Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets - Lafcadio Hearn

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heart of rest and wrath,

       Its painful pulse is in the sands.

       Last utterly, the whole sky stands,

       Grey and not known, along its path.

       Listen alone beside the sea,

       Listen alone among the woods;

       Those voices of twin solitudes

       Shall have one sound alike to thee:

       Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

       Surge and sink back and surge again—

       Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach And listen at its lips: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea's speech. And all mankind is thus at heart Not anything but what thou art: And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

      In the last beautiful stanza we have a comparison as sublime as any ever made by any poet—of the human heart, the human life, re-echoing the murmur of the infinite Sea of Life. As the same sound of the sea is heard in every shell, so in every human heart is the same ghostly murmur of Universal Being. The sound of the sea, the sound of the forest, the sound of men in cities, not only are the same to the ear, but they tell the same story of pain. The sound of the sea is a sound of perpetual strife, the sound of the woods in the wind is a sound of ceaseless struggle, the tumult of a great city is also a tumult of effort. In this sense all the three sounds are but one, and that one is the sound of life everywhere. Life is pain, and therefore sadness. The world itself is like a great shell full of this sound. But it is a shell on the verge of the Infinite. The millions of suns, the millions of planets and moons, are all of them but shells on the shore of the everlasting sea of death and birth, and each would, if we could hear it, convey to our ears and hearts the one same murmur of pain. This is, to my thinking, a much vaster conception than anything to be found in Tennyson; and such a poem as that of Lee-Hamilton dwindles into nothingness beside it, for we have here all that man can know of our relation to the universe, and the mystery of that universe brought before us by a simile of incomparable sublimity.

      Before leaving this important class of poems, let me cite another instance of the comparative nearness of Rossetti at times to Oriental thought. It is the fifteenth of that wonderful set of sonnets entitled the "House of Life."

      THE BIRTH-BOND

       Have you not noted, in some family

       Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,

       How still they own their gracious bond, though fed

       And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—

       How to their father's children they shall be

       In act and thought of one goodwill; but each

       Shall for the other have, in silence speech,

       And in a word complete community?

       Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,

       That among souls allied to mine was yet

       One nearer kindred than life hinted of.

       O born with me somewhere that men forget,

       And though in years of sight and sound unmet,

       Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

      This beautiful little thought of love is almost exactly the same as that suggested in a well-known Japanese proverb about the relations of a previous existence. We have here, in an English poet, who very probably never read anything about Buddhism, the very idea of the Buddhist en. The whole tendency of the poet's mind was toward larger things than his early training had prepared him for.

      Yet it would be a mistake to suppose Rossetti a pure mystic; he was too much of an artist for that. No one felt the sensuous charm of life more keenly, nor the attraction of plastic beauty and grace. By way of an interlude, we may turn for a time to his more sensuous poetry. It is by this that he is best known; for you need not suppose that the general English public understands such poems as those which we have been examining. Keep in mind that there is a good deal of difference between the adjectives "sensuous" and "sensual." The former has no evil meaning; it refers only to sense-impression—to sensations visual, auditory, tactile. The other adjective is more commonly used in a bad sense. At one time an attempt was made to injure Rossetti by applying it to his work; but all good critics have severely condemned that attempt, and Rossetti must not be regarded as in any sense an immoral poet.

      II

      To the cultivated the very highest quality of emotional poetry is that given by blending the artistically sensuous with the mystic. This very rare quality colours the greater part of Rossetti's work. Perhaps one may even say that it is never entirely absent. Only, the proportions of the blending vary, like those mixtures of red and blue, crimson and azure, which may give us either purple or violet of different shades according to the wish of the dyer. The quality of mysticism dominates in the symbolic poems; we might call those deep purple. The sensuous element dominates in most of the ballads and narrative poems; we might say that these have rather the tone of bright violet. But even in the ballads there is a very great difference in the proportions of the two qualities. The highest tone is in the "Blessed Damozel," and in the beautiful narrative poem of the "Staff and Scrip"; while the lowest tone is perhaps that of the ballad of "Eden Bower," which describes the two passions of lust and hate at their greatest intensity. But everything is beautifully finished as work, and unapproachably exquisite, in feeling. I think the best example of what I have called the violet style is the ballad of "Troy Town."

      Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's Queen,

       (O Troy Town!) Had two breasts of heavenly sheen, The sun and moon of the heart's desire: All Love's lordship lay between. (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) Helen knelt at Venus' shrine, (O Troy Town!) Saying, "A little gift is mine, A little gift for a heart's desire. Hear me speak and make me a sign! (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "Look! I bring thee a carven cup; (O Troy Town!) See it here as I hold it up— Shaped it is to the heart's desire, Fit to fill when the gods would sup. (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "It was moulded like my breast; (O Troy Town!) He that sees it may not rest, Rest at all for his heart's desire. O give ear to my heart's behest! (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "See my breast, how like it is; (O Troy Town!) See it bare for the air to kiss! Is the cup to thy heart's desire? O for the breast, O make it his! (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "Yea, for my bosom here I sue; (O Troy Town!) Thou must give it where 'tis due, Give it there to the heart's desire. Whom do I give my bosom to? (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "Each twin breast is an apple sweet! (O Troy Town!) Once an apple stirred the beat Of thy heart with the heart's desire:— Say, who brought it then to thy feet? (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "They that claimed it then were three: (O Troy Town!) For thy sake two hearts did he Make forlorn of the hearths desire. Do for him as he did for thee! (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) "Mine are apples grown to the south, (O Troy Town!) Grown to taste in the days of drouth, Taste and waste to the heart's desire: Mine are apples meet for his mouth!" (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) Venus looked on Helen's gift, (O Troy Town!) Looked and smiled with subtle drift, Saw the work of her heart's desire:— "There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!" (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) Venus looked in Helen's face, (O Troy Town!) Knew far off an hour and place, And fire lit from the heart's desire; Laughed and said, "Thy gift hath grace!" (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) Cupid looked on Helen's breast, (O Troy Town!) Saw the heart within its nest, Saw the flame of the heart's desire— Marked his arrow's burning crest. (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) Cupid took another dart, (O Troy Town!) Fledged it for another heart, Winged the shaft with the heart's desire, Drew the string, and said "Depart!" (O Troy's down! Tall Troy's on fire!) Paris turned upon his bed, (O Troy Town!) Turned upon his bed, and said, Dead at heart

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