The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art

The action of each figure being now determinate, the next step will be to make a sketch in oil of the whole design; after which, living models, as like the artist's conception as can be found, must be procured, to make outlines of the nude of each figure, and again sketches of the same, draped in the proper costume.7

From these studies, the painter will prepare a second sketch, in outline, of the whole, being, in fact, a small and hasty cartoon.8

In this last preparation of the design, the chief care of the student will be the grouping, and the correct size and place of each figure; also the perspective of the architecture and ground plan will now have to be settled; a task requiring much patient calculation, and usually proving a source of disgust to the novice not endowed with much perseverance. But, above all, the quality to be most studied in this outline design will be the proportion of the whole work.

And with a few remarks on this quality, which might appropriately be termed “constructive beauty in art,” we will close this paper on “the Design,” as belonging more properly to the mechanical than the intellectual side of art; as being rather the slow growth of experience than the spontaneous impulse of the artistic temperament. It is a feature in art rather apt to savor of conventionality to such as would look on nature as the only school of art, who would consider it but as the exponent of thought and feeling; while, on the other hand, we fear it likely to be studied to little effect by such as receive with indiscriminate and phlegmatic avidity all that is handed down to them in the shape of experience or time-sanctioned rule. But plastic art claims not merely our sympathy, in its highest capacity to emit thought and sentiment; but as form, colour, light, life, and beauty; and who shall settle the claims between thought and beauty? But art has beauties of its own, which neither impair nor contradict the beauties of nature; but which are not of nature, and yet are, inasmuch as art itself is but part of nature: and of such, the beauties of the nature of art, is the feeling for constructive beauty. It interferes not with truth or sentiment; it is not the cause of unlikely order and improbable symmetry; it is not bounded by line or rule, nor taught by theory. It is a feeling for proportion, ever varying from an infinity of conflicting causes, that balances the picture as it balances the Gothic edifice; it is a germ planted in the breast of the artist, that gradually expands by cultivation.

To those who would foster its development the only rule we could offer would be never to leave a design, while they imagine they could alter for the better (subordinate to the truth of nature) the place of a single figure or group, or the direction of a line.

And to such as think it beneath their care we can only say that they neglect a refinement, of which every great master takes advantage to increase the fascination which beauty, feeling, or passion, exercises over the multitude.

A Testimony

I said of laughter: It is vain;—Of mirth I said: What profits it?—Therefore I found a book, and writTherein, how ease and also pain,How health and sickness, every oneIs vanity beneath the sun.Man walks in a vain shadow; heDisquieteth himself in vain.The things that were shall be again.The rivers do not fill the sea,But turn back to their secret source:The winds, too, turn upon their course.Our treasures, moth and rust corrupt;Or thieves break through and steal; or theyMake themselves wings and fly away.One man made merry as he supp'd,Nor guessed how when that night grew dim,His soul would be required of him.We build our houses on the sandComely withoutside, and within;But when the winds and rains beginTo beat on them, they cannot stand;They perish, quickly overthrown,Loose at the hidden basement stone.All things are vanity, I said:Yea vanity of vanities.The rich man dies; and the poor dies:The worm feeds sweetly on the dead.Whatso thou lackest, keep this trust:—All in the end shall have but dust.The one inheritance, which bestAnd worst alike shall find and share.The wicked cease from troubling there,And there the weary are at rest;There all the wisdom of the wiseIs vanity of vanities.Man flourishes as a green leaf,And as a leaf doth pass away;Or, as a shade that cannot stay,And leaves no track, his course is brief:Yet doth man hope and fear and planTill he is dead:—oh foolish man!Our eyes cannot be satisfiedWith seeing; nor our ears be fill'dWith hearing: yet we plant and build,And buy, and make our borders wide:We gather wealth, we gather care,But know not who shall be our heir.Why should we hasten to ariseSo early, and so late take rest?Our labor is not good; our bestHopes fade; our heart is stayed on lies:Verily, we sow wind; and weShall reap the whirlwind, verily.He who hath little shall not lack;He who hath plenty shall decay:Our fathers went; we pass away;Our children follow on our track:So generations fail, and soThey are renewed, and come and go.The earth is fattened with our dead;She swallows more and doth not cease;Therefore her wine and oil increaseAnd her sheaves are not numbered;Therefore her plants are green, and allHer pleasant trees lusty and tall.Therefore the maidens cease to sing,And the young men are very sad;Therefore the sowing is not glad,And weary is the harvesting.Of high and low, of great and small,Vanity is the lot of all.A king dwelt in Jerusalem:He was the wisest man on earth;He had all riches from his birth,And pleasures till he tired of them:Then, having tested all things, heWitnessed that all are vanity.

