Richard Le Gallienne

“ He must turn his eyes away;
And the flowers and the faces he must pass by
With stern self-sacrificing eye.
For beauty and duty are strangers forever,
Work and wonder ever apart,
And the laws of life eternally sever
The ways of the brain from the ways of the heart;
Be it flower or pearl, or the face of a girl,
Or the ways of the waters as they swirl.
Lo! beauty is sorrow, and sorrowful men
Have no heart to look on the face of the sky,
Or hear the remorseful voice of the sea,
Or the song of the wandering wind in the tree,
Or even watch a butterfly. ”

“ Can't you imagine that to hear another say that her life is in one's hands makes one feel just a little solemn?"
"But isn't your life in mine, Henry?" asked Angel, simply.
"Of course it is, dear," answered Henry.
And then the moon began to rise through the trees, pouring enchantment over the sleeping woods, and the meadows half-submerged in lakes of mist.
Angel drew close to Henry, and watched it with big eyes.
"What a wonderful world it is! How beautiful and how sad!" she said, half to herself.
"Yes; there is nothing in the world so sad as beauty," answered Henry. ”

“ When a young husband and wife smile across to each other above the sleep of their little child—is that a limited thing? When the siren voices of the world blend together on the lips of a young poet, and with rapt eyes and hot heart he makes a song as of the morning stars—is that a limited thing? Are love, and genius, and duty done in the face of death—are these limited things? I think not—and man, indeed, knows better.
Greatness is not relative. It is absolute. It is not for man to depress himself by measuring himself against the eternities and the immensities external to him. ”

“ But for the fire in thee that melts her snows
For a brief spell
She loves thee—"loves" thee! Though thy heart should break,
Though thou shouldst lie athirst for her in hell,
She could not pity thee: who of the Rose,
Or of the Moon, asks pity, or return
Of love for love? and she is even as those.
Beauty is she, thou Love, and thou must learn,
O lover, this:
Thine is she for the music thou canst pour
Through her white limbs, the madness, the deep dream;
Thine, while thy kiss
Can sweep her flaming with thee down the stream
That is not thou nor she but merely bliss ”

“ Love for ever completes the world, for it is no future of higher achievement, no expectation of greater joy. It lives for ever in a present made perfect by itself. Love can dream of no greater blessedness than itself, of no heaven but its own. God himself could have added no touch of happiness to our happy hearts that grave and sunny morning. You philosophers who go searching for the meaning of life, thinkers reading so sadly, and let us hope so wrongly, the riddle of the world—life has but one meaning, the riddle but one answer—which is Love. ”

“ And the man with the strange wheel answered:
"I am the maker of rainbows. I am the alchemist of hope. To me November is always May, tears are always laughter that is going to be, and darkness is light misunderstood. The sad heart makes its own sorrow, the happy heart makes its own joy. The harvest is made by the harvestman—and there is nothing hard or black or weary that is not waiting for the magic touch of hope to become soft as a spring flower, bright as the morning star, and valiant as a young runner in the dawn." ”

“ I have a friend who is alive. He is alive in England. We have not met for twelve years. He never writes, and I never write. Perhaps we shall never meet, never even write to each other, again. It is our way, the way of many a friendship, none the less real for its silence—friendship by faith, one might say, rather than by correspondence. My dead friend is not more dumb, not more invisible. When these two friends meet me by the Christmas fire, will they not both alike be ghosts—both, in a sense, dead, but both, in a truer sense, alive? ”

“ I have often wondered where the countryfolk hide themselves, as I have walked hour after hour, past farm and croft and lonely door-yards, and never caught sight of a human face. If you should want to ask the way, a farmer is as shy as a squirrel, and if you knock at a farm-house door, all is as silent as a rabbit-warren.
As I walked along in the enchanted stillness, I came at length to a quaint old farm-house—"old Colonial" in its architecture—embowered in white lilacs, and surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple-trees which cast a rich shade on the deep spring grass. ”

“ You are an evil dream that has stolen from me the truth of life. I have broken a true heart that loved me, that would have died for me—for your sake; just to watch your loveless beauty, to hear the cold music of your voice. You are like the moon that turns men mad, a hollow shell of silver drawing all your light from the sun of life, a silver shadow of the golden sun."
But prayer and reproach were alike in vain. Silencieux remained unheeding, and Antony returned to watch by Beatrice's side, with a heart that had now no hope, and a soul weighed down with the sense of irrevocable sin. ”

