The Angel in the House

Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
BY COVENTRY PATMORE.
“Par la grace infinie, Dieu les mist au monde ensemble.” Rousier des Dames .
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE . 1891.
THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF HER BY WHOM AND FOR WHOM I BECAME A POET.
There could be but one answer to the suggestion of Mr. Coventry Patmore that his “Angel in the House” might usefully have a place in this “National Library.” The suggestion was made with the belief that wide and cheap diffusion would not take from the value of a copyright library edition, while the best use of writing is fulfilled by the spreading of verse dedicated to the sacred love of home. The two parts of the Poem appeared in 1854 and 1856, were afterwards elaborately revised, and have since obtained a permanent place among the Home Books of the English People. Our readers will join, surely, in thanks to the author for the present he has made us.
H. M.
‘Mine is no horse with wings, to gain The region of the spheral chime; He does but drag a rumbling wain, Cheer’d by the coupled bells of rhyme; And if at Fame’s bewitching note My homely Pegasus pricks an ear, The world’s cart-collar hugs his throat, And he’s too wise to prance or rear.’
Thus ever answer’d Vaughan his Wife, Who, more than he, desired his fame; But, in his heart, his thoughts were rife How for her sake to earn a name. With bays poetic three times crown’d, And other college honours won, He, if he chose, might be renown’d, He had but little doubt, she none; And in a loftier phrase he talk’d With her, upon their Wedding-Day, (The eighth), while through the fields they walk’d, Their children shouting by the way.
‘Not careless of the gift of song, Nor out of love with noble fame, I, meditating much and long What I should sing, how win a name, Considering well what theme unsung, What reason worth the cost of rhyme, Remains to loose the poet’s tongue In these last days, the dregs of time, Learn that to me, though born so late, There does, beyond desert, befall (May my great fortune make me great!) The first of themes, sung last of all. In green and undiscover’d ground, Yet near where many others sing, I have the very well-head found Whence gushes the Pierian Spring.’