O When and Where

All knowledge hath taught me,All sorrow hath brought me,Are smothered sighsThat pleasure lies,Like the last gleam of evening's ray,So far and far away,—far away.Under the cold moist herbsNo wind the calm disturbs.O when and where?Nor here nor there.Grass cools my face, grief heats my heart.Will this life I swoon with never part?

Fancies at Leisure

I. Noon Rest

Following the river's course,We come to where the sedges plantTheir thickest twinings at its source;—A spot that makes the heart to pant,Feeling its rest and beauty. PullThe reeds' tops thro' your fingers; dullYour sense of the world's life; and tossThe thought away of hap or cross:Then shall the river seem to callYour name, and the slow quiet crawlBetween your eyelids like a swoon;And all the sounds at heat of noonAnd all the silence shall so singYour eyes asleep as that no wingOf bird in rustling by, no proneWillow-branch on your hair, no droneDroning about and past you,—noughtMay soon avail to rouse you, caughtWith sleep thro' heat in the sun's light,—So good, tho' losing sound and sight,You scarce would waken, if you might.

II. A Quiet Place

My friend, are not the grasses here as tallAs you would wish to see? The runnell's fallOver the rise of pebbles, and its blinkOf shining points which, upon this side, sinkIn dark, yet still are there; this ragged craneSpreading his wings at seeing us with vainTerror, forsooth; the trees, a pulpy stockOf toadstools huddled round them; and the flock—Black wings after black wings—of ancient rookBy rook; has not the whole scene got a lookAs though we were the first whose breath should fanIn two this spider's web, to give a spanOf life more to three flies? See, there's a stoneSeems made for us to sit on. Have men goneBy here, and passed? or rested on that bankOr on this stone, yet seen no cause to thankFor the grass growing here so green and rank?

III. A Fall of Rain

It was at day-break my thought said:“The moon makes chequered chestnut-shadeThere by the south-side where the vineGrapples the wall; and if it shineThis evening thro' the boughs and leaves,And if the wind with silence weavesMore silence than itself, each stalkOf flower just swayed by it, we'll walk,Mary and I, when every fowlHides beak and eyes in breast, the owlOnly awake to hoot.”—But cloverIs beaten down now, and birds hover,Peering for shelter round; no bladeOf grass stands sharp and tall; men wadeThro' mire with frequent plashing stingOf rain upon their faces. Sing,Then, Mary, to me thro' the dark:But kiss me first: my hand shall markTime, pressing yours the while I hark.

IV. Sheer Waste

Is it a little thing to lie down hereBeside the water, looking into it,And see there grass and fallen leaves interknit,And small fish sometimes passing thro' some bitOf tangled grass where there's an outlet clear?And then a drift of wind perhaps will come,And blow the insects hovering all aboutInto the water. Some of them get out;Others swim with sharp twitches; and you doubtWhether of life or death for other some.Meanwhile the blueflies sway themselves alongOver the water's surface, or close by;Not one in ten beyond the grass will flyThat closely skirts the stream; nor will your eyeMeet any where the sunshine is not strong.After a time you find, you know not how,That it is quite a stretch of energyTo do what you have done unconsciously,—That is, pull up the grass; and then you seeYou may as well rise and be going now.So, having walked for a few steps, you fallBodily on the grass under the sun,And listen to the rustle, one by one,Of the trees' leaves; and soon the wind has doneFor a short space, and it is quiet all;Except because the rooks will make a cawJust now and then together: and the breezeSoon rises up again among the trees,Making the grass, moreover, bend and teaseYour face, but pleasantly. Mayhap the pawOf a dog touches you and makes you riseUpon one arm to pat him; and he licksYour hand for that. A child is throwing sticks,Hard by, at some half-dozen cows, which fixUpon him their unmoved contented eyes.The sun's heat now is painful. Scarce can youMove, and even less lie still. You shuffle then,Poised on your arms, again to shade. AgainThere comes a pleasant laxness on you. WhenYou have done enough of nothing, you will go.Some hours perhaps have passed. Say not you flingThese hours or such-like recklessly away.Seeing the grass and sun and children, say,Is not this something more than idle play,Than careless waste? Is it a little thing?

