands behind it, is inside of all facts,
and the concrete and material and the worldly affairs
of life and sense. That is the purport and meaning
behind all the other meanings, of Leaves of Grass’'
As a matter of fact the questions of origin and destiny
are beyond the grasp of the human mind. We can see
a certain distance ; beyond that everything is only
indistinct; and beyond the indistinct is the unseen.
In the presence of these mysteries—and everything is
a mystery so far as origin, destiny, and nature are con
cerned—the intelligent, honest man is compelled to say,
“ I do not know.”
In the great midnight a few truths like stars shine
on forever—and from the brain of man come a few
struggling gleams of light—a few momentary sparks.
Some have contended that everything is spirit;
others that everything is matter ; and again, others
who maintained that a part is matter and 9. part is
spirit; some that spirit was first and matter after;
others that matter was first and spirit after ; and others
that matter and spirit have existed together.
But none of these people can by any possibility tell
what matter is, or what spirit is, or what the difference
is between spirit and matter.
The materialists look upon the spiritualists as sub
stantially crazy ; and the spiritualists regard the
materialists as low and groveling. These spiritualistic
�26
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
people hold matter in contempt ; but, after all, matter
is quite a mystery. You take in your hand a little
earth—a little dust. Do you know what it is ? In
this dust you put a seed ; the rain falls upon it; the
light strikes it; the seed grows ; it bursts into blossom ;
it produces fruit.
What is this dust—this womb ? Do you understand
it? Is there anything in the wide universe more
wonderful than this ?
Take a grain of sand, reduce it to powder, take the
smallest possible particle, look at it with a microscope,
contemplate its every part for days, and it remains the
citadel of a secret—an impregnable fortress. Bring all
the theologians, philosophers, and scientists in serried
ranks against it; let them attack on every side with all
the arts and arms of thought and force. The citadel
does not fall. Over the battlements floats the flag and
the victorious secret smiles at the baffled hosts.
Walt Whitman did not and does not imagine that he
has reached the limit—the end of the road travelled by
the human race. He knows that every victory over
nature is but the preparation for another battle. This
truth was in his mind when he said : “ Understand me
well; it is provided in the essence of things, that from
any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come
forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.”
This is the generalisation of all history.
XI.
THE TWO POEMS.
There are two of these poems to which I have time
to call special attention. The first is entitled, “ A
Word Out of the Sea.”
The boy, coming out of the rocked cradle, wandering
over the sands and fields, up from the mystic play of
shadows, out of the patches of briers and blackberries
—from the memories of birds—from the thousand
responses of his heart—goes back to the sea and his
childhood, and sings a reminiscence.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
27
Two guests from Alabama—two birds—build their
nest, and there were four light green eggs, spotted with
brown, and the two birds sang for joy :
Shine, shine,
Pour down your warmth together, great sun!
While we bask, we two together.
Two together—<
Windsblow south, or winds blow north,
Day come white, or night come black,
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding no time,
If we two but keep together.
In a little while one of the birds is missed and never
appeared again, and all through the summer the mate,
the solitary guest, was singing of the lost:
Blow, blow,
Blow up, sea winds, along Paumanok’s shore;
I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.
And the boy that night, blending himself with the
shadows, with bare feet, went down to the sea, where
the white arms out in the breakers were tirelessly
tossing ; listening to the songs and translating the
notes.
And the singing bird called loud and high for the
mate, wondering what the dusky spot was in the
brown and yellow, seeing the mate whichever way he
looked, piercing the woods and the earth with his song,
hoping that the mate might hear his cry ; stopping
that he might not lose her answer ; waiting and then
•crying again : “Here I am!” And this gentle call is
for you. Do not be deceived by the whistle of the
wind ; those are the shadows ; and at last crying :
0 past, 0 joy !
In the air, in the woods, over fields,
Loved! loved! loved !
Loved—but no more with me—
We two togethei* no more.
And then the boy, understanding the song that had
awakened in his breast a thousand songs clearer and
louder and more sorrowful than the bird’s, knowing
�28
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
that the cry of unsatisfied love would never again be
absent from him; thinking then of the destiny of all,
and asking of the sea the final word, and the sea
answering, delaying not and hurrying not, spoke the
low delicious word “ Death !” “ ever Death !”
The next poem, one that will live as long as our
language, entitled, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,” is on the death of Lincoln.
The sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands.
. One who reads this will never forget the odor of the
lilac, “lustrous western star” and “the grey-brown
bird singing in the pines and cedars.”
In this poem the dramatic unities are perfectly pre
served, the atmosphere and climate in harmony with
every event.
Never will he forget the solemn journey of the coffin
through day and night, with the great cloud darkening
the land, nor the pomp of inlooped flags, the procession
long and winding, the flambeaus of night, the torches’
flames, the silent sea of faces, the unbared heads, the
thousand voices, rising strong and solemn, the dirges,
the shuddering organs, the tolling bells—and the sprig
of lilac.
And then for a moment they will hear the grey
brown bird singing in the cedars, bashful and tender,
while the lustrous star lingers in the West, and they
will remember the pictures hung on the chamber walls
to adorn the burial house—pictures of spring and
farms and homes and the grey smoke, lucid and
bright, and the floods of yellow gold—of the gorgeous
indolent sinking sun—the sweet herbage under foot—
the green leaves of the trees prolific—the breast of the
river with the wind-dapple here and there, and the
varied and ample land—and the most excellent sun so
calm and haughty—the violet and purple morn with
just felt breezes. The gentle, soft-born measureless
light—the miracle spreading, bathing all—the fulfilled
noon—the coming eve delicious and the welcome night
and the stars.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
29
And then again they will hear the song of the grey
brown bird in the limitless dusk amid the cedars and
pines. Again they will remember the star and again
the odor of the lilac.
But most of all, the song of the bird translated and
becoming the chant for death:
THE CHANT FOE DEATH.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate ’round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Praised be the fathomless universe,
Por life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise ! praise! praise !
For the sure enwinding arms of cool enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome p
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come
unfalteringly.
Approach, strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing
the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, 0 death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and
feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread
sky are flitting.
And life and the fields, and the bright and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice
I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled death,"
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and
I ■«. the prairies wide,
Over the dense-packed cities all—and the teeming wharves
and waves,
I float this carol to thee, with joy to thee, 0 death.
�30
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN,
This poem, in memory of “ the sweetest, wisest soul
of all our days and lands,” and for whose sake lilac
and star and bird were entwined, will last as long as
the memory of Lincoln.
XII.
OLD AGE.
Walt Whitman- is not only the poet of childhood, of
youth, of manhood, but, above all, of old age. He
has not been soured by slander or petrified by preju
dice ; neither calumny nor flattery has made him re
vengeful or arrogant. Now sitting by the fireside, in
the winter of life,
His jocund heart still beating in his breast,
he is just as brave and calm and kind as in his man
hood’s proudest days, when roses blossomed in his
cheeks. He has taken life’s seven steps. Now, as the
gamester might say, “ on velvet.” He is enjoying “ old
age expanded, broad, with the haughty breadth of the
universe ; old age, flowing free, with the delicious,
near-by freedom of death ; old age, superbly rising,
welcoming the ineffable aggregation of dying days.”
He is taking the “ loftiest look at last,” and before
he goes he utters thanks “ for health, the midday sun,
the impalpable air—for life, mere life ; for precious
ever lingering memories of mother, father, brothers,
sisters, friends ; for all his days, for gentle words,
carresses, gifts from foreign lands, for shelter, wine
and meat, for sweet appreciation, for beings, groups,
love, deeds, words, books ; for colors, forms ; for all
the brave, strong men who forward sprung in freedom’s
help—all years—in all lands ; the cannoneers of song
and thought—the great artillerists, the foremost leaders,
captains of the soul.”
It is a great thing to preach philosophy—far greater
to live it. The highest philosophy accepts the inevit
able with a smile, and greets it as though it were
desired.
To be satisfied : This is wealth—success.
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
31
The real philosopher knows that everything has hap
pened that could have happened—consequently he
accepts. He is glad that he has lived—glad that he has
had his moment on the stage. In this spirit Whitman
has accepted life.
I shall go forth;
I shall traverse these states, but I cannot tell whither or how
iong.
Perhaps soon, some day or night, while I am singing, my
voice will suddenly cease,
O soul!
Then all may arrive but to this :
The glances of my eyes that swept the daylight,
The unspeakable love I interchanged with women,
My joys in the open air,
My walks in the Mannahatta,
The continual good will I have met,
The curious attachments of young men to me,
My reflections alone—the absorption into me from the land
scape, stars, animals, thunder, rain, and snow in my
interviews alone;
The words of my mouth—rude, ignorant—my many faults
and derelictions;
The light touches on my lips of the lips of my comrades at
parting,
The tracks which I leave on the sidewalks and fields—
May all arrive at but this beginning of me;
This beginning of me—and yet it is enough, 0, soul!
0, soul, we have positively appeared; that is enough.
Yes, Walt Whitman has appeared. He has his place
upon the stage. The drama is not ended. His voice
is still heard. He is the Poet of Democracy—of all
people. He is the poet of the body and soul. He has
sounded the note of Individuality. He has given the
pass-word primeval. He is the Poet of Humanity—of
Intellectual Hospitality. He has voiced the aspirations
of America—and, above all, he is the poet of Love and
Death.
How grandly, how bravely he has given his thought,
and how superb is his farewell—his leave-taking :
After the supper and talk ; after the day is done.
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging.
Good-bye and good-bye with emotional lips repeating.
�32
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
So hard for his hand to release those hands—no more will
they meet—
No more for.communion of sorrow and joy of old and young,
A far-stretching journey awaits him to return no more.
Shunning postponing severance, seeking to ward off the last
word ever so little,
Even at the exit dooi’ turning—charges superfluous calling
back—even as he descends the steps,
Something to eke out a minute additional—shadows of night
fall deepening,
Farewell messages lessening, dimmer the forthgoer’s visage
and form,
Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness; loth, oh, so loth to
depart!
And is this all ? Will the forthgoer be lost, and for
ever ? Is death the end ? Over the grave bends Love
sobbing, and by her side stands Hope and whispers :
We shall meet again. Before all life is death, and
after all death is life. The falling leaf, touched with
the hectic flush, that testifies of autumn’s death, is, in
a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.
Walt Whitman has dreamed great dreams, told great
truths and uttered sublime thoughts. He has held aloft
the torch and bravely led the way.
