The Angel in the House

CANTO V

The Violets

PRELUDES

IThe ComparisonWhere she succeeds with cloudless brow,   In common and in holy course,He fails, in spite of prayer and vow   And agonies of faith and force;Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails   To righteous life, his virtuous deedsLack beauty, virtue’s badge; she fails   More graciously than he succeeds.Her spirit, compact of gentleness,   If Heaven postpones or grants her pray’r,Conceives no pride in its success,   And in its failure no despair;But his, enamour’d of its hurt,   Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,Crows from the dunghill of desert,   And wags its ugly wings for pride.He’s never young nor ripe; she grows   More infantine, auroral, mild,And still the more she lives and knows   The lovelier she’s express’d a child.Say that she wants the will of man   To conquer fame, not check’d by cross,Nor moved when others bless or ban;   She wants but what to have were loss.Or say she wants the patient brain   To track shy truth; her facile witAt that which he hunts down with pain   Flies straight, and does exactly hit.Were she but half of what she is,   He twice himself, mere love alone,Her special crown, as truth is his,   Gives title to the worthier throne;For love is substance, truth the form;   Truth without love were less than nought;But blindest love is sweet and warm,   And full of truth not shaped by thought,And therefore in herself she stands   Adorn’d with undeficient grace,Her happy virtues taking hands,   Each smiling in another’s face.So, dancing round the Tree of Life,   They make an Eden in her breast,While his, disjointed and at strife,   Proud-thoughted, do not bring him rest.IILove in TearsIf fate Love’s dear ambition mar,   And load his breast with hopeless pain,And seem to blot out sun and star,   Love, won or lost, is countless gain;His sorrow boasts a secret bliss   Which sorrow of itself beguiles,And Love in tears too noble is   For pity, save of Love in smiles.But, looking backward through his tears,   With vision of maturer scope,How often one dead joy appears   The platform of some better hope!And, let us own, the sharpest smart   Which human patience may endurePays light for that which leaves the heart   More generous, dignified, and pure.IIIProspective FaithThey safely walk in darkest ways   Whose youth is lighted from above,Where, through the senses’ silvery haze,   Dawns the veil’d moon of nuptial love.Who is the happy husband?  He   Who, scanning his unwedded life,Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,   ’Twas faithful to his future wife.IVVenus VictrixFatal in force, yet gentle in will,   Defeats, from her, are tender pacts,For, like the kindly lodestone, still   She’s drawn herself by what she attracts.

THE VIOLETS

1I went not to the Dean’s unbid:   I would not have my mystery,From her so delicately hid,   The guess of gossips at their tea.A long, long week, and not once there,   Had made my spirit sick and faint,And lack-love, foul as love is fair,   Perverted all things to complaint.How vain the world had grown to be!   How mean all people and their ways,How ignorant their sympathy,   And how impertinent their praise;What they for virtuousness esteem’d,   How far removed from heavenly right;What pettiness their trouble seem’d,   How undelightful their delight;To my necessity how strange   The sunshine and the song of birds;How dull the clouds’ continual change,   How foolishly content the herds;How unaccountable the law   Which bade me sit in blindness here,While she, the sun by which I saw,   Shed splendour in an idle sphere!And then I kiss’d her stolen glove,   And sigh’d to reckon and defineThe modes of martyrdom in love,   And how far each one might be mine.I thought how love, whose vast estate   Is earth and air and sun and sea,Encounters oft the beggar’s fate,   Despised on score of poverty;How Heaven, inscrutable in this,   Lets the gross general make or marThe destiny of love, which is   So tender and particular;How nature, as unnatural   And contradicting nature’s source,Which is but love, seems most of all   Well-pleased to harry true love’s course;How, many times, it comes to pass   That trifling shades of temperament,Affecting only one, alas,   Not love, but love’s success prevent;How manners often falsely paint   The man; how passionate respect,Hid by itself, may bear the taint   Of coldness and a dull neglect;And how a little outward dust   Can a clear merit quite o’ercloud,And make her fatally unjust,   And him desire a darker shroud;How senseless opportunity   Gives baser men the better chance;How powers, adverse else, agree   To cheat her in her ignorance;How Heaven its very self conspires   With man and nature against love,As pleased to couple cross desires,   And cross where they themselves approve.Wretched were life, if the end were now!   But this gives tears to dry despair,Faith shall be blest, we know not how,   And love fulfill’d, we know not where.2While thus I grieved, and kiss’d her glove,   My man brought in her note to say,Papa had hid her send his love,   And would I dine with them next day?They had learn’d and practised Purcell’s glee,   To sing it by to-morrow night.The Postscript was: Her sisters and she   Inclosed some violets, blue and white;She and her sisters found them where   I wager’d once no violets grew;So they had won the gloves.  And there   The violets lay, two white, one blue.

