iiliijliliill iill 'OINEvBIITLERTHQ iiiiiiiiiiiiiii ilii Class TS ^539 Rnnk M 5 43 G; (o GoRyri^htN" L*lO COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. f GOLDEN WINGED DAYS BY ANNE BUTLER THOMAS BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER The Gorham Press 1907 Copyright 1907 by Anne Butler Thomas All Rights Reserved I LIBRARY of CONGRESS / Two Copies Received "■ JUN 24 « 30/ \ 'Ccoyrisrtif Entry iClas&' (X XXc, No, f S(^ /7 3 COPY B. I III '< I I I ■ l lWi l W , T iii - J 77/^ Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. DEDICATION To the memory of Ovid Butler Beloved sire, though twenty years have passed Since thy fair counsel hath been given to men, Thine image still doth press upon my heart: For there hath been no influence in my Hfe, From earliest breath, that hath surpassed thine. Could'st thou but scan this page, what interest And kindly thought, perchance, thou mightest know; For reading into it thy spirit pure, My simple message would be magnified To something true and worthy of thy name. Oh, thou, who in exalted dreams for those Thou lovedst well, ne'er equalled was by man! Dost thou still mind the hour when at thy feet I knelt, for Jacob's blessing on rny head ? And cried aloud in agony of grief; But more bemoaned I (for thy relief Of sorrow's stress) mine own inconsequence. Well did I know how, after thy great loss, (That flame of youth which flashed across our sky And sped into eternity) although Thy children crowded near to comfort give, Thou desolate wast left without that one. And bent and sore bereft thou hadst but this: The reverence due thy virtue and thy years, From filial hearts; and daughter's blinding tears, With all abounding gift of love to thee from her — Gift consecrate: sweet frankinscence and myrrh. These verses, slight and mayhap shadowed o'er, I lowly offer them and lay them here. Midst plaudits which from far thou hast received. Oh, couldst thou speak to me (in memory Of deathless pact twixt Love and Gratitude) One single word of approbation kind. Content with life, and with a mind at rest, I would arise and consolation find. That thou with me (fulfilled thy request) Art in a measure satisfied, at last. A. B. T. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART FIRST Book I. Science PAGjE Science Among the Greeks 13 Modern Science the Spirit of the Age 16 Science Sketches 21 Origin of Species 21 Evolution of Man 22 Nature's Fiat 23 Survival of the Fittest 23 The Pleiades 24 Microcosm 25 Nature's Heart 26 The Scientific Age 27 *Book II — Crittcism Huxley, a Man of Culture 30 Matthevs^ Arnold 37 Emerson 37 Philistinism 41 6 Contents — Continued Browning 49 John Fust 49 Friends 56 Robert Browning the Scholar 67 Book III — Fiction Present Status of the Novel 81 Book IV. Drama Every Man in His Humor 86 Ancient and Modern Drama Compared 97 Jones' Renaissance of the English Drama 104 Book V . India — Old and ISfew Literature of India 112 * Kipling's India 1 20 PART SECOND Invocation Book I. Nature The River of Life 132 Contents — Continued 7 Book II. Fragments Group I Deliverance i35 Divine Imminence I35 Improvisatore 13^ Nature's Vacuum 137 Dual Self 137 Group II: Comforting Sea 13^ Closed Door 13^ Interpretation 140 Waiting 140 Non-resistance 140 Group III: Translation 141 My Lady Beautiful 142 Poesy 142 Refreshment 142 Viva! 143 Group IV: Golden Winged Days 143 Wild Rose I44 Acorns i45 At the Auditorium 146 Temperament Artistique 146 Group V: Anniversary 147 Vacation 148 Homer Syndicate 149 The Visitor I49 Semper Fidelis Group VI: Things that are Behind 1 50 Nature's Risibles 151 8 Contents — Continued ' Small Life 151 The Open Fire 152 Group VII: Songs o' the Night 154 The Gentle Hand 154 Atmosphere 155 Nocturne 155 Cave of the Winds 156 Group VIII: January Dawn . . 157 The Bequest 157 Mt. Shasta 158 In Doing Deeds Commendable 158 Group IX: Galerie d'Apollon 161 The Catherine Wheel at Chartres 161 The Refining Touch 162 Love's Equivalent 163 My Stradivarius 163 Group X: Cherries 164 Where Stand the Household Gods 164 Allah is His Name 165 Humilitas 166 Group XI: Original MS 168 Ulysses 168 Pan 169 Latin Lyrist 169 The Sacrifice 170 My Library 170 Group XII: Benedictus 171 Contents — Continued 9 Ipsissima Verba 172 Meditation Ignis Est 172 Meditation 173 The Note that Falleth Low 173 Group XIII: Sister Arts 174 Epistle to the Poets 175 Her Little Serene Highness 175 Cradle Song 176 Puritan and Scot 176 Group XIV: Living Stones I77 The Anglo-Saxon 178 Friendship 178 Bride of Christ 179 Palace Beautiful 179 Group XV: Mirage 180 Quiet Hour 181 Creation 182 The New Creation 182 The Ordinance Supreme 183 Book III. Immortality Testis 185 Finale 185 Magnum Opus 186 Book IF. Love Songs Love's Essence 189 Rhapsody 189 Love's Passing 189 Will o'the Wisp 191 10 Contents — Continued Longing 192 Daphne 193 Mortal Love 194 Spirit Love 194 Appreciations 195 Mizpah 196 The Kiss Returned 197 The Gift 197 My Place 197 My Part 198 Language of Love ' 198 Moment Psychological 199 Paradiso 199 Sonata Appassionata 200 Violets 201 Trilogy 202 PART THIRD The Hunt. An Idyl of the Field 207 PART FIRST Book I. — Science SCIENCE AMONG THE GREEKS If we understand by the expression 'science among the Greeks,' science in Greece, we are misled. For, though science may be said to have taken its rise in the teachings of Aristotle and a few other Grecians, it found no permanent home in Hellas. The migration of scientific thought took place quite early after it's birth. It is interesting to know that the Greeks, through their unparalleled imagination, were among the first of scientific discoverers; thus proving that poetry may be the precursor of science. But it is equal- ly puzzling to understand what there was in Grecian soil to deter the Greeks in their investigations. Whatever the cause may have been, it is certain that in Greece scientific study was brief. The beginnings, however, which were destined to attain brilliant results some years later among the Alexandrians, were originally suggested by the Athenians Says one writer: " It is to the foundations of the Museum at Alexandria, by the successors of Alexander, the Ptolemies, that the scientific system inaugurated by Aristotle owes its ancient development. ... It was in fact the first definitely organized institution for the promotion of knowl- edge. " By turning the attention to Alexandria, therefore, it is comparatively an easy matter to learn not only the facts possessed by the Greeks, but the methods of their procedure in study, and the extent of their scientific experimentation. As to a few of the principles acquired by the ancients, through the Aristotelian system. From a direct measure- ment of a meridian arc, the size of the earth was estimated; the method of obtaining specific gravity was discovered; also 13 14 Golden Winged Days the relation of a volume of a sphere to that of its circum- scribing cylinder; and particularly the true theory of the lever. Euclid's great work was perfected by further dis- coveries: the procession of the equinoxes; the first inequal- ity and equation of the moon. Ptolemy discovered the sec- ond inequality of the moon. He argued in favor of plane- tary motion, and embodied in his works many facts in geography and optics. No branch of science attained high- er results, through the school of Alexandria, than that of medicine. Here for the first time, dissection was permitted; and here for the first time, men became careful anatomists, by close study of the structure and physiology of the human body. Says a medical authority: " The discoveries of the Alexandrian scholars were afterward extended by the labors of Galen, the celebrated physician of Pergamus : and through the learned Jewish and Nestorian physicians, the medical knowledge of the Greeks was transmitted to their successors the Arabian scientists." Special reference is here made to the facts acquired by the ancients in the study of medicine since this is almost the only branch of science which remain- ed in active existence (with continuity unbroken) throughout the ages. The study of science in the Alexandrian school lasted four or five centuries; but with the single exception of medical science, it fell into general decline, and was succeed- ed by the study of metaphysics, as the only subject worthy of human thought. Small mystery that our own century — the scientific period — should have been preceded by what are legitimately called the dark ages. The Grecian methods of procedure in study were char- acteristic. Their intellectual manner of approach to a sub- ject was peculiarly their own. Says a certain writer : " The intellectual productions of the Greeks were works of the imagination. The exercise of the reasoning faculty was Golden Winged Days 15 mainly confined to ideal concepts." With Aristotle came a readjustment of the true locus of the imagination: she was given her place — a high one — allowed to precede and lead science; but she was not credited with being an infalli- ble guide, and she was frequently made to withdraw for Science to pass. But even Aristotle, great as he was in his methods of investigation, largely failed. His failure was due to his lack of material, and to his attempts to generalize on slender foundation. Herein is the good which came out of his labor: Aristotle's successors followed his methods in their vigorous collection of facts; and possessing larger ma- terial, with increased power of generalization (resulting from continued tentative effort) they reached, more than he, ac- curate and valuable conclusions. The scientific experimentation of the Greeks was in most directions, wholly dissimilar to ours; but as careful dissectors of the human body they were like moderns. In lieu of the cadaver they frequently made use of apes, in their cross-section examinations. They gave fairly close study to nature, both animate and inanimate; having special advan- tages for such pursuits in the great Alexandrian museum. The extent of their scientific observations must have been considerable, when it is taken into account that within the walls of this same museum were not only menageries and botanical gardens, but a great variety of scientific instru- ments and a magnificent library. If proof were needed, works are extant upon every scientific subject from zoology and botany all the way to agriculture, geography and chem- istry, showing the scope of their investigations. The Grecians, though they left some false conclusions in the theoretical domain of science, left many useful discov- eries in the perceptive domain. Says Huxley: " The foun- dations of mathematics were so well laid by the Greeks that l6 Golden Winged Days our children learn their geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria, two thousand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus and Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and Archimedes. It was long before biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus and by Galen." But this is not all. Says Morris: " The thinkers of the ancient world have done more than make preliminary scientific discoveries. They have rationally interpreted nature, and have swept away much of the rubbish of old thoughts; and have left a clear field for the edifice of modern science. " MODERN SCIENCE THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE The study of science, which prevailed to a surprising degree among the ancients, gradually ceased in all branches except medicine, until during the Dark Age it had almost no place in the university curriculum. Aristotle's theory of evo- lution and his conception of cellular origins, marvellous as they seem in the light of modern science, yet inspired no man- ner of investigation : his original ideas were, for centuries, re- garded as purely philosophical speculations. The results of modern investigation have, however, so far transcended any- thing ever conceived of in the past that no recognition seems possible of a previous scientific age. So pronounced is the scientific spirit today that the interest in science is not regard- ed an awakening so much as it is considered a birth. The scientific revival, broad-spread as it is now, was nevertheless of slow growth. From its inception modern scientific thought was looked upon with suspicion; and its promulgators viewed with combined fear and derision. Golden Winged Days 17 Science and classic learning were at war. Conservative institutions, showing intense hostility to science, cultivated only the classic languages. Science retaliated by deriding the classics as decadent. The breach influenced both to their detriment: the exclusive study of the classics was found to be narrowing, the exclusive study of science ac- knowledged to be materialistic, in its effects. The best thought of the time seemed to advocate compromise. The breach between science and theology was instant and ever increasing. Science sought no favor; theology extended none. The war in certain quarters still continues; but the mutual dependence of science and religion is coming to be more and more recognized. The pioneers of modern science were men of singular simplicity of character, and tenacity of purpose. Their teachings are dissimilar to the opinions enunciated by many of their followers; while they themselves are not responsible for assertions often attributed to them. Notably is this ob- servation applicable to theories held by Darwin and by Wal- lace. They are the discoverers; and to them is accredited the honor of being numbered among the world's original investigators. Aside from the vast researches made by these scien- tists, their prime discovery was the unity of nature. This great theory is still in dispute. But it has been accepted so widely by practical scientists that it deserves a respectful hearing. It is a thought which first dawned upon the minds of Darwin and a few others, was utilized by them in their own investigations, and, proving valuable as a working hypothesis, was given by them to their fellow-workers, for what it was worth. From being received as an acting prin- ciple to being accepted as a fundamental truth was a step which the theory took within a few months. Darwin says i8 Golden Winged Days that between the first and last editions of the Origin of Species it rose quickly from a ridiculed conception of natural processes into a widely credited working basis, by hundreds of naturalists. They did not accept it; but they used it as a line along which to pursue their private studies. That was all that was necessary, and all that the discoverer wished. He let the principle speak for itself; and smiled at their alacrity in following the path he had pointed out. Then came conviction, and a strong desire on the part of those who had availed themselves of this explanation, to bring others to realize its value. The law of unity, as illustrated by Darwin, presents a perfect exemplification of the evulution of man. The discoverers did not claim development to be a universal principle. But they indicated the way by which we may find if it is true in specific instances, and then may follow inductive reasoning for further light. The principle of unity which Darwin and Wallace taught concerning the evolution of man, applies in a larger and grander sense to the whole organized world. One of the noblest services science has rendered recent times is to explain its own method of research. This is known as the New, Modern, or Scientific Method. For an understanding of the New Method we go back to the dis- coverers. As to the way in which he reached his conclusions, Darwin says: " After I returned to England (from his voy- age as naturalist on the Beagle) it appeared to me that, by following the example of Lyell in geology and noting all the facts which bore in anyway on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, some light might be thrown on the subject. My first note-book was opened July 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles and, without any theory, collected facts. After five years work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject. " Huxley calls the Modern Method Golden Winged Days 19 the method of nature. He says: " The methods of the physical and natural sciences are the methods of investiga- tion. They begin with observation and experiments, ad- vance to generalizations (called hypotheses or theories) and finally proceed to overthrow^ or establish the generalizations, by deducing from them necessary consequences and rigor- ously testing them. This method involves inductive as well as deductive logic; and herein lies its peculiarity. It is the method nature employs. Furthermore it is not merely the method of nature. It does not stop with observation and ex- periment. It only begins there. Objects should generate orderly ideas J' The Scientific Method maybe said, therefore, to proceed along this line: ist. Accumulation of facts. 2nd. Classification of Facts. 3rd. Reasoning. The last is the most complex and difficult. Morris says: *' It is the laws and principles which bind together the vast array of na- ture's materials. It is the last step and one necessary to complete the work and to build a true counterpart of the uni- verse in the human mind." The New Method has been so prolific of results that its advance has been one of conquest. It is now universally adopted and is the only accredited means of inquiry in an- thropology, in comparative philology, in geology, and in an- cient and sacred literature. The Modern Method has re- volutionized the study of anthropology. For example, man's racial place was determined, formerly, by his language and location. The Scientific Method decides his race definitely from cranial measurements and angles, stature, hair and, skin. The New Method is invaluable in the study of com- parative philology: as instanced in the Indo-European languages, which all have the same word for father and mother; showing that the family relation existed before the migration of the early tribes from their first home. The cen- 20 Golden Winged Days tral fact which the Modern Method has revealed in geology is that there is a continuity in the earth's crust formation; notwithstanding the abrupt changes in the various strata. Of equal importance, and to many of more interest, is the effect which the Scientific Method has had upon the study of ancient and sacred literatures. But the method so valuable in all objective studies (which may be actually demonstrated by experimentation) is not always infallible when applied to manuscripts; because the originals are frequently lost, and the copies which we have are supplied from memory, or taken inaccurately from unreliable sources. This being so, the results from textual criticism cannot be depended upon as invariably true. There are no mistakes in nature, and a fact in nature once established is forever an hypothesis upon which we may form a conclusion. But an ancient manu- script is one thing: an uncertain quantity. And a rock is quite another: an eternal basis. However the New Method is so far the best that it would be strange if it were not used extensively in belles-lettres just as it is in every other branch of learning. In ancient and sacred literatures the Modern Method has already been most far-reaching in its results. And with a proper appreciation and realization of its limita- tions, it will yet reveal wonders. Wolf thought Homer was not a person; but that the word was the name for a collection of songs. The Scientific Method led Schliemann to exca- vate; and out of his excavations history has been construct- ed which duplicates the setting of the Greek epics. The New Method applied to the study of the Sacred Scriptures is. called Higher Criticism. It is at work as present; and its results, though incomplete, are somewhat modifying long accepted ideas The rise of modern science is like the building of a tem- ple. First, the plan: Darwin and others have suggested the Golden Winged Days 21 plan to be the Unity of Nature. Second, the accumulation of stones or building material: specialists have blazed facts from every quarry. Third, the process of building: this has been and is being done by other v^^orkers w^ho are arrang- ing these vast piles of facts and laying them in their proper places in the structure. Fourth, and last are the finishers and furnishers: these noble artificers v^ill not come in our time; they may never come. For so grand is the plan and so stupendous the work that man may never do more in his little day than keep on building — forever, building; but meanwhile rejoicing in his work, as he feels assured that every stone in wisdom hath been laid, and with God's plan in harmony. SCIENCE SKETCHES Origin of Species I Bare feet, bare hands upon the floor, I chanced to place. Faint, trembling memories stirred — a recognition swift As thought, of days primordial: when on tropic vine Ancestral creatures climbed, and chattered as they ran! II In me their distant kin, a comprehension rose Of nature's unity: and I and they — The children of the forest, wild and free — Are now, and shall remain, forever one. 22 Golden Winged Days Evolution of Man I The origin and fate of men Is now by science loud proclaimed. (Alas, the weariness of life Doth compass me on every hand.) II If men from orders low have ris*n, Then rudiment'ry to their flesh Doth cling the nature of their sires. (One