Books and Habits, from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn Part 2

I did not hear the birds about the eaves, Nor hear the reapers talk among the sheaves: Only my soul kept watch from day to day, My thirsty soul kept watch for one away:-- Perhaps he loves, I thought, remembers, grieves.

At length there came the step upon the stair, Upon the lock the old familiar hand: Then first my spirit seemed to scent the air Of Paradise; then first the tardy sand Of time ran golden; and I felt my hair Put on a glory, and my soul expand.

The woman is dead. In the room where her body died, flowers have been placed, offerings to the dead. Also there are flowers upon the bed. The ghost of the woman observes all this, but she does not feel either glad or sad because of it; she is thinking only of the living lover, who was not there when she died, but far away. She wants to know whether he really loved her, whether he will really be sorry to hear that she is dead.

Outside the room of death the birds are singing; in the fields beyond the windows peasants are working, and talking as they work. But the ghost does not listen to these sounds. The ghost remains in the room only for love's sake; she can not go away until the lover comes. At last she hears him coming. She knows the sound of the step; she knows the touch of the hand upon the lock of the door. And instantly, before she sees him at all, she first feels delight. Already it seems to her that she can smell the perfume of the flowers of heaven; it then seems to her that about her head, as about the head of an angel, a circle of glory is shaping itself, and the real heaven, the Heaven of Love, is at hand.

How very beautiful this is. There is still one line which requires a separate explanation--I mean the sentence about the sands of time running golden. Perhaps you may remember the same simile in Tennyson's "Locksley Hall":

Love took up the gla.s.s of Time, and turn'd it in His glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Here time is identified with the sand of the hour gla.s.s, and the verb "to run" is used because this verb commonly expresses the trickling of the sand from the upper part of the gla.s.s into the lower. In other words, fine sand "runs" just like water. To say that the sands of time run golden, or become changed into gold, is only a poetical way of stating that the time becomes more than happy--almost heavenly or divine. And now you will see how very beautiful the comparison becomes in this little poem about the ghost of the woman waiting for the coming step of her lover.

Several other aspects of the emotion may now be considered separately. One of these, an especially beautiful one, is memory. Of course, there are many aspects of love's memories, some all happiness, others intensely sorrowful--the memory of a walk, a meeting, a moment of good-bye. Such memories occupy a very large place in the treasure house of English love poems. I am going to give three examples only, but each of a different kind. The first poet that I am going to mention is Coventry Patmore. He wrote two curious books of poetry, respectively called "The Angel in the House" and "The Unknown Eros." In the first of these books he wrote the whole history of his courts.h.i.+p and marriage--a very dangerous thing for a poet to do, but he did it successfully. The second volume is miscellaneous, and contains some very beautiful things. I am going to quote only a few lines from the piece called "Amelia." This piece is the story of an evening spent with a sweetheart, and the lines which I am quoting refer to the moment of taking the girl home. They are now rather famous:

... To the dim street I led her sacred feet; And so the Daughter gave, Soft, moth-like, sweet, Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk, Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.

And now "Good Night!"

Why should the poet speak of the girl in this way? Why does he call her feet sacred? She has just promised to marry him; and now she seems to him quite divine. But he discovers very plain words with which to communicate his finer feelings to the reader. The street is "dim" because it is night; and in the night the beautifully dressed maiden seems like a splendid moth--the name given to night b.u.t.terflies in England. In England the moths are much more beautiful than the true b.u.t.terflies; they have wings of scarlet and purple and brown and gold. So the comparison, though peculiarly English, is very fine. Also there is a suggestion of the soundlessness of the moth's flight. Now "showy as damask rose" is a striking simile only because the damask-rose is a wonderfully splendid flower--richest in colour of all roses in English gardens. "Shy as musk"

is rather a daring simile. "Musk" is a perfume used by English as well as j.a.panese ladies, but there is no perfume which must be used with more discretion, carefulness. If you use ever so little too much, the effect is not pleasant. But if you use exactly the proper quant.i.ty, and no more, there is no perfume which is more lovely. "Shy as musk" thus refers to that kind of girlish modesty which never commits a fault even by the measure of a grain--beautiful shyness incapable of being anything but beautiful. Nevertheless the comparison must be confessed one which should be felt rather than explained.

