Arthur Hugh Clough

“ And it was certain that Philip was lame.
⁠Yes, in his excuses,
Answered the Piper, indeed!—
⁠Nay, truly, said Hobbes, interposing,
Did you not say she was seen every day in her beauty and bedgown
Doing plain household work, as washing, cooking, scouring?
How could he help but love her? nor lacked there of course the attraction
That in a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey,
Barefoot, barelegged, he beheld her, with arms bare up to the elbows,
Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting potatoes?
Is not Katie as Rachel, and is not Philip a Jacob? ”

“ Can it be with him he beareth the golden-haired lassie of Rannoch?
This fierce furious walking—o'er mountain-top and moorland,
Sleeping in shieling and bothie, with drover on hill-side sleeping,
Folded in plaid, where sheep are strewn thicker than rocks by Loch Awen,
This fierce furious travel unwearying,—cannot in truth be
Merely the wedding tour succeeding the week of wooing!
⁠No, wherever he Katie, with Philip she is not; I see him,
Lo, and he sitteth alone, and these are his words in the mountain.
⁠Souls of the dead, one fancies, can enter and be with the living ”

“ Thus to his pupil anon commenced the grave man Adam.
⁠Yes, she is beautiful, Philip, beautiful even as morning:
Yes, it is that which I said, the Good and not the Attractive!
Happy is he that finds, and finding does not leave it!
⁠And by his side in silence walked Philip, and presently answered,
Happy is he that finds, if he lose not : but happy, and more too,
Blessed, be he by whose showing the seeker is changed to the finder.
⁠Ten more days did Adam with Philip abide at the changehouse,
Ten more nights they met, they walked with father and daughter. ”

“ Still you are right, I suppose; you always are, and will be.
Though I mistrust the Field-Marshal, I bow to the duty of order.
Let us all get on as we can, and do what we're meant for,
Or, as is said in your favourite weary old Ethics, our ergon.
Yet is my feeling rather to ask, Where is the battle?
Yes, I could find in my heart to cry, in spite of my Elspie,
O that the armies indeed were arrayed, O joy of the onset,
Sound, thou Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to array us,
King and leader appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee. ”

“ No she lives and takes pleasure in all, as in beautiful weather,
Sorry to lose it, but just as we would be to lose fine weather.
And she is strong to return to herself and feel undeserted,
For she always keeps burning a cheerful fire inside her.
Oh, she is strong, and not silly; she thinks no more about you;
She has had kerchiefs before from gentle, I know, as from simple.
Yes, she is good and not silly; yet were you wrong, Mr. Philip,
Wrong, for yourself perhaps more than for her.
⁠But Philip replied not,
Raised not his eyes from the hands on his knees.
⁠And Elspie continued. ”

“ Rooted in earth should it be, carnation alike or daisy,
That I grant, and refer you to Shakespeare on gillyflowers,
Where in the Winter's Tale Leontes Perdita questions.
Education and manners, accomplishments, refinements,
Waltz, pandventure, and polka, the knowledge of music and drawing,
All these things are Nature's, to Nature dear and precious.
We must all do something, man, woman alike, I own it;
Yes, but woman-and-man in lady-and-gentleman is not
Lost, extinct; it lives; if not, God help them, change them! ”

“ For this Rachel-and-Leah is marriage, and Laban their father
Circumstance, chance, the world, our uncle and hard taskmaster.
Rachel we found as we fled from the daughters of Heth by the desert;
Rachel we met at the well; we came, we saw, we kissed her;
Rachel we serve-for, long years,—that seem a few days only,
E'en for the love we have to her,—and win her at last of Laban.
Is it not Rachel we take in our joy from the hand of her father?
Is it not Rachel we lead in the mystical veil from the altar!
Rachel we dream-of at night: in the morning, behold, it is Leah. ”

“ There in the sparkling champagne, ecstatic, they shrieked and shouted.
⁠"Hobbes's gutter" the Piper entitles the spot, profanely,
Hope "the Glory" would have, after Arthur, the glory of headers;
But, for before they departed, in shy and fugitive reflex
Here in the eddies and there did the splendour of Jupiter glimmer,
Adam adjudged it the name of Hesperus, star of the evening.
⁠Hither, to Hesperus, now, the star of evening above them,
Come in their lonelier walk the pupils twain and Tutor ”

“ Katie was not in the house, thank God: I saw her in passing,
Saw her, unseen myself, with the pang of a cruel desertion,
Poignant enough; which however but made me walk the faster,
Like a terrible spur running into one's vitals, and through them,
Turning me all into pain and sending me off, I suppose like
One that is shot to the heart and leaps in the air in his dying.
What dear Katie thinks, God knows; poor child; may she only
Think me a fool and a madman, and no more worth her remembering. ”

“ Leaving, wilt seek in the moorland of Rannoch the wandering hero.
⁠There is it, there, or in lofty Lochaber, where, silent up-heaving,
Hearing from ocean to sky, and under snow—winds of September,
Visibly whitening at morn to darken by noon in the shining,
Rise on their mighty foundations the brethren huge of Bennevis?
There, or westward away, where roads are unknown to Loch Nevish,
And the great peaks look abroad over Skye to the westermost islands? ”

“ Philip should go to his books: if he chose, he might write; if after
Chose to return, might come; he truly believed him honest.
But a year must elapse, and many things might happen.
Yet at the end he burst into tears, called Elspie, and blessed them;
Elspie, my bairn, he said, I thought not, when at the doorway
Standing with you, and telling the young man to come and see us,
I did not think he would one day be asking me here to surrender
What is to me more than wealth in my Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich. ”

“ Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper-confections,
Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered,
Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it.
⁠That I allow, said Adam. ”

“ Ten more nights, and night by night more distant away were
Philip and she; every night less heedful, by habit, the father.
Happy ten days, most happy; and, otherwise than thought of,
Fortunate visit of Adam, companion and friend to David.
Happy ten days, be ye fruitful of happiness! Pass o'er them slowly,
Slowly; like cruise of the prophet be multiplied, even to ages! ”

“ So had I duly commenced in the spirit and style of my Philip,
⁠So had I formally opened the Treatise upon the Laws of
Architectural Beauty in Application to Women,
So had I writ.—But my fancies are palsied by tidings they tell me,
Tidings—ah me, can it be then that I the blasphemer accounted,
Here am with reverent heed at the wondrous analogy working,
Pondering thy words and thy gestures, whilst thou, a poet apostate,
(How are the mighty fallen!) whilst thou, a shepherd travestie,
(How are the mighty fallen!) ”

“ There in the joy of their life and glory of shooting jackets,
Bathed and read and roamed, and looked no more for Philip.
List to a letter that came from Philip at Balloch to Adam.
⁠I am here, O my friend—idle, but learning wisdom.
Doing penance, you think; content, if so, in my penance.
You have conjectured a change must have come to my mind: I believe it!
You will believe it too; if I tell you the thoughts that haunt me! ”

“ No, I do not set Philip herein on the level of Arthur,
No, I do not compare still tarn with furious torrent,
Yet will the tarn overflow, assuaged in the lake be the torrent.
⁠Women are weak as you say, and love of all things to be passive,
Passive, patient, receptive, yea even of wrong and misdoing,
Even to force and misdoing with joy and victorious feeling
Passive, patient, receptive ”

“ Philip!
We mustn't pull ourselves at the great key stone of the centre;
Some one else up above must hold it, fit it, and fix it;
If we try to do it, we shall only damage the archway,
Damage all our own work that we wrought, our painful up-building. ”

“ Or perhaps Trinity wines, about Gothic buildings and Beauty?
⁠And with a start from the sofa came Hobbes; with a cry from the sofa,
There where he lay, the great Hobbes, contemplative, corpulent, witty,
Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrase and fancy,
Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing,
Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics;
Studious; careless of dress; inobservant; by smooth persuasions
Lately decoyed into kilt on example of Hope and the Piper,
Hope an Antinous mere, Hyperion of calves the Piper. ”

“ If when he wake in the morning he find not a Leah beside him!
⁠But the Tutor enquired, who had bit his lip to bleeding,
How far off is the place? who will guide me there to-morrow?
⁠But by the mail, ere the morrow, came Hope, and brought new tidings;
Round by Rannoch had come, and Philip was not at Rannoch;
He had left that noon, an hour ago.
⁠With the lassie?—
With her? the Piper exclaimed, undoubtedly! By great Jingo! ”

“ Foolish were budding carnation, in gay parterre by greenhouse,
Should it decline to accept the nurture the gardener gives it,
Should it refuse to expand to sun and genial summer,
Simply because the field-daisy, that grows in the grass-plat beside it,
Cannot, for some cause or other, develope and be a carnation.
Would not the daisy itself petition its scrupulous neighbour? ”

“ Keen the conjecture and joke; but Adam kept the secret,
Adam the secret kept, and Philip read like fury.
⁠This is a letter written by Philip at Christmas to Adam.
What I said at Balloch has truth in it; only distorted.
Plants are some for fruit, and some for flowering only;
Let there be deer in parks, as well as kine in paddocks,
Grecian buildings upon the earth as well as Gothic.
There may be men, perhaps, whose vocation it is to be idle,
Idle, sumptuous even, luxurious, if it must be:
Only let each man seek to be that for which Nature meant him ”

“ There is it? there? or there? we shall find our wandering hero?
Here, in Badenoch, here, in Lochaber anon, in Lochiel, in
Knoydart, Croydart, Moydart, Morrer, and Ardnamurchan,
Here I see him and here: I see him; anon I lose him!
Even as cloud passing subtly unseen from mountain to mountain,
Leaving the crest of Benmore to be palpable next on Benvohrlich,
Or like to hawk of the hill which ranges and soars in its hunting,
Seen and unseen by turns, now here, now in ether eludent. ”

“ No, I will leave it to you, my Philip, my Pugin of women.
⁠Leave it to Arthur, said Adam, to think of, and not to play with.
You are young, you know, he said, resuming to Philip,
You are young, he proceeded, with something of fervour to Hewson,
You are a boy; when you grow a man, you'll find things alter. ”

“ No, I defy Thee, strike not; crush me, if thou wilt, who deserve it.
⁠You will not think that I soberly look for such things for sweet Katie,
Contemplate really, as possible even, a thing that would make one
Think death luxury, seek death, to get at damnation beyond it.
No, but the vision is on me; I now first see how it happens,
Feel how tender and soft is the heart of a girl; how passive
Fain would it be, how helpless; and helplessness leads to destruction. ”

“ How shall a poor silly sheep get endowed with the will of a woman!
⁠But I said this in my letter before, and need not repeat it.
You will have seen yourself the danger of pantry-flirtation,
You will not now run after what merely attracts and entices,
Every-day things highly coloured, and common-place carved and gilded.
You will henceforth seek only the good: and seek it, Philip,
Where it is—not more abundant perhaps, but—more easily met with ”

“ Who hath made man, as the beasts, to live the one on the other,
Who hath made man as Himself to know the law—and accept it!
⁠You will wonder at this, my friend I also wonder!
But we must live and learn; we can't know all things at twenty.
List to a letter of Hobbes to Philip his friend at Balloch. ”

“ BUT a revulsion again came over the spirit of Elspie,
When she thought of his wealth, his birth and education :
Wealth indeed but small, though to her a difference truly;
Father nor mother had Philip, a thousand pounds his portion,
Somewhat impaired in a world where nothing is had for nothing ”

“ More fer the rich indeed than the poor, who are not so guilty.
⁠Ah! replied Philip again, But as for the rest of the story,
Truly I see a good deal in the daisy-carnation fable;
Though I should like to be clear what standing in the earth means.
But, as you said to me when this long discussion started,
There's truth in what you say, though I don't quite understand you.
⁠So the discussion ended; and Arthur rose up smiling,
Now, quoth he, that Philip daren't bully you more, it is my turn.
How will my argument please you? To-morrow we start on our travel. ”

“ This was the answer returned by Philip, the Pugin of Women.
Good are the Ethics, I wis; good absolute, not for me, though;
Good too Logic, of course; in itself, but not in fine weather.
Three weeks hence, with the rain, to Prudence, Temperance, Justice,
Virtues Moral and Mental, with Latin prose included,
Three weeks hence we return, to cares of classes and classics.
I will away with the rest, and bury my hairy 'Tottle.
⁠But the Tutor enquired, the grave man, nicknamed Adam,
Where do you mean to go, and whom do you mean to visit? ”