Thomas Woolner - My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale
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Thomas Woolner >> My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale
MY BEAUTIFUL LADY.
NELLY DALE.
BY
THOMAS WOOLNER, R.A.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1887.
INTRODUCTION.
"A ray has pierced me from the highest heaven--
I have believed in worth; and do believe."
So runs Mr. Woolner's song, as it proceeds to show the issue of a noble
earthly love, one with the heavenly. Its issue is the life of high
endeavour, wherein
"They who would be something more
Than they who feast, and laugh and die, will hear
The voice of Duty, as the note of war,
Nerving their spirits to great enterprise,
And knitting every sinew for the charge."
This Library is based on a belief in worth, and on a knowledge of the
wide desire among men now to read books that are books, which "do," as
Milton says, "contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that
soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the
purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
When, therefore, as now happens for the second time, a man of genius who
has written with a hope to lift the hearts and minds of men by adding one
more true book to the treasures of the land, honours us by such
recognition of our aim, and fellow-feeling with it, that he gives up a
part of his exclusive right to his own work, and offers to make it freely
current with the other volumes of our series,--we take the gift, if we
may dare to say so, in the spirit of the giver, and are the happier for
such evidence that we are not working in vain.
Such evidence comes in other forms: as in letters from remote readers in
lonely settlements, from the far West, from sheep-farms in Australia,
from farthest India, from places to which these little volumes make their
way as pioneers; being almost the first real books that have there been
seen. To send a true voice over, for delight and support of earnest
workers who open their hearts wide to a good book in a way that we can
hardly understand,--we who live wastefully in the midst of plenty, and
are apt sometimes to leave to feed on the fair mountain and batten on the
moor,--is worth the while of any man of genius who puts his soul into his
work, as Mr. Woolner does.
Books in the "National Library" that come like those of Mr. Patmore and
Mr. Woolner are here as friends and companions. If they were not
esteemed highly they would not be here. Beyond that implied opinion
there is nothing to be said. He would be an ill-bred host who criticised
his guest, or spoke loud praise of him before his face. Nor does a well-
known man of our own day need personal introduction. It is only said, in
consideration that this book will be read by many who cannot know what is
known to those who have access to the works of artists, that Mr. Thomas
Woolner is a Royal Academician, and one of the foremost sculptors of our
day. For a couple of years, from 1877 to 1879, he was Professor of
Sculpture at the Royal Academy. A colossal statue by him in bronze of
Captain Cook was designed for a site overlooking Sydney Harbour. A
poet's mind has given life to his work on the marble, and when he was an
associate with Mr. Millais, Mr. Holman Hunt, and others, who, in 1850,
were endeavouring to bring truth and beauty of expression into art, by
the bold reaction against tame and insincere conventions for which Mr.
Ruskin pleaded and which the time required, Mr. Woolner joined in the
production by them of a magazine called "The Germ," to which some of the
verses in this volume were contributed.
There is no more to say; but through another page let Wordsworth speak
the praise of Books:
Yet is it just
That here, in memory of all books which lay
Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
Whether by native prose, or numerous verse.
That in the name of all inspired souls--
From Homer the great thunderer, from the voice
That roars along the bed of Jewish song,
And that more varied and elaborate,
Those trumpet tones of harmony that shake
Our shores in England--from those loftiest notes,
Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made
For cottagers and spinners at the wheel
And sunburnt travellers resting their tired limbs
Stretched under wayside hedgerows, ballad tunes
Food for the hungry ears of little ones
And of old men who have survived their joys--
'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
And of the men that framed them, whether known
Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
That I should here assert their rights, attest
Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
Their benediction; speak of them as Powers
For ever to be hallowed; only less,
For what we are and what we may become,
Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,
Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.
_Prelude, Book V_.
H. M.
MY BEAUTIFUL LADY. INTRODUCTION.
In some there lies a sorrow too profound
To find a voice or to reveal itself
Throughout the strain of daily toil, or thought,
Or during converse born of souls allied,
As aught men understand. And though mayhap
Their cheeks will thin or droop; and wane their eyes'
Frank lustre; hair may lose its hue, or fall;
And health may slacken low in force; and they
Are older than the warrant of their years;
Yet they to others seem to gild their lives
With cheerfulness, and every duty tend,
As if their aspects told the truth within.
But they are not as others: not for them
The bounding pulse, and ardour of desire,
The rapture and the wonder in things new;
The hope that palpitating enters where
Perfection smiles on universal life;
Nor do they with elastic enterprise
Forecast delight in compassing results;
Nor, having won their ends, fall godlike back
And taste the calm completion of content.
But in a sober chilled grey atmosphere
Work out their lives; more various though they are
Than creatures in the unknown ocean depths,
Yet each in whom this vital grief has root
Is dull to what makes everything of worth.
And though, may be, a shallow bodily joy
Oft tingles through them at the breathing spring,
Or first-heard exultation of the lark;
Still that deep weight draws ever steadily
Their thoughts and passions back to secret woe.
Though, if endowed with light, heroic deeds
May be achieved; and if benignly bent
They may be treasured blessings through their lives;
Yet power and goodness are to them as dreams,
And they heed vaguely, if their waking sight
Be met with slanting storm against the pane,
Or sunshine glittering on the leaves that play
In purest blue of breezy summer morns.
Whence springs this well of mournfulness profound,
Unfathomable to plummet cast by man?
Alas; for who can tell! Whence comes the wind
Heaving the ocean into maddened arms
That clutch and dash huge vessels on the rocks,
And scatter them, as if compacted slight
As little eggs boys star against a tree
In wanton mischief? Whence, detestable,
To man, who suffers from the monster-jaws,
The power that in the logging crocodiles'
Outrageous bulk puts evil fire of life?
That spouts from mountain-pyramids a flood
Of lava, overwhelming works and men
In burning, fetid ruin?--The power that stings
A city with a pestilence: or turns
The pretty babe, who in his mother's lap
Babbles her back the lavished kiss and laugh,
Through lusts and vassalage to obdurate sin,
Into a knife-armed midnight murderer?
Our lives are mysteries, and rarely scanned
As we read stories writ by mortal pen.
We can perchance but catch a straying weft
And trace the hinted texture here or there,
Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates.
Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed
With one bright child, a wonder in his years,
For loveliness and genius versatile:
Some common ill destroys him; parents, both,
Until their death, are left but living tombs
That hold the one dead image of their joy.
A man, the flower of honour, who has found
His well-beloved young daughter fled from home,
Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing
Tainting his blood. A youth who throws the strength
Of his whole being into love for one
Answering him honeyed smiles, and leaves his land
For some far country, seeking wealth he hopes
Will grace her daintily with choice delights,
And on returning sees the honeyed smiles
Are sweetening other lips. A husband who
Has found that household curse, a faithless wife.
A thinker whose far-piercing care perceives
His nation goes the road that ends in shame.
A gracious woman whose reserve denies
The power to utter what consumes her heart.
Such instances (and some a loss to know,
Which steadfast reticence will shield from those,
Debased or garrulous, whose hearts corrupt,
But learn the gloomy secrets of their kind
To poison-tip their wit, or grope and grin
With pharisaic laughter at disgrace)--
Such instances as these demand no guide
To thrid the dismal issues from their source!
But others are there, lying fast concealed,
Dark, hopeless, and unutterably sad,
Which have not been, and never may be known.
Then we may well call happy one whose grief,
Mixed up with sacred memories of the past,
Can tell to others how the tempest rose,
That struck and left him lonely in the world;
And who, narrating, feels his sorrow soothed,
By that respect which love and sorrow claim.
It much behoves us all, but chiefly those
Whom fate has favoured with an easy trust,
To keep a bridle upon restless speech
And thought: and not in flagrant haste prejudge
The first presentment as the rounded truth.
For true it is, that rapid thoughts, and freak
Of skimming word, and glance, more frequently
Than either malice, settled hate, or scorn,
Support confusion, and pervert the right;
Set up the weakling in the strong man's place;
And yoke the great one's strength to idleness;
Pour gold into the squanderer's purse, and suck
The wealth, which is a power, from their control
Who would have turned it unto noble use.
And oftentimes a man will strike his friend,
By random verbiage, with sharper pain
Than could a foe, yet scarcely mean him wrong;
For none can strip this complex masquerade
And know who languishes with secret wounds.
They whom the brunt of war has maimed in limb,
Who lean on crutches to sustain their weight,
Are manifest to all; and reverence
For their misfortunes kindly gains them place:
But wounds, sometimes more deep and dangerous,
We may in careless jostle through the crowd,
Gall and oppress, because to us unknown.
Then, howsoever by our needs impelled,
Let us resolve to move in gentleness;
Judge mildly when we doubt; and pause awhile
Before injustice palpably proclaimed
Ere we let fall the judgment stroke: against
Their ignominious craft, who ever wait
To filch another's right, we will maintain
Majestic peace in silence; knowing well
Their craft takes something richer from themselves.