The Light beyond

I

Though we may brood with keenest subtlety,Sending our reason forth, like Noah's dove,To know why we are here to die, hate, love,With Hope to lead and help our eyes to seeThrough labour daily in dim mystery,Like those who in dense theatre and hall,When fire breaks out or weight-strained rafters fall,Towards some egress struggle doubtfully;Though we through silent midnight may addressThe mind to many a speculative page,Yearning to solve our wrongs and wretchedness,Yet duty and wise passiveness are won,—(So it hath been and is from age to age)—Though we be blind, by doubting not the sun.

II

Bear on to death serenely, day by day,Midst losses, gains, toil, and monotony,The ignorance of social apathy,And artifice which men to men display:Like one who tramps a long and lonely wayUnder the constant rain's inclemency,With vast clouds drifting in obscurity,And sudden lightnings in the welkin grey.To-morrow may be bright with healthy pleasure,Banishing discontents and vain defiance:The pearly clouds will pass to a slow measure,Wayfarers walk the dusty road in joyance,The wide heaths spread far in the sun's alliance,Among the furze inviting us to leisure.

III

Vanity, say they, quoting him of old.Yet, if full knowledge lifted us sereneTo look beyond mortality's stern screen,A reconciling vision could be told,Brighter than western clouds or shapes of goldThat change in amber fires,—or the demesneOf ever mystic sleep. Mists intervene,Which then would melt, to show our eyesight boldFrom God a perfect chain throughout the skies,Like Jacob's ladder light with winged men.And as this world, all notched to terrene eyesWith Alpine ranges, smoothes to higher ken,So death and sin and social miseries;By God fixed as His bow o'er moor and fen.

The Blessed Damozel

The blessed Damozel leaned outFrom the gold bar of Heaven:Her blue grave eyes were deeper muchThan a deep water, even.She had three lilies in her hand,And the stars in her hair were seven.Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,No wrought flowers did adorn,But a white rose of Mary's giftOn the neck meetly worn;And her hair, lying down her back,Was yellow like ripe corn.Herseemed she scarce had been a dayOne of God's choristers;The wonder was not yet quite goneFrom that still look of hers;Albeit to them she left, her dayHad counted as ten years.(To one it is ten years of years:........ Yet now, here in this placeSurely she leaned o'er me,—her hairFell all about my face.........Nothing: the Autumn-fall of leaves.The whole year sets apace.)It was the terrace of God's houseThat she was standing on,—By God built over the sheer depthIn which Space is begun;So high, that looking downward thence,She could scarce see the sun.It lies from Heaven across the floodOf ether, as a bridge.Beneath, the tides of day and nightWith flame and blackness ridgeThe void, as low as where this earthSpins like a fretful midge.But in those tracts, with her, it wasThe peace of utter lightAnd silence. For no breeze may stirAlong the steady flightO seraphim; no echo there,Beyond all depth or height.Heard hardly, some of her new friends,Playing at holy games,Spake, gentle-mouthed, among themselves,Their virginal chaste names;And the souls, mounting up to God,Went by her like thin flames.And still she bowed herself, and stoopedInto the vast waste calm;Till her bosom's pressure must have madeThe bar she leaned on warm,And the lilies lay as if asleepAlong her bended arm.From the fixt lull of heaven, she sawTime, like a pulse, shake fierceThrough all the worlds. Her gaze still strove,In that steep gulph, to pierceThe swarm: and then she spake, as whenThe 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 himTo the deep wells of light,And we will step down as to a streamAnd bathe there in God's sight.“We two will stand beside that shrine,Occult, withheld, untrod,Whose lamps tremble continuallyWith prayer sent up to God;And where each need, revealed, expectsIts patient period.“We two will lie i' the shadow ofThat living mystic treeWithin whose secret growth the DoveSometimes is felt to be,While every leaf that His plumes touchSaith His name audibly.“And I myself will teach to him—I myself, lying so,—The songs I sing here; which his mouthShall pause in, hushed and slow,Finding some knowledge at each pauseAnd some new thing to know.”(Alas! to her wise simple mindThese things were all but knownBefore: they trembled on her sense,—Her voice had caught their tone.Alas for lonely Heaven! AlasFor life wrung out alone!Alas, and though the end were reached?........Was thy part understoodOr borne in trust? And for her sakeShall this too be found good?—May the close lips that knew not prayerPraise ever, though they would?)“We two,” she said, “will seek the grovesWhere the lady Mary is,With her five handmaidens, whose namesAre five sweet symphonies:—Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,Margaret, and Rosalys.“Circle-wise sit they, with bound locksAnd bosoms covered;Into the fine cloth, white like flame,Weaving the golden thread,To fashion the birth-robes for themWho are just born, being dead.“He shall fear haply, and be dumb.Then I will lay my cheekTo his, and tell about our love,Not once abashed or weak:And the dear Mother will approveMy pride, and let me speak.“Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,To Him round whom all soulsKneel—the unnumber'd solemn headsBowed with their aureoles:And Angels, meeting us, shall singTo their citherns and citoles.“There will I ask of Christ the LordThus much for him and me:—To have more blessing than on earthIn nowise; but to beAs then we were,—being as thenAt peace. Yea, verily.“Yea, verily; when he is comeWe will do thus and thus:Till this my vigil seem quite strangeAnd 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, filledWith Angels, in strong level lapse.Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.(I saw her smile.) But soon their flightWas vague 'mid the poised spheres.And then she cast her arms alongThe 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 assume 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,” constitutes, 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: ‘ThouHast 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 passion 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 God; the third, “The New Sirens,” though passionate in utterance, is, in purpose, a rejection of passion, 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 outgrowsMan'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 missedIf birth proceeds, if things subsist;The life of plants and stones and rain;The life he craves:—if not in vainFate 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-passive 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 passage from which claims to be quoted, not less for its vividness as description, than in illustration of this thought:—

