Under the Trees and Elsewhere

by Hamilton Wright Mabie

One brilliant morning, the sky cloudless and the sea singing under a freshening wind, we sat under a great tree, with a bit of soft sward before us, and talked of Prospero. In that place the master presence was always with us; there was never an hour in which we did not feel the spell of his creative spirit. We were always secretly hoping that we should come upon him in some secluded place, his staff unbroken, and his book undrowned. But what need had we of sight while the island encompassed us and the multitudinous music filled the air?

On that fair morning the magical beauty of the world possessed us, and our talk, blending unconsciously with the music of the invisible choir, was broken by long pauses. The Poet was saying that the world thought of Prospero as a magician, a wonder-worker, whose thought borrowed the fleetness of Ariel, whose staff unleashed the tempest and sent it back to its hiding-place when its work was done, and in whose book were written all manner of charms and incantations. This was the Prospero whom Caliban knew, and this is the Prospero whom the world remembers. "For myself," said he, "I often try to forget the miracles, so stained and defiled seem the great artists by this homage which is only another form of materialism. The search for signs and wonders is always vulgar; it defiles every great spirit who compromises with it, because it puts the miracle in place of the truth. That which gives a wonder its only dignity and significance is the spiritual power which it evidences and the spiritual knowledge which it conveys. To the greatest of teachers this hunger for miracles was a bitter experience; he who came with the mystery of the heavenly love in his soul must have felt defiled by the homage rendered as to a necromancer, a doer of strange things. The curiosity which draws men to the masters of the arts has no real honour in it; the only recognition which is real and lasting is that which springs from the perception of truth and beauty disclosed anew in some noble form. Prospero was a magician, but he was much more and much greater than a wonder-worker; not Caliban, but Ferdinand and Miranda and Gonzalo, are the true judges of his power. Prospero was the master spirit of the world which moved about him. He alone knew its secret and used its forces; on him alone rested the government of this marvellous realm. His command had stirred the seas and sent the winds abroad which brought Milan and Naples within his hand; at his bidding the isle was full of sounds; Ariel served him with tireless devotion; he read the sweet thought that flashed from Miranda to Ferdinand; he unearthed the base conspiracy of Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano; he read the treacherous hearts of Antonio and Sebastian; in his hand all these threads were gathered, and upon all these lives his will was imposed. In that majestic drama of human character and action, powers of air and earth, the highest and the lowest alike serving, it is a lofty soul and a noble mind possessed by a great purpose, which control and triumph. The magical arts are simply the means by which a great end is served; when the work is accomplished, the staff will be broken and the book sunk beneath the sea, lower than any sounding of plummet."

"Yes," said Rosalind impulsively, carrying the thought another step forward, "Prospero deals with natural, substantial things for great, real ends, not with magical powers for fantastic purposes. When it falls in his way, he evokes forces so unusual that they seem supernatural to those who do not understand his power, but the end which lies before him is always real, enduring, and noble; something which belongs to the eternal order of things."

"For that matter," I interrupted, "it grows more and more difficult to distinguish between the forces and the achievements that we have thought real and possible, and those which have seemed only dreams and visions. Men are doing things every day by mechanical agencies which the most famous of the old magicians failed to accomplish. The visions of great minds are realities discovered a little in advance of their universal recognition."

"As I was saying," continued the Poet, "most men hold Prospero to be a mere wonder-worker, a magician who puts his arts on and off with his robe; they do not know that he stands for the greatest force in the world. For the Imagination is not only the inspiring leader of men in their strange journey through life, but their nearest, most constant, and most practical helper and sustainer. That our souls would have starved without the Imagination we are all, I think, agreed; without Imagination we should have seen and remembered nothing on our long journey but the path at our feet. The heavens above us, the great, mysterious world about us, would have meant no more to us than to the birds and the beasts that have perished without thought or memory of the beauty which has encompassed them. All this the Imagination has interpreted for us. It has fashioned life for us, and the dullest mind that plods and counts and dies is ministered to and enriched by it. It does magical things. It puts on its robe and opens its book, and straightway the heavens rain melody and drop riches upon us. But this is its play. In these displays of its art it hints at the resources at its command, at the marvels it will yet bring to pass. Meanwhile it has made the earth hospitable for us and taught men how to live above the brutes."

The Poet stopped abruptly, as if he had been caught in the act of preaching, and Rosalind gave the sermon a delightful ending.

"I wonder," she said, "if love would be possible without the Imagination? For the heart of love is the perception of a deep and genuine fellowship of the soul, and the end of love is the happiness which comes through ministry. Could we understand a human soul or serve it if the Imagination did not aid us with its wonderful light? Is it not the Imagination which enables me to put myself in another's place, and so to sympathise with another's sorrow and share another's joy? Could a man feel the sufferings of a class or a race or the world if the Imagination did not open these things to him? And if he did not understand, could he serve?"

No one answered these questions, for they made us aware on the instant how dependent are all the deep and beautiful relations of life on this wonderful faculty. But for this "master light of all our seeing," how small a circle of light would lie about our feet, how vast a darkness would engulf the world!

V

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't!