Among My Books Volume Ii Part 17

"And is there care in Heaven? and is there love In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, That may compa.s.sion of their evils move?

There is: else much more wretched were the case Of men than beasts: but O, the exceeding grace Of highest G.o.d, that loves his creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe!

"How oft do they their silver bowers leave, To come to succor us that succor want!

How oft do they with golden pinions cleave The fleeting skies like flying pursuivant, Against foul fiends to aid us militant!

They for us fight, they watch and duly ward, And their bright squadrons round about us plant; And all for love and nothing for reward; O, why should heavenly G.o.d to men have such regard?"[312]

His natural tendency is to shun whatever is sharp and abrupt. He loves to prolong emotion, and lingers in his honeyed sensations like a bee in the translucent cup of a lily. So entirely are beauty and delight in it the native element of Spenser, that, whenever in the "Faery Queen" you come suddenly on the moral, it gives you a shock of unpleasant surprise, a kind of grit, as when one's teeth close on a bit of gravel in a dish of strawberries and cream. He is the most fluent of our poets. Sensation pa.s.sing through emotion into revery is a prime quality of his manner. And to read him puts one in the condition of revery, a state of mind in which our thoughts and feelings float motionless, as one sees fish do in a gentle stream, with just enough vibration of their fins to keep themselves from going down with the current, while their bodies yield indolently to all its soothing curves. He chooses his language for its rich canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning. To characterize his style in a single word, I should call it _costly_. None but the daintiest and nicest phrases will serve him, and he allures us from one to the other with such cunning baits of alliteration, and such sweet lapses of verse, that never any word seems more eminent than the rest, nor detains the feeling to eddy around it, but you must go on to the end before you have time to stop and muse over the wealth that has been lavished on you. But he has characterized and exemplified his own style better than any description could do:--

"For round about the walls yclothed were With goodly arras of great majesty, Woven with gold and silk so close and near That the rich metal lurked privily As faining to be hid from envious eye; Yet here and there and everywhere, unwares It showed itself and shone unwillingly Like to a discolored snake whose hidden snares Through the green gra.s.s his long bright-burnished back declares."[313]

And of the lulling quality of his verse take this as a sample:--

"And, more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down And ever drizzling rain upon the loft, Mixt with the murmuring wind much like the soun Of swarming bees did cast him in a swoon.

No other noise, nor peoples' troublous cries, As still are wont to annoy the walled town, Might there be heard: but careless quiet lies Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies."[314]

In the world into which Spenser carries us there is neither time nor s.p.a.ce, or rather it is outside of and independent of them both, and so is purely ideal, or, more truly, imaginary; yet it is full of form, color, and all earthly luxury, and so far, if not real, yet apprehensible by the senses. There are no men and women in it, yet it throngs with airy and immortal shapes that have the likeness of men and women, and hint at some kind of foregone reality. Now this place, somewhere between mind and matter, between soul and sense, between the actual and the possible, is precisely the region which Spenser a.s.signs (if I have rightly divined him) to the poetic susceptibility of impression,--

"To reign in the air from the earth to highest sky."

Underneath every one of the senses lies the soul and spirit of it, dormant till they are magnetized by some powerful emotion. Then whatever is imperishable in us recognizes for an instant and claims kindred with something outside and distinct from it, yet in some inconceivable way a part of it, that flashes back on it an ideal beauty which impoverishes all other companions.h.i.+p. This exaltation with which love sometimes subtilizes the nerves of coa.r.s.est men so that they feel and see, not the thing as it seems to others, but the beauty of it, the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth that is in it, would appear to have been the normal condition of Spenser. While the senses of most men live in the cellar, his "were laid in a large upper chamber which opened toward the sunrising."

"His birth was of the womb of morning dew, And his conception of the joyous prime."

The very greatest poets (and is there, after all, more than one of them?) have a way, I admit, of getting within our inmost consciousness and in a manner betraying us to ourselves. There is in Spenser a remoteness very different from this, but it is also a seclusion, and quite as agreeable, perhaps quite as wholesome in certain moods when we are glad to get away from ourselves and those importunate trifles which we gravely call the realities of life. In the warm Mediterranean of his mind everything

"Suffers a sea change Into something rich and strange."

