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.4He ceased, and gave his hand.  He had won   (And all my heart was in my word),From me the affection of a son,   Whichever fortune Heaven conferr’d!Well, well, would I take more wine?  Then go   To her; she makes tea on the lawnThese fine warm afternoons.  And so   We went whither my soul was drawn;And her light-hearted ignorance   Of interest in our discourseFill’d me with love, and seem’d to enhance   Her beauty with pathetic force,As, through the flowery mazes sweet,   Fronting the wind that flutter’d blythe,And loved her shape, and kiss’d her feet,   Shown to their insteps proud and lithe,She approach’d, all mildness and young trust,   And ever her chaste and noble airGave to love’s feast its choicest gust,   A vague, faint augury of despair.

CANTO VII

Ætna and the Moon

PRELUDES

ILove’s ImmortalityHow vilely ’twere to misdeserve   The poet’s gift of perfect speech,In song to try, with trembling nerve,   The limit of its utmost reach,Only to sound the wretched praise   Of what to-morrow shall not be;So mocking with immortal bays   The cross-bones of mortality!I do not thus.  My faith is fast   That all the loveliness I singIs made to bear the mortal blast,   And blossom in a better Spring.Doubts of eternity ne’er cross   The Lover’s mind, divinely clear;For ever is the gain or loss   Which maddens him with hope or fear:So trifles serve for his relief,   And trifles make him sick and pale;And yet his pleasure and his grief   Are both on a majestic scale.The chance, indefinitely small,   Of issue infinitely great,Eclipses finite interests all,   And has the dignity of fate.IIHeaven and EarthHow long shall men deny the flower   Because its roots are in the earth,And crave with tears from God the dower   They have, and have despised as dearth,And scorn as low their human lot,   With frantic pride, too blind to seeThat standing on the head makes not   Either for ease or dignity!But fools shall feel like fools to find   (Too late inform’d) that angels’ mirthIs one in cause, and mode, and kind   With that which they profaned on earth.

ÆTNA AND THE MOON

1To soothe my heart I, feigning, seized   A pen, and, showering tears, declaredMy unfeign’d passion; sadly pleased   Only to dream that so I dared.Thus was the fervid truth confess’d,   But wild with paradox ran the plea.As wilfully in hope depress’d,   Yet bold beyond hope’s warranty:2‘O, more than dear, be more than just,   And do not deafly shut the door!I claim no right to speak; I trust   Mercy, not right; yet who has more?For, if more love makes not more fit,   Of claimants here none’s more nor less,Since your great worth does not permit   Degrees in our unworthiness.Yet, if there’s aught that can be done   With arduous labour of long years,By which you’ll say that you’ll be won,   O tell me, and I’ll dry my tears.Ah, no; if loving cannot move,   How foolishly must labour fail!The use of deeds is to show love;   If signs suffice let these avail:Your name pronounced brings to my heart   A feeling like the violet’s breath,Which does so much of heaven impart   It makes me amorous of death;The winds that in the garden toss   The Guelder-roses give me pain,Alarm me with the dread of loss,   Exhaust me with the dream of gain;I’m troubled by the clouds that move;   Tired by the breath which I respire;And ever, like a torch, my love,   Thus agitated, flames the higher;All’s hard that has not you for goal;   I scarce can move my hand to write,For love engages all my soul,   And leaves the body void of might;The wings of will spread idly, as do   The bird’s that in a vacuum lies;My breast, asleep with dreams of you,   Forgets to breathe, and bursts in sighs;I see no rest this side the grave,   No rest nor hope, from you apart;Your life is in the rose you gave,   Its perfume suffocates my heart;There’s no refreshment in the breeze;   The heaven o’erwhelms me with its blue;I faint beside the dancing seas;   Winds, skies, and waves are only you;The thought or act which not intends   You service seems a sin and shame;In that one only object ends   Conscience, religion, honour, fame.Ah, could I put off love!  Could we   Never have met!  What calm, what ease!Nay, but, alas, this remedy   Were ten times worse than the disease!For when, indifferent, I pursue   The world’s best pleasures for relief,My heart, still sickening back to you,   Finds none like memory of its grief;And, though ’twere very hell to hear   You felt such misery as I,All good, save you, were far less dear!   Than is that ill with which I dieWhere’er I go, wandering forlorn,   You are the world’s love, life, and glee:Oh, wretchedness not to be borne   If she that’s Love should not love me!’3I could not write another word,   Through pity for my own distress;And forth I went, untimely stirr’d   To make my misery more or less.I went, beneath the heated noon,   To where, in her simplicity,She sate at work; and, as the Moon   On Ætna smiles, she smiled on me.But, now and then, in cheek and eyes,   I saw, or fancied, such a glowAs when, in summer-evening skies,   Some say, ‘It lightens,’ some say, ‘No.’‘Honoria,’ I began—No more.   The Dean, by ill or happy hap,Came home; and Wolf burst in before,   And put his nose upon her lap.

