Robert Herrick

“ The gloomy wall of the palace cast a shadow that reached to the well. Just as he entered, a church-clock across the rio struck the hour on a cracked bell.
"My friend has gone in—she is afraid of the night air," Miss Barton explained. "Perhaps she is afraid of ghosts," she added, as the young man stood silent by her side. "An old doge killed his wife and her children here, some centuries ago. They say the woman walks. Are you afraid?"
"Of only one ghost——"
"Not yet a ghost!" Indeed, her warm, breathing self threw a spirit of life into the moonlight and gainsaid his idle words. ”

“ I can feel that isolation now coming over my soul like the stealthy fog, until I lay there, unconscious of my body, in a wondering placidity, watching the stars burn and fade. I could seem to feel them whirl in their way through the heavens. And then a thought detached itself from me, the conception of an eternity passed in placidity like that without the pains of sense, the obligations of action; I loved it then—that cold residence of thought!
She. You have known it, too. Those moments when the body in life feels the state of spirit come rarely and awe one. ”

“ When she was very close to Clayton, he felt her presence, and they both stood still, looking at the picture. It was almost finished—all was planned. Miss Marston saw only the woman. She was youthful, just between girlhood and womanhood—unconscious, strong, and active as the first; with the troubled mystery of the second. The artist had divined an exquisite moment in life, and into the immature figure, the face of perfect repose, the supple limbs, he had thrown the tender mystery that met the morning light. ”

“ And duty makes the only conceivable world given the human spirit and the human frame: even should we believe that the world is a revolving palæstrinum without betterment. And the next world—the next? It must be like ours, too, in its action; it must call upon the same activities, the same range of desires and loves and hates. Grander, perhaps, more adorned, with greater freedom, with more swing, with a less troubled song as it rushes on its course. But a world like unto ours, with effort, with the keen jangle of persons in effort, with sorrow, aye, and despair: for there must be forfeits! ”

“ It would not be bad, a heaven like that, of perpetual physical presentiment, of storms and sun, and rich fields, and long waves rolling up the beaches. For nerves ever alive and strung healthily all along the gamut of sensation! Days with terrific gloom, like the German forests of the Middle Ages; days with small nights spent on the sea; September days with a concealed meaning in the air. One would ride and battle and sail and eat. Then long kisses of love in bodies that spoke.
She. And yet, how strange to life as it is is that picture—like some mediæval song with the real people left out ”

“ I sighed, "Maud, how can you part with a work of fine art that has meant so much to you?"
"Do you think, Jerome, I would go home and have Uncle Higgins, with his authentic Rembrandt and all his other pictures, laugh at me and my Titian? I'd burn it first."
I turned to Uncle Ezra. "Uncle, what strange metamorphosis has happened to this picture? The spiritual light from that color must shine as brightly as ever; the intrinsic value remains forever fixed in Maud's soul; it is desecration to reject such a precious message. ”

“ One word to his gondolier and in two hours he could be on the train for Milan, Paris, London—then indefinite years of turning about in the crowd, of jostling and being jostled. But he lay still while the sun crept over him.
She was so unreal, once apart from her presence, like an evanescent mirage on the horizon of the mind. He told himself that he had seen her, heard her voice; that her eyes had been close to his, that she had touched him; that there had been moments when she stood with the flowers of the garden. ”

“ I went to Italy—to Venice and Florence and Rome—to Athens and Constantinople and Vienna. In a word, I unfitted myself for Wabash as completely as I could, and troubled my spirit with vain attempts after art and feeling.
You women do not know the intoxication of five-and-twenty—a few hundred francs in one's pockets, the centuries behind, creation ahead. You do not know what it is to hunger after the power of understanding and the power of expression; to see the world as divine one minute and a mechanic hell the next ”

“ I must husband my devotions: love, except the idea of love, is not for me; pleasure, except the idea of pleasure, is too keen for me; energy, except the ideas energy creates, is beyond me. I am limited, definite, alone, without you.
I confess that two passions are greater than any man, the passion for God and the passion of a great love. They send a man hungry and naked into the street, and make his subterfuges with existence ridiculous. How rarely they come! How inadequate the man who is mistaken about them! We peer into the corners of life after them, but they elude us. ”

“ You have come to this confession out of a trusting religion and I from doubt—at the best indifference. You are ashamed to confess what seems to you wholly blasphemous against that noble faith and prayer of a Christian; and I find an invigorating pleasure in your blasphemy. There is no conceivable life of a spirit to compare with the pain, even, of the human body; it is better to suffer than to know no difference. ”

