The darts of Eros’ quiver are just as numerous and deftly feathered as of yore. Only there are more hearts to hit, with proportionally more registrars to chronicle the passage of his shafts. Still, as of old, the exhortation, Carpe Diem! reverberates through the poet’s page; the rose likewise hath not lost her fragrance, or the violet her perfume; and still, despite stings and thorns, kisses and favours remain sweet things.
Writing love-lyrics is less a momentous occupation now than in the times of doublet and hose. It is fair to assume, notwithstanding, that many a charming fantasy in verse, many an ethereal flight winged from modern lover to modern mistress, never sees the light of the printed page, as was far less the case in ancient days; but remains inviolate with the person by whom it was inspired. Could we obtain access to many passionate apostrophes that exist but in manuscript alone, cherished or known only by the sender and recipient, what a fragrant garland were ours!
Recurring to the comparison already touched upon, Cupid and Campaspe have not ceased to play their game of cards; while the admonition to Lesbia to “live and love” will continue to be current coin amid the “golden cadences” of all time. For,
“What to him is snow or rime,
Who calls his love his own?”
It were difficult, in truth, to wrest from Waller his “girdle” of immortal fame, or for any twentieth-century laureate to excel Jonson’s spirited pledge, “To Celia,” or to vie with the sublime strain of Herrick’s “Bid me to live.” And who shall surpass the delicate lacelike grace of Lodge’s “Love in my bosom like a bee,” “My bonny lass! thine eye,” and his still more impassioned rendition of the charms of “Rosalind”?
Who, too, shall outsoar the plumèd flight of Heywood’s “Pack clouds away,” or transcend the birdlike carol of Davenant, “The lark now leaves his wat’ry nest”? And where shall we look for a rival to Marvell’s “Had we but world enough and time,” or the music and dainty conceit of Carew’s “Ask me no more where Jove bestows”? These, and how many, many more, pulsate with the sweetness and plaintiveness of a zither touched by master fingers. Reading them as they attune and chant themselves despite the lapse of centuries, they recall the picture Glapthorne so vividly depicts of a Gentleman playing on the Lute:—
“Whose numerous fingers whiter farre
Than Venus swans or ermines are
Wag’d with the amorous strings a Warre,
But such a Warre as did invite
The sense of Hearing, and the Sight
To riot in a full delight.”
A review of the following pages, on the other hand, will disclose many a delicious wild-flower that, alike in form and hue, is a stranger to the gardens of the past. It is perhaps unfair to individualise; but for the sake of comparison solely, a few instances may be cited with no disparagement to the excellence of the whole of which they form a part. So far as musical sweetness of tone, elevated sentiment, and facility of rhythmic utterance are concerned, Tennyson and Swinburne stand unequalled in their special spheres. The short lyric, however, does not occur nearly as frequently with the latter as with the former, who abounds in pure love-lays, fluid and tender as a thrush’s song. What more fragrantly exquisite than “Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white,” or indeed the scores of amoretti with which he has added to “golden numbers, golden numbers”! With Shakespeare and Milton a master of the sonnet, a large portion of Rossetti’s shorter pieces have been expressed in this his favourite vehicle of verse. Surely the music of song, even though it be in sonnet form, has not suffered a decline when such impassioned chords are heard as vibrate amid “The House of Life.” But acting on prescribed lines, the sonnet in consequence has been but sparingly employed in this collection.
Surely, too, there is a grace as fine as that of the choir of Elizabeth and James, in such airy flights as, “Love on my heart from heaven fell,” “Sweetheart, sigh no more,” “I breathe my heart in the heart of the rose,” and “Up, up, my heart!” Again, we must search long for as powerful a love lyric as Splendide Mendax, or the haunting cadences that rise and fall, sonata-like, throughout “A Dead March.” And how exquisite the simple lines to a star of Mr. Garnett, the rhapsody “Oh to think, oh to think” of Mr. Gale, Mr. Bridges’ “Long are the hours the sun is above,” Mathilde Blind’s “I charge you, O winds of the West,” Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Has summer come without the rose,” or the chivalrous notes of Mr. Pollock’s “It is not mine to sing the stately grace”! And these are not exceptions or individual instances, but merely a few examples taken at random for the sake of illustration. It is more the lack of the musicians, it would seem, than any want of suitable pieces to be set to music, that must account for the decadence of “Song” proper, since the ancient days of lute and lyre.
No great poet sings because he must sing, we are told; a great poet sings because he chooses to sing. Let us thank the truly great, therefore, for so choosing, and the lesser in proportion, on the principle of receiving all favours thankfully according to their merit and degree. Meanwhile, in the various phases of Love as portrayed so musically by the full-throated choir in the subjoined pages, the reader may peradventure read and learn. For, as voiced by Owen Meredith,—