It is but seemly to respect the great;
But never let us fail toward lowly ones;
Respecting more, in that they lack the force
To claim it of the world. For souls there are
Of poor capacities, whose purpose holds,
Throughout their unregarded lives, a worth,
And earnest law of fixed integrity,
That were an honour even unto those
Whose genius marks the boundaries of our race.
PART THE FIRST.
LOVE.
Love comes divinely, gladdening mortal life,
As sunrise dawns upon the gaze of one
Bewildered in some outland waste, and lost:
Who, lonely faint and shuddering, through the night
Heard savage creatures nigh; and far-off moan
Of tempests on the wind.
Auroral joy
Flushes the brow of childhood, warms his cheek
To rosier redness at the name of Love;
And earlier thoughts awake in darkness strive;
As unfledged nestlings move their sightless heads
At sound, toward a fair world to them unknown.
Young Hope scales azure mountain heights to gaze,
In Love's first golden and delicious dream.
He sees the earth a maze of tempting paths,
For blissful sauntering mid the crowded flowers
And music of the rills. No ambushed wrongs,
Or thwarting storms there baffle and surprise;
But lingering, man treads long an odorous way;
And at the close, with Love clasped hand in hand,
Sets in proud glory: thence to rise anon
With Love beyond the stars and rest in heaven.
Man, nerved by Love, can steadily endure
Clash of opposing interests; perplexed web
Of crosses that distracting clog advance:
In thickest storm of contest waxes stronger
At momentary thought of home, of her,
His gracious wife, and bright-faced joys.
To him
The wrinkled patriarch, who sits and suns
His shrunken form beneath the boughs he climbed
A lissom boy, whence comes that brooding smile,
Whose secret lifts his cheeks, and overflows
His sight with tender dew? What through his frame
Melts languor sweeter than approaching sleep
To one made weary by a hard day's toil?
It is the memory of primal love,
Whose visionary splendour steeped his life
In hues of heaven; and which grown open day,
Revealing perilous falls, his steps confined
Within the pathways to the noblest end.
Now following this dimmed glory, tired, his soul
Haunts ever the mysterious gates of Death;
And waits in patient reverence till his doom
Unfolding them fulfils immortal Love.
As from some height, on a wild day of cloud,
A wanderer, chilled and worn, perchance beholds
Move toward him through the landscape soaked in gloom
A golden beam of light; creating lakes,
And verdant pasture, farms, and villages;
And touching spires atop to flickering flame;
Disclosing herds of sober feeding kine;
And brightening on its way the woods to song;
As he, that wanderer, brightens when the shaft
Suddenly falls on him. A moment warmed,
He scarcely feels its loveliness before
The light departing leaves his saddened soul
More cold than ere it came.
Thus love once shone
And blessed my life: so vanished into gloom.
I. MY BEAUTIFUL LADY.
I love My Lady; she is very fair;
Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair:
Her spirit sits aloof, and high,
But glances from her tender eye
In sweetness droopingly.
As a young forest while the wind drives through,
My life is stirred when she breaks on my view;
Her beauty grants my will no choice
But silent awe, till she rejoice
My longing with her voice.
Her warbling voice, though ever low and mild,
Oft makes me feel as strong wine would a child:
And though her hand be airy light
Of touch, it moves me with its might,
As would a sudden fright.
A hawk high poised in air, whose nerved wing-tips
Tremble with might suppressed, before he dips,
In vigilance, hangs less intense
Than I, when her voice holds my sense
Contented in suspense.
Her mention of a thing, august or poor,
Makes it far nobler than it was before:
As where the sun strikes life will gush,
And what is pale receive a flush,
Rich hues, a richer blush.
My Lady's name, when I hear strangers use,
Not meaning her, sounds to me lax misuse;
I love none but My Lady's name;
Maud, Grace, Rose, Marian, all the same,
Are harsh, or blank and tame.
My Lady walks as I have seen a swan
Swim where a glory on the water shone:
There ends of willow branches ride,
Quivering in the flowing tide,
By the deep river's side.
Fresh beauties, howsoe'er she moves, are stirred:
As the sunned bosom of a humming bird
At each pant lifts some fiery hue,
Fierce gold, bewildering green or blue;
The same, yet ever new.
What time she walks beneath the flowering May,
Quite sure am I the scented blossoms say,
"O Lady with the sunlit hair!
Stay and drink our odorous air,
The incense that we bear:
"Thy beauty, Lady, we would ever shade;
For near to thee, our sweetness might not fade."
And could the trees be broken-hearted,
The green sap surely must have smarted,
When my Lady parted.
How beautiful she is! A glorious gem
She shines above the summer diadem
Of flowers! And when her light is seen
Among them, all in reverence lean
To her, their tending Queen.
A man so poor that want assaults his health,
Blessed with relief one morn in boundless wealth,
Breathes no such joy as mine, when she
Stands statelier, expecting me,
Than tall white lilies be:
And the white flutter of her robe to trace,
Where clematis and jasmine interlace,
Expands my gaze triumphantly:
Even such his gaze, who sees on high
His flag, for victory.
We wander forth unconsciously, because
The azure beauty of the evening draws;
When sober hues pervade the ground,
And universal life is drowned
Into hushed depths of sound.
We thread a copse where frequent bramble spray
With loose obtrusion from the side roots stray,
And force sweet pauses on our walk;
I lift one with my foot, and talk
About its leaves and stalk.
Or maybe that some thorn or prickly stem
Will take a prisoner her long garments' hem;
To disentangle it I kneel,
Oft wounding more than I can heal;
It makes her laugh, my zeal.
Or on before a thin-legged robin hops,
And leaping on a twig, he pertly stops,
Speaking a few clear notes, till nigh
We draw, when briskly he will fly
Into a bush close by.
A flock of goldfinches arrest their flight,
And wheeling round a birchen tree alight
Deep in its glittering leaves; and stay
Till scared at our approach, when they
Strike with vexed trills away.
I recollect My Lady in the wood,
Keeping her breath, while peering as she stood
There, balanced lightly on tiptoe,
To mark a nest built snug below,
Leaves shadowing her brow.
I recollect her puzzled, asking me,
What that strange tapping in the wood might be?
I told of gourmand thrushes, which,
To feast on morsels oosy rich,
Cracked poor snails' curling niche.
And then, as knight led captive, in romance,
Through postern and dark passage, past grim glance
Of arms; where from throned state the dame
He loved, in sumptuous blushes came
To him held dumb for shame:
Even so my spirit passed, and won, through fears
That trembled nigh despair; through foolish tears,
And hope fallen weak in breathless flight,
Where beamed in pure entrancing light
Love's beauty on my sight.
For when we reached a hollow, where the stone
And scattered fragments of the shells lay strown,
By margin of a weedy rill;
"This air," she said, "feels damp and chill,
We'll go home if you will."
"Make not my pathway dull so soon," I cried;
"See how yon clouds of rosy eventide
Roll out their splendour: while the breeze
Shifts gold from leaf to leaf, as these
Lithe saplings move at ease!"
Grateful, in her deep silence, one loud thrush
Startled the air with song; then every bush
Of covert songsters all awoke,
And all, as to their leader's stroke,
Into full chorus broke.
A lonely wind sighed up the pines, and sung
Of woes long past, forgot. My spirit hung
O'er awful gulfs: and loathly dread
So bitter was I wished me dead,
And from a great void said;
"Wait till its glory fade; the sun but burned
To light your loveliness!" The Lady turned
To me, flushed by its lingering rays,
Mute as a star. My frantic praise
Fixed wide her brightened gaze:
When, rapt in resolution, I told all
The mighty love I bore her; how would pall
My very breath of life, if she
For ever breathed not hers with me:--
Could I a spirit be,
How, vainly hoping to enrich her grace,
What gems and wonders would I snatch from space;
Would back through the vague distance beat,
Glowing with joy her smile to meet,
And heap them round her feet!
Her waist shook to my arm. She bowed her head
To mine in silence, and my fears had fled:
(Just then we heard a tolling bell.)
Ah no; it is not right to tell;
But I remember well
How dear the pressure of her warm young breast
Against my own, her home; how proud and blessed
I stood and felt her trickling tears,
While proudly murmuring in her ears
The hope of distant years.
The rest I keep: a holy charm, a source
Of secret strength and comfort on my course.
Her glory left my pathway bright;
And stars on stars throughout the night
Came blooming into light.
II. DAWN.
O lily with the heavenly sun
Shining upon thy breast!
My scattered passions toward thee run,
And poise to awful rest.
The darkness of our universe
Smothered my soul in night;
Thy glory shone; whereat the curse
Passed molten into light.
Raised over envy; freed from pain;
Beyond the storms of chance:
Blessed king of my own world I reign,
Controlling circumstance.