“ Only the college boy who feeds on Oscar Wilde and sentimental pessimism has that disease of indifference with which you crudely charge me. It is a kind of chicken-pox, cousin-French to the evils of literary Paris. But I must not thank God too loudly, or you will think I am one with them at heart.
No, I am in earnest, in terrible earnest, about all this—I mean life and what to do with it. That is a great day when a man comes into his own, no matter how paltry the pittance may be the gods have given him—when he comes to know just how far he can go, and where lies his path of least resistance. ”

“ Miss Marston entered the untidy studio, where the débris of a month's fruitless efforts strewed the floor. Bits of clay and carving-tools, canvases hurled face downward in disgust and covered with paint-rags, lay scattered about. She tip-toed around, carefully raising her skirt, and examined everything. Finally, discovering an alcohol-lamp and a coffee-pot, she prepared some coffee, and when Clayton appeared—a somewhat dishevelled god—he found her hunting for biscuit.
"You can't make an artist of me at six in the morning," he growled. ”

“ And perhaps we change; as you say, we may become dead in life, prepared for a different state; and in that change we may find a new joy—a longing for perfection and peace.
He. That would be an acknowledgment of defeat, indeed, and that is the sad result of so much living. The world has been too hard, we cry—there is so much heartbreaking, so much misery, so few arrive! We look to another world where all that will be made right, and where we shall suffer no more. ”

“ I follow you about in your devious path from tea to dinner or dance, or I wait at the opera or theatre to watch for a new light in your face, to see your world written in a smile. You are dark, and winning, and strong. You are pagan in your love of sensuous, full things. You are grateful to the biting air as it touches your cheek and sends the blood leaping in glad life. ”

“ In fact, Clayton could not dream of a more inferior milieu for the birth of the great artist.
Miss Marston had fitted herself to suit his needs, and in submitting to this difficult position felt that she was repaying a loan of a new life. He was so curious, so free, so unusual, so fond of ideas, so entertaining, even in his grim moods, that he made her stupid life over. She could enjoy vicariously by feeling his intense interest in all living things. ”

“ After all, you have mastered but one trick—the trick of being loved. With that trick you expect to take the world; but, alas! you capture only an old man's purse or a young man's passion.
Artificial, my letters—yes, if you wish. I should say, not crude—matured, considered. I discuss the love you long to experience. I dangle it before your eyes as a bit of the drapery that goes to the ball of life. But when dawn almost comes and the ball is over, you mustn't expect the paper roses to smell. ”

“ All men, I like to think, for one short breath in their lives, believe this narrow world to be shoreless. They feel that they should die in discontent if they could not experience, test, this wonderful conglomerate of existence. It is an old, old matter I am writing you about. We have classified it nicely, these days; we call it the "romantic spirit," and we say that it is made three parts of youth and two of discontent—a perpetual expression of the world's pessimism. ”

“ Although Clayton had abandoned the Magdalen in utter disgust, Miss Marston persisted in the early morning sittings. She made herself useful in preparing his coffee and in getting his canvas ready. They rarely talked. Sometimes Clayton, in a spirit of deviltry, would tease his mentor about their peculiar relationship, about herself, or, worse than all, would run himself and say very true things about his own imperfections. Then, on detecting the tears that would rise in the tired, faded eyes of the woman he tortured, he would throw himself into his work. ”

“ Stuart knew her ground in painting. But she still loved the atmosphere of the great studio-room at the Art Institute. She liked the poor girls and the Western bohemianism and the queer dresses, and above all she liked to linger over her own little easel, undisturbed by the creative flurry around, dreaming of woods and soft English gardens and happy hours along a river where the water went gently, tenderly, on to the sea. ”

“ She found in herself an admirable spirit, and her love added devotion and faith in the future, her lover's future. So she tided over the months of her engagement, when her uncle's displeasure settled down like a fog over the pleasant house. Edwards would run down frequently, but Oliphant managed to keep out of his way. It was none of his affair, and he let them see plainly this aspect of it. Her spirit rose. She could do as other women did, get on without candy and roses, and it hurt her to feel that she had expected money from her uncle. ”

“ Very little, I confess, but to me more serious than L's and sky-scrapers; yes, than love. Mine is an infinite labor: first to shape the true tool, and then to master the material! I grant you I may die any day like a rat on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have moulded something; life will have justified itself to me, or I to life. ”

“ It is well, too, as it is, for until we can go to bed with the commonplace, and dine with sorrow, we are but children,—brilliant children, but with the unpleasant mark of the child. Not sorrow accepted, my love, and bemoaned; but sorrow fought and dislodged. He is great who feels the pain and sorrow and absorbs it and survives—he who can remain calm in it and believe in it. It is a fight; only the strong hold their own. ”

“ We must not forget that our creative force would be spent: planning, building, executing, toiling patiently for some end that is mirrored only in our minds—how much of our joy comes from these!—would be laid aside. We should have shaken the world as much as we could: now, peace.... Again, I say, peace is felt only after a storm. Like Ulysses, we should look wistfully out from the isolation of heaven to the resounding waves of this unconquered world. ”

“ As a girl and a young woman, she had shown a delicate, retiring beauty that might have been made much of, and in spite of gray hair, thirty-five years, and a somewhat drawn look, arising from her discontent, one might discover sufficient traces of this fading beauty to idealize her. All this summer she had watched the wayward young artist with a keen interest in the fresh life he brought among her flat surroundings. ”

“ Could we have any individual longing for one-another, any affection kept apart to ourselves, not swallowed up in that general loving-kindness and universal beatification proper to spirits?
I know upon earth to-day some women, great souls, too, who are incapable of an individual love. They may be married, they may have children; they are good wives and good mothers; but their souls are too large for a single passion. Their world blesses them, worships them, makes saints of them, but no man has ever touched the bottom of their hearts. ”

“ NO. IX. CRITICISM. (Miss Armstrong vindicates herself by scorning.)
You are a tissue of phrases. You feel only words. You love! What mockery to hear you handle the worn, old words! You have secluded yourself in careful isolation from the human world you seem to despise. You have no right to its passions and solaces. Incarnate selfishness, dear friend, I suspect you are. You would not permit the disturbance of a ripple in the contemplative lake of your life such as love and marriage might bring. ”

“ Better the furs that are soft about your neck, for they never grow cold. Perchance the lover will come, also, as a prince with his princedom. It will be comfortable to have your cake and the frosting, too. If not, take the frosting; go glittering on with your pulses full of the joys, until you are old and fagged and the stupid world refuses to revolve. Remember my sure word that you were meant for dinners, for power and pleasure and excitement. Trust no will-o'-the-wisp that would lead you into the stony paths of romance. ”

“ His wife followed him heroically into all his moods with that pitiful absorption such women give to the men they love. She believed in him tremendously, if not as a lawyer, as a man and an artist. Somehow she hadn't been an inspiration, and for that she humbly blamed herself. How was it accomplished, this inspiration? A loving wife inspired the ordinary man. Why not an artist?
They got into the habit of planning their life all differently—so that it might not be limited and futile. If they had a few thousand dollars! ”

“ Do you suppose any one woman would be enough? What a great posture for an arm!" His sudden exclamation was called out by the attitude that Miss Marston had unconsciously assumed in the eagerness of her interest. She had thrown her hand over a ledge above them, and was leaning lightly upon it. The loose muslin sleeve had fallen back, revealing a pretty, delicately rounded arm, not to be suspected from her slight figure. Clayton quickly squirmed a little nearer, and touching the arm with an artist's instinct, brought out still more the fresh white flesh and the delicate veining. ”

“ The sea-breeze had touched the locust groves of San Niccolò da Lido, and caught up the fragrance of the June blossoms, filling the air with the soft scent of a feminine city.
When the scrap of the island Sant' Elena came enough into the angle to detach itself from the green mass of the Giardino Pubblico, the prow swung softly about, flapping the little waves, and pointed in shore where a bridge crossed an inlet into the locust trees.
"You can see the Italian Alps," Miss Barton remarked, pulling aside the felza curtains and pointing lazily to the snow masses on the blue north horizon. ”

“ Every artist is; his only lookout, however, should be that his surroundings don't become stale. Or, if you prefer to put it more humanely, an artist isn't fit to marry; it's criminal for him to marry and break a woman's heart."
After this heroic confession he paused to smoke. "Besides, no woman whom I ever knew really understands art and the ends which the artist is after. She has the temperament, a superficial appreciation and interest, but she hasn't the stimulus of insight. She's got the nerves, but not the head."
"But you just said that you had had too much sympathy and molly-coddling." ”