As you read the marvellous book, or the person, called
Leaves of Grass, you feel the freedom of the antique
world ; you hear the voices of the morning, of the
first great singers—voices elemental as those of sea and
storm. The horizon enlarges, the heavens grow ample,
limitations are forgotten —the realisation of the will,
the accomplishment of the ideal, seem to be within
your power. Obstructions become petty and disappear.
The chains and bars are broken, and the distinctions
of caste are lost.
The soul is in the open air, under the blue and stars
—the flag of Nature. Creeds, theories, and philosophies
ask to be examined, contradicted, reconstructed. Pre
judices disappear, superstitions vanish, and custom
abdicates. The sacred places become highways, duties
and desires clasp hands and become comrades and
friends. Authority drops the sceptre, the priest the
mitre, and the purple falls from kings. The inanimate
�ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
33
becomes articulate, the meanest and humblest things
utter speech, and the dumb and voiceless burst into
song. A feeling of independence takes possession of
the soul, the body expands, the blood flows full and
free, superiors vanish, flattery is a lost art, and life
becomes rich, royal and superb. The world becomes a
personal possession, and the oceans, the continents and
constellations belong to you. You are in the centre,
everything radiates from you, and in your veins beats
and throbs the pulse of all life. You become a rover,
careless and free. You wander by the shores of all
seas and hear the eternal psalm. You feel the silence
of the wide forest, and stand beneath the intertwined
and over-arching boughs, entranced with symphonies
of winds and woods. You are borne on the tides of
eager and swift rivers, hear the rush and roar of
cataracts as they fall beneath the seven-hued arch, and
watch the eagles as they circling soar. You traverse
gorges dark and dim, and climb the scarred and threa
tening cliffs. You stand in orchards where the blossoms
fall like snow, where the birds nest and sing, and
painted moths make aimless journeys through the
happy air. You live the lives of those who till the
earth, and walk amid the perfumed fields, hear the
reapers’ song, and feel the breadth and scope of earth
and sky. You are in the great cities, in the midst of
multitudes, of the endless processions. You are on the
wide plains—the prairies—with hunter and trapper,
with savage and pioneer, and you feel the soft grass
yielding under your feet. You sail in many ships, and
breathe the free air of the sea. You travel many roads,
and countless paths. You visit palaces and prisons,
hospitals and courts ; you pity kings and convicts, and
your sympathy goes out to all the suffering and insane,
the oppressed and enslaved, and even to the infamous.
You hear the din of labor, all sounds of factory, field,
and forest, of all tools, instruments, and machines.
You become familiar with men and women of all
employments, trades, and professions—with birth and
burial, with wedding feast and funeral chant. You see
the cloud and flame of war, and you enjoy the ineffable
perfect days of peace.
�34
ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN.
In?hls°ne book’ in these wondrous Leaves of Grass
yi>n1r?.d hmts and suggestions, touches and fragments’
of all there is of life, that lies between the babe, whose
rounded cheeks dimple beneath his mother’s laughing
oving eyes, and the old man, snow-crowned, who, with
a smile, extends his hand to death. And we have met
to-night to honor ourselves by honoring the author of
Leaves of Grass.
Printed and Published by G. W. Foote, at 28 Stonecutter Street
London, E.O.
’
�WORKS BY COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
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MISTAKES OF MOSES
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DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
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Five Hours’ Speech at the Trial of C. B.
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REPLY TO GLADSTONE
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With a Biography by J. M. Wheeler. '
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FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
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THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
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A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert and
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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An oration on Walt Whitman
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 34, 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed and published by G.W. Foote. Publisher's catalogue (8 p.), dated September 1890, at end. No. 45g in Stein checklist. "The following oration by Colonel Ingersoll was delivered in the Horticultural Hall, New York, on October 21, 1890". Essays previously published in a variety of journals and books, which are listed in the Acknowledgements section. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Progressive Publishing Company
Date
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1890
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N382
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Poetry
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (An oration on Walt Whitman), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
American Poetry
NSS
Poetry
Poetry in English
Walt Whitman
-
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PDF Text
Text
65
lUIIab.
Why is it so with me, false Love,
Why is it so with me ?
Mine enemies might thus have dealt;
I fear’d it not of thee.
Thou wast the thought of all my thoughts,
Nor other hope had I:
My life was laid upon thy love;
Then how could’st let me die ?
The flower is loyal to the bud,
The greenwood to the spring,
The soldier to his banner bright,
The noble to his king :
The bee is constant to the hive,
The ringdove to the tree,
The martin to the cottage-eaves;
Thou only not to me.
Yet if again, false Love, thy feet
To tread the pathway burn
That once they trod so well and oft,
Return, false Love, return;
And stand beside thy maiden’s bier,
And thou wilt surely see,
That I have been as true to love
As thou wert false to me.
F. T. Palgrave.
4—5
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Ballad
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Palgrave, Francis Turner
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 1 page (p.65) ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From the Cornhill Magazine 30 (July, 1874). Attribution from Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900.
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[Smith, Elder & Co.]
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[1874]
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G5347
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Poetry
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English
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
Poetry in English
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FIRST PAPER.
1 L’Art pour l’Art ’ is a motto that supplies us with a very satisfactory
definition of the aim and purport of the poetry of those early times
when men, not having lost their fresh childlike rejoicing in the present,
sang—if they had the power to sing—aimlessly ‘ wie der Vogel singt,’
just only because
Das Lied das aus der Kehle dringt
1st Lohn der reichli ch lohnet.
,
But every year is now carrying us farther away from a state of things
in which it is possible that there should be produced poetry of the kind
to which this definition is applicable. The great flood of subjectivity
which has made its way into all modern thought has brought with it
problems pressing for answer in such a crowd as to leave no room for
thinking or feeling to be exercised unconsciously and without purpose.
Of the poets now writing amongst us we cannot say that their work
is 1 pour l’Art.’ In the generation immediately preceding theirs there
was, indeed, one poet—Scott—who contrived to keep himself apart, as
on an island, nntouched by the waves of restless subjective thought
that had come over the intellectual life of his age, and who retained the
power of purposeless poetical utterance. But has there been produced,
since his, any poetry seeking no further office than to become a beauti
ful or noble piece of art ? Does not all, or by far the greater part of
that which is of recent origin, seem to be sent forth for the purpose of
gaining satisfaction of one kind or another for the craving self-con
sciousness of the writers, and of their contemporaries who are to share
in the results of their quest? Poetry, like every other power which
man has at command, has now been forced to take its part in supplying
the two great wants, Pleasure and Truth—which, little felt in simple
primitive times, become passionately urgent in a state of high civilisation
and culture. We have not now—and probably the world will never
have again—poets who are poets and nothing more. What we have
now is truth-seekers and pleasure-seekers gifted with the power of
�172
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
artistic perception and imagination, of rhythmical or melodious ex«
pression, and using these gifts to seek what without them they would!
have sought by other means.
The school of thought which is content to regard pleasure as the
satisfaction for which all desires are craving, uses its poetry to go forth,
and bring in full richness of pleasures ; careless, if only there can be
found in them beauty and delight, from whence they come and of what
sort they are. Not the value of a man’s work as art, but the power it
has to awaken in writer or readers a stranger susceptibility to
pleasure of sense or imagination, is here the measure of his success.
There is a great deal of poetry which seems on its surface to be alto
gether the free playing of spontaneous instincts, but which we find,
if we look a little deeper into it, to have at bottom the principle of
utilitarianism, not of art.
Nor can the men whose desires are towards the satisfaction of truth
be poets more unconscious of a purpose. To find that satisfaction for
themselves and for others is the aim towards which all their faculties
are bent, and in proportion as their search is successful these men
become teachers and preachers. The poet on whose characteristics the
following pages will contain a few thoughts—Mr. Robert Browning—
is one whose gifts as a poet, strong and true as they are, are perhaps
oftener than any contemporary artist’s, merged in his character as
preacher of what he has gained as a truth-seeker. I cannot but think
that the full value of his work can only be estimated by recognising
him first in his office of preacher rathei’ than of poet.
Any reader who has had patience enough to force his way through
the bristling hedge of complicated sentences that forms so much of the
outer fence of Browning’s writings, and has gone in and got hold of
intelligible meaning, must surely perceive that he has to do with some
thing which cannot be judged of by aesthetic tests,. We feel that what
is to be found there is the work of a man who is bound by all the
impulses of his nature to preach what he believes and to persuade
other men. He seems to have chosen the office of poet voluntarily, for
the sake of this preaching ; partly because the rythmical form of words
will carry his doctrine where it might not otherwise reach and partly
because amongst the truths he would set forth, there are some which
are of the kind that to men’s present faculties must be always only
as sights half seen, as sounds half heard, and which become dimmer
and fainter if the attempt is made to define them into the accurate
form and articulate speech of ordinary prose. Browning’s place is
amongst the teachers whose words come forth allowed by their own
conscious will; not amongst the artists controlled by involuntarily
instincts.
His poetry is not a great artist utterance that has fulfilled its end—
or at least the only end with which the artist is concerned—when once
it has got outside the mind in which it originated into audible sound
�BROWNING- AS A PREACHER.
173
or visible form, whether that sound be heard or that form be seen or
not; but it is a message intended to travel (the sender hardly cares
how, provided that the end be reached) from the heart and brain of
one man to the hearts and brains of those who will hear him. The
necessity that is laid upon him, through his instincts, is the ‘ When
thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren ; ’ and the setting himself
to his work as a poet seems to be his choice of the way in which he
will obey that impulse. Not for his own sake does poetry seem to be
a necessity to him. As far as his own needs are concerned, such a man
could afford to be silent. It is neither for the relief nor for the pleasure
of self-utterance that he speaks. Nothing that he has written
betokens the weakness and incapacity of_reticence that have opened the
mouths of so many poets in a great strong bitter crying, which
they tuned into beautiful music whose sweetness might ease them of
their pain. Nor has he that irrepressible joy in beauty for its own
sake which forced Wordsworth to tell of the loveliness of the visible
world.
And we cannot attribute his becoming a poet to the pressure of
dramatic instincts. Though in power of imagining dramatic characters
it is he and he only who at all fills the office’of modern Shakespeare,
yet there is something in his manner of exercising that power which
tells us that in him it is subordinate to some other motive. This
difference there is between Browning and other poets who could
create ‘ men and women,’ that w’hereas with others the production
of life-like characters seems to be the aim and end, with him it is only
the means to a further end—namely, the arguing out and setting
forth of general truths. He cannot, as others have done, rest
satisfied with contemplating the children of his imagination, and find
the fulfilment of his aim in the fact of his having given them existence.
