I will sing what happened to-night on high:
In the frank, wide sky
The wind had put the sun to rout,
The tossed west clouds were floating about;
From the wreath above me, staid and prim,
A star looked out,
Preparing to trim
Her lamp, and to shine as she had shined
Worlds out of mind:
When lo! she felt the wind on her face,
And for joy of him
She left the place
Where she had shined
Worlds out of mind,
To run through the frank, wide sky:
She was veiled by the clouds a moment or two,
Then I saw her scouring across the blue,
For joy of the wind.
* * *
Where winds abound,
And fields are hilly,
Shy daffadilly
Looks down on the ground.
Rose cones of larch
Are just beginning;
Though oaks are spinning
No oak-leaves in March.
Spring’s at the core,
The boughs are sappy:
Good to be happy
So long, long before!
The volume called Long Ago was published as early as 1889: that is to say, four years before Underneath the Bough and nineteen years before Wild Honey. It is, however, a more perfect work than either of those two, both of which include poems of very various date, circumstance, and merit. Long Ago possesses a unity which they lack, and which characterizes the spirit as well as the form of the book. The fact of its having been designed as a whole and wrought to a finish without any long interruption may account for its effect of singleness in impulse and style; but its more satisfying inner unity no doubt arises from the harmony that existed between the poets and their theme, Sappho. Critics notwithstanding, it was not so audacious as it seemed for two Victorian ladies to plunge into the task of rendering Sapphic ecstasy. For, first, the leader of the sally was herself a flame of Dionysiac fire; and the inscription on the banner of her life, from its beginning to its end, was love. There would appear to be a real resemblance between Michael’s intensity, her exuberance and quick lyrical impulse, and the legendary Sappho. And this, restrained by Henry’s sense of form and deepened by their classical lore in poetry and philosophy, should surely have armed them for the adventure.
There is an ironic flavour now in tasting the comments on the book at its appearance. One of the faithful held up protesting hands at the poets’ audacity. Another described the book as a “ludicrous and lamentable attempt.” Yet Browning praised it, and marked some of the pieces in the manuscript “Good” and “Good indeed!” Meredith wrote to the poets to express his joy in it. The Academy reviewer, in June 1889, predicted that it would some day be described as “one of the most exquisite lyrical productions of the latter half of the nineteenth century”; while Wharton, in the preface to the third edition of his Sappho, speaks of the “felicitous paraphrases of Michael Field,” and quotes from four of them. The contrast between the two opinions is as amusing as such things are apt to be to those who are not the subject of them; but Michael Field did not see the joke (perhaps her sense of humour was deficient), and the severer judgments pained her. They were probably based on an assumption that the poets were trying to recreate Sappho, a project which might have justified brickbats if it had ever been entertained. But their aim was simply to make short dramatic lyrics out of the scenes suggested to their imagination by the Sapphic fragments. The verdict of those most competent to judge the book is, on balance, that they succeeded remarkably well; while as to the average reader, he will surely find something most attractive in the flashing moods of the verse, in its grace and finish, and in its complete harmony. Truly pagan the work is, whether in its sunny aspects or its dark ones, whether in its philosophy or its art. The pursuit of joy, the adoration of beauty, the ecstasy and the pain of love, the gay light and colour of the physical world, its sweet scents and sounds, its lovely shapes and delicate textures, are all here, their brilliance but the brighter for the shadow that flits about them of death and its finality.
They plaited garlands in their time,
They knew the joy of youth’s sweet prime,
Quick breath and rapture.
Theirs was the violet-weaving bliss,
And theirs the white, wreathed brow to kiss,
Kiss, and recapture.
They plaited garlands, even these,
They learned Love’s golden mysteries
Of young Apollo;
The lyre unloosed their souls; they lay
Under the trembling leaves at play,
Bright dreams to follow.
They plaited garlands—;heavenly twine!
They crowned the cup, they drank the wine
Of youth’s deep pleasure.
Now, lingering for the lyreless god—;
Oh yet, once in their time, they trod
A choric measure.