The Poet's Poet Part 15

... I would eat, and have all human joy, And know,--and know.

He continues,

But, for the Evening Star, I have it there.

I would not have it nearer. Is that love As thou dost understand? Yet is it mine As I would have it: to look down on me, Not loving and not cruel; to be bright, Out of my reach; to lighten me the dark When I lift eyes to it, and in the day To be forgotten. But of all things, far, Far off beyond me, otherwise no star.

Marlowe's closing words bring us to another important question, _i. e._, the stage of love at which it is most inspiring. This is the subject of much difference of opinion. Mrs. Browning might well inquire, in one of her love sonnets,

How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?

A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine Sad memory with thy songs to interfuse?

A shade, in which to sing, of palm or pine?

A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.

[Footnote: _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, XVII.]

Each of these situations has been celebrated as begetting the poet's inspiration.

To follow the process of elimination, we may first dispose of the married state as least likely to be spiritually creative. It is true that we find a number of poems addressed by poets to their wives. But these are more likely to be the contented purring of one who writes by a cozy fireside, than the pa.s.sionate cadence of one whose genius has been fanned to flame. One finds but a single champion of the married state considered abstractly. This is Alfred Austin, in whose poem, _The Poet and the Muse_, his genius explains to the newly betrothed poet:

How should you, poet, hope to sing?

The lute of love hath a single string.

Its note is sweet as the coo of the dove, But 'tis only one note, and the note is love.

But when once you have paired and built your nest, And can brood thereon with a settled breast, You will sing once more, and your voice will stir All hearts with the sweetness gained from her.

And perhaps even Alfred Austin's vote is canceled by his inconsistent statement in his poem on Petrarch, _At Vaucluse_,

Let this to lowlier bards atone, Whose unknown Laura is their own, Possessing and possessed:

Of whom if sooth they do not sing, 'Tis that near her they fold their wing To drop into her nest.

Let us not forget Sh.e.l.ley's expression of his need for his wife:

Ah, Mary dear, come to me soon; I am not well when thou art far; As twilight to the sphered moon, As sunset to the evening star, Thou, beloved, art to me.

[Footnote: _To Mary_.]

Perhaps it is unworthy quibbling to object that the figure here suggests too strongly Sh.e.l.ley's consciousness of the merely atmospheric function of Mary, in enhancing his own personality, as contrasted with the radiant divinity of Emilia Viviani, to whom he ascribes his creativeness. [Footnote: Compare Wordsworth, _She Was a Phantom of Delight_, _Dearer Far than Life_; Tennyson, _Dedication of Enoch Arden_.]

It is customary for our bards gallantly to explain that the completeness of their domestic happiness leaves them no lurking discontent to spur them onto verse writing. This is the conclusion of the happily wedded heroes of Bayard Taylor's _A Poet's Journal_, and of Coventry Patmore's _The Angel in the House_; likewise of the poet in J. G.

Holland's _Kathrina_, who excuses his waning inspiration after his marriage:

She, being all my world, had left no room For other occupation than my love.

... I had grown enervate In the warm atmosphere which I had breathed.

Taken as a whole, the evidence is decidedly in favor of the remote love, prevented in some way from reaching its culmination. To requote Alfred Noyes, the poet knows that ideal love must be

Far off, beyond me, otherwise no star.

[Footnote: Marlowe.]

In _Sister Songs_ Francis Thompson a.s.serts that such remoteness is essential to his genius:

I deem well why life unshared Was ordained me of yore.

In pairing time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat.

Were its love, forever by it, Never nigh it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine l.u.s.tre linger on its coat.

[Footnote: Possibly this is characteristic only of the male singer.

Christina Rossetti expresses the opposite att.i.tude in _Monna Innominata_ XIV, mourning for

The silence of a heart that sang its songs When youth and beauty made a summer morn, Silence of love that cannot sing again.]

Byron, in the _Lament of Ta.s.so_, causes that famous lover likewise to maintain that distance is necessary to idealization. He sighs,

Successful love may sate itself away.

The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate To have all feeling save the one decay, And every pa.s.sion into one dilate, As rapid rivers into ocean pour.

But ours is bottomless and hath no sh.o.r.e.

The manner of achieving this necessary remoteness is a nice problem. Of course the poet may choose it, with open eyes, as the Marlowe of Miss Peabody's imagination does, or as the minstrel in Hewlitt's _Cormac, Son of Ogmond_. The long engagements of Rossetti and Tennyson are often quoted as exemplifying this idiosyncrasy of poets. But there is something decidedly awkward in such a situation, inasmuch as it is not till love becomes so intense as to eclipse the poet's pride and joy in poetry that it becomes effective as a muse. [Footnote: See Mrs.

Browning, Sonnet VII.

And this! this lute and song, loved yesterday, Are only dear, the singing angels know Because thy name moves right in what they say.]

The minor poet, to be sure, is often discovered solicitously feeling his pulse to gauge the effect of love on his rhymes, but one does not feel that his verse gains by it. Therefore, an external obstacle is usually made to intervene.

As often as not, this obstacle is the indifference of the beloved. One finds rejected poets by the dozens, mourning in the verse of our period.

The sweetheart's reasons are manifold; her suitor's inferior station and poverty being favorites. But one wonders if the primary reason may not be the quality of the love offered by the poet, whose extreme humility and idealization are likely to engender pride and contempt in the lady, she being unaware that it is the reflection of his own soul that the poet is worshipping in her. One can feel some sympathy with the lady in Thomas Hardy's _I Rose Up as My Custom Is_, who, when her lover's ghost discovers her beside a snoring spouse, confesses that she is content with her lot:

He makes no quest into my thoughts, But a poet wants to know What one has felt from earliest days, Why one thought not in other ways, And one's loves of long ago.

It may be, too, that an instinct for protection has something to do with the lady's rejection, for a recent poet has openly proclaimed the effect of attaining, in successful love, one step toward absolute beauty:

O beauty, as thy heart o'erflows In tender yielding unto me, A vast desire awakes and grows Unto forgetfulness of thee.

[Footnote: "A. E.," _The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty_.]

Rejection is apt to prove an obstacle of double worth to the poet, since it not only removes him to a distance where his lady's human frailties are less visible, so that the divine light shining through her seems less impeded, but it also fires him with a very human ambition to prove his transcendent worth and thus "get even" with his unappreciative beloved. [Footnote: See Joaquin Miller, _Ina_; G. L. Raymond, _"Loving,"_ from _A Life in Song_; Alexander Smith, _A Life Drama_.

Richard Realf in _Advice Gratis_ satirically depicts the lady's altruism in rejecting her lover:

It would strike fresh heat in your poet's verse If you dropped some aloes into his wine, They write supremely under a curse.]

There is danger, of course, that the disillusionment produced by the revelation of low ideals which the lady makes in her refusal will counterbalance these good effects. Still, though the poet is so egotistical toward all the world beside, in his att.i.tude toward his lady the humility which Emerson expresses in _The Sphinx_ is not without parallel in verse. Many singers follow him in his belief that the only worthy love is that for a being so superior that a return of love is impossible. [Footnote: See _The Sphinx_--

Have I a lover who is n.o.ble and free?

I would he were n.o.bler than to love me.

See also Walt Whitman, _Sometimes with One I Love_, and Mrs. Browning, "I never thought that anyone whom I could love would stoop to love me--the two things seemed clearly incompatible." Letter to Robert Browning, December 24, 1845.]

To poets who do not subscribe to Emerson's belief in one-sided attachments, Alexander Smith's _A Life Drama_ is a treasury of suggestions as to devices by which the poet's lady may be kept at sufficient distance to be useful. With the aid of intercalations Smith exhibits the poet removed from his lady by scornful rejection, by parental restraint, by an unhappy marriage, by self-reproach, and by death. All these devices have been popular in our poetry.

The lady's marriage is seldom felt to be an insuperable barrier to love, though it is effective in removing her to a suitable distance for idealization. The poet's worship is so supersensual as to be inoffensive. To confine ourselves to poetic dramas treating historical poets,--Beatrice,[Footnote: G. L. Raymond's and S. K. Wiley's dramas, _Dante_, and _Dante and Beatrice_.] Laura, [Footnote: Cale Young Rice, _A Night in Avignon_.] Vittoria Colonna, [Footnote: Longfellow, _Michael Angelo_.] and Alison [Footnote: Peabody, _Marlowe_.] are all married to one man while inspiring another. A characteristic autobiographical love poem of this type, is that of Francis Thompson, who a.s.serts the ideality of the poet's affection in his reference to

This soul which on thy soul is laid, As maid's breast upon breast of maid.

[Footnote: See also _Ad Amicam_, _Her Portrait_, _Ma.n.u.s Animon Pinxit_.]