It seems always as if his purpose in creating them was to make them
serve as questioners and objectors and answerers in the great debate
of conflicting thoughts of which nearly all his poetry forms part. His
object in transferring (as he can do with such marvellous success)
his own consciousness, as it were, into the consciousness of some
imagined character, seems to be only to gain a new stand-point, from
which to see another and a different aspect of the questions concerning
which he could not wholly satisfy himself from his own point of view.
He can create characters with as strongly marked individualities as
had ever any that came out of the brain of dramatist or novelist, but
he cannot be content to leave them, as Shakespere did the characters
he created, to look, all of them, off in various directions according to
whatever chanced to suit best with the temper and disposition he had
imagined for them. Still less can he leave to any of his men and
women the vraisemblable attribute of having no steady outlook at
anything in particular. They are all placed by him with their eyes
turned in very much in the same direction, gazing towards the same class
�174
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
of questions. And, somehow, Browning himself seems to he in com
pany with them all the time, hearing their different reports of the
various aspects which those questions present to each of them ; and
judging and choosing between all these different reports, in order to
give credence to the true one. The study of no individual character
would seem to him of much value, unless that character contained
something which should help to throw light upon matters common to
all humanity, upon the questions either as to what it is, or as to what are
its relations to the things outside humanity. Desire to know the truth,
and to make other men know it, seems to be the essential quality of
his nature, and his poetry only its separable accident — a garment
which it wears because if finds such best suited to it in the nineteenth
century, but which it might very likely have gone without, if placed
among the surroundings of some other age. If we can fancy him
transferred back some five hundred years ago, he would be found
surely not among the followers of the 1 gaye science/ as a trouvère
or troubadour, exercising his art to give pleasure at the court or the
knightly castle, but rather in the solitude of a monastic cell, gazing
with fixed eyes into the things of the unseen world, until they became
the real, and the shows of earth the unreal, things ; or, later on, would
surely have been a worker, not in the cause of the great art revival of
the sixteenth century but of its Reformation movement. One can fancy
how grandly he would then have preached his gospel of the sanctity
of things secular, in rough plain Luther-like prose, with the same
singleness of purpose with which he now, as a poet, sets himself to
preach a gospel—needed more than all others by his contemporaries—
of the reality and presence of things immaterial and extra-human.
Browning’s poetry has one characteristic which gives its teaching
peculiar influence over contemporary minds. I mean the way in which,
all the while being perfectly free from egoism, it brings its readers in
some inexplicable way into a contact with the real self of the author,
closer and more direct than that which we have with any other poets
through their writings. Once you succeed in construing the compli
cated thinking and feeling of this or that passage of his, you feel,
not that youtare seeing something that a man has made, but that you
are in the immediate presence of the man himself. I know of no other
writings (except J. H. Newman’s) having this peculiarity to such a
degree (it is in this that the secret of the fascination of those wonder
ful sermons of Newman’s consists). These two men, so different,
have yet this in common, that there is something in their written
words which communicates to the men who read them the thrill of
contact with the.pulsations of another human life. And the knowledge
that there is the real living mind of another man speaking to your
mind, gives a restful sense of reality that is the starting-point of all
belief and of all motive to action. Surely anyone who has received
this from Browning must feel as if there would be a miserable ingrati-
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
175
tu.de in the sort of criticism which should carp at his poetry for its
lack of polish in style or prettiness in ideas.
Browning is greater than his art, and the best work which his poetry
does is to bring you into his own presence: and once there you no
longer care what brought you there, and feel as if it mattered very
little whether the means of communication had been poetry or other
form of words. Tennyson’s art is greater than Tennyson ; and it is
with it, and not with the man himself, that you have to do.
Of course, though Tennyson can have no direct influence as a teacher
over anyone who feels thus about him and his work, yet his indirect
influence over the minds of men is not to be lightly accounted of. His
poetry is what it is, and may be accepted by us as we accept a beauti
ful painting or piece of music, as an end in itself. Acting through our
aesthetic perceptions, it affects the tone and colour of our moods. And
most of us know by experience that the character of our thinking is in
a great measure dependent upon moods and feelings open to impres
sions of this sort. It is of course no slight gift that Mr. Tennyson has
given to his contemporaries when he has shown them ideas so pure and
calm and noble, by the contemplation of which their own lives may
unconsciously become purer and higher.
Acknowledging this influence that he has, and giving him due honour
for it, all I would say is that there is another kind of influence which
he cannot exercise, and that his poetry, though making nineteenth cen
tury problems so constantly its theme, is not to be reckoned amongst the
books that give any real availing help against the modern 1 spectres of
the mind.’ To the needs of vital doubt it is no more than if it told us
tales of fairy-land. And this because of its failing to give us that entire
satisfaction as to its being truth subjective, which alone could be our
guarantee for its being able to help in guiding us to truth objective. In
the times when neither our hearts nor brains can get hold of the sense
of reality in anything around us, we find that instead of aiding us ‘ aus
diesem Meer des Irrthums aufzutauchen,’ all that Tennyson’s poetry
seems to have done for us is to have made a beautiful word-phantom,
having a semblance of wise human counsel, to add another to the
number of the appearances that with aspects beautiful or horrible are
floating over and under and around us, and perpetually eluding our
grasp. Fai’ more is to be gained at such times from poetry even such
as Clough’s, which, though it carries you to no farther resting-place, at
least lets you take hold of one substantial thing—'the veritable mind of
a human being, doubting with its. own doubts and having its certaintainties its own, each of those certainties, however few and imperfect,
having a distinct place as independent testimony to truth.. . ?
Browning brings from out of his own individuality something which
he did not receive from his age, and which he offers to it as a gift, and
which is of a spirit so foreign to the atmosphere into which it comes
that he requires men to accept him as a. teacher before attaining to
�176
BROWNING- AS A PREACHER.
sympathy with. him. This that he has to give is some of the intense
earnestness of Puritanism, and the strenuousness of effort which gave
heroic grandeur to the old asceticism. He offers this to a state of
society, which along with all its practical vigour and perseverance in
the affairs of men’s outer lives, has so much of aimlessness and aban
donment of self-direction in all that concerns the life of inner thought
and feeling.
Other men of present and recent times have had a like gift to bestow,
but their manner of giving it was such as to make its acceptance for
the most part impossible. J. H. Newman and the company of men
who, with him, were the Puritans and ascetics of the nineteenth century,
have gained no permanent influence as teachers of their age. Teachers
of their age, indeed, they did not attempt to be, but only of whoever
should be willing to betake himself out of it back into mediaeval modes
cf thought; and with the thoughts and difficulties of the men who
refused to do this, they either could not or would not sympathise nor
have anything to do. Hence, the vigour and thoroughness of their
own individual lives was able only very partially to affect the thinking
and feeling of the world around them. But Browning undertakes the
work which they would not attempt. The chief glory of his labour is
that he has taken so much of what was good in the old Puritan spirit,
and has brought it into harmony with the wider knowledge and larger
life of later times. He devises for the fixedness of moral purpose and
power of asceticism, which are the inherent characteristics of his own
nature, another and a worthier use than the uses which in old times
men had been wont to make them serve. He sees in moral fixedness a
means that may be used not to check intellectual advance, but to help
it forward by steadying its aim; and he finds that asceticism is capable
of becoming, from having been the old monkish discipline of repression,
the nobler acncriaic of the mental athlete, which is to prepare him for
strenuous exertions whereby all parts of his human nature may
develop themselves to the full.
The idea of a struggle and a wrestling in which the wills of men are
to be engaged—the central idea of early and mediaeval Christian
thought—is recognised fully and distinctly by Browning in all that he
has written. He holds that men’s business in this world’is labour and
strife and conquest, and not merely free unconscious growth and
harmonious development. He differs thoroughly from the modern
thinking, which sees no moral evil distinct from and antagonistic to
good; and again and again, directly or indirectly, his poems let us see
how wide is his separation, both in belief and feeling, from the many
poets of these present days, who have returned to the idea round which
the old Greek poetry had all revolved, of the powerlessness of man’s
will and the drifting of his life before an unalterable destiny. In a
recent . criticism on Tennyson’s and Browning’s characteristics,1
1 Professor Dowden’s lecture on ‘ Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning,’ The Dublin
Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art (1867-68). London: Bell & Daldy.
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BROWNING- AS A PREACHER.
Browning is distinguished as being pre-eminently the poet of impulse.
This he doubtless is, but it seems to me that his chief point of difference
from the majority of modern poets, is his being emphatically the poet
of the will.
That this is the characteristic feature of his poetry strikes one most
forcibly if one chances to take up a volume of it immediately after
reading his contemporary Matthew Arnold’s sufficiently to have let
one’s mood take the impress of his. The transition from the one man’s
conception of life to that of the other seems like the waking from one
of those nightmare dreams in which we have the sense of being for
ever passive (all the while struggling in vain not to be) under
some Compelling that is horrible and yet mockingly sweet; to find
Ourselves restored from this to the wide-awake state of things, in
which we regain the consciousness of freedom of action.
There is much in which he makes common cause with J. H. Newman
and the men who were imbued with his spirit. They and Browning alike
realise the individuality of each human life, and the struggle which is
for each man a separate work to be entered into by his self-determined
will, and feel the intense mysteriousness of human personality. And they
may be classed together as protesters against nineteenth-centuryism—
the habit of thought which makes so little account of these things.
The question on which they part company is the question as to whether
the impulses which men find within them are to be opposed by their
wills as enemies, or to be accepted by them as allies in the struggle
that has to be engaged in. While, on the one hand, by Newman and
those like-minded with him, the only guide internal to man which is
acknowledged as having the authority of a voice from the invisible
world, is the conscience—the sense of a law binding to the doing of
one sort of actions and the refraining from another sort (the law by
making its presence thus felt being in itself evidence for its giver) ;
by Browning, on the other hand, other mental phenomena to be found
in human nature are accepted, as having first their intellectual signifi
cance as evidences ‘ whence a world of spirit as of sense’ is made plain
to us, and afterwards their moral uses in raising us from the world of
sense into the world of spirit.
Our human impulses towards knowledge, towards beauty, towards
love—all these impulses, the feeling of which is common in various
degrees to all men, and the expression of which by some few among
them is Art—are reverenced by him as the signs and tokens of a world
not included in that which meets our senses, as the
Intuitions, grasps of guess,
That pull the more into the less,
Making the finite comprehend
Infinity.
j
-“-not of course that Browning does not also recognise the evidential
force of conscience as an internal witness, but still, I think, it is chiefly
VOL. IL—NO. VIII.
K
�178
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
in the human impulses which in the world of sense are never satisfied,
that he considers the subjective evidence for the spirit world to lie.
