Poets From England

"It was a mighty while ago."

"Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse,— Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. Death, ere thou hast slain another, Learn'd and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee."

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue... Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polished lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

"Past are three summers since she first beheld The ocean; all around the child await Some exclamation of amazement here. She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased, Is this the mighty ocean? is this all? That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,— Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold, Soul discontented with capacity,— Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say She was enchanted by the wicked spells Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed The western winds have landed on our coast? I since have watcht her in lone retreat, Have heard her sigh and soften out the name."

"Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walked along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse."

"There is delight in singing, though none hear Beside the singer."

"When we play the fool, how wide The theatre expands! beside, How long the audience sits before us! How many prompters! what a chorus!"

"'Tis verse that gives Immortal youth to mortal maids."

"We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake."

"Upon the work of Walter Landor I am unfit to speak with candor. If you can read it, well and good; But as for me, I never could."

"Little men in lofty places, who throw long shadows, because our sun is setting."

"Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked."

"Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then thrown into the dust or into the furnace."

"We must not indulge in unfavourable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain."

"Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one."

"There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodopè! that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last."

"Stand close around, ye Stygian set, with Dirce in the boat conveyed, Lest Charon, seeing her, forget, That he is old and she a shade."

"Wearers of rings and chains! Pray do not take the pains To set me right. In vain my faults ye quote; I write as others wrote On Sunium’s hight."

"I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence."

"Ah what avails the sceptered race, Ah what the form divine!"

"The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow."

"Around the child bend all the three Sweet Graces: Faith, Hope, Charity. Around the man bend other faces; Pride, Envy, Malice, are his Graces."

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art. I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart."

"Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee."

"The Siren waits thee, singing song for song."

"I attempt to describe Mr. Swinburne; and lo! the Bacchanal screams, the sterile Dolores sweats, serpents dance, men and women wrench, wriggle and foam in an endless alliteration of heated and meaningless words, the veriest garbage of Baudelaire flowered over with the epithets of the Della Cruscans."

"I must say that in my judgment Swinburne's claims are immeasurably superior to those of any Englishman now living... Please read in the Volume I send, published two years ago, the 'Seamew,' the 'Jacobite's Exile,' the 'Threnody on Inchbold,' and 'The Commonweal,' his Jubilee Ode, and then consider whether any can touch him as a Poet. I believe that in the long run Public opinion will be more shocked by his neglect than by his recognition."

"Mr. Swinburne is already the Poet Laureate of England. The fact that his appointment to this high post has not been degraded by official confirmation renders his position all the more unassailable. He whom all poets love is the Laureate Poet always."

"Mr. Swinburne … expresses in verse what he finds in books as passionately as a poet expresses what he finds in life."

"Swinburne was perpetually talking shop: the bookish spirit in which he looked on nature and mankind, with his head full of his own trade, is essentially the same as the spirit in which The Tailor and Cutter annually criticises the portraits in the Royal Academy, interested, not in the artist, not in the subject, but in the cut of the subject's clothes."

"I loved Swinburne and Masefield and all the other great sea poets."

"Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light. The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Æschylus. Fate, irreversible and inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we trace the sign, in the upshot of Othello or King Lear. The last step into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all English poets. With Shakespeare — and assuredly not with Æschylus — righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the masterdom of fate: but fate itself, in the tragic world of Webster, seems merely the servant or the synonym of chance. The two chief agents in his two great tragedies pass away — the phrase was, perhaps, unconsciously repeated — "in a mist": perplexed, indomitable, defiant of hope and fear bitter and sceptical and bloody in penitence or impenitence alike. And the mist which encompasses the departing spirits of these moody and mocking men of blood seems equally to involve the lives of their chastisers and their victims. Blind accident and blundering mishap — "such a mistake", says one of the criminals, "as I have often seen in a play" — are the steersmen of their fortunes and the doomsmen of their deeds. The effect of this method or the result of this view, whether adopted for dramatic objects or ingrained in the writer's temperament, is equally fit for pure tragedy and unfit for any form of drama not purely tragic in evolution and event."

"I. But he hears not. Now, my warrior guests, I drink to the onward passage of his soul Death. Had my hand turned coward or played me false, This man that is my hand, and less than I And less than he bloodguilty, this my death Had been my husband's: now he has left it me. [Drinks] How innocent are all but he and I No time is mine to tell you. Truth shall tell. I pardon thee, my husband: pardon me. [Dies]"

"Did I bid thee Mock, and forget me for thy friend — I say not, King? Is thy heart so light and lean a thing, So loose in faith and faint in love? I bade thee Stand to me, help me, hold my hand in thine And give my heart back answer. This it is, Old friend and fool, that gnaws my life in twain — The worm that writhes and feeds about my heart — The devil and God are crying in either ear One murderous word for ever, night and day, Dark day and deadly night and deadly day, Can she love thee who slewest her father? I Love her."

"Not from without us, only from within, Comes or can ever come upon us light Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight. No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win, No grace for guidance, no release from sin, Save of his own soul's giving."

"Stately, kindly, lordly friend Condescend Here to sit by me."

"Though they be Ill rulers of this household, be not thou Too swift to strike ere time be ripe to strike, Nor then by darkling stroke, against them: I Have erred, who thought by wrong to vanquish wrong, To smite by violence violence, and by night Put out the power of darkness: time shall bring A better way than mine, if God's will be — As how should God's will be not? — to redeem Venice. I was not worthy — nor may man, Till one as Christ shall come again, be found Worthy to think, speak, strike, foresee, foretell, The thought, the word, the stroke, the dawn, the day, That verily and indeed shall bid the dead Live, and this old dear land of all men's love Arise and shine for ever: but if Christ Came, haply such an one may come, and do With hands and heart as pure as his a work That priests themselves may mar not."

"They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay, To spill thy strong young life for truth to me, In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous: thou Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them Sustain my memory by the proof — if God Shall give thee grace to prove it — that thy name, Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears Rings truth, and means not treason."

"Farewell, and peace be with you if it may. I have lost, ye have won this hazard: yet perchance My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When time and God give judgment. If there be Truth, true is this, that I desired the right And ye with hands as red sustain the wrong As mine had been in triumph. Have your will: And God send each no bitterer end than mine."

"I believe Not more in God's word than in yours; and this Not for your station's sake, nor yet your fame's, How high soe'er the wind of war have blown The splendour of your standard: but, my lord, Your face and heart and speech, being one, require Of any not base-born and servile-souled Faith: and my faith I give you."

"Friends, citizens, and brethren. This our friend Hath given you by my charge to know of me Thus much, that if your ends and mine be one, As one our wrongs are, and this people's need One, toward the goal forefelt of our desire No heart shall beat, no foot shall press, no hand Strain, strive, and strike with steadier will than mine And faith more strenuous toward the purpose. This If ye believe not, here our hope hath end; If ye believe, here under happier stars Begins the date of Venice."

"So be it the wind and sun That reared thy limbs and lit thy veins with life Have blown and shone upon thee not for nought— If these have fed and fired thy spirit as mine With love, with faith that casts out fear, with joy, With trust in truth and pride in trust — if thou Be theirs indeed as theirs am I, with me Shalt thou take part and with my sea-folk — aye, Make thine eyes wide and give God wondering thanks That grace like ours is given thee — thou shalt bear Part of our praise for ever."

"A poor man's wrong and mine and all the world's, Diverse and individual, many and one, Insufferable of long-suffering less than God's, Of all endurance unendurable else, Being come to flood and fullness now, the tide Is risen in mine as in the sea's own heart To tempest and to triumph. Not for nought Am I that wild wife's bridegroom — old and hoar, Not sapless yet nor soulless."

"What sentence shall be given on mine? Of man, As ill or well God means me, well or ill Shall judgment pass upon me : but of God, If God himself be righteous or be God, Who being unrighteous were but god of hell, The sentence given shall judge me just..."

"God's own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous. Go."

"A crown and justice? Night and day Shall first be yoked together."

"Is not Precedent indeed a King of men?"

"Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last."

"The sweetest flowers in all the world— A baby's hands."

"Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat, They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet."