Ah, but ye that extrude from the ocean your helpless faces, Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions, Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern not, Making your nest on the wave, and your bed on the crested billow, Skimming rough waters, and crowding wet sands that the tide shall return to, Cormorants, ducks, and gulls, fill ye my imagination!
Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.
V. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,--from Florence.
Dearest Miss Roper,--Alas! we are all at Florence quite safe, and You, we hear, are shut up! indeed, it is sadly distressing!
We were most lucky, they say, to get off when we did from the troubles.
Now you are really besieged; they tell us it soon will be over;Only I hope and trust without any fight in the city.
Do you see Mr. Claude?--I thought he might do something for you.
I am quite sure on occasion he really would wish to be useful.
What is he doing? I wonder;--still studying Vatican marbles?
Letters, I hope, pass through. We trust your brother is better.
VI. Claude to Eustace.
Juxtaposition, in fine; and what is juxtaposition?
Look you, we travel along in the railway-carriage or steamer, And, pour passer le temps, till the tedious journey be ended, Lay aside paper or book, to talk with the girl that is next one;And, pour passer le temps, with the terminus all but in prospect, Talk of eternal ties and marriages made in heaven.
Ah, did we really accept with a perfect heart the illusion!
Ah, did we really believe that the Present indeed is the Only!
Or through all transmutation, all shock and convulsion of passion, Feel we could carry undimmed, unextinguished, the light of our knowledge!
But for his funeral train which the bridegroom sees in the distance, Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage procession?
But for that final discharge, would he dare to enlist in that service?
But for that certain release, ever sign to that perilous contract?
But for that exit secure, ever bend to that treacherous doorway?--Ah, but the bride, meantime,--do you think she sees it as he does?
But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and larger existence, Think you that man could consent to be circumscribed here into action?
But for assurance within a limitless ocean divine, o'er Whose great tranquil depths unconscious the wind-tost surface Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and change and endure not,--But that in this, of a truth, we have our being, and know it, Think you we men could submit to live and move as we do here?
Ah, but the women,--God bless them! they don't think at all about it.
Yet we must eat and drink, as you say. And as limited beings Scarcely can hope to attain upon earth to an Actual Abstract, Leaving to God contemplation, to His hands knowledge confiding, Sure that in us if it perish, in Him it abideth and dies not, Let us in His sight accomplish our petty particular doings,--Yes, and contented sit down to the victual that He has provided.
Allah is great, no doubt, and Juxtaposition his prophet.
Ah, but the women, alas! they don't look at it that way.
Juxtaposition is great;--but, my friend, I fear me, the maiden Hardly would thank or acknowledge the lover that sought to obtain her, Not as the thing he would wish, but the thing he must even put up with,--Hardly would tender her hand to the wooer that candidly told her That she is but for a space, an ad-interim solace and pleasure,--That in the end she shall yield to a perfect and absolute something, Which I then for myself shall behold, and not another,--Which amid fondest endearments, meantime I forget not, forsake not Ah, ye feminine souls, so loving, and so exacting, Since we cannot escape, must we even submit to deceive you?
Since, so cruel is truth, sincerity shocks and revolts you, Will you have us your slaves to lie to you, flatter and--leave you?
VII. Claude to Eustace.
Juxtaposition is great,--but, you tell me, affinity greater.
Ah, my friend, there are many affinities, greater and lesser, Stronger and weaker; and each, by the favour of juxtaposition, Potent, efficient, in force,--for a time; but none, let me tell you, Save by the law of the land and the ruinous force of the will, ah, None, I fear me, at last quite sure to be final and perfect.
Lo, as I pace in the street, from the peasant-girl to the princess, Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto,--Vir sum, nihil faeminei,--and e'en to the uttermost circle, All that is Nature's is I, and I all things that are Nature's.
Yes, as I walk, I behold, in a luminous, large intuition, That I can be and become anything that I meet with or look at:
I am the ox in the dray, the ass with the garden-stuff panniers;I am the dog in the doorway, the kitten that plays in the window, On sunny slab of the ruin the furtive and fugitive lizard, Swallow above me that twitters, and fly that is buzzing about me;Yea, and detect, as I go, by a faint but a faithful assurance, E'en from the stones of the street, as from rocks or trees of the forest, Something of kindred, a common, though latent vitality, greets me;And to escape from our strivings, mistakings, misgrowths, and perversions, Fain could demand to return to that perfect and primitive silence, Fain be enfolded and fixed, as of old, in their rigid embraces.
VIII. Claude to Eustace.
And as I walk on my way, I behold them consorting and coupling;Faithful it seemeth, and fond, very fond, very probably faithful, All as I go on my way, with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life is beautiful, Eustace, entrancing, enchanting to look at;As are the streets of a city we pace while the carriage is changing, As a chamber filled-in with harmonious, exquisite pictures, Even so beautiful Earth; and could we eliminate only This vile hungering impulse, this demon within us of craving, Life were beatitude, living a perfect divine satisfaction.
IX. Claude to Eustace.
Mild monastic faces in quiet collegiate cloisters: