Essays by Arthur Christopher Benson Part 16

"Or did you meet a pretty page, Sat swinging on the gate; Sat whistling, whistling like a bird-- Or may be slept too late-- With eaglets broidered on his cap, And eaglets on his glove?

If you had turned his pockets out, You had found some pledge of love."

"I met him at this daybreak, Scarce the east was red; Lest the creaking gate should anger you, I packed him off to bed."

"Oh patience, sister. Did you see A young man tall and strong, Swift-footed to uphold the right And to uproot the wrong, Come home across the desolate sea To woo me for his wife?

And in his heart my heart is locked, And in his life my life."

"I met a nameless man, sister.

Who loitered round our door; I said: 'Her husband loves her much.

And yet she loves him more.'"

"Fie, sister, fie; a wicked lie, A lie, a wicked lie.

I have none other love but him, Nor will have till I die; And you have turned him from our door, And stabbed him with a lie.

I will go seek him through the world In sorrow till I die."

"Go seek in sorrow, sister, And find in sorrow too; If thus you shame our father's name, My curse go forth with you."

But such writings, exquisite as they are, are but the outworks and bastions of the inner life. One could almost wish that Christina Rossetti were further removed by time and s.p.a.ce, and were pa.s.sed beyond the region of letters, biographies, and personal memoirs, which before long will possibly begin "to tear her heart before the crowd." Nowadays, in the excessive zest for personal information, which received such shameful incentives from Carlyle, and still more shameless encouragement from his biographers, we may thank G.o.d, as Tennyson did, that there are yet poets of whom we know as little as we know of Shakespeare, about whom even the utmost diligence of researchers has disinterred but a handful of sordid and humiliating facts.

But Miss Rossetti's poems are so pa.s.sionately human a doc.u.ment as to set one tracing by a sort of inevitable instinct the secrets of a buoyant and tender soul, sharpened and refined by blow after blow of harsh discipline. The same autobiographical savour haunts all her work as haunted the eager dramas of Charlotte Bronte, the first of women-writers of every age. Step by step it reveals itself, the sad and stately development of this august soul. The first tremulous outlook upon the intolerable loveliness of life, the fantastic melancholy of youth, the deep desire of love, the drawing nearer of the veiled star, disappointment, disillusionment, the over-powering rush of the melancholy, that had waited like a beast in ambush for moments of la.s.situde and reaction. Then was the crisis: would the wounded life creep on on a broken wing, or would the spiritual vitality suffice to fill the intolerable void? It did suffice; and the strength of the character that thus found repose was attested by the rational and temperate form of faith that ministered to the failing soul.

At such a moment the sensuous spirit is apt to slide into the luxurious self-surrender that Roman Catholicism permits. To me, indeed, it is a matter of profound surprise that Miss Rossetti did not fall into this temptation; but just as she had, with instinctive moderation, chosen the cool and temperate landscape of her adopted country, so the National Church of England, with its decorous moderation, its liberal generosity, its refined ardour, was the chosen home of this austere spirit. The other danger to be feared was that of a bitter renunciation of old delights, a sojourn in the wilderness of some arid and fantastic pietism. An elder sister of Miss Rossetti's indeed sought the elaborate seclusion of a religious house; and had D. G. Rossetti--to use the uncouth Puritan phrase--"found religion," there is no doubt that he too would have reverted to the Church of his fathers. But Miss Rossetti became, as Mr. Edmund Gosse has, in a penetrating criticism in the _Century Magazine_ (June 1893) pointed out, the poetess, not of Protestantism, but of Anglicanism.

We must retrace our steps for a moment, and touch first on Miss Rossetti's love lyrics. Very occasionally she allowed herself, in the early days, to speak of love with the generous abandon of an ardent spirit, as in the exquisite lyric where she still lingers in the pictorial splendours of the pre-Raphaelite school.

A BIRTHDAY.