“ Hovering over the sleeping lovers was a floating, flickering shape that seemed made of moonbeams, with two great shining stars for its eyes. It was the dream that came nightly to watch over the sleep of the lovers; and, as the miser gazed at it in wonder, a strange change came over his soul, and he saw that all the treasure he had hoarded so long—gathered by the cruel practices of years, and with which his back had grown bent carrying it about the world, was as dross compared with this beautiful dream of two poor lovers, to whom but one of all his gold pieces had seemed like a fortune. ”

“ PARABLES I Dear Love, you ask if I be true,
If other women move
The heart that only beats for you
With pulses all of love.
Out in the chilly dew one morn
I plucked a wild sweet rose,
A little silver bud new-born
And longing to unclose.
I took it, loving new-born things,
I knew my heart was warm,
'O little silver rose, come in
And shelter from the storm.'
And soon, against my body pressed,
I felt its petals part,
And, looking down within my breast
I saw its golden heart.
O such a golden heart it has,
Your eyes may never see,
To others it is always shut,
It opens but for me. ”

“ And the voice of my soul came sweet as the sound of bells at evening. It seemed, indeed, as though it could dream of naught sweeter than to die for one's friend.
This colloquy of inner and outer set me further reflecting. Can it be that this manhood is, after all, rather a quality of the spirit than of the body; that it is to be sought rather in the stout heart than in the strong arm; that big words and ready blows may, like a display of bunting, betoken no true loyalty, and be but the gaudy sign to a sorry inn? Dr. Watts, it may be remembered, declared the mind to be the standard of the man. ”

“ No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high moments, then can one say, "There, listen! that was Jenny."
Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. ”

“ If this oracular office of Nature be indeed a truth, our contemplation of her beauty and marvel is seen to be a method of illumination, and her varied spectacle actually a sacred book in picture-writing, a revelation through the eye of the soul of the stupendous purport of the universe. The sun and the moon are the torches by which we study its splendid pages, turning diurnally for our perusal, and in star and flower alike dwells the lore which we cannot formulate into thought, but can only come indescribably to know by loving the pictures. ”

“ Your feet of pearl and in your face
To look a little was over-much—
In heaven is no such fair a place
As, broken-hearted, at your feet
To lie there and to kiss them, sweet.
AT HER FEET My head is at your feet,
Two Cytherean doves,
The same, O cruel sweet,
As were the Queen of Love's;
They brush my dreaming brows
With silver fluttering beat,
Here in your golden house,
Beneath your feet.
No man that draweth breath
Is in such happy case:
My heart to itself saith—
Though kings gaze on her face,
I would not change my place;
To lie here is more sweet,
Here at her feet. ”

“ There are no girls beneath the sky
Like those of Spain.
All other women scarcely seem
More than pale women in a dream
By ours of Spain.
Ah! who aright shall tell their praise,—
Their subtle, soft, imperious ways,
Their high disdain.
Golden as bars of Spanish gold,
Hot as the sun, as the moon cold,
The girls of Spain.
Their faces as magnolias white,
Their hair the soul of summer night,
Soft as soft rain;
And swift as the steel blade that flies
Into a coward's heart their eyes,
Then soft again.
Under their little languid feet,
That carry such a world of sweet,
My heart lies slain. ”

“ The minstrel looked in the mirror and saw something far more wonderful than all these wonderful things.
He saw the face of the princess—eternally reflected there; for her love of her own beautiful face had turned the mirror into a magic glass. To worship oneself is the only way to make a beautiful face.
And as the minstrel looked into the mirror he sadly realized that he could never bring himself to sell it—and that he must go without his breakfast. The moon had fallen into his hand out of the sky. Could he, a poet, exchange this celestial windfall for a meal and a new doublet? ”

“ As the fragrance and colour of the rose must in some occult way be properties of the rude earth from which they are drawn by the sun, may not human love also be a kindly property of matter—that mysterious life-stuff in which is packed such marvellous potentialities? Evidently love must be somewhere in the universe—else it had not got into the heart of man; and perhaps pity slides down like an angel in the rays of the solar energy, while there is the potential beating of a human heart even in the hard crust of the carbon compounds. ”