III. NOON.
Warble, warble, warble, O thou joyful bird!
Warble, lost in leaves that shade my happy head;
Warble loud delights, laud thy warm-breasted mate,
And warbling shout the riot of thy heart,
Thine utmost rapture cannot equal mine.
Flutter, flutter, and flash; crimson-winged flower,
Parted from thy stem grown in land of dreams!
Hover and tremble, flitting till thou findest,
Butterfly, thy treasure! Yet thou never canst
Find treasure rich as my contented rest.
Hum on contentedly, thou wandering bee!
Or pausing in chosen flowers drain their sweets;
From honeyed petal thou canst never sip
The sweetest sweet of sweets, as I from Love,--
From Love's warm mouth draw sweetest sweet of sweets.
Round, western wind, in grateful eddies sway,
Whisper deliciously the trembling flowers:
O could I fill thy vacancy as I
Am filled with happiness, thou'dst breathe such sounds
Their blooms should wane and waver sick for love;
Thou'dst utter rarer secrets than are blown
With yonder bean-fields' paradisal scents;--
These bean-field odours, lightly sweet and faint,
That tell of pastures sloping down to streams
Murmuring for ever on through sunny lands;
Where mountains gleam and bank to silvery heights
That scarce the greatest angel's wing can reach;
Where wondrous creatures float beneath the shade
Of growths sublime, unknown to mortal race;
Where hazes opaline lie tranced in dreams,
Where melodies are heard and die at will,
And little spirits make hot love to flowers.
Though broadly flaming, plain of yellow blossom,
A dazzling blaze of splendour in the noon!
And brightening open heaven, ye shining clouds,
With lustrous light that casts the azure dim!
Your radiance all united to the sun's
Were darkness to that glory born in me.
For Love's own voice has owned her love is mine;
And Love's own palm has pressed my palm to hers;
Love's own deep eyes have looked the love she spoke:
And Love's young heart to mine was fondly beating
As from her lips I sucked the sweet of life.
IV. NIGHT.
What trite old folly unharmonious sages
In dull books write or prattle day by day,
Of sin original and growing crime!
And commentating the advance of time,
Say wrong has fostered wrong for countless ages,
The strong ones marking down the weak for prey.
They bruit of wars--that thunder heard in dreams;
Huge insurrections, and dynastic changes
Resolved in blood. I marvel they of thought
By apprehensions are so often wrought
To state as fact what unto all men seems,
Who watch cloud-struggles blown through stormy ranges!
Why fill they not with love the printed page,
Illuminating, as yon moon the night,
Serenely shining on a world of beauty,
Where love moves ever hand in hand with duty;
And life, a long aspiring pilgrimage,
Makes labour but a pastime of delight!
It was delightfulness to him I found
Whistling this afternoon behind his team,
That stepped an easy comfortable pace;
While off the mould-iron curved in rolling grace
Dark earth, wave lapping wave, without a sound;
And all passed by me blissful, like a dream.
And those I noticed hoeing on the hill
Talking familiarly of homely things,
A daughter's marriage-day, a son's first child;
How the good Squire at length was reconciled,
Had overlooked the pheasant shot by Will:--
Chirruping on as any cricket sings.
And that complete Arcadian pastoral,
The piping boy who watched his feeding sheep;
And, as a little bird o'erflows with joy,
Piped on for hours my happy shepherd boy!
While, coiled below, his faithful animal
Basked in the sunshine, blinking, half asleep.
This silent night-wind bloweth heavenly pure;
Like dimpled warmth of an infantine face.
Lo, glimmering starlike in yon balmy vale
The village lights; each tells a little tale
Of humble comfort, where its inmates, sure
In hope, feel grateful in their lowly place.
And here My Lady's lighted oriel shines
A giant glowworm in the odorous gloom.
Ah, stands she smiling there in loose white gown,
Hearing the music of her future drown
The stillness and hushed whispering of the vines,
Whose lattice-clasping leaves o'ershade her room!
Or kneels she worshipful beside her bed
In large-eyed hope and bended lowliness,
To crave that He, the Giver, may impart
Enough of strength to bind her trembling heart
Steadfast and true; and that her will be led
To own His chastening cares pain but to bless?
Or sits she at her mirror, face to face
With her own loveliness? (O blessed land
That owns such twin perfections both together;
If guessed aright!) Ah, me; I wonder whether
She now her braided opulent hair unlace
And drop it billowing from her moonwhite hand!