The Pre-Raphaelites- From Rossetti to Ruskin
Page 5
Is ended with the night; the thin white moon
85 Evades the eye, the sun breaks through the trees,
And the charmed wizard comes forth a mere man
From out his circle. Thus it is, whate’er
We know and understand hath lost the power
Over us; we are then the masters. Still
90 All Fancy’s world is real; no diverse mark
Is on the stores of memory, whether gleaned
From childhood’s early wonder at the charm
That bound the lady in the echoless cave
Where lay the sheath’d sword and the bugle horn, –
95 Or from the fullgrown intellect that works
From age to age, exploring darkest truths,
With sympathy and knowledge in one yoke
Ploughing the harvest land.
The lark is up,
Piercing the dazzling sky beyond the search
100 Of the acutest love: enough for me
To hear its song: but now it dies away,
Leaving the chirping sparrow to attract
The listless ear, – a minstrel, sooth to say,
Nearly as good. And now a hum like that
105 Of swarming bees on meadow-flowers comes up.
Each hath its just and yet luxurious joy,
As if to live were to be blessed. The mild
Maternal influence of nature thus
Ennobles both the sentient and the dead; –
110 The human heart is as an altar wreathed,
On which old wine pours, streaming o’er the leaves
And down the symbol-carved sides. Behold!
Unbidden, yet most welcome, who be these?
The high-priests of this altar, poet-kings; –
115 Chaucer, still young with silvery beard that seems
Worthy the adoration of a child;
And Spenser, perfect master, to whom all
Sweet graces ministered. The shut eye sees
Brave pictures! The immortals pass along
120 Into the heaven, and others follow still,
Each on his own ray-path, till all the field
Is threaded with the foot-prints of the great.
And now the passengers are lost; long lines
Only are left, all intertwisted, dark
125 Upon a flood of light … I am awake!
I hear domestic voices on the stair!
Already hath the mower finished half
His summer day’s ripe task; already hath
His scythe been whetted often; and the heaps
130 Behind him lie like ridges from the tide.
In sooth, it is high time to wave away
The cup of Comus, though with nectar filled,
And sweet as odours to the mariner
From lands unseen, across the wide blank sea.
Sonnet Early Aspirations
How many a throb of the young poet-heart,
Aspiring to the ideal bliss of Fame,
Deems that Time soon may sanctify his claim
Among the sons of song to dwell apart. –
5 Time passes – passes! the aspiring flame
Of Hope shrinks down; the white flower Poesy
Breaks on its stalk, and from its earth-turned eye
Drop sleepy tears instead of that sweet dew
Rich with inspiring odours, insect wings
10 Drew from its leaves with every changing sky,
While its young innocent petals unsunn’d grew.
No more in pride to other ears he sings,
But with a dying charm himself unto: –
For a sad season: then, to active life he springs.
To the Artists Called P.R.B.
I thank you, brethren in Sincerity, –
One who, within the temperate climes of Art,
From the charmed circle humbly stands apart,
Scornfully also, with a listless eye
5 Watching old marionettes’ vitality;
For you have shown, with youth’s brave confidence,
The honesty of true speech and the sense
Uniting life with ‘nature,’ earth with sky.
In faithful hearts Art strikes its roots far down,
10 And bears both flower and fruit with seeded core;
When Truth dies out, the fruit appears no more.
But the flower hides a worm within its crown.
God-speed you onward! once again our way
Shall be made odorous with fresh flowers of May.
‘I Go to be Cured at Avilion’
(To a Picture Painted 1847)
Silently, swiftly the funeral barge
Homeward bears the brave and good,
His wide pall sweeping the murmuring marge,
Flowing to the end of the world.
5 Kings’ daughters watching round his head,
His brazen breastplate wet with blood
And tears by these kings’ daughters shed,
Watching to the end of the world.
A cresset of spices and sandal-wood
10 Fills the wake with an odour rare;
Two swans lead dimly athwart the flood,
Lead on to the end of the world.
From the distant wold what brings the blast?
The trump’s recall, the watch-fire’s glare, –
15 Oh! let these fade into the past,
As he fares to the end of the world.
From the misty woods a holier sound –
For the monks are singing their evensong –
Swoons faintly o’er the harvest-ground,
20 As they pass to the end of the world.
From the minster where the steep roofs are,
The passing bell, that voice supreme,
Sends a farewell faintly far,
As they fade to the end of the world.
25 It is gone, it is closed, the last red gleam,
Darkness shuts the fiery day;
Over the windless, boatless stream
The odours and embers have died away:
They are gone to the end of the world.