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow sh.e.l.l That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a das of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates And peac.o.c.ks with a hundred eyes; Work in it gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleur-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

But, as a rule, her thoughts of love are clouded by some dark sense of loss, of having missed the satisfaction that the hungering soul might claim. Take two sonnets:

REMEMBER.

Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land, When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned; Only remember me. You understand, It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet, if you should forget me for a while, And afterwards remember, do not grieve; For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile, Than that you should remember and be sad.

AFTER DEATH.

The curtains were half-drawn, the floor was swept And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.

He leaned above me, thinking that I slept And could not hear him; but I heard him say, "Poor child, poor child!" and as he turned away Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.

He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold That hid my face, or take my hand in his, Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head.

He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is To know he still is warm, though I am cold.

In these sonnets the veil of some pathetic possibility unfulfilled is drawn reverently aside, and the soul-history is written in plain characters. But again the poet is more reticent; and only in sad allusions, incessantly recurring, in unhappy hints, she reveals the hunger of the spirit, the hand that was held out in hope for the heavenly bread, and closed upon a stone. After this the mood becomes one of reluctant certainty, with little bitterness or recrimination; the surrender is accepted, but the thought of what might have been is for ever present.

Then, as in some desolate estuary, the tide begins to set strongly in from the vast and wholesome sea. Sometimes a stoic note is struck of pure desolation, as in the n.o.ble lyric;--

UP-HILL.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place, A roof for when the slow dark hours begin?

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night, Those who have gone before?

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

But this bitterness is not enduring. From the first, even in what we may call her Pagan days, the sense of responsibility and deliberate choice had been hers. We venture to quote the n.o.ble allegory, "A Triad,"

omitted, in some vigorous revulsion of spirit, from her later writings:

Three sang of love together, one with lips Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow, Flushed to the yellow hair and finger tips; And one there sang who, soft and smooth as snow, Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show; And one was blue with famine after love, Who, like a harpstring snapped, rang harsh and low The burden of what those were singing of.

One shamed herself in love; one temperately Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife; One famished, died for love. Thus two of three Took death for love, and won him after strife.

One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee; All on the threshold, yet all short of life.

Into the service, then, of her religion, Miss Rossetti brought all the pa.s.sionate fervour of her unsatisfied heart, all her intense enthusiasm after art, and pa.s.sed steadily, we believe, to the forefront of all English religious poetry. She had not, perhaps, the curious felicity of George Herbert, but, on the other hand, she had the balanced simplicity that stepped clear of his elaborate conceit, the desperate euphuism of Crashaw, and even the pathetic refinement of Henry Vaughan. Again, her pa.s.sionate imagery put her ahead of the soft beauty of Keble, too apt to degenerate into a honied domesticity; above the pensive richness of Charles Wesley, whose Puritan outlook made his hand unsure; above even the divine ardour of Newman, whose technical dogmatism and paucity of human experience limited his range. With Miss Rossetti it was as the strong man armed, in the Gospel parable. When the stronger victor came, the spoil was annexed, and the ancient pride of defence was applied by a more dexterous hand. Can there be found in the rank of English religious poetry two more majestic lyrics than

A BETTER RESURRECTION.

I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.

Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but, dimmed with grief, No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf.

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk; Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk.

My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see.

Yet rise it shall--the sap of spring.

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold One drop of water for my soul Or cordial in the searching cold.

Cast in the fire the perished thing; Melt and remould it, till it be A royal cup for Him, my King.

O Jesus, drink of me.

Or the third of the "Old and New Year Ditties?"

Pa.s.sing away, saith the World, pa.s.sing away; Chances, beauty, and youth sapped day by day; Thy life never continueth in one stay, Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey That hath won neither laurel nor bay?

I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May; Thou, root-stricken, shall not rebuild thy decay On my bosom for aye.

Then I answered, Yea.

Pa.s.sing away, saith my Soul, pa.s.sing away, With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play.

Hearken what the past doth witness and say: Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array, A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.