The Germ Part 15

And still she bowed herself, and stooped Into the vast waste calm; Till her bosom's pressure must have made The bar she leaned on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm.

From the fixt lull of heaven, she saw Time, like a pulse, shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove, In that steep gulph, to pierce The swarm: and then she spake, as when The stars sang in their spheres.

"I wish that he were come to me, For he will come," she said.

"Have I not prayed in solemn heaven?

On earth, has he not prayed?

Are not two prayers a perfect strength?

And shall I feel afraid?

"When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I'll take his hand, and go with him To the deep wells of light, And we will step down as to a stream And bathe there in G.o.d's sight.

"We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps tremble continually With prayer sent up to G.o.d; And where each need, revealed, expects Its patient period.

"We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Sometimes is felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His name audibly.

"And I myself will teach to him-- I myself, lying so,-- The songs I sing here; which his mouth Shall pause in, hushed and slow, Finding some knowledge at each pause And some new thing to know."

(Alas! to _her_ wise simple mind These things were all but known Before: they trembled on her sense,-- Her voice had caught their tone.

Alas for lonely Heaven! Alas For life wrung out alone!

Alas, and though the end were reached?........

Was _thy_ part understood Or borne in trust? And for her sake Shall this too be found good?-- May the close lips that knew not prayer Praise ever, though they would?)

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies:-- Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret, and Rosalys.

"Circle-wise sit they, with bound locks And bosoms covered; Into the fine cloth, white like flame, Weaving the golden thread, To fas.h.i.+on the birth-robes for them Who are just born, being dead.

"He shall fear haply, and be dumb.

Then I will lay my cheek To his, and tell about our love, Not once abashed or weak: And the dear Mother will approve My pride, and let me speak.

"Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, To Him round whom all souls Kneel--the unnumber'd solemn heads Bowed with their aureoles: And Angels, meeting us, shall sing To their citherns and citoles.

"There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me:-- To have more blessing than on earth In nowise; but to be As then we were,--being as then At peace. Yea, verily.

"Yea, verily; when he is come We will do thus and thus: Till this my vigil seem quite strange And almost fabulous; We two will live at once, one life; And peace shall be with us."

She gazed, and listened, and then said, Less sad of speech than mild: "All this is when he comes." She ceased; The light thrilled past her, filled With Angels, in strong level lapse.

Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their flight Was vague 'mid the poised spheres.

And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers, And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears.)

Reviews

The Strayed Reveller; and other Poems. By A.--Fellowes, Ludgate-street.--1849.

If any one quality may be considered common to all living poets, it is that which we have heard aptly described as _self-consciousness_.

In this many appear to see the only permanent trace of the now old usurping deluge of Byronism; but it is truly a fact of the time,--less a characteristic than a portion of it. Every species of composition--the dramatic, the narrative, the lyric, the didactic, the descriptive--is imbued with this spirit; and the reader may calculate with almost equal certainty on becoming acquainted with the belief of a poet as of a theologian or a moralist. Of the evils resulting from the practice, the most annoying and the worst is that some of the lesser poets, and all mere pretenders, in their desire to emulate the really great, feel themselves under a kind of obligation to a.s.sume opinions, vague, incongruous, or exaggerated, often not only not their own, but the direct reverse of their own,--a kind of meanness that has replaced, and goes far to compensate for, the flatteries of our literary ancestors. On the other hand, this quality has created a new tie of interest between the author and his public, enhances the significance of great works, and confers value on even the slightest productions of a true poet.

That the systematic infusion of this spirit into the drama and epic compositions is incompatible with strict notions of art will scarcely be disputed: but such a general objection does not apply in the case of lyric poetry, where even the character of the subject is optional.

It is an instance of this kind that we are now about to consider.

"The Strayed Reveller and other Poems," const.i.tutes, we believe, the first published poetical work of its author, although the following would rather lead to the inference that he is no longer young.

"But my youth reminds me: 'Thou Hast lived light as these live now; As these are, thou too wert such.'"--p. 59.

And, in another poem:

"In vain, all, all, in vain, They beat upon mine ear again, Those melancholy tones so sweet and still: Those lute-like tones which, in long-distant years, Did steal into mine ears."--p. 86.

Accordingly, we find but little pa.s.sion in the volume, only four pieces (for "The Strayed Reveller" can scarcely be so considered) being essentially connected with it. Of these the "Modern Sappho"

appears to us not only inferior, but as evidencing less maturity both of thought and style; the second, "Stagyrus," is an urgent appeal to G.o.d; the third, "The New Sirens," though pa.s.sionate in utterance, is, in purpose, a rejection of pa.s.sion, as having been weighed in the balance and found wanting; and, in the last, where he tells of the voice which once

"Blew such a thrilling summons to his will, Yet could not shake it; Drained all the life his full heart had to spill; Yet could not break it:"--

he records the "intolerable change of thought" with which it now comes to his "long-sobered heart." Perhaps "The Forsaken Merman"

should be added to these; but the grief here is more nearly approaching to gloomy submission and the sickness of hope deferred.

The lessons that the author would learn of nature are, as set forth in the sonnet that opens the volume,

"Of toil unsevered from tranquillity; Of labor that in one short hour outgrows Man's noisy schemes,--accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry."--p. 1.

His conception of the poet is of one who

"Sees before him life unroll, A placid and continuous whole; That general life which does not cease; Whose secret is, not joy, but peace; That life, whose dumb wish is not missed If birth proceeds, if things subsist; The life of plants and stones and rain; The life he craves:--if not in vain Fate gave, what chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul."--pp. 123-4.

(_Resignation._)

Such is the author's purpose in these poems. He recognises in each thing a part of the whole: and the poet must know even as he sees, or breathes, as by a spontaneous, half-pa.s.sive exercise of a faculty: he must receive rather than seek.

"Action and suffering tho' he know, He hath not lived, if he lives so."

Connected with this view of life as "a placid and continuous whole,"

is the principle which will be found here manifested in different modes, and thro' different phases of event, of the permanence and changelessness of natural laws, and of the large necessity wherewith they compel life and man. This is the thought which animates the "Fragment of an 'Antigone:'" "The World and the Quietest" has no other scope than this:--

"Critias, long since, I know, (For fate decreed it so), Long since the world hath set its heart to live.

Long since, with credulous zeal, It turns life's mighty wheel: Still doth for laborers send; Who still their labor give.

And still expects an end."--p. 109.

This principle is brought a step futher into the relations of life in "The Sick King in Bokhara," the following pa.s.sage from which claims to be quoted, not less for its vividness as description, than in ill.u.s.tration of this thought:--

"In vain, therefore, with wistful eyes Gazing up hither, the poor man Who loiters by the high-heaped booths Below there in the Registan

"Says: 'Happy he who lodges there!