For ’tis not in mere death that men die most; And, after our first girding of the loins In youth’s fine linen and fair broidery, To run up hill and meet the rising sun, We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool, While others gird us with the violent bands Of social figments, feints, and formalisms, Reversing our straight nature, lifting up Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts, Head downward on the cross-sticks of the world.
Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross. God, set our feet low and our forehead high, And show us how a man was made to walk!
Leave the lamp, Susan, and go up to bed. The room does very well; I have to write Beyond the stroke of midnight. Get away; Your steps, for ever buzzing in the room, Tease me like gnats. Ah, letters! throw them down At once, as I must have them, to be sure, Whether I bid you never bring me such At such an hour, or bid you. No excuse. You choose to bring them, as I choose perhaps To throw them in the fire. Now, get to bed, And dream, if possible, I am not cross.
Why what a pettish, petty thing I grow,— A mere, mere woman,—a mere flaccid nerve,— A kerchief left out all night in the rain, Turned soft so,—overtasked and overstrained And overlived in this close London life! And yet I should be stronger. Never burn Your letters, poor Aurora! for they stare With red seals from the table, saying each, ‘Here’s something that you know not.’ Out alas, ’Tis scarcely that the world’s more good and wise Or even straighter and more consequent Since yesterday at this time—yet, again, If but one angel spoke from Ararat, I should be very sorry not to hear: So open all the letters! let me read. Blanche Ord, the writer in the ‘Lady’s Fan,’ Requests my judgment on ... that, afterwards. Kate Ward desires the model of my cloak, And signs, ‘Elisha to you.’ Pringle Sharpe Presents his work on ‘Social Conduct,’ ... craves A little money for his pressing debts ... From me, who scarce have money for my needs,— Art’s fiery chariot which we journey in Being apt to singe our singing-robes to holes, Although you ask me for my cloak, Kate Ward! Here’s Rudgely knows it,—editor and scribe— He’s ‘forced to marry where his heart is not, Because the purse lacks where he lost his heart.’ Ah,—— lost it because no one picked it up! That’s really loss! (and passable impudence.) My critic Hammond flatters prettily, And wants another volume like the last. My critic Belfair wants another book Entirely different, which will sell, (and live?) A striking book, yet not a startling book, The public blames originalities, (You must not pump spring-water unawares Upon a gracious public, full of nerves—) Good things, not subtle, new yet orthodox, As easy reading as the dog-eared page That’s fingered by said public, fifty years, Since first taught spelling by its grandmother, And yet a revelation in some sort: That’s hard, my critic Belfair! So—what next? My critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts; ‘Call a man, John, a woman, Joan,’ says he, ‘And do not prate so of humanities:’ Whereat I call my critic, simply Stokes. My critic Jobson recommends more mirth, Because a cheerful genius suits the times, And all true poets laugh unquenchably Like Shakspeare and the gods. That’s very hard. The gods may laugh, and Shakspeare; Dante smiled With such a needy heart on two pale lips, We cry, ‘Weep rather, Dante.’ Poems are Men, if true poems: and who dares exclaim At any man’s door, ’Here, ’tis probable The thunder fell last week, and killed a wife, And scared a sickly husband—what of that? Get up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands, Because a cheerful genius suits the times—’? None says so to the man,—and why indeed Should any to the poem? A ninth seal; The apocalypse is drawing to a close. Ha,—this from Vincent Carrington,—‘Dear friend, I want good counsel. Will you lend me wings To raise me to the subject, in a sketch I’ll bring to-morrow—may I? at eleven? A poet’s only born to turn to use; So save you! for the world ... and Carrington.’ ‘(Writ after.) Have you heard of Romney Leigh, Beyond what’s said of him in newspapers, His phalansteries there, his speeches here, His pamphlets, pleas, and statements, everywhere? He dropped me long ago; but no one drops A golden apple—though indeed, one day, You hinted that, but jested. Well, at least, You know Lord Howe, who sees him ... whom he sees, And you see, and I hate to see,—for Howe Stands high upon the brink of theories, Observes the swimmers, and cries ‘Very fine,’ But keeps dry linen equally,—unlike That gallant breaster, Romney. Strange it is, Such sudden madness seizing a young man, To make earth over again,—while I’m content To make the pictures. Let me bring the sketch. A tiptoe Danae, overbold and hot; Both arms a-flame to meet her wishing Jove Halfway, and burn him faster down; the face And breasts upturned and straining, the loose locks All glowing with the anticipated gold. Or here’s another on the self-same theme. She lies here—flat upon her prison-floor, The long hair swathed about her to the heel, Like wet sea-weed. You dimly see her through The glittering haze of that prodigious rain, Half blotted out of nature by a love As heavy as fate. I’ll bring you either sketch. I think, myself, the second indicates More passion.’ Surely. Self is put away, And calm with abdication. She is Jove, And no more Danae—greater thus. Perhaps The painter symbolises unawares Two states of the recipient artist-soul; One, forward, personal, wanting reverence, Because aspiring only. We’ll be calm, And know that, when indeed our Joves come down, We all turn stiller than we have ever been.
