Eve.—Which it is.
Adam.—The essence of all beauty, I call love.
The attribute, the evidence, the end,
The consummation to the inward sense,
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love. As form, when colorless,
Is nothing to the eye,—that pine-tree there,
Without its black and green, being all a blank,—
So, without love, is beauty undiscerned,
In man or angel. Angel! rather ask
What love is in thee, what love moves to thee,
And what collateral love moves on with thee;
Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.
Luc.—Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love
I darken to the image. Beauty—love!
Let us now carry forward this connection between love and beauty in listening to a further testimony of Emerson's in a poem called The Celestial Love, where, instead of identifying beauty and truth with Keats, we find him making love and truth to be one.
"Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,
Bound for the just but not beyond;
Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
Of self in other still preferred
But they have heartily designed
The benefit of broad mankind
And they serve men austerely,
After their own genius, clearly.
Without a false humility;
For this is love's nobility,—
Not to scatter bread and gold,
Goods and raiment bought and sold;
But to hold fast his simple sense,
And speak the speech of innocence,
And with hand, and body, and blood,
To make his bosom-counsel good.
For he that feeds men serveth few;
He serves all that dares be true."
And in connection with these lines:—
"Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
Of self in other still preferred,"
I must here beg you to observe the quite incalculable advance in the ideal of love here presented by Emerson, and the ideal which was thought to be the crown and boast of the classic novel a hundred years ago, and which is still pointed to with exultation by thoughtless people. This ideal, by universal voice was held to have been consummated by Fielding in his character of Squire Allworthy, in the famous novel, Tom Jones. And here it is: we have a dramatic presentation of Squire Allworthy early on a May morning, pacing the terrace before his mansion which commanded a noble stretch of country, and then Fielding glows thus: "In the full blaze of his majesty up rose the sun, than which one object alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented—a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures." Here Mr. Allworthy's benevolence has for its object to render himself most acceptable to his Creator; his love, in other words, is only another term for increasing his account in the Bank of Heaven; a perfect example, in short, of that love of the low-loving herd which is self in other still preferred.
But now let me once more turn the tube and gain another radiant arrangement of these kaleidoscopic elements, beauty and love and the like. In Emerson's poem called "Beauty," which must be distinguished from the "Ode to Beauty," the relation between love and beauty takes this turn: "Seyd," he says, "chased beauty
"Everywhere,
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air.
He smote the lake to feed his eye
With the beryl beam of the broken wave;
He flung in pebbles well to hear
The moment's music which they gave.
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone
From nodding pole and belting zone.