And from this difference in the grounds of his and Newman’s beliefs
there results a difference in their whole conception of man’s life and its
aims. The part of human nature which alone Newman will acknow
ledge as a divine guide is a part which in itself furnishes no principle
of growth or progress (the conscience being only a power capable of
restraining and directing), and the ideal life in this world is therefore,
according to him, only a state of waiting, a walking warily in obedience,
until some other state shall be reached in which man shall be in a
condition to begin growth. According to him the business of the
earthly life is only to get safely out of it as out of an enemy’s country.
And as a natural result of his theory of the earthly life, we find that
Newman, even with all his vivid perception of each human soul’s
individual existence, becomes unable to sympathise with diversities of
individuality: no scope for human diversities being allowed by the
theory which sets all men to the same sort of work—the mere work of
escaping (each with his unused individualities) to some future condition
in’which life, in the sense of an active and growing state, may begin.
But Browning, on the other hand, having taken all the higher human
impulses and aspirations to be evidences whereby we discern an order
of things extending beyond the world of which sense is cognizant,
becomes able to conceive of the life that now is, as a condition, not of
mere waiting and watching—not as a struggle only on the defensive
against evil, in which safety is the only kind of success sought for—but
as a state in which growth and progress are to be things of the present
—in which the struggle is to be for acquisition and not alone for
defence. His recognition of impulse as a guide to be accounted divine,
makes him recognise human nature as being furnished with means of
self-evolving growth and action, and not merely of obedience to laws
given from without.
Browning’s theory of human impulse removes him from a sort of
asceticism which he would doubtless have been capable of exercising
(if his judgment had decided in favour of it) as unflinchingly and as
fiercely as mediaeval monk or modern ascetic, such as Newman or
Baber. He, like them, could have preached and practised the restraining
of human feelings and hopes, and the reducing of life to a toilsomelymaintained condition of high-wrought quiescence. He is too entirely
filled with the sense of the resolute human will to have ever let himself
be driven along, Swinburne-like, by mighty art impulses. He would
have been able to separate his thinking wholly from their influences,
had it not been that he had deliberately accepted them as guides which
ought to be followed. The moral half of him is stronger than the
eesthetic ; and the stronger could have crushed out the weaker if it had
not chosen to yield it willing honour. A mind such as his is solitary
and ascetic in its natural temperament; yet by his creed Browning
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
179
gains catholicity of thought and of interests. Wide sympathy with
^dissimilar types of human character would be a thing not to be looked
for in a thinker who realises so intensely the mysteries of his own indivi
dual existence, if it had not been that he had taken those very things in
which their dissimilarity lies—their multiform impulses—as the many
witnesses for the same truths, each witness requiring to be understood
by a reverent and appreciative sympathy. To a man whose whole
soul could be absorbed by the vividly realised vision of an Easter Day,
desires such as Abt Vogler’s towards ideal beauty of sound; as those
of Paracelsus towards knowledge; of Aprile towards love; and the
restless battle-ardour of Luria, would seem trivial, and not worthy of
detaining the eyes to search into them and analyse their peculiarities,
Were it not for his belief that in all such desires an infinite meaning’
could be discerned ; and that they were the varying pledges, given to
various human beings, of the individual immortality of each. Prom
this his belief there follows a wide development of human sympathy
which has a peculiar value, because of its not being the expression of
naturally gregarious tendencies, but of an originally self-concentrated
nature, transferring, as it were, its own consciousness, with all its
intensity, into the diverse human individualities that come under its
notice.
Very wide indeed is this sympathy. All human feelings and aspira
tions become precious in Browning’s eyes, not for what they are, but for
what they point to. He becomes capable of seeing a grandeur (poten
tial though not actual) in human aims whose aspect would be, to
Careless unsympathising eyes, ridiculous rather than sublime. For
instance, the instinctive craving after perfection and accuracy, which
had for its only visible result the expending of the energies of a lifetime
on the task of determining the exact force and functions of Greek
particles, is treated by Browning, in that very noble poem of his, ‘ The
Grammarian’s Funeral,’ with no contemptuous pity, but is honoured as
being a pledge of the limitless future, which, lying before all human
workers, renders it unnecessary that a man should slur over the
jjiinutiee of his work hastily, in the endeavour to compress into a life
time all that he aims at accomplishing.
The sort of asceticism which Browning’s theory of impulse
makes impossible to him, is that which fears to let the senses enjoy
¡tile whole fulness of earthly beauty, and seeks to narrow and enfeeble
¡the affections, and to stifle men’s noble ambitions. Yet his poetry
keeps for its characteristic spirit that other asceticism which implies
the using of the world’s material beauty and human passion, not as
ends in themselves, but as means whereby man’s spirit may reach to
the heights above them, there to find new steps by which to ascend.
He counsels no abstinence from beauty for the senses, but it is to be
to men not as a banquet, but as a draught which will give them
¡strength for labour, the fuller the draught the greater the strength.
k2
�180
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
He, more than any other poet, has ever present with him these two
ideas : that the world—the material and the human—contains what is
‘very good;’ and also that ‘ the fashion of this world passeth away.’
His noble christianised Platonism takes ‘ all partial beauty as a pledge
of beauty in its plenitude.’ His mood the pledge never wholly suffices.
The earth is to him ‘ God’s ante-chamber ’—God’s, not a devil’s—yet
still only an ante-chamber.
Asceticism of this kind is the great glory of his doctrine as a preacher.
It may be that, considering him solely as a poet, he loses somewhat by
it. One sort of beauty there is of which it deprives his work, how
ever great may be the compensating gains. This is the artistic
beauty of pathos, of which Browning’s poetry is wholly, or almost
wholly, devoid. There are two kinds of pathos lying on opposite sides
of the position which Browning occupies as a thinker. One of these
is the pathos of mediaeval art, and the other the pathos of pagan art.
And with neither of these has he anything to do. The old ascetic
conception of the earthly life gives a strange yearning tenderness,
infinitely pathetic, to the manner in which the early and mediaeval
hymn writers and the modern mediaevallists, Newman and Faber, look
onward as if from out of a desert or an enemy’s country to the far-off
unseen world—their ‘ Urbs Beata Jerusalem,’ their ‘ Paradise,’ their
‘ Calm land beyond the sea.’ But Browning has no need nor room for
pathos of this sort: the tender ‘ Heimweh ’ of this has no place amongst
his feelings. He does not image to himself the life after death as a
home, in the sense of a state that shall be rested in and never ex
changed for a higher. He conceives of it as differing from the life
that now is, not in permanency, but in elevation and in increase of
capacities. And the earth has its own especial glory, which he will
not overlook, of being first of an infinite series of ascending stages,
showing even now, in the beauty and love that is abroad in it, the
tokens of the visitings of God’s free spirit.
The feeling which we commonly callpathos seems, when one analyses
it, to arise out of a perception of grand incongruities—filling a place
in one class of our ideas corresponding to that in another in which
the sense of the ludicrous is placed by Locke. And this pathos was
attained by mediaeval asceticism through its habit of dwarfing into
insignificance the earthly life and its belongings, and setting the mean
ness and wretchedness which it attributed to it in contrast to the faroff vision of glory and greatness. But by Browning no such incon
gruity is recognised between what is and what shall be.
Another sort of pathos—the Pagan—is equally impossible to him.
This is the sort which results from a full realising of the joy and th®
beauty of the earth, and the nobleness of men’s lives on it; and
from seeing a grand inexplicablenes in the incongruity between th©
brightness of these and the darkness which lies at either end of them
—the infinite contradiction between actual greatness and the apparent
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
181
nothingness of its whence and whither—the mystery of strong and
beautiful impulses finding no adequate outcome now, nor promise of
ever finding it hereafter—human passion kindling into light and glow,
only to burn itself out into ashes—the struggle kept up by the will of
successive generations against Fate, ever beginning and ever ending in
defeat, to recommence as vainly as before—the never-answered ‘ Why ? ’
uttered unceasingly in myriad tones from out all human life.
The poetry of the Greeks gained from the contemplation of these
things a pathos, which, however gladly a Christian poet may forego
such gain for his art, was in its sadness inexpressibly beautiful. The
Iliad had a deep under-current of it even in the midst of all its healthy
childlike objectivity; and it was ever present amongst the great
tragedians’ introspective analysings of humanity.
High art of later times has for the most part retained this pagan
beauty. Though there is no reason to think that there was any
paganism in Shakespeare’s creed, yet we cannot help feeling that,
whether the cause is to be sought in his individual genius or in
Renaissance influences, the spirit of his art is in many respects pagan.
In his great tragedies he traces the workings of noble or lovely human
character on to the point—and no further—where they disappear into
the darkness of death ; and ends with a look back, never on towards
anything beyond. His sternly truthful realism will not, of course,
allow him to attempt a shallow poetical justice, and mete out to each
of his men and women the portion of earthly good which might seem
their due : and his artistic instincts'—positive rather than speculative
—prefer the majesty and infinite sadness of unexplainedness to any
attempt to look on towards a future solution of hard riddles in human
fates. ‘ King Lear,’ for instance, is pathetic because of its paganism ; and
would, be spoiled, or at all events changed into something quite differ
ent, by the introduction of any Christian hope. One of the chief artistic
effects of the story is the incongruity between the wealth of devotion
poured out by Cordelia’s impulses of love and the dreary nothingness
in which those beautiful impulses end. If there was anything in it to
leave with us the impression that this was not the end of all, and that
this expenditure of love was not in vain, but had its results yet to
come, the story could not call forth in us an emotion of such keen and
tender pity. And in this tragedy, as in Shakespeare’s others, one of its
greatest effects, as art, is produced by the idea which had acted so
mightily on the minds of old Greek poets—the powerlessness of man’s
moral agency against his destiny. Hamlet, for instance, ends in ac
complishing nothing of what he has set before him as his aim. Some
thing, over and above his own irresoluteness is hindering him. He
becomes, through no fault of his, the murderer of a harmless old man,
and breaks the innocent young heart of Ophelia, becoming to her
another link in the chain of involuntary evil, and being the cause of
her unconscious sin of self-destruction. (It is as sin that Shakespeare
�182
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
regards Ophelia’s suicide ; and this parodox of his, of guilt without
moral volition is thoroughly Greek—akin, e.g. to the tragic aspect of
the crime of CEdipus.)