“In vain, therefore, with wistful eyesGazing up hither, the poor manWho loiters by the high-heaped boothsBelow there in the Registan“Says: ‘Happy he who lodges there!With silken raiment, store of rice,And, for this drought, all kinds of fruits,Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,“‘With cherries served in drifts of snow.’In vain hath a king power to buildHouses, arcades, enamelled mosques,And to make orchard-closes filled“With curious fruit trees brought from far,With cisterns for the winter rain;And, in the desert, spacious innsIn divers places;—if that pain“Is not more lightened which he feels,If his will be not satisfied:And that it be not from all timeThe law is planted, to abide.”—pp. 47-8.

The author applies this basis of fixity in nature generally to the rules of man's nature, and avow himself a Quietist. Yet he would not despond, but contents himself, and waits. In no poem of the volume is this character more clearly defined and developed than in the sonnets “To a Republican Friend,” the first of which expresses concurrence in certain broad progressive principles of humanity: to the second we would call the reader's attention, as to an example of the author's more firm and serious writing:—

“Yet when I muse on what life is, I seemRather to patience prompted than that proudProspect of hope which France proclaims so loud;France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme:—Seeing this vale, this earth whereon we dream,Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the highUno'erleaped mountains of necessity,Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,When, bursting thro' the net-work superposedBy selfish occupation—plot and plan,Lust, avarice, envy,—liberated man,All difference with his fellow-man composed,Shall be left standing face to face with God.”—p. 57.

In the adjuration entitled “Stagyrus,” already mentioned, he prays to be set free

“From doubt, where all is double,Where Faiths are built on dust;”

and there seems continually recurring to him a haunting presage of the unprofitableness of the life, after which men have not “any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.” Where he speaks of resignation, after showing how the less impetuous and self-concentred natures can acquiesce in the order of this life, even were it to bring them back with an end unattained to the place whence they set forth; after showing how it is the poet's office to live rather than to act in and thro' the whole life round about him, he concludes thus:

“The world in which we live and moveOutlasts aversion, outlasts love.....Nay, and since death, which wipes out man,Finds him with many an unsolved plan,....Still gazing on the ever fullEternal mundane spectacle,This world in which we draw our breathIn some sense, Fausta, outlasts death.....Enough, we live:—and, if a lifeWith large results so little rife,Tho' bearable, seem scarcely worthThis pomp of worlds, this pain of birth,Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,The solemn hills around us spread,This stream that falls incessantly,The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,If I might lend their life a voice,Seem to bear rather than rejoice.And, even could the intemperate prayerMan iterates, while these forbear,For movement, for an ampler sphere,Pierce fate's impenetrable ear,Not milder is the general lotBecause our spirits have forgot,In actions's dizzying eddy whirled,The something that infects the world.”—pp. 125-8.—Resignation.

“Shall we,” he asks, “go hence and find that our vain dreams are not dead? Shall we follow our vague joys, and the old dead faces, and the dead hopes?”