Art for Art’s Sake
‘Art for art’s sake,’ – very well,
Your picture you don’t care to sell?
Yes, yes, I do, and thus I try
To paint so bright they want to buy –
5 ‘Art for art’s sake,’ – then I fear
You want no sympathetic tear
From the stalls and boxes here?
Yes, yes, I do, I write it so,
A hundred nights the crowds shall go –
10 ‘Art for art’s sake,’ – Heavens! Once more,
You’d say again things said before?
And pray, why not? I wish I could
Stand as Shakespeare, Fletcher, stood –
Nay, dear, aspirant rather write
15 As Shakespeare were he here to-night,
That would be far more worth prizing: –
But who can rise to that high pass –
Who can rise? alas, alas,
Shakespeare little thought of rising!
JOHN RUSKIN
The Last Smile
She sat beside me yesternight,
With lip and eye so sweetly smiling,
So full of soul, of life, of light,
So beautifully care-beguiling,
5 That she had almost made me gay,
Had almost charmed the thought away
(Which, like the poisoned desert wind,
Came sick and heavy o’er my mind),
That memory soon mine all would be,
10 And she would smile no more for me.
Christ Church, Oxford Night
Faint from the bell the ghastly echoes fall,
That grates within the grey cathedral tower –
Let me not enter through the portal tall,
Lest the strange spirit of the moonless hour
5 Should give a life to those pale people, who
Lie in their frette
d niches, two and two –
Each with his head on pillowy stone reposed,
And his hands lifted, and his eyelids closed.
A cold and starless vapour, through the night,
10 Moves as the paleness of corruption passes
Over a corpse’s features, like a light
That half illumines what it most effaces;
The calm round water gazes on the sky,
Like the reflection of the lifeless eye
15 Of one who sleeps and dreams of being slain,
Struggling in frozen frenzy, and in vain.
From many a mouldering oriel, as to flout
Its pale, grave brow of ivy-tressèd stone,
Comes the incongruous laugh, and revel shout –
20 Above, some solitary casement, thrown
Wide open to the wavering night wind,
Admits its chill – so deathful, yet so kind
Unto the fevered brow and fiery eye
Of one, whose night-hour passeth sleeplessly.
25 Ye melancholy chambers! I could shun
The darkness of your silence, with such fear,
As places where slow murder had been done.
How many noble spirits have died here –
Withering away in yearnings to aspire,
30 Gnawed by mocked hope – devoured by their own fire!
Methinks the grave must feel a colder bed
To spirits such as these, than unto common dead.
The Mirror
I
It saw, it knew thy loveliness,
Thy burning lip, and glancing eye,
Each lightning look, each silken tress
Thy marble forehead braided by,
5 Like an embodied music, twined
About a brightly breathing mind.
II
Alas! its face is dark and dim;
No more its lightless depth below
That glancing eye shall seem to swim,
That brow to breathe or glow;
5 Its treacherous depth – its heartless hue –
Forgets the form that once it knew.
III
With many a changing shape and face
Its surface may be marked and crossed –
Portrayed with as distinct a grace
As thine, whose loveliness is lost;
5 But there’s one mirror, good and true,
That doth not lose what once it knew.
IV
My thoughts are with that beauty blest,
A breathing, burning, living vision,
That, like a dove with wings at rest,
Still haunts the heart it makes Elysian;
5 And days and times pass like a sleep
Softly sad, and still, and deep;
And, oh! what grief would wakening be
From slumber bright with dreams of thee!
The Old Water-Wheel
It lies beside the river; where its marge
Is black with many an old and oarless barge;
And yeasty filth, and leafage wild and rank
Stagnate and batten by the crumbling bank.
5 Once, slow revolving by the industrious mill,
It murmured, only on the Sabbath still;
And evening winds its pulse-like beating bore
Down the soft vale, and by the winding shore.
Sparkling around its orbèd motion flew,
10 With quick, fresh fall, the drops of dashing dew;
Through noon-tide heat that gentle rain was flung,
And verdant round the summer herbage sprung.
Now dancing light and sounding motion cease,
In these dark hours of cold continual peace;
15 Through its black bars the unbroken moonlight flows,
And dry winds howl about its long repose;
And mouldering lichens creep, and mosses grey
Cling round its arms in gradual decay,
Amidst the hum of men – which doth not suit
20 That shadowy circle, motionless, and mute.
So, by the sleep of many a human heart,
The crowd of men may bear their busy part,
Where withered, or forgotten, or subdued,
Its noisy passions have left solitude:
25 Ah! little can they trace the hidden truth!
What waves have moved it in the vale of youth!