CANTO VIII

Sarum Plain

PRELUDES

ILife of LifeWhat’s that, which, ere I spake, was gone?   So joyful and intense a sparkThat, whilst o’erhead the wonder shone,   The day, before but dull, grew dark.I do not know; but this I know,   That, had the splendour lived a year,The truth that I some heavenly show   Did see, could not be now more clear.This know I too: might mortal breath   Express the passion then inspired,Evil would die a natural death,   And nothing transient be desired;And error from the soul would pass,   And leave the senses pure and strongAs sunbeams.  But the best, alas,   Has neither memory nor tongue!IIThe RevelationAn idle poet, here and there,   Looks round him; but, for all the rest,The world, unfathomably fair,   Is duller than a witling’s jest.Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;   They lift their heavy lids, and look;And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,   They read with joy, then shut the book.And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,   And most forget; but, either way,That and the Child’s unheeded dream   Is all the light of all their day.IIIThe Spirit’s EpochsNot in the crises of events,   Of compass’d hopes, or fears fulfill’d,Or acts of gravest consequence,   Are life’s delight and depth reveal’d.The day of days was not the day;   That went before, or was postponed;The night Death took our lamp away   Was not the night on which we groan’d.I drew my bride, beneath the moon,   Across my threshold; happy hour!But, ah, the walk that afternoon   We saw the water-flags in flower!IVThe PrototypeLo, there, whence love, life, light are pour’d,   Veil’d with impenetrable rays,Amidst the presence of the Lord   Co-equal Wisdom laughs and plays.Female and male God made the man;   His image is the whole, not half;And in our love we dimly scan   The love which is between Himself.VThe Praise of LoveSpirit of Knowledge, grant me this:   A simple heart and subtle witTo praise the thing whose praise it is   That all which can be praised is it.

SARUM PLAIN

1Breakfast enjoy’d, ’mid hush of boughs   And perfumes thro’ the windows blown;Brief worship done, which still endows   The day with beauty not its own;With intervening pause, that paints   Each act with honour, life with calm(As old processions of the Saints   At every step have wands of palm),We rose; the ladies went to dress,   And soon return’d with smiles; and then,Plans fix’d, to which the Dean said ‘Yes,’   Once more we drove to Salisbury Plain.We past my house (observed with praise   By Mildred, Mary acquiesced),And left the old and lazy greys   Below the hill, and walk’d the rest.2The moods of love are like the wind,   And none knows whence or why they rise:I ne’er before felt heart and mind   So much affected through mine eyes.How cognate with the flatter’d air,   How form’d for earth’s familiar zone,She moved; how feeling and how fair   For others’ pleasure and her own!And, ah, the heaven of her face!   How, when she laugh’d, I seem’d to seeThe gladness of the primal grace,   And how, when grave, its dignity!Of all she was, the least not less   Delighted the devoted eye;No fold or fashion of her dress   Her fairness did not sanctify.I could not else than grieve.  What cause?   Was I not blest?  Was she not there?Likely my own?  Ah, that it was:   How like seem’d ‘likely’ to despair!3And yet to see her so benign,   So honourable and womanly,In every maiden kindness mine,   And full of gayest courtesy,Was pleasure so without alloy,   Such unreproved, sufficient bliss,I almost wish’d, the while, that joy   Might never further go than this.So much it was as now to walk,   And humbly by her gentle sideObserve her smile and hear her talk,   Could it be more to call her Bride?I feign’d her won: the mind finite,   Puzzled and fagg’d by stress and strainTo comprehend the whole delight,   Made bliss more hard to bear than pain.All good, save heart to hold, so summ’d   And grasp’d, the thought smote, like a knife,How laps’d mortality had numb’d   The feelings to the feast of life;How passing good breathes sweetest breath;   And love itself at highest revealsMore black than bright, commending death   By teaching how much life conceals.4But happier passions these subdued,   When from the close and sultry lane,With eyes made bright by what they view’d,   We emerged upon the mounded Plain.As to the breeze a flag unfurls,   My spirit expanded, sweetly embracedBy those same gusts that shook her curls   And vex’d the ribbon at her waist.To the future cast I future cares;   Breathed with a heart unfreighted, free,And laugh’d at the presumptuous airs   That with her muslins folded me;Till, one vague rack along my sky,   The thought that she might ne’er be mineLay half forgotten by the eye   So feasted with the sun’s warm shine.5By the great stones we chose our ground   For shade; and there, in converse sweet,Took luncheon.  On a little mound   Sat the three ladies; at their feetI sat; and smelt the heathy smell,   Pluck’d harebells, turn’d the telescopeTo the country round.  My life went well,   For once, without the wheels of hope;And I despised the Druid rocks   That scowl’d their chill gloom from above,Like churls whose stolid wisdom mocks   The lightness of immortal love.And, as we talk’d, my spirit quaff’d   The sparkling winds; the candid skiesAt our untruthful strangeness laugh’d;   I kiss’d with mine her smiling eyes;And sweet familiarness and awe   Prevail’d that hour on either part,And in the eternal light I saw   That she was mine; though yet my heartCould not conceive, nor would confess   Such contentation; and there grewMore form and more fair stateliness   Than heretofore between us two.