“ She dare not hear the little innocent bird,
And a white flower made her poor head to hang—
To be so white! once she was white as curd,
But now—'Alack!' 'Alack!' She speaks no other word.
The pearly line on yonder hills afar
Within the dawn, when mounts the lark and sings
By the great angel of the morning star,—
That was his love, and all free fair fresh things
That move and glitter while the daylight springs:
To thus know love, and yet to spoil love thus!
To lose the dream—O silly beating wings—
Great dream so splendid and miraculous:
O Lord, O Lord, have mercy, have mercy upon us. ”

“ Sometimes it seemed as if the white face of Silencieux looked out from the woodside, and mocked her with the same cry: "Death is coming! Death is coming!"
Silencieux! Ah, how happy they had been before the coming of Silencieux! How frail is our happiness, how suddenly it can die! One moment it seems built for eternity, marble-based and glittering with towers,—the next, where it stood is lonely grass and dew, not a stone left. Ah, yes, how happy they had been; and then Antony by a heartless chance had seen Silencieux, and in an instant their happiness had been at an end for ever. ”

“ Nay, indeed, death does not so much rob as enrich the gifts of love. The dead face that was fair grows fairer each spring, sweet memories grow more sweet, what was silver is now gold, and as years go by, the very death of love becomes its immortality.
I think I shall never hear Elizabeth's voice again, never look into her eyes, never kiss her dear lips—but Elizabeth is still mine, and I am hers, as in that morning when we kissed in that little chancel amid the flickering light, and passed out into the sun and down the lanes, to our little home among the meadow-sweet. ”

“ But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death. ”

“ But of thy face did speak—
How shall all these endure, of thee forlorn?
The sad heart of the world grew glad through thee,
Happy, men toiled and spun
That had thy smile for fee;
So flowers seek the sun,
So singing rivers hasten to the sea.
Yet, though the world, bereft, should bleakly bloom,
And wanly make believe
Against the general doom,
For me the earth you leave
Shall be for ever but a haunted room;
Yea! though my heart beat on a little space,
When thou art strangely gone
To thy far hiding-place,
Soon shall I follow on,
Out-footing Death to over-take thy face. ”

“ In our eager fanaticism, indeed, we cannot conceive that there can be beauty in any other types as well. Yet, because we chance to have fallen under the spell of Botticelli, shall there be no more Titian? Our taste is for a beauty of dim silver and faded stars, a wistful twilight beauty made of sorrow and dreams, a beauty always half in the shadow, a white flower in the moonlight. We cannot conceive how beauty, for others, can be a thing of the hot sun, a thing of purple and orange and the hot sun, a thing of firm outlines, superbly concrete, marmoreal, sumptuous, magnificently animal. ”

“ Your face, your voice, again after these years!
Is it your face I see, your voice I hear,
And is this blessed rain, angel, your tears?
"WHEN THE LONG DAY HAS FADED" When the long day has faded to its end,
The flowers gone, and all the singing done,
And there is no companion left save Death—
Ah! there is one,
Though in her grave she lies this many a year,
Will send a violet made of her blue eyes,
A flowering whisper of her April breath,
Up through the sleeping grass to comfort me,
And in the April rain her tears shall fall. ”

“ Where every bosom heateth with a star—
At Rimini, anigh that crumbling strand
The Adriatic filcheth near and far—
In that same past where Dante's dream-days are,
That one Francesca gave her youthful gold
Unto an aged carle to bolt and bar;
Though all the love which great young hearts can hold,
How could she give that love unto a miser old?
Nay! but young Paolo was the happy lad,
A youth of dreaming eye yet dauntless foot,
Who all Francesca's wealth of loving had;
One brave to scale a wall and steal the fruit,
Nor fear because some dotard owned the root ”

“ Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some subtle air of hellish sweetness?
O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover.
Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest whisper of the real. ”

“ Me you may sacrifice, your own heart you may deny, in the weakness of human pity for human love; but, should this be, your life will be in secret broken, purposeless, and haunted, and to me at last you will come, at the end—at the end and too late. This is your own heart's voice; you know if it be true."
"It is true," moaned Antony.
"Many men and many loves are there in this world," continued Silencieux, "and each knows the way of his own love, nor shall anything turn him from it in the end. ”