The second of the three promised quotations shall be from Robert Browning.

There is one feeling, not often touched upon by poets, yet peculiar to lovers, that is here treated--the desire when you are very happy or when you are looking at anything attractive to share the pleasure of the moment with the beloved. But it seldom happens that the wish and the conditions really meet. Referring to this longing Browning made a short lyric that is now a cla.s.sic; it is among the most dainty things of the century.

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!

This path--how soft to pace!

This May--what magic weather!

Where is the loved one's face?

In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I try to speak, With a hostile eye at my flus.h.i.+ng cheek, With a malice that marks each word, each sign!

Never can we have things the way we wish in this world--a beautiful day, a beautiful place, and the presence of the beloved all at the same time.

Something is always missing; if the place be beautiful, the weather perhaps is bad. Or if the weather and the place both happen to be perfect, the woman is absent. So the poet finding himself in some very beautiful place, and remembering this, remembers also the last time that he met the woman beloved. It was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was rain and storm; and the sounds of the wind and of the rain were as the sounds of people secretly listening, or sounds of people trying to look in secretly through the windows. Evidently it was necessary that the meeting should be secret, and it was not altogether as happy as could have been wished.

The third example is a very beautiful poem; we must content ourselves with an extract from it. It is the memory of a betrothal day, and the poet is Frederick Tennyson. I suppose you know that there were three Tennysons, and although Alfred happened to be the greatest, all of them were good poets.

It is a golden morning of the spring, My cheek is pale, and hers is warm with bloom, And we are left in that old carven room, And she begins to sing;

The open cas.e.m.e.nt quivers in the breeze, And one large musk-rose leans its dewy grace Into the chamber, like a happy face, And round it swim the bees;

I know not what I said--what she replied Lives, like eternal suns.h.i.+ne, in my heart; And then I murmured, Oh! we never part, My love, my life, my bride!

And silence o'er us, after that great bliss, Fell like a welcome shadow--and I heard The far woods sighing, and a summer bird Singing amid the trees;

The sweet bird's happy song, that streamed around, The murmur of the woods, the azure skies, Were graven on my heart, though ears and eyes Marked neither sight nor sound.

She sleeps in peace beneath the chancel stone, But ah! so clearly is the vision seen, The dead seem raised, or Death has never been, Were I not here alone.

This is great art in its power of picturing a memory of the heart. Let us notice some of the beauties. The lover is pale because he is afraid, anxious; he is going to ask a question and he does not know how she may answer him. All this was long ago, years and years ago, but the strong emotions of that morning leave their every detail painted in remembrance, with strange vividness After all those years the man still recollects the appearance of the room, the suns.h.i.+ne entering and the crimson rose looking into the room from the garden, with bees humming round it. Then after the question had been asked and happily answered, neither could speak for joy; and because of the silence all the sounds of nature outside became almost painfully distinct. Now he remembers how he heard in that room the sound of the wind in far-away trees, the singing of a bird--he also remembers all the colours and the lights of the day. But it was very, very long ago, and she is dead. Still, the memory is so clear and bright in his heart that it is as if time had stood still, or as if she had come back from the grave. Only one thing a.s.sures him that it is but a memory--he is alone.

