From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

"The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubim! And young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street were moving jewels; I knew not that they were born, or should die.… The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins, and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.…"

All these things he enjoyed, his life through, uncursed by the itch for 'proprietorship': he was like the Magnanimous Man in his own Christian Ethicks—'one that scorns the smutty way of enjoying things like a slave, because he delights in the celestial way and the Image of God.' In this creed of his all things are made for man, if only man will inherit them wisely: even God, in conferring benefits on man, is moved and rewarded by the felicity of witnessing man's grateful delight in them:—

"For God enjoyed is all His end,
Himself He then doth comprehend
When He is blessed, magnified,
Extoll'd, exalted, prais'd, and glorified."

Yes, and 'undeified almost, if once denied.' A startling creed, this; but what a bold and great-hearted one! To Traherne the Soul is a sea which not only receives the rivers of God's bliss but 'all it doth receive returns again.' It is the Beloved of the old song, 'Quia Amore Langueo;' whom God pursues, as a lover. It is the crown of all things. So in one of his loveliest poems he shows it standing on the threshold to hear news of a great guest, never dreaming that itself is that great guest all the while—

ON NEWS

I.

News from a foreign country came,
As if my treasure and my wealth lay there:
So much it did my heart enflame,
'Twas wont to call my soul into mine ear,
Which thither went to meet
The approaching sweet,
And on the threshold stood
To entertain the unknown Good.
It hover'd there
As if 'twould leave mine ear,
And was so eager to embrace
The joyful tidings as they came,
'Twould almost leave its dwelling-place
To entertain that same.
II.
As if the tidings were the things,
My very joys themselves, my foreign treasure,
Or else did bear them on their wings—
With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure—
My Soul stood at that gate
To recreate
Itself with bliss, and to
Be pleased with speed. A fuller view
It fain would take,
Yet journeys back again would make
Unto my heart: as if 'twould fain
Go out to meet, yet stay within
To fit a place to entertain
And bring the tidings in.
III.
What sacred instinct did inspire
My Soul in childhood with a hope so strong?
What secret force moved my desire
To expect my joy, beyond the seas, so young?
Felicity I knew
Was out of view;
And being here alone,
I saw that happiness was gone
From me! For this
I thirsted absent bliss,
And thought that sure beyond the seas,
Or else in something near at hand
I knew not yet (since nought did please
I knew), my bliss did stand,
IV.
But little did the infant dream
That all the treasures of the world were by:
And that himself was so the cream
And crown of all which round about did lie.
Yet thus it was: The Gem,
The Diadem,
The Ring enclosing all
That stood upon this earthly ball;
The Heavenly Eye,
Much wider than the sky,
Wherein they all included were,
The glorious Soul that was the King
Made to possess them, did appear
A small and little thing.

I must quote from another poem, if only for the pleasure of writing down the lines:—

THE SALUTATION.

These little limbs,
These eyes and hands which here I find,
These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins—
Where have ye been? Behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?
When silent I
So many thousand, thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
How could I smiles or tears
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive!