Frederic Manning

“ Even tho’ I descend into the darkness of deep valleys,
Yet have mine eyes beheld the light,
And my heart treasureth it.
One, seeing thy face, loseth it not in dreams.
It shall abide with him through all the days;
And his heart treasureth it.
Earth dieth in the darkness, but when dawn cometh
Slowly the trees and hills grow into the light....
The heart of darkness cherisheth the dawn.
Who shall forget thee having seen thy face?
I have dreamed in my sleep of thee, as a man dreameth of a maiden. ”

“ Perhaps we are only the superfluities, the parings of ivory, the winnowed husks from the threshing, by-products in the creation of something more perfect; and perhaps the confused and obscure sense of an ideal, which works in us and is at once our desire and our despair, is a dim consciousness of the growth of this beauty, a desire and a despair of being one with it. But, if we could escape for a moment from the tyranny of our own selves, the illusion of our own momentary existence, we might learn to rejoice in the knowledge, that beauty exists, if not in us, at least somewhere in the world. ”

“ In the wheat, With the sunlight gilding their greaves, Helmets, and shields, and mail, They lay, strewn thickly as leaves When Autumn has swung his flail. But afar, where Thermodon rolled The deep, swift strength of its flood To the ocean turbidly gold, Drave Theseus, eager for blood; And as herds stampede in affright At the reek of the beast in the air Precipitately through the night When a lion forth comes from his lair, So the women before him fled In a rout, headlong, overborne, For he drave as a beast all red, With the blood of the prey he had torn, Circled them round ”

“ Making thine images of ivory, stained with sanguine;
Strewing frail petals of roses before you;
Bringing you soft stuffs of sea-dyes,
Vermilion and saffron sandals,
Floating wimples of filmy webs, that veil you,
As clear water the glittering limbs
Of a nymph beloved of Pan.
But you come among us,
With sleepy eyelids, and a sleep-soft smile,
[Pg 7] Ere we have scraped our boots of the mud
That is half human....
You come, tho’ we are killing the lice in our shirts,
To fill our eyes with the wine of your vision,
Tho’ we are weary, and our hearts
Emptied of the old jests. ”

“ We would not, if we could, cut ourselves off from the dumb herd of humanity, with its obscure sufferings, its vague desires, its inarticulate and eternal pain."
"I should not ask it of you, Euripides," said Socrates gently.
He had a real love for Euripides, a real admiration for the mind which through its own tumult and discord had come at last into the possession of peace, and to the vision of a clear hope.
"If mankind with its blind follies makes me doubt the existence of a God," continued Euripides, "its miseries make me believe in one. I am not an enemy of knowledge ”

“ And, as she spoke, the face of Brunhild lit
With radiance from that old love, her face
Softened, and age was as a grace to her.
“Yea, I loved Sigebert; but all that love
Was but my childish wonder at the ways
Of men; and I clung close unto his strength.
Our friendship might have ripened slow like wine,
To be a cheer and comfort to our age,
Mellow with wisdom, tranquil, tolerant;
Yet is it but a shadow. Happiness
Is not the nurture of a steadfast soul;
But sorrow binds us with the bonds of love.
Love is a suffering, a sacrifice;
A hand put out toward all human pain ”

“ What are ye women doing? Get ye hence, Nor weary God with prayers. But when I die, Lay me not there among the peaceful graves Where sleep your puny saints. I would go hence, Over the loud ways of the sea again, In my black ship, with all the war-shields out, Nor, beaten, crawl unto the knees of God, To whine there a whipped hound. Yea, send me forth As when I sought rich lands, and glittering gold, And warm, white-breasted women, and red wine, And all the splendour and the lust of war. ”

“ Praise her lips made sweet with mirth,
Her grave eyes, that dreaming hold
Tears, which tremble ere their birth!
Yet what song shall snare the feet
Of white dawn upon the wheat?
Surely earth’s swift-changing grace,
Starry waters, starry skies
Fallen in some flower-loved place,
Speak such peace as speak her eyes;
There earth’s sudden wonders are
Glassed, as waters glass a star.
[Pg 40] When my lady climbs the stair,
Every wandering golden tress
Streams out, through the living air,
Like a flame for loveliness,
And my soul cries out in me:
What fair things God maketh be. ”

“ They are not present to us as objects to be perceived by the senses; if they move among us at all it is by stealth, and without leaving so much trace as a ship leaves upon the waves. But man has always believed that they are close to him, and has come to imagine them as haunting every green corner of the earth, each well, and wood, and hill, the blue depths of the sea and the wide regions of the air. We have a God to preside at our sowing and at our harvest, at our setting-forth and at our home-coming; there are gods of flocks and herds, of vineyards and olive groves, of rivers and of the sea. ”

“ Wherefore, though in the cold I wail my plight, And wander, through the hoary woods, alone, Hunted, and smitten of the wind and sleet, Among these rooted souls, I would not wrong The intense white flame of beauty mine eyes met, And married for a moment: in this pit My blinded soul feeds on her memories.
Go, thou, my song! Tell her, though weeping, yet Her face is mine: such joy have I in it I cannot shut the splendour from mine eyes. ”

“ No motion made the priest as Brunhild paused;
His eyes avoided hers. She was as one [45]
Towering over the departed years,
The sea of years her memory like a shell
Held echoes of, and reminiscent sounds.
And above all her insults and disgrace,
The burden of her age, the bitter wrongs,
She rose into a calm, majestic realm,
That eagles might inhabit, with her mind
Intent upon the spectacle of life,
Yet heedless of her fate; no shame could touch
The soul that breathed in so serene an air,
Superior to mortal accidents. ”

“ For she said that in our voyage through the world we are being reminded constantly of a previous existence, and that when we are brought face to face with beauty or with virtue or with truth, in short wherever we are moved to admiration as in contemplating a work of art like the chryselephantine Zeus at Olympia, it is the memory stirring in us of the place from which we came; and, further, she asked me if I had never felt an inexplicable sadness mingling with all beauty, as if beauty itself were inseparable from sorrow. ”