So too, in Othello’s character, there is no lack of noble impulses •
yet they are productive of no results. His fate, taking advantage of
the one vulnerable part of his nature, impels him to the destruction
of all his happiness by the murder of Desdemona. And the artist
breaks off, taking the murdered and the murderer out of our sight,
and leaving with us only the impression of the irreparableness of
the deed, and of the mysteriousness and inevitableness of the innocent
suffering and almost involuntary guilt that came upon two human
creatures. The effect of the tragedies depends upon the total absence
in them of anything which might suggest the possibility of a future
answer to the great ‘ Wherefore ? ’ which their endings evoke from our
hearts. Their pathos arises out of their tacit exclusion of hope.1
The contrast between the spirit (apart of course from any thought
as to the relative poetical rank) of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and of
Mr. Browning’s greatest tragic work, ‘ The Ring and the Book,’ is very
striking. The impression which the latter leaves upon the reader’s
mind is that of a great solemn looking forward, which absorbs into
itself all emotions of pity that might have been awakened by Pompilia’s
innocent suffering and Caponsacchi’s love ; and which mitigates the
hatred which we must feel for Guido, by the thought that even for him
a far-off possible good may be waiting. The spirit of Shakespeare’s
tragic art (however much the form may differ from the classical) has
much of the sort of completeness which was characteristic of Greek
art. There is no suggestiveness in it of a state of things out of the
reach of his art, and therefore he allows you to feel to the full (as far
as you are able) any emotion which the character and circumstances
of his dramatic creations should properly give rise to. When once he
has shaped and fashioned his men and women, he leaves them with
you—fixed as a sculptor might, leave his work—in attitudes which
appeal perpetually to one or other of your human feelings, with no
indication of such attitudes not being the only possible ones in which
they might appear. But Browning never completes, or would have
his readers complete, the emotions called forth by his dramatic art.
He checks them, while as yet only half realised, by his perpetual
suggestiveness that what his art represents is only a portion of a great
1 There is an analogy between the poetry of ancient and modern paganism, and
some of 'the greatest poems in the modern art—music. The spirit which seems
to pervade Beethoven’s is essentially pagan. He is the great musical poet of un
answered seeking. There is joyousness enough in his music to contrast with its
tones of mighty Faust-like despair; but I have never heard a passage of it that
suggested emotions of hope or deep restful happiness. Outside the world in which
Beethoven and his art move, there is for him only a ‘ dim gray lampless world.’
Outside the world of Mendelssohn, however, who is no pagan, there is an infinite
encircling love, to which he sings his ‘Lobgesang.’ He seeks—and finds.
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
183
unknown whole, without knowing, which neither he nor you can
determine, what the feelings with which you regard the portion ought
to b©. Considering, as he does, every human life as only a glimpse of
a beginning, its minglings of greatness and imperfection have not for
him the same aspect of pathetic mysterious paradox which they have
for those poets who, either from their creed or from their v’/tioc, regard
it as a rounaed whole.
The absence of any pagan spirit in Browning’s writings deprives
them also of a sort of beauty that belongs to so much of the modern
poetry of external nature. Paganism is the source whence many
poets have drawn their adoration of that loveliness of the earth—
serene and terrible, outlasting and unmoved by human struggles.
When these men behold the infinity of her beauty, they merge in their
adoration of it all dissatisfactions with human life ; attaining to one
kind of intellectual repose, by giving up hope to find satisfaction for
thought or moral feeling, and by taking instead, for solace, the
unmeasured pleasure of «esthetic perception.
Shelley’s creed, taking the visible world for its all in all, has for its
product the intense vividness with which he perceives the richness
and glory of the sights of that world. He looks at, rests in, the
beauty that he sees ; and it becomes more to him than it can be even
to Wordsworth, who, with all his devotion to external nature, looked
through rather than at her. And Shelley’s poetry derives its strange
intangible pathos from its having all this aesthetic brightness to set in
contrast over against the darkness that surrounds those ‘ obstinate
questionings ’ from within, which again and again, in spite of his own
desire, distract his mind from its joyous vision of what is without.
And there is a sort of passionate grasping, clutching rather, at the
light of the sun, and all the sights and sounds and fragrances of the
earth, which belongs especially to pagan poetry, ancient or modern,
and which tells of a prizing of these things not for their own mere
beauty’s sake, but chiefly because in the perception of them life is
implied, and the separation from them means extinction and dark
nothingness. This idea, so all-pervading in the old Greek feeling for
External nature, finds in our own days its chief exponent in Swinburne.
I know of nothing in contemporary poetry that is so supremely
pathetic as the perpetual alternations in those wonderful choruses in
his ‘ Atalanta in Calydon,’ between a wild revelling in the freshness
and exuberant gladness of the earth, in the rush of her joyance,
when—
‘ in green underwood and cover,
Blossom by blossom the spring begins ’—
and a wailing lamentation over the life of man who has for his portion
on the earth
* light in his ways,
And love and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night and sleep in the night.’
�184
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
Yet whose doom is only to abide there during a brief space, knowing
neither content nor hope.
‘ His speech is a burning fire,
With his lips he travaileth,
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes fore-knowledge of death.
He weaves, and is clothed with derision,
Sows, and he shall not reap ;
His life is a watch or a vision,
Between a sleep and a sleep.’
The poem of ‘ Atalanta ’ is of course a direct utterance of modern
paganism, and not merely expressive of historical sympathy with ancient;
and is a specimen, most perfect of its kind, of that eesthetic beauty of
which Browning’s poetry is rendered incapable by the creed in which
his strong, earnest mind, never able to rest without getting down into
the realities that nnderlie the visible surface of things, finds the Sub
stantial reality that it seeks.
Yet it may indeed be that the feeling gained by Browning’s onward
gaze of expectation is higher, even if considered purely as an artist's
feeling, than that of the wistful pathos that comes to other poets
through their sense of a seeking baffled alike behind and before. And,
it may be that our inability instantly to recognise it as higher, is because
of our having, although contemporaries with Browning, lagged behind
him in thought and aspiration ; and not having as yet attained to tho
conception towards which his poetry reaches in its beautiful imperfect
grandeur, of a Christianity and Art—nowhere destructive of each other
—two parts of one great Revelation.
E.
Dicktnson West.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Browning as a preacher. Part 1
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West, Elizabeth Dickinson
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 171-184 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2: Attribution of journal title and date from Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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Poetry
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Conway Tracts
English Poetry
Poetry in English
Robert Browning
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305
J3f\OWNING
AS
P^eachei^
A
SECOND PAPER.
'The first part of this essay was occupied with an attempt to define
some aspects of Mr. Browning’s position amongst contemporary poets;
¡and the tone and temper in which his poetry enters upon one of its
functions—preaching—(this word I used advisedly as better befitting
poetry than the term teaching}. His art and his preaching are, indeed,
inextricably interwoven in all his writings; and the result of an en•deavour to abstract either one or other from the whole, must of course
be unsatisfactory; nevertheless, in some measure I must aim at tracing
•one or two of his characteristics as preacher, to their expression in
some of his sermons. Within a space so limited, I can only allude
to a very few poems : a thorough analysis of any, would be, one need
hardly say, useless to attempt. ‘ Easter-day ’ is perhaps of all others,
the most strikingly illustrative of the Browning peculiarities, the one
which least of all could have been the work of any other man. Viewed
.side by side with his £ Christmas-eve,’ it is, one feels, the more
difficult of apprehension : it seems more complex in meaning, and
full of subtle transitions of thought and mood. It is possible to a cer
tain extent to content ourselves with an interpretation of ‘Christmas-eve,’
but the other poem seems to grow with each successive reading; and
by newly perceived connections of thought or feeling, to modify our old
exegeses. One feels that one is admitted more immediately in this,
into the mysterious presence of a human mind. The impression one
.gets from comparison of the two poems is that the whole of the vivid
artist and man-consciousness of which the £ Easter-day ’ is a product, is
not brought into action in the formation of the poem of ‘ Christmas-eve
and in this latter there is less absolute demand than in the other, that
his readers should have some degree of intellectual and moral affinity
■with the writer.
Granting that there is this difference in the poems, we may perhaps
VOL. II.---- NO. IX.
Q
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BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
discern a reason for it in the difference of the subjects which occupy
them; the subject dealt with in £ Christmas-eve,’ belonging to the region
of matters practical—-that of ‘ Easter-day’ extending into the speculative.
Vigorous and clear-sighted though Browning is in his dealings with
these former, it is in a speculative region only that the full force of hisnature seems to develope itself in that passionate pressing on after
substantial reality of some sort or other—whether good or evil, at least
truth—which is the ultimate attitude of all his intellectual and emotional
action.
1 Christmas-eve’ starts from beliefs, which it takes for granted con
cerning the relations of humanity to an unseen spiritual world. It
belongs to the world of intercourse with our fellow men, a region where'
our beliefs are certainties, or as good as certainties. The question it treatsof is one within the Christian Church. The lesson it gives is a practical
one of broad charity and tolerance, a tolerance which, resulting out of the*
love to be learned by contemplation of the Human-Divine love, is to be
able to overcome all intellectual variances and fastidious repugnances of
taste. There is wrought out in the poem the grand feeling of a brother
hood, including witbin its comprehensive hold the manifold varieties of
human lives. Browning by his deep digging into humanity, finds
essential root-union, where Matthew Arnold with his languid scratching
at the surface, finds only dissimilarities forbidding sympathy. He unites
himself and us with the men and women of the Zion Chapel meeting,,
whose portraits he places before his readers in terms so grotesquely
graphic,—omitting no offensive detail to render them thoroughly life
like; and effectually preventing any mere aesthetic sentiment from being
the basis of our Christian charity. The absence of sweetness and light,
and the presence of certan repulsive characteristics (there is a vein off
humour akin to Dickens’s, in the way in which these are individualized),,
in the 1 preaching-man,’ alike, and in the flock that sat under the ‘ pig-oflead-like pressure,’ of his ‘ immense stupidity,’ are things that Browning:
insists on our realising to the full. Then, over the disgust awakened,
in us, he gains and makes us gain, as the poem proceeds, a victory
sublime, both as ethics and as art. (I said in the earlier pages of this,
essay, that Browning had no pathos—no sense of grand incongruities;.