He lifts everything, not beyond recognition, but to an ideal distance where no mortal, I had almost said human, fleck is visible. Instead of the ordinary bridal gifts, he hallows his wife with an Epithalamion fit for a conscious G.o.ddess, and the "savage soil"[315] of Ireland becomes a turf of Arcady under her feet, where the merchants' daughters of the town are no more at home than the angels and the fair shapes of pagan mythology whom they meet there. He seems to have had a common-sense side to him, and could look at things (if we may judge by his tract on Irish affairs) in a practical and even hard way; but the moment he turned toward poetry he fulfilled the condition which his teacher Plato imposes on poets, and had not a particle of prosaic understanding left. His fancy, habitually moving about in worlds not realized, unrealizes everything at a touch. The critics blame him because in his Prothalamion the subjects of it enter on the Thames as swans and leave it at Temple Gardens as n.o.ble damsels; but to those who are grown familiar with his imaginary world such a transformation seems as natural as in the old legend of the Knight of the Swan.

"Come now ye damsels, daughters of Delight, Help quickly her to dight: But first come ye, fair Hours, which were begot In Jove's sweet paradise of Day and Night, ...

And ye three handmaids of the Cyprian Queen, The which do still adorn her beauty's pride, Help to adorn my beautifulest bride.

"Crown ye G.o.d Bacchus with a coronal, And Hymen also crown with wreaths of vine, And let the Graces dance unto the rest,-- For they can do it best.

The whiles the maidens do their carols sing, To which the woods shall answer and their echo ring."

The whole Epithalamion is very n.o.ble, with an organ-like roll and majesty of numbers, while it is instinct with the same joyousness which must have been the familiar mood of Spenser. It is no superficial and tiresome merriment, but a profound delight in the beauty of the universe and in that delicately surfaced nature of his which was its mirror and counterpart. Sadness was alien to him, and at funerals he was, to be sure, a decorous mourner, as could not fail with so sympathetic a temperament; but his condolences are graduated to the unimpa.s.sioned scale of social requirement. Even for Sir Philip Sidney his sighs are regulated by the official standard. It was in an unreal world that his affections found their true object and vent, and it is in an elegy of a lady whom he had never known that he puts into the mouth of a husband whom he has evaporated into a shepherd, the two most naturally pathetic verses he ever penned:--

"I hate the day because it lendeth light To see all things, but not my love to see."[316]

In the Epithalamion there is an epithet which has been much admired for its felicitous tenderness:--

"Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes And blesseth her with his two _happy_ hands."

But the purely impersonal pa.s.sion of the artist had already guided him to this lucky phrase. It is addressed by Holiness--a dame surely as far abstracted from the enthusiasms of love as we can readily conceive of--to Una, who, like the visionary Helen of Dr. Faustus, has every charm of womanhood, except that of being alive as Juliet and Beatrice are.

"O happy earth, Whereon thy innocent feet do ever tread!"[317]

Can we conceive of Una, the fall of whose foot would be as soft as that of a rose-leaf upon its mates already fallen,--can we conceive of her treading anything so sordid? No; it is only on some unsubstantial floor of dream that she walks securely, herself a dream. And it is only when Spenser has escaped thither, only when this glamour of fancy has rarefied his wife till she is grown almost as purely a creature of the imagination as the other ideal images with which he converses, that his feeling becomes as nearly pa.s.sionate--as nearly human, I was on the point of saying--as with him is possible. I am so far from blaming this idealizing property of his mind, that I find it admirable in him. It is his quality, not his defect. Without some touch of it life would be unendurable prose.