Returning now to the subject of love's illusion in itself, let me remind you that the illusion does not always pa.s.s away--not at all. It pa.s.ses away in every case of happy union, when it has become no longer necessary to the great purposes of nature. But in case of disappointment, loss, failure to win the maiden desired, it often happens that the ideal image never fades away, but persistently haunts the mind through life, and is capable thus of making even the most successful life unhappy. Sometimes the result of such disappointment may be to change all a man's ideas about the world, about life, about religion; and everything remains darkened for him. Many a young person disappointed in love begins to lose religious feeling from that moment, for it seems to him, simply because he happens to be unfortunate, that the universe is all wrong. On the other hand the successful lover thinks that the universe is all right; he utters his thanks to the G.o.ds, and feels his faith in religion and human nature greater than before. I do not at this moment remember any striking English poem ill.u.s.trating this fact; but there is a pretty little poem in French by Victor Hugo showing well the relation between successful love and religious feeling in simple minds. Here is an English translation of it.

The subject is simply a walk at night, the girl-bride leaning upon the arm of her husband; and his memory of the evening is thus expressed:

The trembling arm I pressed Fondly; our thoughts confessed Love's conquest tender; G.o.d filled the vast sweet night, Love filled our hearts; the light Of stars made splendour.

Even as we walked and dreamed, 'Twixt heaven and earth, it seemed Our souls were speaking; The stars looked on thy face; Thine eyes through violet s.p.a.ce The stars were seeking.

And from the astral light Feeling the soft sweet night Thrill to thy soul, Thou saidst: "O G.o.d of Bliss, Lord of the Blue Abyss, Thou madest the whole!"

And the stars whispered low To the G.o.d of s.p.a.ce, "We know, G.o.d of Eternity, Dear Lord, all Love is Thine, Even by Love's Light we s.h.i.+ne!

Thou madest Beauty!"

Of course here the religious feeling itself is part of the illusion, but it serves to give great depth and beauty to simple feeling. Besides, the poem ill.u.s.trates one truth very forcibly--namely, that when we are perfectly happy all the universe appears to be divine and divinely beautiful; in other words, we are in heaven. On the contrary, when we are very unhappy the universe appears to be a kind of h.e.l.l, in which there is no hope, no joy, and no G.o.ds to pray to.

But the special reason I wished to call attention to Victor Hugo's lyric is that it has that particular quality called by philosophical critics "cosmic emotion." Cosmic emotion means the highest quality of human emotion. The word "cosmos" signifies the universe--not simply this world, but all the hundred millions of suns and worlds in the known heaven. And the adjective "cosmic" means, of course, "related to the whole universe."

Ordinary emotion may be more than individual in its relations. I mean that your feelings may be moved by the thought or the perception of something relating not only to your own life but also to the lives of many others.

The largest form of such ordinary emotion is what would be called national feeling, the feeling of your own relation to the whole nation or the whole race. But there is higher emotion even than that. When you think of yourself emotionally not only in relation to your own country, your own nation, but in relation to all humanity, then you have a cosmic emotion of the third or second order. I say "third or second," because whether the emotion be second or third rate depends very much upon your conception of humanity as One. But if you think of yourself in relation not to this world only but to the whole universe of hundreds of millions of stars and planets--in relation to the whole mystery of existence--then you have a cosmic emotion of the highest order. Of course there are degrees even in this; the philosopher or the metaphysician will probably have a finer quality of cosmic emotion than the poet or the artist is able to have. But lovers very often, according to their degree of intellectual culture, experience a kind of cosmic emotion; and Victor Hugo's little poem ill.u.s.trates this. Night and the stars and the abyss of the sky all seem to be thrilling with love and beauty to the lover's eyes, because he himself is in a state of loving happiness; and then he begins to think about his relation to the universal life, to the supreme mystery beyond all Form and Name.

A third or fourth cla.s.s of such emotion may be ill.u.s.trated by the beautiful sonnet of Keats, written not long before his death. Only a very young man could have written this, because only a very young man loves in this way--but how delightful it is! It has no t.i.tle.

