Plebe

“ Grant me the shade of thy wings, O Death, for I would rest within.
Weary of smiling faces when the heart is like to break.
Of lips that are too silent when they long the while to speak,
Of tears that fall from eyes too young, of quivering lips that laugh. ”

“ I need not describe the pleasure I felt; it appeared as if we were no longer separated; and we discoursed in the silent intercourse of the spirit, which, when every other medium is cut off, in the least look, gesture, or signal of any kind, can make itself comprehended and felt. ”

“ The youth who goes seeking for pleasure,
The preacher who dares talk of God,
All priests with their creeds and their croaking,
All doubters who dare to deny,
The gay who find aught to wake laughter,
The sad who find aught worth a sigh,
Whoever is downcast or solemn,
Whoever is gleeful and glad,
Are only the dupes of delusions -
We are all of us--all of us mad. ”

“ Passion flickered, waned, and, on a pause of doubt and misgiving, tenderness dawned—tenderness, pity, remorse, regret, a growing horror and anguish, a growing knowledge of Heaven forfeited, of Hell made sure, a crescent terror, and dismay unspeakable, and under it all tenderness deepening, deepening, deepening, like a flood pressing against a barrier that it must at last break down. ”

“ When I go raving at night, weeping by day, with a knife in my heart, tears that scald my eyes! When with these pains to endure, these perils to skirt, heights to fly, you will speak, touch me, breathe upon me, tempt me to greet you with kissing of the lips—ah, heaven and hell! it is over-much. ”

“ But if the violence of your spring command you to haste away, to pay your duties to your great prince, the sea, yet carry with you those few words, and let the uttermost ends of the world know them. A love more clear than yourselves, dedicated to a love, I fear, more cold than yourselves, with the clearness lays a night of sorrow upon me, and with the coldness inflames a world of fire within me. ”

“ Is bitterness and sorrow in its sum so small and scant a thing? Do we here breathe so divine an air that we should fear to face the passage of our breath? What have we here but hope and memory? What see we here but shadows? ”

“ They are weeping, we are sure,
At the litanies of human groans ascending
From the crushed hearts of the poor.
III.
When the human rests in love upon the human,
All grief is light;
But who bends one kind glance to illumine
Our life-long night?
The air around is ringing with their laughter—
God has only made the rich to smile;
But we—in our rags, and want, and woe—we follow after,
Weeping the while.
IV.
And the laughter seems but uttered to deride us. ”

“ Had you to weep because the being whom you had learned to worship had with wanton frolic and a mocking smile plucked out your heart-strings and left you forlorn and desolate, a prey to ignominy and to lifelong regret? And had you to weep tears of bitter humiliation in the knowledge that those who hated and despised you were laughing their fill at your folly? Oh! I, too, Mademoiselle Fernande, was young then ... ”

“ Strange that grief, and laments, and the humble petition of repentance, should fill us with delight—a delight that awakens these very emotions in the heart—and calls tears into the eyes, and yet which is dearer than any pleasure. ”

“ I guess that I'm done for, old chappie!
Done, whether she loves me or not,—
But don't look so deuced unhappy,—
Y'know it was I fired the shot.
Thanks, awfully. Give me the whiskey,—
There's a horrible pain in my head;
It's queer that my nerves should be frisky
When my heart is as heavy as lead.
I'm worthless; I own it! ”

“ Oh, wear my heart today; tomorrow
Who knows where the winds will blow it?
[80] Advice to Youth (For Guillaume)
SINCE little time is granted here
For pride in pain or play,
Since blood soon cools before that Fear
That makes our prowess clay,
If lips to kiss are freely met,
Lad, be not proud nor shy;
There are no lips where men forget,
And undesiring lie. ”

“ Men dance like satyrs, cup and gourd in hand, or, extending a hand, make orations to the crowd—natural actors, orators, and pantomimists every one of them. But, with all this intoxication, only glee and affection manifest themselves. ”

“ And will not listen to my vows,
But let me plead, and plead in vain;
Who turn away with blushing cheek
And head averted at my sigh,
Whose scornful laughter chills my heart,
So that I pine, and soon must die. ”

“ Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many's looks, the false heart's history
Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange. ”

“ Her breath comes thick, her wild heart glows,
Dilating as the madness grows,
Her form looks larger to the eye,
Unearthly peals her deep-toned cry,
As breathing nearer and more near
The God comes rushing on his seer. ”

“ Under thy feet a dawn that pales the day's;
And poets, mad with incense and with roses,
Laud thee with chants of glory, love, and praise.
Sweet being, grant to us thy sweetest blisses!
We drag ourselves under thy conquering feet,
While, in a downy drunkenness, thy kisses
Gather our last and loveliest heart's beat. ”

“ And therefore should we all—like consecrated priestesses,—go forth:—forth to suffering and to shame, with the laughter of Spring, and its cry Evoë! love for love, joy for joy, pain for pain,—welling up from our hearts! ”

“ Through rustling flowers, sweet sounds of night,
There comes a voice—hark, a surprise!
Why haunt the bard with cruel wiles?
In your heart sorrow has no place;
False is your voice, false are your smiles ”

“ Some plaintive plea subdues the reader's mind.
The Bard, perchance, is young, o'erwhelm'd with fears;
Forgive his faults, and spare his tender years.
Or want, not will, inspires his tuneful rage [7] ;
'Tis alms to buy—you need not read the page.
Or love [8] has led his gentle mind astray,
From humble prose, to tempt the arduous lay.
Perchance, surviving friends deplore his doom,
And print his strains to grace th' untimely tomb.
Can Censure rail against the recent dead?
Is Pity deaf when mourning parents plead? ”

“ His affections show themselves in the tones of his voice, in the changes of the muscles of his face, and in the various movements of the whole body. They do this naturally, that is, without any purpose or effort on his part. Grief will cause weeping; shame mantles the face with blushes; joy expresses itself by smiles and laughter. ”

“ Aged bard of the evening, I bring to men joy in cities when I cry with varying voice; they sit in silence, quiet in the dwellings. Say what my name is who, like a female jester, loudly mimic a player’s song, announce to men many welcome things with my voice. ”

“ The eyes straining to look through all the experiences and troubles that their life has held to plead, as only eyes can plead, to one who can, if she will, perform their miracle for them. And the mouths,—the sensitive human mouths,—each one distorted by the tragedy against which it was praying. ”

“ How we laugh and cry, become indignant, revengeful, our feelings leaping from one extreme to the other, according to the passion-freighted or love-freighted words which reach our ear; how we sit spell-bound, with bated breath, before the great orator who is playing upon the emotions of his audience, as a musician plays upon the strings of his harp, now bringing out tears, now smiles, now pathos, now indignation! ”

“ Each cloud, that stained it once, away is driven:
Come, mother, come, and with thee many bring;
Cry, ‘Here is spread the banquet of the King;’
Come, all ye faithful—come, and dare to prove
The bitter-sweet, the pain and bliss of love.”
So cried the child unto that crowd of men ”

“ And blushing cheeks are in bosom hidden!
While hand seeks softer hand, and there
Seems spell-bound by the amorous air—
When love, in very silence, finds
The tone that pleads, the pledge that binds. ”

“ At present it is enough to ask whether human love and hatred, joy and sorrow, homage and scorn can manifest themselves by looks and tones, by the open palm and the clenched fist, by laughter and tears, by a bent neck and by a curled lip. ”

“ A spirit out of the infinite heaven seemed calling to my spirit, which longed to answer—and was dumb—and could only vent itself in tears, which welled unconsciously forth, and eased my heart from the painful tension of excitement. ”

“ Therefore the dusky, golden softness of this man’s sensuous flame of life, that flowed oft his flesh like the flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into incandescence by thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her something wonderful, beyond her. ”

“ The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood; it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. ”

“ If one soft plea the public favour gain,
And from disgrace protect the vilest strain,
Oh say, what honours may that Bard require,
In whose sad lot all pleas at once conspire;
Who, young, enamour'd, poor, and almost dead,
Writes for his fame, his mistress, and his bread.
Man feels for man by partnership of woe,
For human suff'rings, human tears will flow. ”

“ And the moment that I merely took the letter in my hands, I swear by the very gods and by the love that burns in me for you, that instant my pains forsook me and at once the fever let me go, as though it were abashed by some manifest saving presence. ”

“ It is almost impossible to read the noble original without finding every word swollen with a sigh or broken with a sob. A heart pregnant with distress, and striving to utter expressions descriptive of its feelings, which are repeatedly interrupted by an excess of grief, is most sensibly painted throughout the whole. ”

“ And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked. ”

“ Sometimes a child would cry, a man utter an oath, a woman shriek: then would come harsh orders delivered in a gruff voice, more swearing, the grounding of arms and more often than not a dull, flat sound like a blow struck against human flesh, followed by a volley of curses, or a cry of pain. ”

“ The breath of his words, of the very words he spoke, fanned the spark of divine folly in his breast, the spark that made him—the hard-headed, heavy-handed adventurer—stand out from the crowd, from the sordid, from the joyous, unscrupulous, and noisy crowd of men that were so much like himself. ”

“ And I wholly misdoubt, you perceive,
⁠That laughter must always prove gladness.
Are you sure it is grief when a tear starts?
⁠Can you trust smiles of mirth in all places?
If aught can be falser than human hearts,
⁠It must surely be human faces! ”

“ Pleasures of the heart cause anxiety, bitterness, rendings, and fears.
Pleasures of the mind produce a void, vanity, jealousy, coldness, and humiliations! Teach me that all must pass away ... that nothing is true, nothing is good, nothing is eternal, but Thou, Thou only, O my God! ”

“ Glooms, and melancholy, were considered as infallible signs of a gracious disposition, not only by my father, but by all my religious connexions. One of our preachers used to say, he had rather be in the company of a thousand Demons, than ten laughing persons! ”

“ Gay and jesting speeches fall from this mouth which sobs at night upon its pillow; a laugh dwells on my lips, while my tears, shut up within my heart, at length make on it, in spite of its hardness, the effect produced by water on a stone: falling drop by drop, they insensibly wear it away. ”

“ Have you no warm blood that flows round your heart, that gives your frame a thrilling soft sensation, and makes your bosom glow with affections ornamental to man as a social creature? For shame, my Lord! ”

“ Where do you come from, O man, and where do you keep yourself, that we know not your features nor hear your voice? Have you wife or mother who awaits your return? Or children who set your torch in the corner and climb to your lap and embrace your neck? ”

“ Having passed the distress of repentance, the pain of confession, and the labour of penance, and having overcome the love of the World, the tempting of the Devil, and its own self-will, the soul, weary, and longing for her Divine Lover and God, cries out: “Beautiful Youth, I long for thee. ”

“ In the midst of all the solemn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heart and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remote from philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with no household affections. ”

“ The tears that are the pledge of harvest are not called to the eyes by ridicule or opposition. They are not the tears of disappointment, vexation, or impotence. They are tears that dim the eyes of them that see visions, and gather in the heart of them that dream dreams. ”

“ At others—what curses—foul or coarse jests—or tales addressed to all—or ribald laughter—or sighings and groanings in these later hours when the straining spirit having struggled to silence, there was supposedly rest for the body and the spirit. ”