Francis Thompson (Sister Songs).
Francis Thompson is one of the “difficult” poets who repay study. Here he says that, in the young girl, sex appears in a less complex form than in the woman and, just as Perseus could safely look at the reflection on his shield of the fatal Medusa’s head, so we can freely view womanhood in the girl-child. Nothing conceals her open, innocent, feminine nature. She is the Dryad, the Nymph who lives in the tree and is born and dies with it, but is as yet unconscious of the tree, that is, of her sex. Her “young sex is yet but in her soul,” and is like the juice of the grape which has not yet fermented into wine, or the calm air which sleeps undisturbed. The mystery of womanhood, which attracts and yet, in its own protection, repulses man, will not come to her until after the changes of years. It is the Aphrodite lying in unawakened beauty before she rises as a goddess from the sea. (“Facilely” appears to have the strained meaning “easy to understand” or “simply”; the word “gated,” “confined,” is a curious use of a university word: the Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate, who has misbehaved, may be “gated” for a period, i.e., confined to the precincts of his own college.) “The dragon to its own Hesperides”—the Hesperides were maidens who guarded the golden apples of love and fruitfulness, which Earth had given to Hera on her marriage to Zeus. The maidens were protected by a dragon. Here the dragon is the maiden’s own sensitive reserve and self-protecting nature, which enable her to protect herself. (“Conchèd,” Aphrodite is lying in her shell.)
Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer when once we know them.
Alexander Pope.
Compare the ancient with the modern world; “Look on this picture, and on that.” One broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet “holy.” In other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who besides being virtuous in their actions were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is, that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the time of Christ where a century has passed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of God Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die?
Sir J. R. Seeley (Ecce Homo).
The quotation from Hamlet should read, “Look here, upon this picture, and on this.”