I retract:—this is what one might call an inverted pathos. The un
looked-for discovery that the reality is nobler than the appearance, is.
the pathos belonging to Browning, and, to Christianity; just as the
finding truth to be smaller and meaner than illusion, had been the
pathos of Paganism). ‘Christmas-eve’ unites us, also, with the crowd
of ignorant worshippers in Rome at the ‘ raree show of Peter’s suc
cessor,’ who (typical of a multitude in all sections of the Church).,
remain in the days when the ‘world’s eyes are open’
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
307
Peevish as ever to be suckled,
Lulled by the same old baby prattle,
With intermixture of the rattle ;
and with the Gottingen professor who, with an inconsistency nobler than
his logic, retains the feeling of faith in and love for what his reason has
reduced to a myth. (Were it not that this paper must abstain from
viewing Browning as an artist, I would notice as a specimen of his
power as a portrait painter, the way in which with a few vigorous touches
he sets before us the whole ‘personnel ’ outer and inner, of this ‘ virginminded studious martyr to mild enthusiasm.’) The poem has its cul
minating idea in the grand trust that can say—
‘— Subsisteth. ever
God’s care above, and I exult
That God, by God’s own ways occult
May—doth. I will believe—bring back
All wanderers to a single track.’
Browning lets us see clearly what the nature of this feeling of brother
hood is j and guards jealously against any possibility of confounding it
with ‘ mild indifferentism’ or ‘lazy glow of benevolence over the various
modes of man’s beliefs.’ He makes no attempt to harmonize the different
creeds and tempers of religious feeling, by the modern method of elimi
nating the peculiarities of each as non-essentials. He, on the contrary,
insists that what constitutes each man’s earthly care, is to ‘ strive—to
find some one chief way of worship, and contrive ’ that his fellows ‘ take
their share.’ His tolerance is only the result of his confidence that here
where man’s care ends, ‘ God’s, which is above it and distinct,’ begins.
He cannot take the philosophical bird’s-eye view of the different creeds,
which is possible to men who are sufficiently impersonal to themselves to
contemplate at their ease, and compare impartially, the various religious
systems and cults spread out before them. All conclusions taking as
their premises only the aspects of men in masses, are unsatisfactory to
him. All problems of life, social or ecclesiastical, are unintelligible to
him until he have gained a solvent for them through the solution of the
problem of the life individual. The unit from which his reasonings
start is neither Humanity, nor the portion of it included within a church,
but the ego (the only ego he knows as a basis for argument being his
own). And it is only through his individual realisings, attained through
the toil and struggle of personal faith, that he gets his hope for the des
tinies of other men : it is only because of what he has himself discerned,
that he is enabled to reach—by a leap, not by a logical process—to the
trust that the discerning» of his fellows, though varying from his own,
are not illusory. The ratio of his power of sympathy and tolerance is
exactly that of the strength of his own dogmatic beliefs.
Q 2
�308
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
It is in tlie 1 Easter day ’ that we have to look for the record of how
an earnest human soul attains to that faith in the unseen, which in
‘ Christmas eve ’ is assumed all along as the basis of the argument. The
poem concerns itself with no questions of the ecclesiastical life, but of
the individual Christian life, which includes within itself the idea of the
objectively-including ecclesiastical life. Here Browning’s especial faculty
■—the strong venturing of faith—finds exercise. There are men (and
many amongst the highest orders of men) whose motions of thought and
feeling gain in firmness and freedom by the consciousness of belonging
to and acting with an ecclesiastical organisation or great public move
ment of opinion. But Browning’s mind has no place amongst minds of
this class : it is equally unfitted to move in an army organised under a
definite church system, or in an irregular force banded together by 1 the
spirit of an age;’ its victories must be won in single combat, if won
at all.
Here, parenthetically, we may notice this isolated working of Brown
ing’s thought, as the source of two characteristic imperfections—or,
more properly, limitations—in it. 1st, owing to this, his conception of
Christianity lacks the solidarity that arises out of the corporate feeling
and consciousness of historic permanence. It has never the broad firm
grandeur of the mood of the Ambrosian hymns, for instance, or the ‘ Te
Deum.’ According to his view, each generation of men have just the
same sort of work to do which they would have to do were all the
work of their ancestors to be blotted out, and leave no vestige of itself or
its effects. The objective creed is not placed by him ever in any secure
independence of our subjective hold upon it. 2ndly, though from this
mental aloneness comes the chief glory of his work as truthseeker,—his
way of getting face to face with his beliefs, and seeing whatever he sees,
directly and through no medium of languidly accepted traditions,—-yet
from the same source there comes one characteristic, which limits the
range of his helpfulness, and makes his teaching incapable of influencing
more than one class of minds. His own view of the immeasurable ex
panse of truth makes him, indeed, profoundly tolerant of the views of
other men whose standpoints are not his : but is he wholly free from
exclusiveness in his notions as to what should be accounted the lawful
organ in human nature for truth-discerning 1 Does he not seem to make
his very peculiar self the measure of other men, and become sometimes
intolerant of varieties of ways in which variously constituted men arrive
at and hold their beliefs ? In himself two natures are met in rare com
bination ; each of these natures being of heroic size and vigour. There
is the union of intellectual strength and subtlety, with a vividly imagin
ative and emotional temperament. He is at once a hard thinker and a
passionate feeler—a logician and a poet; and is, for his own part, able
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
30 9
to work in whatever engages him, with the faculties that belong to this
two-fold nature, and choose to which set of faculties he will entrust the
work he cares most about. His poems portray or suggest mental pro
cesses in ■which progress into scepticism and out of it takes place usually
thus:—the keen dialectic intellect first takes up the question in hand,
and works at it until it has made visible all the difficulties that are to
be found in it;—then, at the point where all objections have been fairly
brought into notice, the ego does not set the part of its nature—the in
tellect—which began operations with them, to the further task of at
tempting either to find explanation and answer to them, or to relegate
them beyond the province of things explicable ; but with a sudden
change of mood, the consciousness (leaving all these as and where they
are) flings itself with a passionate leap away from them, into the emo
tional part of human nature, and seeks its faith in a refuge from, rather
than in an encounter with, intellectual difficulty.
Whatever imperfections there are in Mr. Browning’s power of sym
pathy, are to be found on the side that is turned towards the class of
thinkers incapable, from mental constitution, of reaching faith by such
methods. His Christianity seems to exclude men born to belong to
what Mr. R. H. Hutton (in a somewhat ‘hard’-mooded essay—out of tune
with the others in his two recently-published volumes,) styles the ‘ Hard
Church.’ From these,—the men feebler in imagination and emotion,
than in intellectual power,—men whose feelings flow only as after-conse
quences from beliefs which they in no way helped to form—men who
for doubts of reason must find either satisfaction by reason, or find by it
good cause for the impossibility of such satisfaction—from such men
Browning holds aloof. His preaching rejects with somewhat of contempt
the evidences which are their faith’s all. He casts impatiently aside the
evidence, e.g., of the 1 greater probability ’—which to many a man must
be the sole ground of his belief in Christianity, and a ground which
would seem to melt from under him, if emotion or desire intruded upon
a mood dispassionately judicial. Browning’s mind, itself able instinc
tively to feel out the ‘ mightiness of love inextricably curled about ’ all
‘power and beauty in the world;’ and able to transcend, in the strength
of these intuitive perceptions, the chasm intervening between Nature
and the Christian Tale ; refuses to recognise the existence of any logical
footway of historical evidence, whereby alone a mind such as, <?.</., Arch
bishop Whately’s could arrive at belief in the truth of the story.
The failing to behold ‘lover’ written ‘on the foreheads’of the men who
must lovelessly know before they can love, is the imperfection discernible
in the great fraternal-hearted poet-thinker.
It happens often that men far more rigidly exclusive as to the ‘ what ’
of other people’s beliefs, are less so than Mr. Browning with regard to the
�310
BROWNING ÀS A PREACHER.
‘ how.’ This sort of tolerance results from their accepting the creed of
a church as handed down, ¿Ind not making religious truth a matter of
individual investigation. The creed of a church represents the aggre
gate action of varieties of minds it is the centre of agreement where
Opinions meet, irrespective of how they have travelled. Whoever, there
fore, takes this already-arrived-at creed as his own starting-point of
thought or feeling, acquiesces thereby in the lawfulness of roads (be these
what they may) which have brought other men to it. Keble, for in
stance, though a man immeasurably narrower in inherent sympathies
than Browning, has in some ways a larger toleration for minds of a dif
ferent order from his own, and holds in honour modes of thought such
as Bishop Butler’s. This is made possible to him (though for his own
part his faith would rest upon feeling only), by his having at the outset
abstained from individual truth-seeking, and merged his own life in the
catholic life of a church.
In Browning’s teaching there is in many respects a repetition alike of
the perfections and imperfections of Coleridge’s. In both of these men
the same intense inwardness and vivid self-concentrated thought which
fits them to accomplish—as their own peculiar work—the maintaining of
the subjective evidences for religious truth, inclines them to the same
sort of impatience towards all others, who, not able to trust the instinc
tive voices from within, have to seek faith through investigation and
comparison of what is without.
‘ Easter Day ’ is all throughout illustrative of Browning’s tendency
to exclusive reliance upon the subjective evidence of the human instincts.
The problem of the poem is the how
‘To joint
This flexile, finite life once tight
Into the fixed and infinite.’
•—the how to find, first, a ‘ fixed and infinite.’ And for the problem’s
solution, his mind refuses to avail itself of all aids which the intellect,
judging from things external, can offer. Meeting each answer of the
interlocutor with freshly occurring objections, he gets down deeper into
the difficulty, seeing ever more and more ‘ how very hard it is to be a
Christian.’ Then there comes to him, out of his great poet-heart, a
means of escape from the throng of surrounding perplexities, in that
strange, terribly vivid vision-dream, which brings in succession all earthly
things accounted good—earth’s exquisite treasures of wonder and delight
■—the waving of her woods, and flowing of her rivers, and all her vast
exhaustless beauty, and endless change—art in its most perfect ancient
and modern forms—knowledge, and the power to range Faust-like
‘through all circling sciences, philosophies, and histories’—brings all
these to the test of the human soul’s hunger for satisfaction; until it
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
311
feels that none of them is sufficient to stay its cravings; and that its one
final desire (to attain which it would let all else go in exchange) is for
love. And then there comes the mighty leap up of the human instincts,
regardless of intervening intellectual obstacles, towards the love of God
as told of in the Christian story,
£ "What doubt in thee, could countervail
Belief in it— ?’
and in ‘ it ’ he feels that he has found the substance of the gleams
that, blending with all the displays of power and beauty on the earth,
have been the essence of the brightness and good in her, which men have
rejoiced in. The scene which the dream tells of is placed in the after
judgment state; the whole poem, however, is in its scope not illustra
tive of a belief in a spiritual world, and of man’s probation for it, but
tentative of the grounds for such belief; and taking the judgment sen
tences of condemnation, merely as hypotheses in order to have in them,
the most searching tests to apply to human instincts.
Characteristically, too, in his £ Saul,’ Browning makes the Messianic
prophecy evolve itself to David from his instincts introspectively per
ceived. The £ Caliban upon Setebos’ gives us his views (strikingly unPaleyan) of the utmost that natural theology would amount to, argued
out without the aid of the intuitions of human love. These he illus
trates in this (which is one of his most powerfully executed poems), by
showing how Caliban, the loveless creature, who is either devoid of human
affections, or in whom they have not been called into activity by fellow
ship with men, can bring no key from within to unlock the meanings of
the universe; and therefore all that he can find in it, everywhere, all
around, by those shrewd bitterly ironical reasonings which his intellect
alone gathers from external things, is only merciless power, and capri
ciously used strength. And the horrible loathsomeness of this idea is
drawn out with a minute perfection curiously fascinating.
Preference for internal evidence is shown, too, in the whole tenor of
Pope Innocent’s monologue in the £ Ring and the Book.’ Here, though
truth is sought not through the mere instincts of the heart, but with
long patient reasonings of the head, it is still the introspective glance
into the human mind which supplies the starting point of the whole
.argument by which the old Pope, finding therein ideas' of strength, inrtelligence and goodness, larger in conception than in human fulfilment,
;and finding in the natural order of the world, actual fulfilment corre
sponding to two only of these ideas, arrives (by the necessity of finding
some instance of the third) at belief in the Christian story of limitless
Jove and sacrifice.
Brom -within, too, Innocent gets his very beautiful answer to the doubt
�312
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
that inevitably suggested itself to a man living in days when the earth
had become very evil, and lust and cruelty such as Guido’s ‘ had their
way i’ the world where God should rule,’ lest haply Christianity’s visible
failure should disprove its truth. The query,
‘ And is this little all that was to be;
Where is the glorious decisive change ?
The immeasurable metamorphosis
Of human clay to divine gold, we looked
Should in some poor sort justify the price ?
.*
«
*
*
*
*
Well, is the thing we see salvation ? ’
is answered by the guess which is supplied by his own heart instincts,,
that this very weakness and failure may be, after all,
‘ But repetition of the miracle,
The Divine instance of self-sacrifice
That never ends, and aye begins for man.’
and are characteristics necessary in a religion corresponding to the re
quirements of our truest humanity.
‘ How can man love but what he yearns to help ?
What but the weakness in a faith supplies
The incentive to humanity, no strength
Absolute, irresistible, comports ? ’
Thoroughly Browning-like is the Pope’s mood, when in his forecast of
the age succeeding his own, his hopes of world-regeneration are placed
in his expectation that it will ‘ shake the torpor of assurance from men’s
creed,’ and compel them, when they shall have grown to disbelieve re
port, to look inwards for truth, and
‘ Correct the portrait by the living face ;
Man’s God, by God’s God in the mind of man.’
A noticeable exception to Browning’s usual attitude of thought occurs,
in the closing pages of the ‘Paracelsus.’ The speech of the dying
knowledge-seeker contains a passage (too long to quote, and whose im
measurable poetic beauty must not here be spoken of), where the argu
ment extends over the whole known aspect of our world, viewing man
objectively in his chronological place in Nature, as an appearance illus
trative by its ‘ supplementary reflux of light’ of all foregoing appearances:
as the counterpai-t of anterior creations, a mirror consciously reflectant
of the whole.
Mr. Browning is an optimist: and all throughout his poetry his opti
mism is as the life-blood, circulating through and giving colour to every
part of it. Some notion of this element in his creed must be defined in
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
all criticism of him, either as teachei’ or artist. The features distinguish
ing his optimistic theory, are, I think, first, his never at any time ceas
ing to behold evil as evil, and to hate it as such : and secondly, his seeming
not to feel the oppression of its mystery that has lain as a burden so
heavily on the minds of generations of thinkers.
Moral evil he beholds as a thing in no way resolvable into mere imper
fection. Where he finds it in the human world it retains for him its old
meaning of sin, and is viewed as something wholly distinct from a stunting
of the beautiful development of men’s natures: by unfavourable outward
circumstances, such as the absence of knowledge and culture. His own
favourite theory of the position of human impulse, and the homage due
to it, never leads him into letting that homage be of a blind indiscrimina
ting sort. He recognises that there is a principle working internally,
and sending forth impulses which must not be mistaken for those which
are men’s lawful guides. With him holiness and healthiness are not
quite convertible terms. Caponsacchi and Guido have both acted
according to the promptings of impulse, obeying laws which were part of
the nature of each : yet between them a difference is set. Rejoicing
praise is bestowed by the Pope, in the 1 Ring and the Book,’ on the
obedience yielded to instincts by one of these men ;
‘ Well done !
Be glad thou hast let light into the world
Through that irregular breach in the boundary,—see
The same upon thy path, and march assured,
Learning anew the use of soldiership,
Self-abnegation, freedom from all fear ;
Loyalty to the life’s end.’
And on the other—Guido—whom he images to himself as pleading in
self-justification that his course of action has been only the same as that
commended, inasmuch as he too has guided his steps according to the
tune of impulse, the old man’s righteous anger smites the blow of the
sentence of temporal death. Wherein does Pope Innocent account this
difference just ? In this—that there has been a probation for both ;
each of them having within him a something to follow, and a some
thing to resist. Count Guido he beholds as
‘ Furnished forth for his career,
On starting for his life-chance in our world,
With nearly all we count sufficient help.
Body and mind in balance—a sound frame,
A solid intellect; the wit to seek,
Wisdom to choose, and courage wherewithal
To deal with whatsoever circumstance
Should minister to man—make life succeed.’
�314
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
■and fortified in his surroundings with 1 great birth, good breeding, and
the Church for guide.’ He accounts that such a man’s trial lies in the
having within, evil impulses balanced more evenly against the good than
they are in the man less favourably circumstanced for resistance to evil.
He condemns (justly, he feels) him who, if he had so willed, might have
made the good outweigh the evil,—might have used stumbling-block as
stepping-stone; but -who has chosen rather to love and believe in—
‘ Just the vile of life,
Low instinct—base pretension.’
Caponsacchi, too, Innocent views as having undergone trial by urgings
of two kinds of impulse ; and as having followed the noble and resisted
the base,—as having, while yielding to instincts of ‘healthy rage’
against cruelty and oppression, retained self-government, and kept
himself pure in thought, and word, and deed. In his praise there is
involved the idea that evil has been present as—
‘ Temptation . . . for man to meet
And master, and make crouch beneath his feet,
And so be pedestailed in triumph.’
.So, too, in the 1 Easter Day’ (as elsewhere) we find the same doctrine of
.a probation for all human life by instincts good and evil. To each
¿human soul has been shown—
‘ The earthly mixed
With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.
The earthly joys lay palpable,—
A taint in each, distinct as well
The heavenly flitted faint and rare
Above them.’
Far on, indeed, in the hereafter, Browning looks on to there being no
longer this two-fold and contrary working of impulse. His expectation
is that human nature will take its perfection in a grand one-ness. When
it shall—
‘ reach the ultimate, angel’s law
Indulging every instinct of the soul,
There where law, Hfe, joy, impulse are one thing.’
-—‘ A Death in the Desert.’
But he does not confound his hope for the future with his teaching for
.the needs of the present.
An optimist Browning is not in the sense of rejecting or explaining
•away the dogma that humanity has inherent tendencies to moral evil
dark and foul; or proclaiming a freedom to all impulses from any bar
save that of physical or social inexpediency; yet an optimist he is—and
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
315
that not falteringly, but with the conviction of his whole heart—in the
¡sense of being able, all the while he sees the evil which he will not dis
guise by any other name, to look steadily into its dark hateful face, assured
that its ultimate significance is good. He does not conceive that it has
come as some unlucky accident to spoil a harmony of order in a world
which but for it had been perfect; he holds, rather, that it is through
it that a higher perfection is attainable. Feeling this, he does not need
that shuffle into a real though unacknowledged Manichceism, which is
the refuge of so many men from the perplexities and contradictions of a
creed of mingled pessimism and optimism. He believes that the antagon
ism between principles does not extend beyond the world of finite being;
and ventures to refer to the same source the placing in this world of ours
the two contrary principles which we call good and evil. Here is some
of his doctrine, spoken by the Pope in the ‘ Ring and the Book.’
He says (having reached the point of acknowledgment that the
Christian story is true, and that therein ‘ God shows complete’):—
‘ I can believe this dread machinery
Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else
Devised,-—all pain, at most expenditure
Of pain by Who devised pain,—to evolve
By new machinery in counterpart
The moral qualities of man—how else ?
To make him love in turn and be beloved,
Creating and self-sacrificing too—
And thus eventually, God-like (ay
■“I have said ye are Gods”—shall it be said for nought ?)
Enable man to wring from out all pain
All pleasure for a common heritage.
******
The moral sense grows but by exercise,
’Tis even as man grew, probatively
Initiated in Godship, set to make
A fairer moral world than this he finds.
******
Life is probation, and this earth no goal,
But starting-point for man, compel him strive,
Which means in man as good as reach the goal.’
Evil he beholds as the immediate bringer to humanity of our chief and
peculiar glory—progress, as a messenger sent to institute a race for men,
from less to more, from lower to higher. The one thing of which he
feels a shrinking horror is ‘ ghastly smooth life ’ in which man should be
left ‘dead at heart;’ and his whole spirit leaps up to behold purposes of
goodness in the appearance of anything as a deliverer from that.
Browning’s is a creed including within it the hope that where during
�316
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
the earthly probation, men’s moral wills have been too feeble to enable
them to use temptations by evil as ‘ points that prove advantage for who
vaults from low to high;’ the work neglected or failed in here, may yet
elsewhere, though under harder conditions, be ultimately done. Even
Guido Franceschini, the abominable, he will not allow to depart from
our sight unfollowed by words of hope. In the forgivingness of Pompilia,
the victim of the murderer in her life and death, there is a gospel of a
far-off healing and restoration for him even, albeit by God’s shadow instead
of the light of His face. And the Pope, Guido’s judge, thinks of the
criminal on whom he pronounces sentence of temporal death, as going,
forth—
‘ Into that sad, obscui’e, sequestered state,
Where God unmakes but to remake a soul
He else had made in vain ; which must not be.’
And the same hope comes out, in vaguer expression, in that last phrase-,
of ‘Easter Day’ (without adding which, the human heart of the poet will
not suffer him to let go his vision of the close of the earthly probation):—
‘ Mercy, every way,
Is infinite—and who can say 1 ’
Very faint, by comparison with Browning’s, is Tennyson’s trust in the
‘larger hope;’ though lie, too, seeks to hold the creed that ‘somehow
good will be the final goal of ill.’ All that Tennyson attains to is an
infant’s blind crying after it—a groping for it, with ‘lame hands of faith.’
He looks for his theory of optimism in a direction whither Browning, an
idealist in his metaphysics, does not turn in his quests of objective
realities. And looking for it all throughout the material world and her
analogies, he finds nothing to be a reliable guide to it; and can only fall
in the darkness upon that ‘great world’s altar-stairs;’ not feeling assured
as to what ultimate law and purpose he should find above them, could he
see up their heights.
However, in speaking of the Tennyson and Browning optimisms, it is
not fail’ to make the quality of vigour the point of comparison—nor,
indeed, any other quality either. The aim of the two poets, in their
search, is essentially different. Tennyson’s colder and more symmetrical
mind looks to find truth as harmony and proportion; and is alwayssuspicious of the parts unless it can see the whole. What Browning;
seeks is truth absolute, not relative ; and if he thinks he has got hold of
the minutest particle of that, it is to him as a thing indestructible by
any mass of contradictions; and it suffices to him as a sure earnest of
the rest. His own heart’s instinctive conviction of a law of Lave is out
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
317
of the reach of whatever ‘evil dreams ’ Nature may lend, and does not
need to concern itself with analogies of her waste and destruction—with
appearances such as that ‘of fifty seeds, she often brings but one to bear?
The optimistic creed of Tennyson is the result of an effort, very noble, to
comprehend: that of Browning is an effort to apprehend. The one seeks
a superhuman solution to the problem, and fails : the other, grasping
with a human passion, succeeds in finding satisfaction.
At this part of Browning’s creed there is one of the many doors of
entrance, from the question of his work as a truth-seeker, into the question
of his Art. Into this we may not now’ trespass, further than to observe
that the character of his work, as poet of external Nature, seems to be
determined by the negative influence of his optimism, and his method of
.attaining thereto. His seeking and finding his satisfaction as to the
world’s purport, in another quarter than in the material world, leaves
him free to derive from that world, art of a peculiar and very valuable
kind. Browning’s poetry of external Nature has some characteristics so
rare, that (though in quantity it is much less than what most other great
poets have produced) its loss would leave a gap in our literature. It is
nowhere mystical, like Wordsworth’s, nor eesthetico-scientific, like Tenny
son’s Nature-poetry ; but it is simply full of a noble sensuousness. It is
not the product of moods of intellectual and moral tension. It is glad
acceptance of the physical influences of external Nature—not truth.seeking in and through her mysteries. The contact of the phenomena
which we term material, in ourselves, with the so-called material phe
nomena outside us, is rested in, for the time being, without endeavour to
pursue a further significance. Beautiful art, as well as teaching not a
little wholesome, is given to us in Mr. Browning’s poems of Nature; of
which the speciality is theii’ being sensuous, yet restrained by a manly
■dignity from ever becoming a voluptuous self-abandoning to enslavement
by her beauty. We have the same sort of thing only from one other
modern English poet—A. H. Clough. (See ‘The Bothie.’) There is a cer
tain amount of positivism in both Clough’s and Browning’s acceptance of
the material -world, which results, in both cases, in a similar sort of purely
physical enjoyment of it (the latter’s poetical expression of this being,
however, by far the superior in varied richness). Their positivisms are,
of course, alike in their effects only, and are essentially different. Clough’s
is the positivism of a strong mind, sternly setting aside truth-seeking in
this direction as bootless, and -with a resolute temperate cheerfulness,
accepting whatever certain good it can find. Browning’s is the positivism
of childlike trust—so confident in the truth which it has found elsewhere,
that it can afford to pause here from restless searching, and take the
-earth’s beauty as beauty—joys of sense as joy. For illustration of Mr.
JBrowning’s poetical feeling for external Nature, we might refer to his
�318
BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
‘ Pippa Passes,’ to his ‘ Saul ’ (specially to the passage in it beginning1 Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour’), to parts of the ‘Paracelsus,’ and to
other passages, which cannot here be enumerated. Though none otherof our poets is so perpetually on the watch to discern transcendental
significance, translucent through the facts of mind, yet he, more than,
most others, is content to behold the facts of matter as (so to speak)‘ opaque] and to describe his impressions from them, directly and unsymbolically. To Wordsworth it would be impossible to tell simply of.
‘the sense of the yellow mountain flowers.’
This paper must hasten to conclude, leaving with only a passing
mention, one of the aspects of Mr. Browning’s preaching—its stern moral
lessons, and its peculiar downrightness of enforcing them. As poet of
the Will, he has words of unsparing condemnation to bestow on such sins
as failure ‘ through weak endeavour.’ There is an earnest severity in
‘The Statue and the Bust,’ and in his ‘Sordello’—terriblest of tragedies,
inasmuch as it depicts the deterioration of a soul. The miserable life
failure, of which this latter is the history, is looked on by him as resulting
from the man’s irresoluteness to overcome and banish his probation
spectre (Do not many of us know something akin to it ?); of his hauntingdouble consciousness—fourfold consciousness, rather; of, at the same
time, an ego divided by impulses diverging towards two ways of utterance
—Art and action; and of another two-fold spectral ego—reflexion of the
actual ego—contemplating, as if from some view-point in nowhere, it and.
its work, in their place in the All-of-things. The real self and its re
flexion keep on, like opposite mirrors, reflecting each other backwards
and forwards, ad infinitum; each becoming alternately subject and
object, until there is produced in Sordello, as the result, a wretched
paralysis of all working-power, either artistic or practical. And all for
lack of the vigorous effort of whole-hearted obedience to either impulse, ,
by which his will could have freed him from the thing that wrought the
ruin of his life. Sternest of sermons this I on the text, difip Si^vyos,.
aKaTaoraTos,’ &c., &c. (St. James i., 8.)
Need one say anything with reference to one charge which we some
times heai* brought against Mr. Browning—of being, in ‘ The Ring and.
the Book,’ too open—offensively coarse, even, of speech 1 I—a woman—
feel that he needs no apology in this matter. Those of his readers who
are capable of, and willing to take the trouble of entering into the spirit
of his poetry, do not fail to find in it, moral saltness enough to keep its
purity untainted by the ugly words which his grave truthfulness some
times uses in indicating ugly things : and to mere criticism from without
—from those who neither learn from or sympathise with him—I imagine
that Mr. Browning does not greatly care to commend himself and his.
poems.
�BROWNING AS A PREACHER.
319'
Wholly unsatisfied by what these two papers have been able to say as
to some of the characteristics noticeable on one side of the most manysided of contemporary poets, I gladly cease from the attempt to write
little definitions of the poetry which I would rather feel indefinitely, and
grow into increasingly.
E. Dickinson West.
Mr. Browning’s latest work, ‘ Balanstione Adventure,’ lets us see, in its whole tenorand purport, the same characteristics of his preaching. There is no slight significance
in his choosing for his theme, a Greek play not ranked by critics amongst the finest;
but having peculiar attractions for the poet of the will, on account of its being the
story of the victory of a will—a half-7iw?iara will—over death and fate.
For nothing human or divine, does Browning recognise an iron law of necesssity.
He cares not for the grand Greek lifeless virtue of endurance of the inevitable ; and
would find his own poetical feeling wholly unsuited- to reproduce utterances such as
the hEschylean :
Tijv 7re7rpwp,ev7jv 8e ypiy
aT<rav (f>epeLV ws pacna, yiyva><TK.ov3’ on
’Avay/<7js ecrr’ aBrjpLTOV cr^evos
to ttjs
of Prometheus in his majestic passiveness.
There seems to be a curiously personal sympathy in Mr. Browning for Herakles, the
labour and effort God, whose strength is a thoroughly human strength of conscious
toil. Browning’s enlargement of Euripides’ portraiture of the hero, has been criti
cized as exaggerating the idea of joyous helpful strength ; and making him too much
of a ‘muscular Christian.’ I think that this objection to it fades out of sight, when
we view the poem as tinged and explained by the luminous Browning conscious
ness that indefinitely appears all throughout it. Struggle—and joy and hope in
struggle, and all things that he holds to be the portion best suited for the spiritual
part of our human life, are connected by him in a deep dim suggestiveness, with his
representation of Herakles. It is a spiritual truth—and not mere admiration of
thews and muscles, and good use of them, that he preaches to us.
In Browning’s suggested new version of the story, ‘ New Admetos new Alkestis,’
we may notice his characteristic way of penetrating through all surface appearances.
Deep underneath these, he finds a connection between human and infinite truths, and
sees there a beautiful ‘ how,’ by which Admetos might worthily let his wife die that
he might live. In harmony with all his other teaching, too, is Browning’s idea of
making the undyingness of Alkestis come to her, not as a mere salvation given from
without, but as worked out from wii7wn. The principle of life which cannot be holden
of death, is viewed by him always as a thing given to be in humanity.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Browning as a preacher. Part 2
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West, Elizabeth Dickinson
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 305-319 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November, 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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[s.n.]
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[1871]
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G5337
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Poetry
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Browning as a preacher. Part 2), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
Poetry in English
Robert Browning
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/892c3ca7cf204dbcc9f2a67dca90f500.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=c94uGEcslELbIK%7Ewkh8LOI2HbVbI5VqLt2OrWnSnqp4GI88xyABx7stSfDsma-pU9TYW0%7E0HcJI2kUpzaWMOnnHOYYjzs8g3UlhW%7EgDIAfk5wdqDJAyRO1yUTHQqhvGaK4JStl16qHbwOYHrgS28AOACC-rWznP3IpHy091DsRrpBMTrLIf3wQSqf5%7Ee2XtdxDQC4mZPIdv%7EOVmPSzTnn26xgCoAwOSdYDH1LIWtfJY1l6wObqOOxiuz9If4VZtiJo%7EJmFxjyz5vGuM93nCtqZWVJgMF0R1QS94H6rC3Zgi1Auq2vt4TJWiMWz6Sxzv437bUGOIewlKfpVKFpDIJAg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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DOWN STREAM.'
�211
JOoWN
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
The river’s brimmed with rain,
Through close-met banks and parted banks
How 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,
’Heath shuddering clouds that hang in shrouds
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
A white face not the moon,
With lilies meshed in tangled hair,
On this year’s first of June.
�212
DOWN STREAM.
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,
The sweet school-children’s road.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Down Stream
Creator
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Rossetti, Dante Gabriel [1828-1882]
Brown, Ford Madox [1821-1893] (ill)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: [210]-212 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (October 1871). The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873. Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5320
Subject
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Poetry
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Down Stream), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
English Poetry
Ford Madox Brown
Poetry in English