Alexander Smith

“ That tender greening of the black bough and the red field,—that coming again of the new-old flowers,—that re-birth of love in all the family of birds, with cooings, and caressings, and building of nests in wood and brake,—that strange glory of sunshine in the air,—that stirring of life in the green mould, making even churchyards beautiful,—seems like the creation of a new world. And yet—and yet, even with the lamb in the sunny field, the lark mile-high in the blue, Spring has her melancholy side, and bears a sadder burden to the heart than Autumn, preaching of decay with all his painted woods. ”

“ And sealed for Heaven by a mother's kiss.
I mix with men whose hearts of human flesh,
Beneath the petrifying touch of gold,
Have grown as stony as the trodden ways.
I see no trace of God, till in the night,
While the vast city lies in dreams of gain,
He doth reveal himself to me in heaven.
My heart swells to Him as the sea to the moon;
Therefore it is I love the midnight stars.
VIOLET.
I would I had a lover who could give
Such ample reasons for his loving me,
As you for loving stars! But to your task.
WALTER.
Wilt listen to the pictures of my life? ”

“ In the wake of a ship there is always a melancholy splendour. The finest set of verses of our modern time describes how the poet gazed on the "happy autumn fields," and remembered the "days that were no more." After all, a man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
In our warm imaginative youth, death is far removed from us, and attains thereby a certain picturesqueness. The grim thought stands in the ideal world as a ruin stands in a blooming landscape. The thought of death sheds a pathetic charm over everything then. ”

“ CHARLES.
He told me once,
The saddest thing that can befall a soul
Is when it loses faith in God and Woman;
For he had lost them both. Lost I those gems—
Though the world's throne stood empty in my path,
I would go wandering back into my childhood,
Searching for them with tears.
EDWARD.
Let him go
Alone upon his waste and dreary road,
He will return to the old faith he learned
Beside his mother's knee. That memory
That haunts him, as the sweet and gracious moon
Haunts the poor outcast Earth, will lead him back
To happiness and God.
CHARLES.
May it be so! ”

“ The young man cools himself with a thought of the winding-sheet and the charnel, as the heated dancer cools himself on the balcony with the night-air. The young imagination plays with the idea of death, makes a toy of it, just as a child plays with edge-tools till once it cuts its fingers. The most lugubrious poetry is written by very young and tolerably comfortable persons. When a man's mood becomes really serious he has little taste for such foolery. The man who has a grave or two in his heart, does not need to haunt churchyards. The young poet uses death as an antithesis ”

“ God is a worker. He has thickly strewn
Infinity with grandeur. God is Love;
He yet will wipe away Creation's tears,
And all the worlds shall summer in His smile.
Why work I not? The veriest mote that sports
Its one-day life within the sunny beam
Has its stern duties. Wherefore have I none?
[Pg 189] I will throw off this dead and useless past,
As a strong runner, straining for his life,
Unclasps a mantle to the hungry winds.
A mighty purpose rises large and slow
From out the fluctuations of my soul,
As, ghost-like, from the dim and tumbling sea
Starts the completed moon. ”

“ He sees marketable pathos in his friend's death-bed. He carries the peal of his daughter's marriage-bells into his sentences or his rhymes; and in these the music sounds sweeter to him than in the sunshine and the wind. If originally of a meditative, introspective mood, his profession can hardly fail to confirm and deepen his peculiar temperament. He begins to feel his own pulse curiously, and for a purpose. As a spy in the service of literature, he lives in the world and its concerns. Out of everything he seeks thoughts and images, as out of everything the bee seeks wax and honey. ”

“ The blushing blood miraculous doth range
From tender dawn to sunset. When she speaks
Her soul is shining through her earnest face,
As shines a moon through its up-swathing cloud—
My tongue's a very beggar in her praise,
It cannot gild her gold with all its words.
[Pg 128]
WALTER.
Hath unbreeched Cupid struck your heart of ice?
You speak of her as if you were her lover.
Could you not find a home within her heart?
No, no! you are too cold, you never loved.
EDWARD.
There's nothing colder than a desolate hearth. ”

“ Perhaps what he has seen of the world, its sins, its sorrows, its death-beds, its widows and orphans, has tamed his spirit and put a tenderness into his wit. I do not think I have ever encountered a man who so adorns his sacred profession. His pious, devout nature produces sermons just as naturally as my apple-trees produce apples. He is a tree that flowers every Sunday. Very beautiful in his reverence for the Book, his trust in it; through long acquaintance, its ideas have come to colour his entire thought, and you come upon its phrases in his ordinary speech. ”

“ Are high above your order, as the stars
Sit large and tranquil o'er the restless clouds
[Pg 120] That weep and lighten, pelt the earth with hail,
And fret themselves away. The truly great
Rest in the knowledge of their own deserts,
Nor seek the confirmation of the world.
Wouldst thou be calm and still?
WALTER.
I'd be as lieve
A minnow to leviathan, that draws
A furrow like a ship. Away! away!
You'd make the world a very oyster-bed.
I'd rather be the glad, bright-leaping foam,
Than the smooth sluggish sea. O let me live
To love and flush and thrill—or let me die! ”

“ And that joy is the greatest which, while felt to be joy, can include the thought of death and clothe itself with that crowning pathos. And in the minds of thoughtful persons every joy does, more or less, with the crowning pathos clothe itself.
In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You cannot lay a trap for it. It will fall into no ambuscade, concert it ever so cunningly. Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps. ”

“ Love in a cottage, with a broken window to let in the rain, is not my idea of comfort; no more is Dignity, walking forth richly clad, to whom every head uncovers, every knee grows supple. Bruin in winter-time fondly sucking his own paws, loses flesh; and love, feeding upon itself, dies of inanition. Take the candle of death in your hand, and walk through the stately galleries of the world, and their splendid furniture and array are as the tinsel armour and pasteboard goblets of a penny theatre; fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid. ”

“ You used to love the moon!
WALTER.
This mournful wind
Has surely been with Winter, 'tis so cold;
The dews are falling, Violet! Your cloak—
Draw it around you. Let the still night shine!
A star's a cold thing to a human heart,
And love is better than their radiance. Come!
Let us go in together.
[Pg 213]
AN EVENING AT HOME.
To-day a chief was buried—let him rest.
His country's bards are up like larks, and fill
With singing the wide heavens of his fame.
To-night I sit within my lonely room,
The atmosphere is full of misty rain,
Wretched the earth and heaven. ”

“ There is a Ship-man, whose beard has been shaken by many a tempest, whose cheek knows the kiss of the salt sea spray; a Merchant, with a grave look, clean and neat in his attire, and with plenty of gold in his purse. There is a Doctor of Physic, who has killed more men than the Knight, talking to a Clerk of Laws. There is a merry Friar, a lover of good cheer; and when seated in a tavern among his companions, singing songs it would be scarcely decorous to repeat, you may see his eyes twinkling in his head for joy, like stars on a frosty night. ”

“ Wrapt in Thy skies, what were my prayers to Thee?
My pangs? My tears of blood? They could not move
Thee from the depths of Thine immortal dream.
Thou hast forgotten me, God! Here, therefore, here,
To-night upon this bleak and cold hill-side,
Like a forsaken watch-fire will I die,
[Pg 148] And as my pale corse fronts the glittering night,
It shall reproach Thee before all Thy worlds."
His death did not disturb that ancient Night.
Scornfullest Night! Over the dead there hung
Greats gulfs of silence, blue, and strewn with stars—
No sound—no motion—in the eternal depths. ”

“ The portrait-painter is of all men the most beloved. You sit to him willingly, and put on your best looks. You are inclined to be pleased with his work, on account of the strong prepossession you entertain for his subject. To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation. It is an admirable excuse for egotism. You would not discourse on the falcon-like curve which distinguishes your nose, or the sweet serenity of your reposing lips, or the mildness of the eye that spreads a light over your countenance, in the presence of a fellow-creature for the whole world ”

“ I will go forth 'mong men, not mailed in scorn,
But in the armour of a pure intent.
Great duties are before me and great songs,
And whether crowned or crownless, when I fall
It matters not, so that God's work is done.
I've learned to prize the quiet lightning-deed,
Not the applauding thunder at its heels
Which men call Fame. Our night is past;
We stand in precious sunrise, and beyond
A long day stretches to the very end.
Look out, my beautiful, upon the sky!
Even puts on her jewels. Look! she sets,
Venus upon her brow. ”

“ The dead man is wise, but he is silent. We cannot wring his secret from him. We cannot interpret the ineffable calm which gathers on the rigid face. As a consequence, when our thought rests on death we are smitten with isolation and loneliness. We are without company on the dark road; and we have advanced so far upon it that we cannot hear the voices of our friends. It is in this sense of loneliness, this consciousness of identity and nothing more, that the terror of dying consists. And yet, compared to that road, the most populous thoroughfare of London or Pekin is a desert. ”

“ WALTER.
The man I loved
Wrought this complaint of thine into a song,
Which I sung long ago.
EDWARD.
We must reverse
[Pg 119] The plans of ages. Let the Body sweat,
So that the soul be calm, why should it work?
Say, had I spent the pith of half my life,
And made me master of our English law,
What gain had I on resurrection morn,
But such as hath the body of a clown,
That it could turn a summerset on earth?
A single soul is richer than all worlds,
Its acts are only shadows of itself,
And oft its wondrous wealth is all unknown ”

“ That a man should go to the stake for an opinion, was as incomprehensible to him as that a priest or king should send him there for an opinion. He thought the persecuted and the persecutors fools about equally matched. He was easy-tempered and humane—in the hunting-field he could not bear the cry of a dying hare with composure—martyr-burning had consequently no attraction for such a man. His scepticism came into play, his melancholy humour, his sense of the illimitable which surrounds man's life, and which mocks, defeats, flings back his thought upon himself. ”