Arthur Hugh Clough

“ And I proceed on my way with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life is beautiful, Eustace, entrancing, enchanting to look at;
As are the streets of a city we pace while the carriage is changing,
As is a chamber filled-in with harmonious, exquisite pictures,
Even so beautiful Earth ”

“ Galleries only oppress me. Remembrance of hope I had cherished
(Almost more than as hope, when I passed through Florence the first
time)
Lies like a sword in my soul. I am more a coward than ever,
Chicken-hearted, past thought. ”

“ Seen from Montorio's height, Tibur and Aesula's hills!
Ah, could we once, ere we go, could we stand, while, to ocean
descending,
Sinks o'er the yellow dark plain slowly the yellow broad sun,
Stand, from the forest emerging at sunset, at once in the champaign,
Open, but studded with trees, chestnuts umbrageous and old,
E'en in those fair open fields that incurve to thy beautiful hollow,
Nemi, imbedded in wood, Nemi, inurned in the hill!--
Therefore farewell, ye plains, and ye hills, and the City Eternal!
Therefore farewell! We depart, but to behold you again! ”

“ Adieu, dearest Louise,—evermore your faithful Georgina.
Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with?
Very stupid, I think, but George says so very clever.
IV.—Claude to Eustace.
No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it,
With its humiliations and exaltations combining,
Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,
Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and
In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,—
No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it,
Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches ”

“ IV.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.
Not, as we read in the words of the olden-time inspiration,
Are there two several trees in the place we are set to abide in;
But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden,
Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever,
Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,--
Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless, unfruitful blossom. ”

“ Adieu again,—evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.
P. S. by Mary Trevellyn.
I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.
Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.
I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.
He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and
Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is frightfully selfish. ”

“ Knowledge is painful often; and yet when we know, we are happy.
Seek it, and leave mere Faith and Love to come with the chances.
As for Hope,--to-morrow I hope to be starting for Naples.
Rome will not do, I see; for many very good reasons.
Eastward, then, I suppose, with the coming of winter, to Egypt.
XIV.--Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.
You have heard nothing; of course, I know you can have heard nothing.
Ah, well, more than once I have broken my purpose, and sometimes,
Only too often, have looked for the little lake-steamer to bring him. ”

“ Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,
Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.
Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o'ermaster,
Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still. ”

“ Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,
Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian pontiff,
Are ye also baptized? are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven?
Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!
Am I to turn me for this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?
XI.—Claude to Eustace.
These are the facts. The uncle, the elder brother, the squire, (a
Little embarrassed, I fancy,) resides in a family place in
Cornwall, of course. "Papa is in business," Mary informs me;
He's a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. ”

“ For the sense of the thing is simply to hurry to Florence,
Where the certainty yet may be learnt, I suppose, from the Ropers.
VI.--MARY TREVELLYN, _from Lucerne_, TO MISS ROPER, _at Florence_.
Dear Miss Roper,--By this you are safely away, we are hoping,
Many a league from Rome; ere long we trust we shall see you.
How have you travelled? I wonder;--was Mr. Claude your companion?
As for ourselves, we went from Como straight to Lugano;
So by the Mount St. Gothard;--we meant to go by Porlezza,
Taking the steamer, and stopping, as you had advised, at Bellaggio ”

“ Italy, utter one word, and the olive and vine will allure not,--
Wilderness, forest, and snow will not the passage impede;
Italy, unto thy cities receding, the clue to recover,
Hither, recovered the clue, shall not the traveller haste? ”

“ Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for,
Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge,
Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed."
This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the poop of the
steamer;
And as unthinking I sat in the ball of the famed Ariadne,
Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble.
It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer.
Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.
III.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.
Farewell, Politics, utterly! ”

“ They were at Florence the day I returned there, and spoke to me even;
Staid a week, saw me often; departed, and whither I know not.
Great is Fate, and is best. I believe in Providence, partly.
What is ordained is right, and all that happens is ordered.
Ah, no, that isn't it. But yet I retain my conclusion:
I will go where I am led, and will not dictate to the chances.
Do nothing more, I beg. If you love me, forbear interfering.
XII.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.
Shall we come out of it all, some day, as one does from a tunnel? ”

“ Takes may destroy my fragments. But as men pray, without asking
Whether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,--
Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a Being
In a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,--
So in your image I turn to an _ens rationis_ of friendship. ”

“ Gone from Florence; indeed; and that is truly provoking;--
Gone to Milan, it seems; then I go also to Milan.
Five days now departed; but they can travel but slowly;--
I quicker far; and I know, as it happens, the house they will go to.--
Why, what else should I do? Stay here and look at the pictures,
Statues, and churches? Alack, I am sick of the statues and pictures!--
No, to Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Lodi, and Milan,
Off go we to-night,--and the Venus go to the Devil!
II.--Claude to Eustace,--_from Bellaggio_.
Gone to Como, they said; and I have posted to Como. ”

“ Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!
No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.
Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,
This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?
Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant:
"Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!" their Emperor vaunted;
"Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!" the Tourist may answer
III.—Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ⸻. ”

“ Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hôte and restaurant
Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even:
Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!
Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected;
Doubtless somewhere in some neighborhood have, and careful to keep, some
Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their turn are enchanted
Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies
To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes.
Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!
VII.Claude to Eustace. ”

“ Vir sum, nihil faeminei_,--and e'en to the uttermost circle,
All that is Nature's is I, and I all things that are Nature's.
Yes, as I walk, I behold, in a luminous, large intuition,
That I can be and become anything that I meet with or look at:
I am the ox in the dray, the ass with the garden-stuff panniers ”

“ E'en from the stones of the street, as from rocks or trees of the
forest,
Something of kindred, a common, though latent vitality, greet me,
And, to escape from our strivings, mistakings, misgrowths, and
perversions,
Fain could demand to return to that perfect and primitive silence,
Fain be enfolded and fixed, as of old, in their rigid embraces.
VIII.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.
And as I walk on my way, I behold them consorting and coupling ”

“ Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!
I.--MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER,--_on the way to Florence_.
Why doesn't Mr. Claude come with us? you ask.--We don't know.
You should know better than we. He talked of the Vatican marbles ”

“ If so, then I said, we had started for Como, and meant to
Cross the St. Gothard, and stay, we believed, at Lucerne, for the
summer.
Was it wrong? and why, if it was, has it failed to bring him?
Did he not think it worth while to come to Milan? He knew (you
Told him) the house we should go to. Or may it, perhaps, have
miscarried?
Any way, now, I repent, and am heartily vexed that I wrote it.
There is a home on the shore of the Alpine sea, that upswelling
High up the mountain-sides spreads in the hollow between;
Wilderness, mountain, and snow from the land of the olive conceal it ”

“ Tivoli's waters and rocks; and fair under Monte Gennaro,
(Haunt even yet, I must think, as I wonder and gaze, of the shadows,
Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces,)
Fair in itself, and yet fairer with human completing creations,
Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace:--
So not seeing I sung ”