[23] This verse is of course to be read as one made up of rough but regular anapæsts; the heavier accents falling consequently upon every third syllable—that is, upon the words if, not, and him. The next line is almost as rough, and seems indeed to slip into the solid English iambic; but may also be set right by giving full attention to accent.
[24] A strange and rather beautiful, if grotesque, evidence of the unity of faith and feeling to which Blake and his wife had come by dint of living and thinking so long together, is given by one of the stray notes in this same book: which we transcribe at full on account of its great biographical value as a study of character. Space might have been found for it in the Life, if only to prove once again how curiously the nature and spiritual habits of a great man leave their mark or dye upon the mind nearest to his own.
“South Molton Street.
“Sunday, August, 1807.—My wife was told by a spirit to look for her fortune by opening by chance a book which she had in her hand; it was Bysshe’s ‘Art of Poetry.’ She opened the following:—
‘I saw ’em kindle with desire,
While with soft sighs they blew the fire;
Saw the approaches of their joy,
He growing more fierce and she less coy;
Saw how they mingled melting rays,
Exchanging love a thousand ways.
Kind was the force on every side;
Her new desire she could not hide,
Nor would the shepherd be denied.
The blessed minute he pursued,
Till she, transported in his arms,
Yields to the conqueror all her charms.
His panting breast to hers now joined,
They feast on raptures unconfined,
Vast and luxuriant; such as prove
The immortality of love.
For who but a Divinity
Could mingle souls to that degree
And melt them into ecstasy?
Now like the Phœnix both expire,
While from the ashes of their fire
Springs up a new and soft desire.
Like charmers, thrice they did invoke
The God, and thrice new vigour took.’—Behn.
“I was so well pleased with her luck that I thought I would try my own, and opened the following:—
‘As when the winds their airy quarrel try,
Jostling from every quarter of the sky,
This way and that the mountain oak they bear,
His boughs they scatter and his branches tear;
With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground;
The hollow valleys echo to the sound;
Unmoved, the royal plant their fury mocks,
Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks:
For as he shoots his towering head on high,
So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.’—Dryden’s Virgil.”
Nothing is ever so cynical as innocence, whether it be a child’s or a mystic’s. As a poet, Blake had some reason to be “well pleased” with his wife’s curious windfall; for those verses of the illustrious Aphra’s have some real energy and beauty of form, visible to those who care to make allowance, first for the conventional English of the time, and secondly for the naked violence of manner natural to that she-satyr, whose really great lyrical gifts are hopelessly overlaid and encrusted by the rough repulsive husk of her incredible style of speech. Even “Astræa” must however have fair play and fair praise; and the simple truth is that, when writing her best, this “unmentionable” poetess has a vigorous grace and a noble sense of metre to be found in no other song-writer of her time. One song, fished up by Mr. Dyce out of the weltering sewerage of Aphra’s unreadable and unutterable plays, has a splendid quality of verse, and even some degree of sentiment not wholly porcine. Take four lines as a sample, and Blake’s implied approval will hardly seem unjustifiable:—
“From thy bright eyes he took those fires
Which round about in sport he hurled;
But ’twas from mine he took desires
Enough to undo the amorous world.”
The strong and subtle cadence of that magnificent fourth verse gives evidence of so delicate an ear and such dexterous power of hand as no other poet between the Restoration date and Blake’s own time has left proof of in serious or tragic song. Great as is Dryden’s lyrical work in more ways than one, its main quality is mere strength of intellect and solidity of handling—the forcible and imperial manner of his satires; and in pure literal song-writing, which (rather than any ‘ode’ or such-like mixed poem) may be taken as the absolute and final test of a poet’s lyrical nature, he never came near this mark. François Villon and Aphra Behn, the two most inexpressibly non-respectable of male or female Bohemians and poets, were alike in this as well; that the supreme gift of each, in a time sufficiently barren of lyrical merit, was the gift of writing admirable songs; and this, after all, has perhaps borne better fruit for us than any gift of moral excellence.