Idyll

“ Until the white light settles on the distance.
⁠And hedgerow shadows lengthen on the lea.
And so it is that idylls have existence,
⁠And so, while hearts are young, ’twill ever be.
For bygone times are still by us reflected,
⁠We are as near to Arcadie as they;
’Tis but the outward sign we have rejected,
⁠The shepherd’s trappings that are put away.
And, in our hearts, for all time there abideth
⁠The spirit that in old times clothed the downs,
The woods, and valleys where the river glideth,
⁠With simple loves of shepherd-maids and clowns. ”

“ This is, of course, to some extent an idyll of village life; but so slight is the idealisation, as we know from the experience of those “intellectuals” who went to the villages as equals coming among equals, that the idyll reads almost as a reality. ”

“ Men and women are tossed from land to sea, from city to forest and desert, from court to country, from a civil and cultured, to a rustic and simple life. These latter situations are peculiar to romance in the form of the idyll, which is really the most romantic of romanticisms, though it may seem to be the opposite. ”

“ The painter is still under the influence of idyllic literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the town-bred rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes ”

“ It was a lovely landscape. It was idyllic, poetical, and it inspired me. I felt good and noble. I felt I didn’t want to be sinful and wicked any more. I would come and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old, and all that sort of thing. ”

“ And when the light of some little distant city makes a slight flush upon the edge of the sky, and the happy golden windows of the homesteads stare gleaming into the dark, then the old and holy figure of Romance, cloaked even to the face, comes down out of hilly woodlands and bids dark shadows to rise and dance, and sends the forest creatures forth to prowl, and lights in a moment in her bower of grass the little glowworm's lamp, and brings a hush down over the grey lands, and out of it rises faintly on far-off hills the voice of a lute. ”

“ Lurk thro' hollows, hide in fern!
Then; the old house, ample-eaved,
Night-long quiet beneath the stars,—
How the maples, many-leaved,
Screened us at the orchard bars!
Path by which her feet have gone,
Still you climb the windy hill;
Still the hillside fronts the dawn,
Fronts the clustering village still;
But no longer she, my own,
Treads you, save as dreams allow.
And these eyes in dreams alone
Dare to look upon you now.
TOUT OU RIEN. Love, if you love me, love with heart and soul! ”

“ Even he who yearns for human sympathies,
And hears a music in the breath of man,
Dearer than voice of mountain or of flood,
Might live a hermit here, and mark the sun
Rising or setting 'mid the beauteous calm,
Devoutly blending in his happy soul
Thoughts both of earth and heaven!—Yon mountain-side,
Rejoicing in its clustering cottages,
Appears to me a paradise preserved
[Pg 337] From guilt by Nature's hand, and every wreath
Of smoke, that from these hamlets mounts to heaven,
In its straight silence holy as a spire
Rear'd o'er the house of God. ”

“ All pleasant scenes have dull and tasteless grown,
And shadows lower-shadows, erewhile unknown
Of ever-deepening gloom.
The halls where erst thy happy childhood played,
The pleasant garden by thy fair hands made,
The bower thy sunny presence made so fair,
Are all unchanged,—yet grief is everywhere;—
Dear one, come home!
Come home?—come home?—alas, what have I said?
Beyond the stars, beloved, thy feet have sped!
No more to press these garden paths with mine,
Or walk beside my own at day's decline—
No more—no more to come
To these old summer haunts! But I shall stay
A little while ”

“ Pleasure and wealth to our lot may be granted,—
Love may a far-distant mansion endear, —
Yet who can forget the soft soil where were planted,
Those first germs of bliss never wet with a tear?
Rude frowning rocks, Nature's loveliness spurning,
May rise to disfigure the spot of our birth,
But with rapture's warm thrill the glad wanderers returning
Will press their fond lips to their dear native earth. ”

“ As the eye stretched across a country that seemed to be rich and well cultivated, it felt that dream-like charm of dim romance, which visible darkness throws over the face of nature, and which invests her groves, her lordly mansions, her rich campaigns, and her white farm-houses, with a beauty that resembles the imagery of some delicious dream, more than the realities of natural scenery. ”

“ When the town is hushed and silent, in the death-like sleep of night, by the spell I have upon thee, by the love within thy heart, thou shalt feel my kisses falling like warm rain-drops on thy mouth; listen then, and hear me calling, calling thee as in a dream; drawing thee from out thy slumbers, by the magic of my art. Waken then. Oh! my beloved one, to enjoy the bliss of lust. Then from out thy open casement I shall creep upon thy couch; for I am the man created, to awaken thee to life. ”

“ For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments. ”

“ Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place— O to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud, Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. ”

“ The clouds have a homely look as they hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they loved their birthplace;—all unlike those heartless clouds that keep stravaigging over mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the sky! Poets speak of living rocks, but what is their life to that of houses? Who ever saw a rock with eyes — that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, and stone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house without eyes—that is, windows? ”

“ In my search after moated and haunted houses, many a ballad in building, many a romance in stone, seeming more like an artist's or a poet's dream than a happy reality, and many a legended home in remote places have I discovered—for a romantic spot is the mother of legends. ”

“ They eat, they drink, they dance, they sing, they marry and are given in marriage, they have castles and gardens and villas, and the very beauty of Paradise seems over it all,—and yet how close by burns and roars the eternal fire! Fools that we are, to clamor for indulgence and happiness in this life, when the question is, to escape everlasting burnings! ”

“ If we live here among the trees, where their green waves make a summer sea high in the heavens above our heads, I could be as content as any bird is. But if you make our home in the city, or in the midst of a desert for that matter, I could not withhold one thought from your happiness, 196 for love has transformed me, adapted life itself to a new purpose. ”

“ Oh bless those limbs, beaming with heavenly light!
Like as an angel glittering in the sky
In times of innocence and holy joy;
The joyful shepherd stops his grateful song
To hear the music of an angel's tongue.
So when she speaks, the voice of Heaven I hear;
So when we walk, nothing impure comes near;
Each field seems Eden, and each calm retreat;
Each village seems the haunt of holy feet.
But that sweet village, where my black-eyed maid
Closes her eyes in sleep beneath night's shade,
Whene'er I enter, more than mortal fire
Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire. ”

“ The scene of early love again rises green to memory beyond the sterile waste of years; and the idea of home, fraught with the fragrance of home-dwelling joys, reanimates the drooping spirit,—as the Arabian breeze will sometimes waft the freshness of the distant fields to the weary pilgrim of the desert. ”

“ You love water and fire and wind, elemental things, and you love them with fervor and passion. All this to the world! Much more intimate to me, who can read the letters you scrawl for the impudent, careless world. For deep down in the core of that rose there lies a soul that permeates it all—a longing, restless soul, one moment revealing a heaven that the next is shut out in dark despair.
Yes, keep the cottage by the sea for one more dream. Perchance I shall find something stable, eternal, something better than discontent and striving; for the sea is great and makes peace. ”

“ Till a mist creeps over the hill, shuts down
On our home's white walls and o'erhanging eaves,
And the nightingales hush as the distant town
Puts out her lights and leaves
The rest of the night to darkness and love
Consecrated to thee and me,
Whilst my world spins on about and above,
Centred in thee. ”

“ Great houses loom up swiftly, out of the gray.
Knocking at last, the gradual echoes stir
The hangings of unhaunted passages;
Until she surely knows only for her
Has this House hoarded up its silences
Since the beginning of the early years,
And that this night her soul shall dwell at ease
And grow forgetful of its ancient fears
In some long-kept, unviolated room.
And so the quiet city no more hears
Her footsteps, and the streets their dust resume.
But what have I to do with her and death
Who hold these living grasses in my hands,—
With her who liveth not, yet sorroweth? ”

“ A stranger not knowing the antecedents of the little sanctuary would discern no form nor comeliness in it. It was an hour when one could think of but two things, one was home, and one was heaven. These earthly objects have a comeliness, a simple dignity, and nattiness which are beyond the reach of art. How it elevates the spirit to stand, thrilled by a beautiful romance and find that it is not romance at all but unspeakably sacred reality. ”

“ From this we may infer the character of home influence. It is great, silent, irresistible, and permanent. Like the calm, deep stream, it moves on in silent but overwhelming power. It strikes root deep into the human heart, and spreads its branches wide over our whole being. Like the lily that braves the tempest, and the "Alpine flower that leans its cheek on the bosom of eternal snow," it is exerted amid the wildest scenes of life, and breathes a softening spell in our bosom, even when a heartless world is freezing up the fountains of our sympathy and love. ”

“ Melancholy as she felt when she started from the cottage, her elastic nature was incapable of resisting the glory of the sky, the beauty of the earth, the music of the birds, and the invigorating breath of the ocean, intensified as they all were by a joyful sense of security and freedom, growing out of the constraint that had lately been put upon her movements. ”

“ Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life—from the cottage to the throne—are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. ”

“ There always seems something attractive in insular life, especially with a pleasant summer residence, on a small domain, girdled by the sparkling sea. It would seem as if the world of thought, of nature, and of books, might be more entirely at your own control, and as if the voice of the deep-rolling main insured you against interruptions, or that fear of them, which often produces the same mental hindrance, as their actual occurrence. ”

“ To the field labourer whose heart desires
The old folk by the nook, the welcome bright
From the house-wife long parted from at dawn—
So the star villages in God's great depths withdrawn.
Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led,
Though there no house fires burn nor bright eyes gaze,
We rise, but by the symbol charioted,
Through loved things rising up to Love's own ways
By these the soul unto the vast has wings
[20] And sets the seal celestial on all mortal things.
SUNG ON A BY-WAY
What of all the will to do? ”

“ In lofty halls, where fortune takes its ease, Sunk in the treasures of all lands and seas; In happy homes, where warmth and comfort meet The weary traveler with their smiles to greet; In lowly dwellings, where the needy swarm Round starving embers, chilling limbs to warm, Rises the prayer that makes the sad heart light— "Thank God for home, this bitter, bitter night!" ”

“ Varied are the emotions that take possession of the individuals of our company; but I think there are some among us, more thoughtful or sentimental, perhaps, who, unconsciously to themselves, draw a kind of inspiration from the noble scene. To such there seems, in those majestic cliffs, sea-swept and forest-crowned, first seen as lighted by the rising sun, a nameless sermon preached, a wordless lesson taught, an everlasting poem sung. And our minds and spirits are calmed, refreshed, and invigorated; while in some dim way we grasp ideas that the silent scene irresistibly conveys to us. ”

“ I come from lonely downs and silent woods,
With winter in my heart, a withered world,
A heavy weight of dark and sorrowful things,
And all my dreams spread out their rainbow wings,
And turn again to those bright solitudes
Where Beauty met me in a thousand moods,
And all her shining banners were unfurled... ”