If I have called the world to which he transports us a world of unreality, I have wronged him. It is only a world of unrealism. It is from pots and pans and stocks and futile gossip and inch-long politics that he emanc.i.p.ates us, and makes us free of that to-morrow, always coming and never come, where ideas shall reign supreme.[318] But I am keeping my readers from the sweetest idealization that love ever wrought:--

"Unto this place whenas the elfin knight Approached, him seemed that the merry sound Of a shrill pipe, he playing heard on height, And many feet fast thumping the hollow ground, That through the woods their echo did rebound; He nigher drew to wit what it mote be.

There he a troop of ladies dancing found Full merrily and making gladful glee; And in the midst a shepherd piping he did see.

"He durst not enter into the open green For dread of them unwares to be descried, For breaking of their dance, if he were seen; But in the covert of the wood did bide Beholding all, yet of them unespied; There he did see that pleased so much his sight That even he himself his eyes envied, A hundred naked maidens lily-white, All ranged in a ring and dancing in delight.

"All they without were ranged in a ring, And danced round; but in the midst of them Three other ladies did both dance and sing, The while the rest them round about did hem, And like a garland did in compa.s.s stem.

And in the midst of these same three was placed Another damsel, as a precious gem Amidst a ring most richly well enchased, That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced.

"Look how the crown which Ariadne wove Upon her ivory forehead that same day, That Theseus her unto his bridal bore, (When the bold Centaurs made that b.l.o.o.d.y fray, With the fierce Lapithes, that did them dismay) Being now placed in the firmament, Through the bright heaven doth her beams display, And is unto the stars an ornament, Which round about her move in order excellent;

"Such was the beauty of this goodly band, Whose sundry parts were here too long to tell, But she that in the midst of them did stand, Seemed all the rest in beauty to excel, Crowned with a rosy garland that right well Did her beseem. And, ever as the crew About her danced, sweet flowers that far did smell, And fragrant odors they upon her threw; But most of all those three did her with gifts endue.

"Those were the graces, Daughters of Delight, Handmaids of Venus, which are wont to haunt Upon this hill and dance there, day and night; Those three to men all gifts of grace do grant And all that Venus in herself doth vaunt Is borrowed of them; but that fair one That in the midst was placed paravant, Was she to whom that shepherd piped alone, That made him pipe so merrily, as never none.

"She was, to weet, that jolly shepherd's la.s.s Which piped there unto that merry rout; That jolly shepherd that there piped was Poor Colin Clout; (who knows not Colin Clout?) He piped apace while they him danced about; Pipe, jolly shepherd, pipe thou now apace, Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place, Thy love is there advanced to be another Grace."[319]

Is there any pa.s.sage in any poet that so ripples and sparkles with simple delight as this? It is a sky of Italian April full of suns.h.i.+ne and the hidden ecstasy of larks. And we like it all the more that it reminds us of that pa.s.sage in his friend Sidney's _Arcadia_, where the shepherd-boy pipes "as if he would never be old." If we compare it with the mystical scene in Dante,[320] of which it is a reminiscence, it will seem almost like a bit of real life; but taken by itself it floats as unconcerned in our cares and sorrows and vulgarities as a sunset cloud. The sound of that pastoral pipe seems to come from as far away as Thessaly when Apollo was keeping sheep there. Sorrow, the great idealizer, had had the portrait of Beatrice on her easel for years, and every touch of her pencil transfigured the woman more and more into the glorified saint. But Elizabeth Nagle was a solid thing of flesh and blood, who would sit down at meat with the poet on the very day when he had thus beatified her. As Dante was drawn upward from heaven to heaven by the eyes of Beatrice, so was Spenser lifted away from the actual by those of that ideal Beauty whereof his mind had conceived the lineaments in its solitary musings over Plato, but of whose haunting presence the delicacy of his senses had already premonished him. The intrusion of the real world upon this supersensual mood of his wrought an instant disenchantment:--

"Much wondered Calidore at this strange sight Whose like before his eye had never seen, And, standing long astonished in sprite And rapt with pleasance, wist not what to ween, Whether it were the train of Beauty's Queen, Or Nymphs, or Fairies, or enchanted show With which his eyes might have deluded been, Therefore resolving what it was to know, Out of the woods he rose and toward them did go.