Kind Vincent Carrington. I’ll let him come. He talks of Florence,—and may say a word Of something as it chanced seven years ago,— A hedgehog in the path, or a lame bird, In those green country walks, in that good time, When certainly I was so miserable ... I seem to have missed a blessing ever since.
The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars. It is not thus with men. We do not make our places with our strains,— Content, while they rise, to remain behind, Alone on earth instead of so in heaven. No matter—I bear on my broken tale.
When Romney Leigh and I had parted thus, I took a chamber up three flights of stairs Not far from being as steep as some larks climb, And, in a certain house in Kensington, Three years I lived and worked. Get leave to work In this world,—’tis the best you get at all; For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts Than men in benediction. God says, ‘Sweat For foreheads;’ men say ‘crowns;’ and so we are crowned,— Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work; Be sure ’tis better than what you work to get.
So, happy and unafraid of solitude, I worked the short days out,—and watched the sun On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons, Like some Druidic idol’s fiery brass, With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat, In which the blood of wretches pent inside Seemed oozing forth to incarnadine the air,— Push out through fog with his dilated disk, And startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog, Involve the passive city, strangle it Alive, and draw it off into the void, Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a spunge Had wiped out London,—or as noon and night Had clapped together and utterly struck out The intermediate time, undoing themselves In the act. Your city poets see such things, Not despicable. Mountains of the south, When, drunk and mad with elemental wines, They rend the seamless mist and stand up bare, Make fewer singers, haply. No one sings, Descending Sinai: on Parnassus mount, You take a mule to climb, and not a muse, Except in fable and figure: forests chant Their anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb. But sit in London, at the day’s decline, And view the city perish in the mist Like Pharaoh’s armaments in the deep Red Sea,— The chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host, Sucked down and choked to silence—then, surprised By a sudden sense of vision and of tune, You feel as conquerors though you did not fight, And you and Israel’s other singing girls, Ay, Miriam with them, sing the song you choose.
I worked with patience which means almost power. I did some excellent things indifferently, Some bad things excellently. Both were praised, The latter loudest. And by such a time That I myself had set them down as sins Scarce worth the price of sackcloth, week by week, Arrived some letter through the sedulous post, Like these I’ve read, and yet dissimilar, With pretty maiden seals,—initials twined Of lilies, or a heart marked Emily, (Convicting Emily of being all heart); Or rarer tokens from young bachelors, Who wrote from college (with the same goosequill, Suppose, they had just been plucked of) and a snatch From Horace, ‘Collegisse juvat,’ set Upon the first page. Many a letter signed Or unsigned, showing the writers at eighteen Had lived too long, though every muse should help The daylight, holding candles,—compliments, To smile or sigh at. Such could pass with me No more than coins from Moscow circulate At Paris. Would ten roubles buy a tag Of ribbon on the boulevard, worth a sou? I smiled that all this youth should love me,—sighed That such a love could scarcely raise them up To love what was more worthy than myself; Then sighed again, again, less generously, To think the very love they lavished so, Proved me inferior. The strong loved me not, And he ... my cousin Romney ... did not write. I felt the silent finger of his scorn Prick every bubble of my frivolous fame As my breath blew it, and resolve it back To the air it came from. Oh, I justified The measure he had taken of my height: The thing was plain—he was not wrong a line; I played at art, made thrusts with a toy-sword, Amused the lads and maidens. Came a sigh Deep, hoarse with resolution,—I would work To better ends, or play in earnest. ‘Heavens, I think I should be almost popular If this went on!’—I ripped my verses up, And found no blood upon the rapier’s point; The heart in them was just an embryo’s heart, Which never yet had beat, that it should die; Just gasps of make-believe galvanic life; Mere tones, inorganised to any tune.
And yet I felt it in me where it burnt, Like those hot fire-seeds of creation held In Jove’s clenched palm before the worlds were sown,— But I—I was not Juno even! my hand Was shut in weak convulsion, woman’s ill, And when I yearned to loose a finger—lo, The nerve revolted. ’Tis the same even now: This hand may never, haply, open large, Before the spark is quenched, or the palm charred, To prove the power not else than by the pain.