And little can its broken chords avow
How once they sounded. All is silent now.
The Hills of Carrara
I
Amidst a vale of springing leaves,
Where spreads the vine its wandering root,
And cumbrous fall the autumnal sheaves,
And olives shed their sable fruit,
5 And gentle winds and waters never mute
Make of young boughs and pebbles pure
One universal lute,
And bright birds, through the myrtle copse obscure,
Pierce, with quick notes, and plumage dipped in dew,
10 The silence and the shade of each lulled avenue, –
II
Far in the depths of voiceless skies,
Where calm and cold the stars are strewed,
The peaks of pale Carrara rise.
Nor sound of storm, nor whirlwind rude,
5 Can break their chill of marble solitude;
The crimson lightnings round their crest
May hold their fiery feud –
They hear not, nor reply; their chasmèd rest
No flowret decks, nor herbage green, nor breath
10 Of moving thing can change their atmosphere of death.
III
But far beneath, in folded sleep,
Faint forms of heavenly life are laid,
With pale brows and soft eyes, that keep
Sweet peace of unawakened shade;
5 Whose wreathèd limbs, in robes of rock arrayed,
Fall like white waves on human thought,
In fitful dreams displayed;
Deep through their secret homes of slumber sought,
They rise immortal, children of the day,
10 Gleaming with godlike forms on earth, and her decay.
IV
Yes, where the bud hath brightest germ,
And broad the golden blossoms glow,
There glides the snake, and works the worm,
And black the earth is laid below.
5 Ah! think not thou the souls of men to know,
By outward smiles in wildness worn:
The words that jest at woe
Spring not less lightly, though the heart be torn –
The mocking heart, that scarcely dares confess,
10 Even to itself the strength of its own bitterness.
V
Nor deem that they, whose words are cold,
Whose brows are dark, have hearts of steel;
The couchant strength, untraced, untold,
Of thoughts they keep, and throbs they feel,
5 May need an answering music to unseal;
Who knows what waves may stir the silent sea,
Beneath the low appeal,
From distant shores, of winds unfelt by thee?
What sounds may wake within the winding shell,
10 Responsive to the charm of those who touch it well!
FORD MADOX BROWN
Angela Damnifera
Could I have known, that day I saw you first,
How much my fate lay coiled within your eyes!
How Nemesis spoke in your soft replies!
Could I have known – and so have shunned the worst?
5 Could I have known how for my bitter thirst
Your coming brought but saltest tears and sighs,
How going life seemed fled with you likewise.
Could I have known – oh angel love-accurs’d!
And now how name you, slayer of my peace?
10 Life-giving basilisk? source of gladdest woe?
Emblem o
f Fortune wrecked upon one throw?
O’er blessed and damned flame-hallowed Beatrice?
And cause of martyrdom without surcease?
Alas! Alas! by me entreated so!
For the Picture ‘The Last of England’
‘The last of England! O’er the sea, my dear,
Our homes to seek amid Australian fields,
Us, not our million-acred island yields
The space to dwell in. Thrust out! Forced to hear
5 Low ribaldry from sots, and share rough cheer
With rudely-nurtured men. The hope youth builds
Of fair renown, bartered for that which shields
Only the back, and half-formed lands that rear
The dust-storm blistering up the grasses wild.
10 There learning skills not, nor the poet’s dream,
Nor aught so loved as children shall we see.’
She grips his listless hand and clasps her child,
Through rainbow tears she sees a sunnier gleam,
She cannot see a void, where he will be.
For the Picture Called ‘Work’
Work! which beads the brow, and tans the flesh
Of lusty manhood, casting out its devils!
By whose weird art transmuting poor men’s evils,
Their bed seems down, their one dish ever fresh.
5 Ah me! For lack of it what ills in leash
Hold us. ’Tis want the pale mechanic levels
To workhouse depths, while Master Spendthrift revels.
For want of work, the fiends him soon inmesh!
Ah! beauteous tripping dame with bell-like skirts,
10 Intent on thy small scarlet-coated hound,
Are ragged wayside babes not lovesome too?
Untrained, their state reflects on thy deserts,
Or they grow noisome beggars to abound,
Or dreaded midnight robbers breaking through.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Seasons
The crocus, in the shrewd March morn,
Thrusts up his saffron spear;
And April dots the sombre thorn