The doctor, &c., vol. 3 (of 7)

by Robert Southey

As the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by Love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly.³

Vanity, presumption, ambition, adulation, malice and folly, flatulent emptiness and ill digested fulness, misdirected talent and misapplied devotion, wantonness and want, good motives, bad motives, and mixed motives have given birth to verses in such numberless numbers, that the great lake of Oblivion in which they have sunk, must long ago have been filled up, if there had been any bottom to it. But had it been so filled up, and a foundation thus laid, the quantity of love poems which have gone to the same place, would have made a pile there that would have been the eighth wonder of the world. It would have dwarfed the Pyramids. Pelion upon Ossa would have seemed but a type of it; and the Tower of Babel would not, even when that Tower was at its highest elevation, have overtopt it, though the old rhyme says that

Seven mile sank, and seven mile fell,
And seven mile still stand and ever shall.
Ce n'est que feu de leurs froids chaleurs,
Ce n'est qu' horreur de leurs feintes douleurs,
Ce n'est encor de leurs souspirs et pleurs,
Que vents, pluye, et orages:
Et bref, ce n'est à ouir leurs chansons,
De leurs amours, que flammes et glaçons,
Fleches, liens, et mille autres façons
De semblables outrages.
De voz beautez, ce n'est que tout fin or,
Perles, crystal, marbre, et ivoyre encor,
Et tout l'honneur de l'Indique thresor,
Fleurs, lis, œillets, et roses:
De voz doulceurs ce n'est que succre et miel,
De voz rigueures n'est qu' aloës, et fiel,
De voz esprits c'est tous ce que le ciel
Tient de graces encloses.
* * * * *
Il n'y a roc, qui n'entende leurs voix,
Leurs piteux cris ont faict cent mille fois
Pleurer les monts, les plaines, et les bois,
Les antres et fonteines.
Bref, il n'y a ny solitaires lieux,
N'y lieux hantez, voyre mesmes les cieux,
Qui ça et là ne montrent à leurs yeux
L'image de leurs peines.
Cestuy-la porte en son cueur fluctueux
De l'Ocean les flots tumultueux,
Cestuy l'horreur des vents impetueux
Sortans de leur caverne:
L'un d'un Caucase, et Mongibel se plaingt,
L'autre en veillant plus de songes se peingt,
Qu'il n'en fut onq' en cest orme, qu'on feinct
En la fosse d'Averne.
Qui contrefaict ce Tantale mourant
Bruslé de soif au milieu d'un torrent,
Qui repaissant un aigle devorant,
S'accoustre en Promethee:
Et qui encor, par un plus chaste vœu,
En se bruslant, veult Hercule estre veu,
Mais qui se mue en eau, air, terre, et feu,
Comme un second Protee.
L'un meurt de froid, et l'autre meurt de chauld;
L'un vole bas, et l'autre vole hault,
L'un est chetif, l'autre a ce qui luy fault;
L'un sur l'esprit se fonde,
L'autre s'arreste à la beauté du corps;
On ne vid onq' si horribles discords
En ce cahos, qui troubloit les accords
Dont fut basty le monde.⁴

But on the other hand if love, simple love, is the worst of poets, that same simple love, is beyond comparison the best of letter writers. In love poems conceits are distilled from the head; in love letters feelings flow from the heart; and feelings are never so feelingly uttered, affection never so affectionately expressed, truth never so truly spoken, as in such a correspondence. Oh if the disposition which exists at such times, were sustained through life, marriage would then be indeed the perfect union, the “excellent mystery” which our Father requires from those who enter into it, that it should be made; and which it might always be, under His blessing, were it not for the misconduct of one or the other party, or of both. If such a disposition were maintained,—“if the love of husbands and wives were grounded (as it then would be) in virtue and religion, it would make their lives a kind of heaven on earth; it would prevent all those contentions and brawlings which are the great plagues of families, and the lesser hell in passage to the greater.” Let no reader think the worse of that sentence because it is taken from that good homely old book, the better for being homely, entitled the Whole Duty of Man.

² SCAURANUS.

³ SHAKESPEARE.

⁴ JOACHIM DU BELLAY.

I once met with a book in which a servant girl had written on a blank leaf, “not much love after marriage, but a good deal before!” In her station of life this is but too true; and in high stations also, and in all those intermediate grades where either the follies of the world, or its cares, exercise over us an unwholesome influence. But it is not so with well constituted minds in those favorable circumstances wherein the heart is neither corrupted by wealth, nor hardened by neediness. So far as the tendency of modern usages is to diminish the number of persons who are thus circumstanced, in that same proportion must the sum of happiness be diminished, and of those virtues which are the only safeguard of a nation. And that modern policy and modern manners have this tendency, must be apparent to every one who observes the course both of public and private life.

This girl had picked up a sad maxim from the experience of others; I hope it did not as a consequence, make her bestow too much love before marriage herself, and meet with too little after it. I have said much of worthless verses upon this subject; take now, readers, some that may truly be called worthy of it. They are by the Manchester Poet, Charles Swain.

1.
Love?—I will tell thee what it is to love!
It is to build with human thoughts a shrine,
Where Hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove;
Where Time seems young, and Life a thing divine.
All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine
To consecrate this sanctuary of bliss.
Above, the stars in shroudless beauty shine;
Around, the streams their flowery margins kiss;
And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this!
2.
Yes, this is Love, the stedfast and the true,
The immortal glory which hath never set;
The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew:
Of all life's sweets the very sweetest yet!
Oh! who but can recall the eve they met
To breathe, in some green walk, their first young vow,
While summer flowers with moonlight dews were wet,
And winds sigh'd soft around the mountain's brow,
And all was rapture then which is but memory now!