"But soon as he appeared to their view They vanished all away out of his sight And clean were gone, which way he never knew, All save the shepherd, who, for fell despite Of that displeasure, broke his bagpipe quite."

Ben Jonson said that "he had consumed a whole night looking to his great toe, about which he had seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination"; and Coleridge has told us how his "eyes made pictures when they were shut" This is not uncommon, but I fancy that Spenser was more habitually possessed by his imagination than is usual even with poets. His visions must have accompanied him "in glory and in joy" along the common thoroughfares of life and seemed to him, it may be suspected, more real than the men and women he met there. His "most fine spirit of sense" would have tended to keep him in this exalted mood. I must give an example of the sensuousness of which I have spoken :--

"And in the midst of all a fountain stood Of richest substance that on earth might be, So pure and s.h.i.+ny that the crystal flood Through every channel running one might see; Most goodly it with curious imagery Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys, Of which some seemed with lively jollity To fly about, playing their wanton toys, Whilst others did themselves embay in liquid joys.

"And over all, of purest gold was spread A trail of ivy in his native hue; For the rich metal was so colored That he who did not well avised it view Would surely deem it to be ivy true; Low his lascivious arms adown did creep That themselves dipping in the silver dew Their fleecy flowers they tenderly did steep, Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep.

"Infinite streams continually did well Out of this fountain, sweet and fair to see, The which into an ample laver fell, And shortly grew to so great quant.i.ty That like a little lake it seemed to be Whose depth exceeded not three cubits' height, That through the waves one might the bottom see All paved beneath with jasper s.h.i.+ning bright, That seemed the fountain in that sea did sail upright.

"And all the margent round about was set With shady laurel-trees, thence to defend The sunny beams which on the billows bet, And those which therein bathed mote offend.

As Guyou happened by the same to wend Two naked Damsels he therein espied, Which therein bathing seemed to contend And wrestle wantonly, ne cared to hide Their dainty parts from view of any which them eyed.

"Sometimes the one would lift the other quite Above the waters, and then down again Her plunge, as overmastered by might, Where both awhile would covered remain, And each the other from to rise restrain; The whiles their snowy limbs, as through a veil, So through the crystal waves appeared plain: Then suddenly both would themselves unhele, And the amorous sweet spoils to greedy eyes reveal.

"As that fair star, the messenger of morn, His dewy face out of the sea doth rear; Or as the Cyprian G.o.ddess, newly born Of the ocean's fruitful froth, did first appear; Such seemed they, and so their yellow hear Crystalline humor dropped down apace.

Whom such when Guyon saw, he drew him near, And somewhat gan relent his earnest pace; His stubborn breast gan secret pleasance to embrace.

"The wanton Maidens him espying, stood Gazing awhile at his unwonted guise; Then the one herself low ducked in the flood, Abashed that her a stranger did avise; But the other rather higher did arise, And her two lily paps aloft displayed, And all that might his melting heart entice To her delights, she unto him bewrayed; The rest, hid underneath, him more desirous made.

"With that the other likewise up arose, And her fair locks, which formerly were bound Up in one knot, she low adown did loose, Which flowing long and thick her clothed around, And the ivory in golden mantle gowned: So that fair spectacle from him was reft, Yet that which reft it no less fair was found; So hid in locks and waves from lookers' theft, Naught but her lovely face she for his looking left.

"Withal she laughed, and she blushed withal, That blus.h.i.+ng to her laughter gave more grace, And laughter to her blus.h.i.+ng, as did fall.

"Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, Of all that mote delight a dainty ear, Such as at once might not on living ground, Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: Right hard it was for wight which did it hear To read what manner music that mote be; For all that pleasing is to living ear Was there consorted in one harmony; Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.

"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade, Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet; The angelical soft trembling voices made To the instruments divine respondence mete; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; The gentle warbling wind low answered to all."

Spenser, in one of his letters to Harvey, had said, "Why, a G.o.d's name, may not we, as else the Greeks, have the kingdom of our own language?"