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth's human sh.o.r.es, Or gazing on new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--

No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

Tennyson has charmingly represented a lover wis.h.i.+ng that he were a necklace of his beloved, or her girdle, or her earring; but that is not a cosmic emotion at all. Indeed, the idea of Tennyson's pretty song was taken from old French and English love songs of the peasants--popular ballads. But in this beautiful sonnet of Keats, where the lover wishes to be endowed with the immortality and likeness of a star only to be forever with the beloved, there is something of the old Greek thought which inspired the beautiful lines written between two and three thousand years ago, and translated by J.A. Symonds:

Gazing on stars, my Star? Would that I were the welkin, Starry with myriad eyes, ever to gave upon thee!

But there is more than the Greek beauty of thought in Keats's sonnet, for we find the poet speaking of the exterior universe in the largest relation, thinking of the stars watching forever the rising and the falling of the sea tides, thinking of the sea tides themselves as continually purifying the world, even as a priest purifies a temple. The fancy of the boy expands to the fancy of philosophy; it is a blending of poetry, philosophy, and sincere emotion.

You will have seen by the examples which we have been reading together that English love poetry, like j.a.panese love poetry, may be divided into many branches and cla.s.sified according to the range of subject from the very simplest utterance of feeling up to that highest cla.s.s expressing cosmic emotion. Very rich the subject is; the student is only puzzled where to choose. I should again suggest to you to observe the value of the theme of illusion, especially as ill.u.s.trated in our examples. There are indeed mult.i.tudes of Western love poems that would probably appear to you very strange, perhaps very foolish. But you will certainly acknowledge that there are some varieties of English love poetry which are neither strange nor foolish, and which are well worth studying, not only in themselves but in their relation to the higher forms of emotional expression in all literature. Out of love poetry belonging to the highest cla.s.s, much can be drawn that would serve to enrich and to give a new colour to your own literature of emotion.

CHAPTER III

THE IDEAL WOMAN IN ENGLISH POETRY

As I gave already in this cla.s.s a lecture on the subject of love poetry, you will easily understand that the subject of the present lecture is not exactly love. It is rather about love's imagining of perfect character and perfect beauty. The part of it to which I think your attention could be deservedly given is that relating to the imagined wife of the future, for this is a subject little treated of in Eastern poetry. It is a very pretty subject. But in j.a.pan and other countries of the East almost every young man knows beforehand whom he is likely to marry. Marriage is arranged by the family: it is a family matter, indeed a family duty and not a romantic pursuit. At one time, very long ago, in Europe, marriages were arranged in much the same way. But nowadays it may be said in general that no young man in England or America can even imagine whom he will marry. He has to find his wife for himself; and he has n.o.body to help him; and if he makes a mistake, so much the worse for him. So to Western imagination the wife of the future is a mystery, a romance, an anxiety--something to dream about and to write poetry about.

This little book that I hold in my hand is now very rare. It is out of print, but it is worth mentioning to you because it is the composition of an exquisite man of letters, Frederick Locker-Lampson, best of all nineteenth century writers of society verse. It is called "Patchwork."

Many years ago the author kept a kind of journal in which he wrote down or copied all the most beautiful or most curious things which he had heard or which he had found in books. Only the best things remained, so the value of the book is his taste in selection. Whatever Locker-Lampson p.r.o.nounced good, the world now knows to have been exactly what he p.r.o.nounced, for his taste was very fine. And in this book I find a little poem quoted from Mr.

Edwin Arnold, now Sir Edwin. Sir Edwin Arnold is now old and blind, and he has not been thought of kindly enough in j.a.pan, because his work has not been sufficiently known. Some people have even said his writings did harm to j.a.pan, but I want to a.s.sure you that such statements are stupid lies.

On the contrary, he did for j.a.pan whatever good the best of his talent as a poet and the best of his influence as a great journalist could enable him to do. But to come back to our subject: when Sir Edwin was a young student he had his dreams about marriage like other young English students, and he put one of them into verse, and that verse was at once picked out by Frederick Locker-Lampson for his little book of gems. Half a century has pa.s.sed since then; but Locker-Lampson's judgment remains good, and I am going to put this little poem first because it so well ill.u.s.trates the subject of the lecture. It is ent.i.tled "A Ma Future."