CANTO IX

Sahara

PRELUDES

IThe Wife’s TragedyMan must be pleased; but him to please   Is woman’s pleasure; down the gulfOf his condoled necessities   She casts her best, she flings herself.How often flings for nought, and yokes   Her heart to an icicle or whim,Whose each impatient word provokes   Another, not from her, but him;While she, too gentle even to force   His penitence by kind replies,Waits by, expecting his remorse,   With pardon in her pitying eyes;And if he once, by shame oppress’d,   A comfortable word confers,She leans and weeps against his breast,   And seems to think the sin was hers;And whilst his love has any life,   Or any eye to see her charms,At any time, she’s still his wife,   Dearly devoted to his arms;She loves with love that cannot tire;   And when, ah woe, she loves alone,Through passionate duty love springs higher,   As grass grows taller round a stone.IICommon GracesIs nature in thee too spiritless,   Ignoble, impotent, and dead,To prize her love and loveliness   The more for being thy daily bread?And art thou one of that vile crew   Which see no splendour in the sun,Praising alone the good that’s new,   Or over, or not yet begun?And has it dawn’d on thy dull wits   That love warms many as soft a nest,That, though swathed round with benefits,   Thou art not singularly blest?And fail thy thanks for gifts divine,   The common food of many a heart,Because they are not only thine?   Beware lest in the end thou artCast for thy pride forth from the fold,   Too good to feel the common graceOf blissful myriads who behold   For evermore the Father’s face.IIIThe Zest of LifeGive thanks.  It is not time misspent;   Worst fare this betters, and the best,Wanting this natural condiment,   Breeds crudeness, and will not digest.The grateful love the Giver’s law;   But those who eat, and look no higher,From sin or doubtful sanction draw   The biting sauce their feasts require.Give thanks for nought, if you’ve no more,   And, having all things, do not doubtThat nought, with thanks, is blest before   Whate’er the world can give, without.IVFool and WiseEndow the fool with sun and moon,   Being his, he holds them mean and low,But to the wise a little boon   Is great, because the giver’s so.

SAHARA

1I stood by Honor and the Dean,   They seated in the London train.A month from her! yet this had been,   Ere now, without such bitter pain.But neighbourhood makes parting light,   And distance remedy has none;Alone, she near, I felt as might   A blind man sitting in the sun;She near, all for the time was well;   Hope’s self, when we were far apart,With lonely feeling, like the smell   Of heath on mountains, fill’d my heart.To see her seem’d delight’s full scope,   And her kind smile, so clear of care,Ev’n then, though darkening all my hope,   Gilded the cloud of my despair.2She had forgot to bring a book.   I lent one; blamed the print for old;And did not tell her that she took   A Petrarch worth its weight in gold.I hoped she’d lose it; for my love   Was grown so dainty, high, and nice,It prized no luxury above   The sense of fruitless sacrifice.3The bell rang, and, with shrieks like death,   Link catching link, the long array,With ponderous pulse and fiery breath,   Proud of its burthen, swept away;And through the lingering crowd I broke,   Sought the hill-side, and thence, heart-sick,Beheld, far off, the little smoke   Along the landscape kindling quick.4What should I do, where should I go,   Now she was gone, my love! for mineShe was, whatever here below   Cross’d or usurp’d my right divine.Life, without her, was vain and gross,   The glory from the world was gone,And on the gardens of the Close   As on Sahara shone the sun.Oppress’d with her departed grace,   My thoughts on ill surmises fed;The harmful influence of the place   She went to fill’d my soul with dread.She, mixing with the people there,   Might come back alter’d, having caughtThe foolish, fashionable air   Of knowing all, and feeling nought.Or, giddy with her beauty’s praise,   She’d scorn our simple country life,Its wholesome nights and tranquil days.   And would not deign to be my Wife.‘My Wife,’ ‘my Wife,’ ah, tenderest word!   How oft, as fearful she might hear,Whispering that name of ‘Wife,’ I heard   The chiming of the inmost sphere.5I pass’d the home of my regret.   The clock was striking in the hall,And one sad window open yet,   Although the dews began to fall.Ah, distance show’d her beauty’s scope!   How light of heart and innocentThat loveliness which sicken’d hope   And wore the world for ornament!How perfectly her life was framed;   And, thought of in that passionate mood,How her affecting graces shamed   The vulgar life that was but good!6I wonder’d, would her bird be fed,   Her rose-plots water’d, she not by;Loading my breast with angry dread   Of light, unlikely injury.So, fill’d with love and fond remorse,   I paced the Close, its every partEndow’d with reliquary force   To heal and raise from death my heart.How tranquil and unsecular   The precinct!  Once, through yonder gate,I saw her go, and knew from far   Her love-lit form and gentle state.Her dress had brush’d this wicket; here   She turn’d her face, and laugh’d, with lightLike moonbeams on a wavering mere.   Weary beforehand of the night,I went; the blackbird, in the wood   Talk’d by himself, and eastward grewIn heaven the symbol of my mood,   Where one bright star engross’d the blue.