CANTO VI

The Dean

PRELUDES

IPerfect Love rareMost rare is still most noble found,   Most noble still most incomplete;Sad law, which leaves King Love uncrown’d   In this obscure, terrestrial seat!With bale more sweet than others’ bliss,   And bliss more wise than others’ bale,The secrets of the world are his.   And freedom without let or pale.O, zealous good, O, virtuous glee,   Religious, and without alloy,O, privilege high, which none but he   Who highly merits can enjoy;O, Love, who art that fabled sun   Which all the world with bounty loads,Without respect of realms, save one,   And gilds with double lustre Rhodes;A day of whose delicious life,   Though full of terrors, full of tears,Is better than of other life   A hundred thousand million years;Thy heavenly splendour magnifies   The least commixture of earth’s mould,Cheapens thyself in thine own eyes,   And makes the foolish mocker bold.IILove JustifiedWhat if my pole-star of respect   Be dim to others?  Shall their ‘Nay,’Presumably their own defect,   Invalidate my heart’s strong ‘Yea’?And can they rightly me condemn,   If I, with partial love, prefer?I am not more unjust to them,   But only not unjust to her.Leave us alone!  After awhile,   This pool of private charityShall make its continent an isle,   And roll, a world-embracing sea;This foolish zeal of lip for lip,   This fond, self-sanction’d, wilful zest,Is that elect relationship   Which forms and sanctions all the rest;This little germ of nuptial love,   Which springs so simply from the sod,The root is, as my song shall prove,   Of all our love to man and God.IIILove ServiceableWhat measure Fate to him shall mete   Is not the noble Lover’s care;He’s heart-sick with a longing sweet   To make her happy as she’s fair.Oh, misery, should she him refuse,   And so her dearest good mistake!His own success he thus pursues   With frantic zeal for her sole sake.To lose her were his life to blight,   Being loss to hers; to make her his,Except as helping her delight,   He calls but incidental bliss;And holding life as so much pelf   To buy her posies, learns this lore:He does not rightly love himself   Who does not love another more.IVA Riddle SolvedKind souls, you wonder why, love you,   When you, you wonder why, love none.We love, Fool, for the good we do,   Not that which unto us is done!

THE DEAN

1The Ladies rose.  I held the door,   And sigh’d, as her departing graceAssured me that she always wore   A heart as happy as her face;And, jealous of the winds that blew,   I dreaded, o’er the tasteless wine,What fortune momently might do   To hurt the hope that she’d be mine.2Towards my mark the Dean’s talk set:   He praised my ‘Notes on Abury,’Read when the Association met   At Sarum; he was pleased to seeI had not stopp’d, as some men had,   At Wrangler and Prize Poet; last,He hoped the business was not bad   I came about: then the wine pass’d.3A full glass prefaced my reply:   I loved his daughter, Honor; I toldMy estate and prospects; might I try   To win her?  At my words so boldMy sick heart sank.  Then he: He gave   His glad consent, if I could getHer love.  A dear, good Girl! she’d have   Only three thousand pounds as yet;More bye and bye.  Yes, his good will   Should go with me; he would not stir;He and my father in old time still   Wish’d I should one day marry her;But God so seldom lets us take   Our chosen pathway, when it liesIn steps that either mar or make   Or alter others’ destinies,That, though his blessing and his pray’r   Had help’d, should help, my suit, yet heLeft all to me, his passive share   Consent and opportunity.My chance, he hoped, was good: I’d won   Some name already; friends and placeAppear’d within my reach, but none   Her mind and manners would not grace.Girls love to see the men in whom   They invest their vanities admired;Besides, where goodness is, there room   For good to work will be desired.’Twas so with one now pass’d away;   And what she was at twenty-two,Honor was now; and he might say   Mine was a choice I could not rue.

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