saith the human heart is kind.) Ill It may be that the flame doth burn Which one day Hghted from above, Presaged their final birth as men — Partakers in divinity. IV But aeons e'en must roll around E'er that eliminate shall be Which now doth drag them to the dust- Refuting origin divine. For evolution needs no proof Than that found in humanity: Primeval instinct, cruel, strong; And culture, pure, ennobling. Golden Winged Days 23 VI Oh, that I had through endless years Of man's slow and transitional state, Remained non-existent still — Unborn till fullness of the times. VII Oh, life! oh, weariness of life! When will the dross of earth decay ? When will maturity be here ? Will Man (God's image) e'er appear ? Nature's Fiat Great Nature doth enforce a single law. This one sublime event doth shake the earth: The human, slender, slight and small; The creature moving in her stall; The birds (that for a moment leave Their blue with pointed winging cleave) Obey; and all to mandate come. Still, still they lie. They all succumb. Survival of the Fittest I The vast majority of life attempts Abortive are. E'en from a million seeds Not more than half to full fruition come. 24 Golden Winged Days And many children — may God pity them — Flit out of life, before they ope their eyes. II Oh, why this prodigality of forms That go to waste ? But one solution stands That life upon the earth may never fail; And unit ever to the greatest good Of greatest number, must be sacrificed. The Pleiades I Our minds are most inadequate Determining whence cometh man: It is not reasonable to think From earth he hath evolved himself. II Impossible 'tis to believe He doth trace back his ancestry (Devonian, Silurian age) To low and brutal origins. Ill Imagination stimulant Doth need, to drive to positive Conclusion, that he perfect was Made by his Maker from the first. IV And so at sea, to contemplate, We're left, midst doubt and mystery; Golden Winged Days 25 We have no compass but the stars, Forever fixed in sky of God. Microcosm I The Universal Rhythm The Wonder vast, which Harvey understood, (That gives a dignity to human frame) We call **the circulation of the blood." The heart, like as a fount, doth hold and send Belated river roseate, till thence It flow^eth to its sure and destined end. It is not strange that in the olden times The very source of life should be esteemed To so reside in fluid coursing veins. Oh, bath of full and rich and glorious glow! Thou dost the essence of existence prove: All life should center in thine overflow. Dynamic Fusion in our every vein, That movest up and down and all around. And so returnest to thy place again, Thou circlest evermore in rhythmic run And keepest on thy steady, measured course Without our aid, from birth till life is done. 26 Golden Winged Days II The Primal Elements The substance of the stars is in our frame. And we are one with meteoric rock; And one are we with vast volcanic flame. How do the primal elements of earth, Found in the fire and snow and in the sod, Engrapple me with ever tight'ning girth. Of fascination's power what is the source ? They draw me as the magnet doth the steel: Perchance I recognize a kindred force. In passive state, or ever constant strife, At rest, or acting now molecular. Is matter, that doth constitute my life. Those very substances that spend themselves And change from gases into solid form Are re-adjustment of my own materials! I am the rock. I am the fire and flood. Till universe dissolves in nothingness, The sea, the sky the earth flow in my blood! Nature's Heart Hath Nature then no charm for us Save likeness to humanity ? Golden Winged Days 27 Must she forever be "in tears/' Or smile in maiden vanity ? God wot, she is herself alone! Apart she stands in radiance; In stentor and in undertone She hath a deep significance. O mighty power of universe That throbbest hard with quickened pace; Thou surgest up and down the earth, Thou reachest out to boundless space! Life! Life! It marks thee everywhere — Life limitless in strength and scope; Life full, abundant, ent'ring where The human may not go, or hope. O fill me with thine overflow; Pulse through my viens, great Nature's heart. And send me sweeping down the range Of century — an atom's part! The Scientific Age 'Tis not the age of Poetry, " Saith one who would malign the time. And credit it with neither heart nor voice; But give it note of dominance Pertaining to the evidence Of sense, and instinct in the race For profit and for loss. 28 Golden Winged Days But, though the times must truly change, And fair Romance doth often hide her face, Before the mid-day mercenary sun. And turn away when Science draweth near. She is not dead, nor even doth she sleep. Ah, just so long as fields are green, And skies are blue, and human hearts know love, In nature and in life she shall appear. She sweetly walks abroad at eventide. Or when the dawn of morning soft Doth brighten land and sky, Romance With trailing skirts well dipped in dew. Doth trip it lightly o'er the hills. And whereso e'er Love finds his resting place, In cranny of the mountain top, or lowest deep, There Romance sits — her silent watch to keep. She treadeth now her lonely way Along the quiet country paths. Anon, she climbeth city steeps And gazeth from some lofty tower Out over restless, troubled world; And granteth men her benediction mild. Dear Children of the Dust," she saith, " I love you so that I shall ne'er withdraw, Nor leave you desolate on earth, Save when your hearts are given o'er To that which profiteth you not. If, by the slightest chance, you turn aside From base material gain, Golden Winged Days 29 Or calculation cold of Truth, to find A longing in your breasts for better things (Imperishable treasures long forsworn) Ah, gently then I wrap you 'neath my wings. And bearing you away to heavenly heights, Remove you far from dingy foot-paths here: That ye may yet that "something more" attain. And so doth Romance smile and go her way. Till worn humanity waits to receive The blessing she hath still in store for us. 'Tis not the Age. Tis not the busy brain That shutteth out her ministrations sweet; 'Tis but the willfulness and stubborn sense And self-sufficiency of beings small, Who fain would crowd her from her rightful place, And say she liveth not. To the Elect Romance doth live: nor will she ever die. Book II — Criticism HUXLEY, A MAN OF CULTURE An attempt to define culture is like analyzing a rose to discover the essential elements which, combined, constitute its fragrance; botanical facts as to its floral structure are easily learned; but why certain chemical combinations pro- duce a distinctive perfume, is a logic of nature which escapes reasoning. Culture is an intangible something more readily discerned than described. Perhaps the difficulty of defining the word would partially disappear if due recognition were given to the formative influences which are spiritual as well as to those which are intellectual. May it not be called the resultant of the passion for perfection ? Or in other words, does not culture remain unculture unless there be back of it an intuition which perceives wholeness in the abstract, and a force which prompts a development into an image of the vision ? To the scientific mind this appears a fantastic con- ception of culture. To such an one the word is something which only the New Method may define: " A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more." Even Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture, seems to halt in his definition of the word. He says : '' Culture is to know the best that has been thought and said in the world." Rather, one would think, it is to know and apply the best thought: there is no culture in knowledge per se. Further, in contradistinction to the growth of certain parts, it is an all-round development. 30 Golden Winged Days 31 There is a degree of delicacy in the questioning the cul- ture of a man distinguished as a scientific authority both from his voluminous writings and from his wide experimentations. In the present instance such estimate — if pemissible at all — should rest not so much upon Huxley's attainments as upon his writings, his personality and the nature of his work. Huxley's lack, if deficiency he had, was not in attainment Even a passing reference to the weight and extent of his la- bors is sufficient to command respect. In his early youth he deliberately chose the rugged path of science. Alluding to that time he says: " If I may speak of the objects which I have had more or less definitely in view since I began the ascent of my hillock, they are briefly these: to promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of scientific methods to all problems of life, to the best of my ability. " Huxley possessed a thorough knowledge of many sciences. He was qualified in surgery; and when a very young man was for four years assistant surgeon on board H. M. S. Rattlesnake. Later he became professor of natural history in the Royal School of Mines; and in 1855 FuUerian professor at the Royal Institution. For three years he was lord rector of Aberdeen University. He was Rede lecturer at Cambridge; and in 1883 was made presi- dent of the Royal Society. The fact that Huxley was called to fill so many high positions is evidence that his intellect and genius were readily recognized. In each instance, save one, such recognition was in no way sur- prising: he was simply taking the place for which by nature he was intended. It was therefore a marked compliment to him as a man of culture (without reference to his qualifications at a scientist) when he was instaled Lord Rector of Aberdeen University; and for that reason the more deeply he appreciated the distinc- 32 Golden Winged Days tion. In his Inaugural Address he says: " It is an honor of which I could not have dreamed; and especially surprising as the five and twenty years which have passed over my head since I reached intellectual manhood have been largely spent in the advocacy of doctrines which have not yet found favor in the eyes of Academic respectability. . I was as much astonished as Hal o' the Wynd when proffered knighthood. " Huxley's writings fall under three heads: technical, popular and controversial. His greatest books were pub- lished from 1859-93, and cover a vast survey of science in all of its departments: anatomy, physiology, biology, etc. These score and more volumes at once took rank as author- itative works. Written as they were by a scientist for scien- tists they are out of the pale of literary criticism. During these years he also wrote for the unscientific reader; though his lighter writings were less numerous. The later include his Lay Sermons, Critiques and Addresses, and Science and Culture. These volumes are largely compilations, being for the most part collections from his own lectures and maga- zine articles. In their publication Huxley was prompted by a supreme desire to popularize science. His appeal in these pages to the unscientific reader is as successful as it doubt- less was when made in person to the unscientific hearer. The message indeed is readily comprehensible. It is con- veyed, however, in language, which, considered as literature, leaves much to be desired. As is usual with scientists, Hux- ley minimizes the importance of literary training. The best answer to his disregard for literature as an art is found in his own style; the words hang together, but they do not evince having been collated by a cultured mind. Huxley's con- troversial writings may not be classified by volume or even • by page. They are apparent rather in the large body of his Golden Winged Days 33 work written at a given period, and were due to a move- ment of which he formed a very conspicuous part. The pioneer day for the popularizing of science dawned about the year 1870. Among the first positive efforts to that end was the publication of Huxley's Lay Sermons. Darwin though the prime mover, was the wisest of all the belliger- ents. He alone seems to have kept entirely out of the field. Indeed, from his letters, it is evident that his intention in that respect was his own secret. Like the master diplomat that he was, his indefatigable purpose was first to convince his friends of the credibility of his theories, before he ventured to make his views known to the world. Nor was his wis- dom wanting in his choice of advocates. His earliest confi- dants were (in England) Sir Charles Lyell, and (in America) Professor Asa Gray; both of whom promptly refused to ac- cept his theories. But such was the sweet reasonableness of Darwin that he was in no wise dismayed; and he commenced a process of education, which ended not only in his friends' acceptance of his teaching, but (as he had designed) in their ardent support of his theories. Thenceforth was laid upon them the burden of proselyting other scientists; and to the latter in turn, came the novel duty of sowing scientific thought among the people. Like all reforming periods this was one of hand to hand fight; and one which apparently required a surrender of all ambitions save that of the triumph of the cause. It is certain that the van-guard could not have mov- ed forward without a great amount of preliminary skirmish- ing and sharp shooting by scientific scouts; and to such service more than one man of genius willingly gave up his place as leader and his hope of posthumous honor. Not- able among those who joined in the movement to popularize science was Thomas Henry Huxley. Writing, when an old man of his sacrifice of personal hopes, Huxley says: '* I 34 Golden Winged Days have subordinated any reasonable or unreasonable ambition for scientific fame, which I may have permitted myself to en- tertain, to other ends : to the endless series of battles and skir- mishes over evolution, to the popularization of science, and to the development and organization of scientific education. In striving for the attainment of these objects I have been but one among many; and I shall be content to be remember- ed, or even not remembered, as such. But I could not count anything a mark of success, if I could not hope that I have somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called the New Reformation. " As was inevitable most of the scientific writing of this period was controversial. With the exception of Darwin — who was like a star apart — scien- tists were all on one side or the other. It was the fashion among the leaders to adopt in their disquisitions a certain supercilious attitude toward their opponents which marred their writings, as literature. There was even a deeper in- fringement upon the best style: it seemeda sort of moral an- tagonism. This peculiarity of diction was nowhere more evident than in the writings of Huxley. It should be remem- bered that he lived in vexatious times and was surrounded by petty irritations. He said of his conceptions of truth, that things flashed upon him; and, it may be, he regarded each flash as men do a revelation. Moreover he believed large issues depended upon the stand scientific men were taking; and courageously and conscientiously he sought to do his part in defending it. But the fact remains that there are many passages in Huxley's works which strike one unfavorably and rather painfully. Especially is this true of his essays published in 1882; the language here used is not fhat of a man of culture. Huxley's personality is striking and individual, and enters largely into an estimate of him as a cultured man. Golden Winged Days 35 His intelligence was keen, his temperament nervous, his char- acter at once forceful and purposeful. To the intense nature of Huxley, St. Paul's doctrine is applicable: **This one thing I do." He could no other. Concentration upon a given point, to the exclusion of all else, being Huxley's prime char- acteristic, it w^as inevitable he should run into a groove. He possessed a w^ide knovirledge of science. With this he was satisfied; occasionally to the extent of a seeming indifference to spiritual ethics and literary studies. But the bigotry in others, of which he so often complained, was not altogether foreign to his own nature. This want of mental hospitality was partly responsible for his inability to understand a cul- ture based upon character. And even as his scientific mind could not entertain the full thought of culture, neither for that reason was its personal realization possible to him. The narrowing effect of specialization precludes culture in its broadest sense. Huxley, in addition to being a scien- tific scholar, was a great specialist in biology. Without specialists knowledge would cease. But more is the pity, they are all too frequently martyrs to human enlightenment. They close upon themselves the door of a broad, all-embrac- ing culture; and the very law which regulates the spread of knowledge often takes no account of the individual.The consensus of opinion (both of specialists themselves and of observers generally) seems to be that culture is non-existent with specialization. Darwin's mental application to experi- mental science and the consequent decay of his poetic taste is a well known instance. Darwin's acknowledged experi- ence holds good more or less of all scientists. Mental con- centration upon any one theme of whatever nature, atrophies the ethical perception. Huxley felt this himself. Writing in defense of his position he says: "How often have we been told that the study of physical science is incompetent to con- 36 Golden Winged Days fer culture; that it touches none of the higher problems of life; and what is worse than a continual devotion to scientific studies tends to generate a narrow beUef in the applicability of scientific methods to the search after truth of all kinds ? How frequently one has reason to observe that no reply to a troublesome argument tells so well as calling its author a mere scientific specialist ? Influenced by university traditions, the great majority of educated Englishmen hold that the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is educated, while he who is versed in other branches of knowledge, however deeply, is a more or less respectable specialist — not admissible into the cultured class." A statement which has in it a touch of bitterness; but which, when sifted of its exagger- ation, pretty nearly states the argument as it stands, and re- mains unanswered. He concludes: *' I hold strongly to the conviction that for purposes of attaining real culture, an ex- tensively scientific training is at least as effectual as an exten- sively literary education. And I find myself wholly unable to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance if their common outfit draws nothing from the stores of phy- sical science. " This latter statement is an instance of Hux- ley's too frequent method of reasoning. His opponents do not argue for the total exclusion of science; but they oppose its claim upon the absorption of all the mental faculties. Their demand for purposes of real culture is simply a pro- portionate development. Huxley did not rightly divine the meaning of the word culture. His conception had in it no thought of a spiritual element; nor could he understand it in its broadest intellect- ual aspect. His writings are of inestimable value as works of science. Regarded as literature they are wanting in charm of expression and felicity of style. Huxley's vigorous per- Golden Winged Days 37 sonality remained forever natural, without the graces or adornments which culture alone may bring. His work also (ever all-engrossing to him) was in itself a slight barrier to his own enlargement of soul. Huxley will always remain a great specialist in biology. But from his writings, his per- sonality and the nature of his vocation the evidence of his development along all lines is not sufficient to warrant his being regarded a perfect type of the man of culture. MATTHEW ARNOLD Estimate of Emerson Literary criticism is a modern art. Says Ferris Greens- let: **In both ancient and medieval times actual critics were few. In the ancient period there was nought but the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. Even in the Middle Age what critical writing there was, was cosmo- politan. But from the Renaissance onward the critics were legion." Owing to false conceptions of the function of criticism, though it became a universal craft, it did not devel- op rapidly as an art. Past and present ideas of its province are widely different. The past conception of criticism is nar- row and unworthy. To criticise, formerly, meant unequiv- ocally to condemn: to view with justice — void of sympathy. Even so late as 18 18, Blackwood, by its inhumanity, rendered speechless one of England's greatest poets. In Jeffrey's attack upon Keats, criticism reached the culmination of its merciless censure. The death of the poet brought criticism to a halt: critics began to realize the cruelty of their own 38 Golden Winged Days weapon, and hesitated to give it even legitimate use. The present conception of criticism is broad and noble. To criticise, today, means to approve as well as to censure: to view with justice and love. This changed attitude, or altered spirit of criticism is evinced in the words of one of our best modern critics. Says Saintsbury: *' Criticism is the en- deavor to find, to know, to recommend, to love not only the best but all the good that has been known and thought and written in the world." Authorities in literary criticism are therefore few: since the divine office of critic finds its priest- hood in men loving as truthful, and truthful as loving. The very rarity of the world's great critics makes the study of their works imperative: an ultimatum from them is our only criterion of perfect taste. As a master of the art of literary criticism no writer has appeared in England, up to the present time, who has quite equalled Matthew Arnold. A poet and an essayist, he is eminently qualified to speak with authority upon his own specialty: literature. He has written three volumes of poems and eight works of critical essays. As a poet he is thoughtful and cultured; but to such distinction has he risen as a critic that he is called the " Saint Beauve of English letters." In 1883, after he had been for ten years Professor of Poetry at Oxford, he was granted a pension of two hun- dred and fifty pounds. He then came to America and de- livered a course of lectures. He was well informed concern- ing certain phases of American life; and he chose themes which he knew would be of interest to his public. His lec- ture upon Emerson was one of the best which he gave while in this country. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American by birth and wholly an American in sympathy, was yet scarcely a typical American. Rather he was a product of New England, and Golden Winged Days 39 of a New England no longer Puritan. In early colonial days the stern belief of the Puritans gave New England an unique civilization. The prevalence of their rigid doctrines was followed by a religious faith largely intellectual; and this in turn was succeeded by an influence half rational and half mystical. Transcendentalism, in certain localities, seemed to sweep aside even the vestiges of Unitarianism. In its rap- id movement it was like a small cyclone whirling in a limit- ed circle; and the new cult drew Emerson, with many other thoughtful men, into its vortex. The gentle philosophical preacher retired from the ministry, and sought truth through mysticism. After quitting the Unitarian pulpit Em- erson entered the lecture field. Later he edited a journal called the Dial; and writing a number of poems and essays, he chose, thenceforth, literature as his profession. Arnold says nothing of Emerson which his American friends may not willingly hear. The critic's conclusions are the resultant of a poet's testing a poet by poetic laws, of an essayist judging an essayist by the cannons of literary criti- cism. More than this they are a recognition, one cultured man of another. Arnold gratefully acknowledges the in- fluence which Emerson had exerted upon himself. He first seeks to discover to what that influence was due: if after the lapse of forty years Emerson is as great a writer as Oxford students once believed him to be. The task was a brave one, for he was addressing Emerson's countrymen in Emerson's home. Arnold's delicacy in the treatment of his theme is witnessed by his inclusive remarks concerning Goethe, Carlyle and Emerson as men of comparable power; and by the skillful indictment of Carlyle with which he precedes his estimate of Emerson. Arnold's selections from Emerson's poetry are brief but convincing; and the critic says they are the best in the poet's 40 Golden Winged Days works Emerson is not Plato, as Arnold truly says; but the comparison is invidious. The poet's vagueness is, hovs^ever, a just cause for complaint; and it is traceable, as are most of his literary faults, to the mystical cast of his thought. Upon Emerson's prose style Arnold is equally severe, and quotes as oracular Emerson's modest lament: " Each sentence I write is an infinitely repellent particle. " The critic further affirms that Emerson's style is not that of a man of letters. He says : The style of a great writer resides in the whole tissue of his work, and of his work regarded as a composition for literary purposes. Emerson's style has not the requisite wholeness of tissue." Giving Emerson place neither as a great poet nor as a g;reat writer, Arnold yet assigns him a certain posi- tion as the propounder of a philosophy, ** though he cannot be called a great philosophical writer." And he somewhat detracts from even this slight praise by adding: " Emerson cannot build. His arrangement of philosophical ideas has no progress in it, no evolution; he does not construct a phil- osophy. " Unfortunately Arnold is able to fortify his posi- tion by numerous quotations from the Dial; in which pub- lication is found Emerson's most ineffective writing. Having *' cleared the way," as he says, Arnold concludes his lecture by stating just what manner of a man, in his opin- ion, Emerson is: '' We have not in Emerson a great poet, a great philosopher maker, a great writer. His relation to us is not that of any one of these personages. Yet it is a relation, I think, of superior importance. Emerson is the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit. I figure him to my mind as visible on earth still, in habit as he lived, but of heightened statue and shining feature; with one hand stretch- ed out toward the East, and the other toward the West. To us in England, he shows for guidance, his lucid freedom, his cheerfulness and hope; to you in America, his dignity, his delicacy, serenity, and elevation." Golden Winged Days 41 Arnold's verdict as to Emerson's place among men of letters — being the verdict of aworld critic — stands conclusive. But it may be questioned how far the Englishman was quali- fied by circumstances, by training and by temperament to pronounce a final dictum upon the philosophic greatness of America's best beloved moral teacher. The vaporings of Transcendentalism will ever obtain against the quality of Emerson's works, taken as a whole; but that portion of his writings which is clear of airy speculation is, from Emerson to the world, a message for all time Philistinism Matthew Arnold is a twofold critic: he is a critic of literature and he is a critic of men. As a critic of literature he has few if any equals. He is a master of English expres- sion, as Sainte Beauve is of French. His clear, definitive thought, and his pure limpid style, aside from the matter of his discourse, is a delight to "the rational man." So appre- ciated is Arnold by his fellow-craftsmen that he might be called the critic's critic, as Shelley is termed the poet's poet. As a critic of men his style remains the same — with a differ- ence: luminous in thought, perfect in diction, but with an added sting — like the cutting of a sharp instrument. As a critic of men Arnold knew well how to touch the weak spot; not so well how to heal the wound. He is no longer the prose poet; he is the surgeon with nerve and skill, but not always with the good surgeon's tender heart. It is possible there is a resemblance between modern and ancient Philistinism. Some, however, regard the fancied likeness as overdrawn; while others strongly object to the 42 Golden Winged Days present application of the word, owing to the obloquy which its use casts upon an honorable nation, though they be a peo- ple extinct. The appellation has been in use for some years on the Continent, but it did not till of late become familiar to English-speaking people. Its acceptance and wide use (by Matthew Arnold in particular) made it a name to con- jure with. Arnold found it applicable in describing a cer- tain type of very obtuse persons; and since his adoption of it, he has used it extensively and with a keen appreciation of its fitness to the case in hand. In contradistinction to the enlightened ones, he speaks of those whom he regards Phil- istines as "humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies to light, stupid and oppressive, but at the same time very strong." And again he says: *' Philistinism must have meant originally in the minds of those who invented the nick- name, a strong, dogged opponent of the chosen people — of the children of light." Arnold justifies its use by the re- semblance which he is able to see between the so-called mod- ern Philistines and the people who lived in the time of the Hebrew kings. He holds that the ancient people, being dead and buried, are in no wise mahgned by the opprobrium which of late has been attached to their name. In Matthew Arnold's Phihstia are included the Ger- man, the Englishman and the American. The German does not realize nor care what Arnold thinks about him; the En- glishman suffers; and the American laughs it off and tries to forget. The Frenchman alone is the exception; of him Ar- nold writes as of no other man. The adoption of the name Philistine is variously explained. It is certain however that the modern use of the term rose in Germany; and that the per- sons so designated have long been numerous in that country is evidenced by their early christening. In Heine's time Germany was pronounced by the poet "the land of the Phil- Golden Winged Days 43 istines. '* Arnold has much to say of German Philistinism; but he is far more patient with the type as seen in Germany than he is with the same class as observed in other lands. In referring to the German, Arnold contents himself with simply pointing out his limitations, and even sees some good in him. He says : '* Philistinism is a plant of essentially Ger- man growth, flourishing with its genuine marks only in the German fatherland, in Great Britain and her colonies and in the United States of America. But " — the distinction is quite marked — ** in Germany the steady going habit leads up to science, up to the comprehension and interpretation of the world," The Philistines in England were the special objects of Arnold's continuous attack. Searching for causes of the supposed intellectual thraldom of the English, Arnold says: *'The English, profoundly as they have modified the old Middle Age order, great as is the liberty which they have secured for themselves, have in all their changes, proceeded, to use a familiar expression, by the rule of thumb. What was intolerably inconvenient to them they have suppressed; and as they have suppressed it not because it was irrational but because it was practically inconvenient, they have sel- dom, in suppressing it, appealed to reason; but always, if pos- sible, to some precedent or form or letter which served as a convenient instrument for their purpose, and which saved them fror:; the necessity of recurring to general principles. " Arnold seems inclined to ascribe their presumed obtuseness to new ideas, to the composite character of the English people. In Celtic Literature he writes: "It is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to our bow! If we had been all Germans we might have had the science of Ger- many; if we had been all Celtics we might have been popu- lar and agreeable; if we had been all Latinized we might 44 Golden Winged Days have governed Ireland without getting ourselves detested. But now we have Germanized enough to make us PhiHstines, and Latinized Normanism enough to make us imperious, and Celtism enough to make us self-conscious and awk- ward." Arnold is especially sensitive to national self-com- placency; more particularly as he sees it shown in his own, the boasted Middle Class. In one instance, he refers to certain expressions which have been used so much that they have become stereotyped, such as "The great Middle Class is the backbone of the English nation." Not only does he find the most objectionable form of Philis- tinism in his native land; but the vast body of them, even there, appear to be of his own class. The Philistines at home are a source of infinite torture to Arnold: he has noth- ing to say in extenuation of what he regards their dullness and hopeless provincialism. There is a minor note in most of Arnold's writings concerning his countrymen, and it is partly traceable to the fact that he believes England to be in bondage to the Philistines. It seems to him that after centuries of civilization, naught but the leaven of culture remains; and that leaven may be found only in the universities. To Arnold, Oxford, **the adorable dreamer," is culture personified; and to him all England else, " the land of the commonplace," is dreary Philistia. Writing of England under Philistine influence, he says: *' There has certainly followed from hence a general depression of intel- ligence. The born lover of ideas, the born hater of the com- monplace must feel in England that the sky over his head is of brass and iron. If we are doomed to perish (Heaven avert the omen!) we shall perish by our selfwill and want of pa- tience with ideas: our inability to see the way the world is going. " English critics and statesmen have suggested sever- al methods to exterminate British Philistinism. Arnold's Golden Winged Days 45 idea is that the study of the Celtic language, if made compul- sory, would gradually banish ignorance and be a strong in- centive to the attainment of culture. He writes: " At this moment when the narrow Philistinism, which has long had things all its own way in England,is showing its natural fruits, and we are beginning to feel ashamed and uneasy and alarm- ed at it — at such a moment, it needs some moderation not to be attacking Philistinism by storm, but to mine through such general means as the slow approaches of culture and the introductions of chairs of Celtic. " Cobden believed in the infusion of new blood and new ideas from over sea. His thought was that England should make a better acquain- tance with the United States. His suggestion, made many years ago, is interesting in the light of recent international experiments and developments. Arnold's mind was not furnished with the state-craft of a Cobden or of a Cecil Rhodes: he treats the suggestion rather facetiously. He re- marks: ** Chicago has claims upon us no doubt; but" — and he turns to his favorite thought — "what Oxford should give England are not lectures on Chicago, but lectures on Celtic languages and literature." Matthew Arnold deals severely with his own people; and it is to be expected he will be equally as critical with his kin beyond sea. And so he is, only in a different way. Of the Americans he says: '*The Philistines are the great bulk of the American nation. A livelier sort of Philistinism than ours. As we have found that the strongest and most vital part of English Philistinism was the Puritan and Hebraizing Middle Class, so it is notorious that the people of the United States issues from that class and reproduces its tendencies." Comparisons are ever out of favor. But Arnold finds estimates necessary in order to clarify the thought he wishes to convey. After all, there may be an indirect compliment in 46 Golden Winged Days a comparison, since in every comparison a degree of likeness is implied. To Arnold the French are a superior people. He does not attempt to compare the Germans with the French; but the demerits of other nations are brought out only as he is able to measure them with the favored race. The comparisons which Arnold institutes between the Eng- lish and the French are naturally painful to his own country- men. His criticisms are made somewhat irritating to them from the fact that alongside of the limitations and dullness which he attributes to the English, he throws a flashlight upon what he considers the sparkle and charm of the French, in the same social grade. Arnold finds the Englishman narrow, slow, chained to custom, phlegmatic; he sees the French- man versatile, alert, alive to new ideas and responsive to every influence which comes near him. Arnold is himself English in blood, but all French in temperament. The typi- cal Englishman is an alien to him. But the typical French- man is of a nature similar to his own; and his recognition and appreciation of him are instantaneous. Arnold's compari- son of the Americans and the French is not quite so unequal. In his Mixed Essays he shows that he never has it in his mind that the Americans are a stupid people. His estimate is based not so much upon American and French character- istics, as upon contrasting conditions of the two civilizations. He deplores our want of historical background: but he forgets he may not logically complain of that. He says: *'The old French nobility established a high and charming ideal of social intercourse and manners, for a nation formed to profit by such an ideal; and which has profited ever since. In America we see the disadvantages of having social equality before there has been any such high standard of social life and manners formed." Arnold's ideal of civilization is that of ancient Greece. He writes: "The Golden Winged Days 47 spectacle of ancient Athens has profound interest for a rational man. It is the spectacle of the culture of a people. It is not an aristocracy leavening with its own high spirit the multitude and leaving it the unformed multitude still; it is not a democracy, acute and energetic, but tasteless, narrow- minded and ignoble. It is the Middle and Lower Classes in the highest development of their humanity that these classes have yet reached. In the conversations recorded by Plato and Xenophon (which for the free yet refined discussion of ideas have set the tone for the civihzed world) tradesmen and shopkeepers mingle as speakers. This is why a handful of Athenians are more interesting than the millions of most nations, our contemporaries." Arnold believes that France presents the nearest — indeed the only — modern approach to the civiHzation of ancient Greece. He thinks France alone knows where are to be found the sources of human satisfaction: ** For France is the only country in Europe where the people are the most ahve. " In writing of the French and what he calls "their demands on life," he speci- fies those things in them as a nation which seem to him most admirable. He says: *' If we consider the beauty and ever advancing perfection of Paris (nay the same holds good of all the great French cities also) if we consider the theatre there; if we consider the pleasures, the recreations, even the eating and drinking; if we consider the whole range of re- sources for instruction and for delight, for the convenience of human life generally, we shall find that the advantage of France rises from its immense Middle Class making the same sort of demands upon life which only a comparatively small Upper Class makes among ourselves. In France the whole Middle Class make upon life the demands of civilized men; and this immense demand creates the civili- zation we see. And the joy of their civiHzation creates the 48 Golden Winged Days passionate delight and pride in France which we find in Frenchmen. Life is so good and agreeable a thing there, and for so many. " Matthew Arnold is deservedly entitled the apostle of culture. He brings a peculiar radiance with him. His gleam reveals the rocks; but like the glare from a light-house, it is brightest far away, while around the base of the pillar the darkness still remains. Could he but come down to a sympathetic level with those to whom he speaks, how bright- ly he might illumine their dull paths! For men are neither indifferent nor stupid; but ignorant, and dumbly feel their limitations. The greater the limitations the deeper often the despair of getting beyond them. Arnold's criticisms of men are keenly enjoyed by the elect (who do not include themselves) but the plodders (whom with greater love he might have helped) are still where they were, with the pain- ful consciousness that they are unworthy of their birth-right, yet not knowing why. Matthew Arnold's countrymen heed him not, owing largely to his want of one-ness with them. The very men whom he wished to enlighten are his least in- terested audience: he will profit them little because he did not first win their hearts. But Arnold's illumined word, though having slight local effect, is nevertheless far-reaching, clear, unmistakable and fine. His message to the world is "expansion." No better summary of his views upon the ideal form of life may be found than that included in his *' Requisites for Civilization." He says : " I put first among the requisites for civilization, the instinct for expansion; because it is the basis which man's whole effort to civilize himself pre-supposes. The basis be- ing given, we may next enumerate the powers which, upon this basis, contribute to build up human civilization. They are the powers of conduct, intellect, knowledge, beauty, Golden Winged Days 49 science, social life and manners. Here are the conditions of civilization — the claimants which man must satisfy before he can be humanized." BROWNING John Fust Browning was a prolific poet. His works, including his dramas and short poems, embrace sixteen volumes. He wrote a few plays which were intended for the stage; but the majority of his dramatic works were written to be read. Browning's verse met with slow recognition and has never enjoyed great popularity. It is filled with his own charac- teristic philosophy, which, like that of Shakespeare, may be interpreted in a thousand ways. His disregard for poetic laws has brought censure upon him; notwithstanding his frequent affirmation that he is not ''willingly obscure." Browning's fame as a poet reached its height near the close of his life. Since that time he has been read attentively, and with an ever increasing appreciation. Critics there are to- day who pronounce him a false prophet, whose message is material rather than spiritual. Like Shakespeare again, he remains the object of attack and the sage of the ages. Among Browning's longer poems is " Parleyings with Certain People," which in form is part narrative and part dialogue. The full title of the poem is: "Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day, to wit, Bernard de Mandeville, etc. Introduced by a dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, and concluded by another between John Fust 50 Golden Winged Days and his Friends." The discussion in prologue, parleyings and epilogue is as to the supremacy of good or evil upon the earth. In the dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, the sun-god strives to persuade the sisters that life is all good. Under the influence of w^ine they relent and agree that life is part good. Apollo pleads for Admetus, that he be spared. The effect of wine passing off the Fates threaten doom upon the hapless favorite of the god. In the parleyings with the illustrious dead, Browning professedly seeks ** no fresh knowledge," but "fuller truth yet: new gleanings from the grave, and truth's triumph. " As to the pre-eminence of right or wrong in the world, the argument is thus stated: How helpful could we quote One poor instance when God interposed, Promptly and surely and beyond mistake. Between oppression and it's victim. So might we safely mock at what unnerves Faith now; be spared the sappings fears increase, That haply evil's strife with good shall cease Never on earth. Nay, after earth comes peace Born out of life-long battle. Man's lip curves With scorn: there also what if justice swerves From dealing doom V And in the dialogue between Fust and his Friends the theme is still the battle between right and wrong. The struggle between the forces of good and evil on the earth, is a subject which has been treated by many of the greatest poets. It is the theme of epics by Dante, Milton and Goethe. It is a sublime conception worthy of any poet's highest power, and one which would naturally attract Browning. For the elucidation of this subject several poets have chosen the same historical character: John Golden Winged Days 51 Fust of Mayence. The product of Goethe's genius is the immortal drama of Faust; and the graceful and poetic characterization of Marlowe is known as Doctor Faustus. Goethe and Marlowe have each used Fust's supposed spiritual conflict as a typical experience of the soul, in choosing between good and evil; making the result in each instance fatal to Fust. According to both poets Fust was overcome by Satan and dragged down to the dreadful pit. Not so with Browning; his conception is very differ- ent. Instead of representing him as a weak, passionate, and tempted soul, Browning shakes off the calumny attached to his name and reveals the real John Fust: a simple, earnest, devout man. Browning's poem might well be called a justi- fication of John Fust. The gossip of the old printer's time, which attached a sort of infamy to his name, has dealt out a double punishment upon Fust. Cruel slander caused him to be persecuted in Hfe by his enemies; but what is far worse, destined him to be anathematized, after death, by the greatest of poets and of musicians. The original of Browning's epilogue, John Fust, was born in the year 1440 in Mayence, Germany. He was one of the three persons to whom is ascribed the invention of printing. Fust was a rich goldsmith, and was taken into the partnership to supply the money. The company lasted ten years, when Fust brought suit for the recovery of the money loaned; which, with interest, he computed at twice the origi- nal amount. He won the verdict for a certain sum, which his partner could not pay; where -upon Fust came into possession of the entire printing apparatus, and also of the business. Fust then took his son-in-law into partnership with himself and started anew. When the city of Mayence was taken, the art of printing was spread abroad — one good eflPect of war. That year Fust took some bibles, which he had printed, to Paris. While there, the striking similarity of the beautiful 52 Golden Winged Days copies on vellum, ornamented with illuminated letters, at so insignificant a price, caused Fust to be accused of working magic; and the little ink-covered urchin, who was his errand boy, to be called a devil. So the report went out that Fust, or Faust, was in league with Satan. To keep secret the in- vention Fust claimed the printed pages were scribe-written manuscripts; thus unconsciously adding to his own confusion, till he was obliged to flee the city. Later the Parliament of Paris made a decree exonerating Fust of witchcraft, since the work was found to be the ** product of a new invention, unknown in Paris." Among: the books which bear Fust's name are the Psalter, the Bible (in the Vulgate) a German bible, Cicero Offices, and others. Browning's epilogue opens with the entrance of half a dozen of Fust's friends. Fust sits with his head bowed on his desk. The friends gather round him and begin to probe him about his supposed wicked deeds. Fust rouses himself and denies he ever did anything very wrong. Whereupon they try to frighten him, and tell him unless he confesses ** the Fiend will come clawing with talons aflame." The friends labor a long time wth him, but all to no purpose; he will not say that he was ever in league with Satan: " I confess To many such fool-pranks, but none so outrageous That Satan was called in to help me: excess I own to, I grieve at — no more no less. " At last one of the friends had a happy thought, they must exorcise him: Second Friend: *' Do Satan despite! Remember what caused his undoing was pride! " First Friend: "Dumb devil! Remains one recourse to be tried!" Second Friend: *' Exorcise!" Golden Winged Days 53 They are none of them very learned; but among them they manage to patch up a Latin psalm, which in time past had been used with good effect upon heretics and infidels. And so they apply it upon old Fust. So, solemnly the friends roll forth their Latin periods, and are delighted to find the charm works, and Fust is about to confess. " The knowledge ye claim, Behold, I prepare to impart. The slow travail of years, The long-teeming brain's birth, At last claims revealment. Wait!" Fust then goes into an inner room. The friends are all on the qui vive. What can he be doing ? They get so frigh- tened that one suggests running away. He cries in a terri- fied whisper *' Show courage and stay Hell's outbreak ? Sirs, cowardice here wins the day!" Suddenly Fust reappears. The printed paper slips, which he shows, confound his friends. They cannot make out what imps of darkness have penned so many perfect lines in five minutes. Fust hands them the proof, and promises any number more for distribution throughout Mayence. They are still silent with fright, when Fust tells them if they do not speak he will summon his spirits. The friends find voice at once and all call out together: *' Grace! grace! Call none of thy helpmates! We'll answer apace!" With this the old man goes to the door, and opening it re- veals the engine in the inner room. In a few touching words he refers to the many long years passed in experimenting, before the completion of his invention: 54 Golden Winged Days " Brave full-bodied birth of this brain that conceived thee, I have thee — I hold thee — my fancy that seemed, My fact that proved palpable!" He proceeds to explain the working of the press in de- tail. His friends are overcome with the beauty and sim- plicity of the engine, and cannot understand how it could all be done without a miracle. Fust bursts forth into an apos- trophe to the Deity, which is very beautiful: '* Omniscient, omnipotent God, Thee I thank, Thee ever. Thee only! Thy creature that shrank From no task thou Creator imposedest! Creation Revealed me no object from insect to Man But bore Thy hand's impress. Earth glowed with sal- vation : Hast sinned ? Be thou saved, Fust! Continue my Plan. Have cheer, soul impregnate with purpose! The task I assign Embrace — thy allegiance to evil is ended!" Then comes the argument: how he has benefited man. All man wishes for is knowledge. Fust modestly claims to have helped man's thoughts to rise, as one helps a falcon to fly; and so he hopes to be saved from the effects of his own sins: " So, friends, did my fault find redemption. I sinned, soul-entoiled by the tether of sense: I plead no exemption From Satan's award to his servants; defense Golden Winged Days 55 From the fiery and final assault would be — whence ? By making as man might to truth restitution! One more step to the goal Thanks for reaching I render — Fust's help to Man's soul!" The friends listen respectfully, till one asks gently: ** Art thou happy?" The thoughts which follow from good old Fust are tinged with sadness. But they are the reflections of a great soul: " Through me does print furnish Truth wings ? The same aids Cause Falsehood to range just as widely. " In the epilogue the poet is supposed to collect all the threads of discourse which run through the parleyings and weave them into one strong argument, i. e. the predominance of good over evil in the world. But the epilogue (as well as the entire poem) weakens toward the close; its climax being the passage above quoted, where Fust gives to God the glory for the invention of printing. Portions of the epilogue however seem to enforce the main assertion; notably that part in which the poet attributes to labor a sort of propitiation for sin. And also the portion in which he acknowledges God's agency in man's uplift: " Shall Man, Microcosmos, to claim the conception Of grandeur, of beauty, in thought, word or deed ? I toiled, but Thy light on my dubiousest step shone: If I reach the glad goal, is it I who succeed (Who stumbled at starting, tripped up by a reed), Or Thou .? Knowledge only and absolute, glory As utter be Thine, who concedest a spark Of Thy spheric perfection to earth's transitory Existences! Nothing that lives but Thy mark Gives law to life's light: what is doomed to the dark ?" 56 Golden Winged Days Browning's Friends Friendship is often but an experience of youth: its exis- tence depends upon circumstances, and with changed condi- tions it passes away. With Robert Browning the reverse was true. Slow in childhood and youth to make friends, in later life he drew them to himself as with a magnet, and held them as with hooks of steel. In boyhood, his case was to his relatives, an anomalous one. Of the solitary lad his sis- ter writes: " The fact was, poor boy, he had out-grown his social surroundings. They were absolutely good, but they were narrow. He chafed under them." However it may be accounted for, the fact remains that Browning had few friends in his youth; but for that small number he always retained a warm affection. His own words refer doubtless to the early period of his life I love and am loved by Some few, honest to the core." The initial step in Browning's social life was the publi- cation of several of his first poems. The verse itself was re- ceived with indifference;- but it commended him to some of the best minds, and introduced him to a larger circle than he had previously enjoyed. After its appearance Browning was thrown into intimate relations with Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall and Forster; and he was included in those famous little gatherings where were read first poems and plays. Says Mrs. Orr: " The friends old and new met in the infor- mal manner of those days, at afternoon dinners or late sup- pers at the houses of Mr. Fox or Mr. Macready. " Indeed the latter was one of Browning's very earliest admirers; but the self-interest which the actor displayed in his relation to the poet somewhat marred the beauty of their friendship. In the days of Browning's unpopularity Macready believed Golden Winged Days 57 not only in the poet's genius, but in his untried dramatic talent. The actor, after some persuasion secured the poet's consent to write a play especially for him. The tragedy of Stafford was the result. At the conclusion of the first pre- sentation, a supper was given in honor of the author. Here were gathered a number of congenial spirits; among whom were Wordsworth and Landor. The manner of the former somewhat over-awed the young poet; but he was reassured by Wordsworth's cordial: ** I am proud to drink to your health, Mr. Browning. " The honor guest and Landor were especially drawn to each other; and later, when Browning found his eccentric friend alone and forsaken, he tenderly cared for him and became the old man's sole guardian. Matthew Arnold, Ruskin and Thackeray knew Browning; though each was prevented by circumstances from a close acquaintance with him. Notwithstanding their infrequent meetings, Arnold was always *' dear Mat" to the poet. Miss Martineau once crossed swords with Browning. She ac- cused him of being un-English, and resented his desire to study German. *' You are German enough already," she said. Rossetti loved Browning long before they met, from having read his poems. The very introduction of the young- er to the elder poet had in it a touch of romance. Rossetti had found, in the archives of the British Museum, a work that so entranced him, that without knowing the name of the author, he copied Pauline, entire. Browning had been equally drawn to Rossetti by his painting. So that when the two men met their hearts were warm toward each other, and the friendship then begun strengthened with succeeding years. Carlyle was one of Browning's earliest friends. The young poet makes a significant comment on one of their first meetings: " I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife yester- day (catch me calling people "dear" in a hurry, except in 58 Golden Winged Days letter beginnings). I don't know any people like them." Browning's friends increased with his years. Nature and circumstances combined to widen the range and vary the character of his human interests. Carlyle stands pre- eminent among Browning's friends. One writer says: "For none can his feelings have been more constant or more dis- interested than that which bound him to Carlyle." And Browning himself said of this friend: '* Caryle I like infinite- ly more than I expected to like him. He is one of the most interesting men I could imagine; even deeply interesting to me. And you come to understand perfectly, when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn, sensibility. Highly picturesque he is too in conver- sation. The talk of writino; men is seldom so good. " Mrs. Orr says : " Browning visited him at Chelsea, in the very last days of Carlyle's long life; and as often as their distance from each other and his own engagements allowed. Even Carlyle's posthumous self-disclosure scarcely availed to destroy the affectionate reverence which Browning had always felt for him." The marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Bar- rett was a revolution in the life of each. As the world knows, theirs was an ideal union. From henceforth a separate ex- istence seemed scarcely possible to either poet. Their devel- opment, however, was individual; and the work of each re- mained characteristic, showing no perceptible influence of one writer upon the other. Separately the Brownings were in- teresting personalities. Mrs. Browning delighted in the intellectual life; but with her, sympathy was almost a passion, and, unconsciously, she lived to comfort and to bless. Al- ways visible in life and in verse were the pure colors of her faith : ** Now a dart of red, now a dart of blue. " To Leigh Hunt she wrote, " I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ in Golden Winged Days 59 the intensest sense — that he was God absolutely. " Love was the motif of all she thought and of all she wrote: love for her own and for humanity. The Portuguese Sonnets, under the guise of translations, are simply a rhapsody of love. One poem alone describes the man Browning; and honors him more than all the other songs together: ** Because thou hast the power, and ownest the grace, To look through and behind the mask of me, And behold my soul's true face — Because not sin nor woe, Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go; Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed — Nothing repels thee. Dearest teach me so To pour out gratitude, as thou dost good." Of Browning's personality we have this from Gosse: " No man ever showed a more handsome face to private friend- ship, no one disappointed less, no one upon intimate ac- quaintance required less to be apologized for or explained away." As love was Mrs. Browning's inspiration, so love deepened the nature of the poet himself. Browning's love for his wife was so sacred that he was wont to *' hush and bless himself with silence." Once and once only "did he dare to phrase it. " The poem One Word More are only a few lines to E. B. B. but they tell more by what they say and what they leave unsaid than ** fifty poems finished:" ** Take them, love, the book and me together; Where the heart lies let the brain lie also. Oh, their Raphael of their dear Madonnas, Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno; Wrote our song — and in my brain I sing it, Drew one angel borne, see on my bosom!* , 6o Golden Winged Days The Brownings' choice of friends was characteristic of them both. They had a few intimates whom one knew better than did the other; and they had many mutual friends. The relation of Browning and Carlyle was limited to the affinity existing between the two men — there was no family intima- cy. Browning had a few other choice spirits who were par- ticularly congenial to himself; such friends, for instance, as those who composed a certain historic group. A charming interior is this glimpse of them all together in Browning's home. Besides the family there were present Tennyson and Rossetti. The former read Maud to the little circle, while the latter sketched from life the now famous portrait of Tennyson. Monkhouse says, referring to Rossetti's sketch of Tennyson: *' It is a record of a meeting of four of the greatest poets of the century to hear the greatest of the four read his greatest poem." Mrs. Browning loved women of homely domestic virtues; but she was strongly drawn to wo- men of genius. It was through her initiative that an ac- quaintance was made with George Sand. The genius, how- ever, of that great woman was not sufficient to make her society indispensable to Mrs. Browning. It was a question how a meeting should be brought about. Mrs. Browning gives a description of the dilemma: " I pricked Robert up to the leap; for he was inclined to sit in his chair and be proud a little. 'No' I said, 'you shant be proud, and I wont be proud, and we will see her. I wont die if I can help it with- out seeing George Sand.' She received us very cordially with her hand held out, which I, in the emotion of the mo- ment, stooped and kissed. The hands offered me were small and well shaped. She was dressed in a soft gray gown, with jacket of the same material. Her manners were quite as simple as her costume. I never saw a simpler woman. Not a shade of affectation, not a shade of coquetry, not a Golden Winged Days 6i cigarette to be seen. She spoke rapidly, with a low, em- phatic voice. Repose of manner is more characteristic than animation is, only under all the quietness, and perhaps by means of it, you are aware of an intense, burning soul." And again Mrs. Browning writes: *' She seemed to live in abomination of desolation as regards society. Crowds of ill- bred men who adore her; society of the ragged-red, diluted with the low theatrical. She herself so different, so apart, so alone in her melancholy disdain." It must have been while the impression of that meeting was fresh in her mind that Mrs. Browning wrote to George Sand A Recognition: True genius, but true woman, While before The world thou burnest in a poet fire, We see thy woman's heart beat evermore Through the large flame. Beat Purer, heart, and higher. " The Brownings together drew out the best that was in their friends. Eccentricities of talent often vanished in their presence — sharp angles were softened into curves, when brought into contact with the genial courtesy of the poets. Together, they gave far more than they received. Says Hillard: *' It is a privilege to know such beings, singly and separately. But to see their powers quickened and their happiness rounded by the sacred ties of marriage is a cause of peculiar and lasting gratitude." While living in Italy the Brownings had many American friends. Indeed, the poet always had a warm place in his heart for Americans; for he once said, with a touch of sadness, that they had his poems in every village when the English scorned everything he wrote. Among the Browning intimacies, such as one family would have with another, were the Storys, the Ossolis, 62 Golden Winged Days and the Hawthorns; all Americans. When the Brownings met the Storys in Italy the sculptor's fame was already estab- lished; and a delightful intimacy sprang up between the two households. A little picnic in the woods found Mrs. Brown- ing unable to climb the rocks. Browning let the party made up of the Storys and others go on while he remained with her all day. *' The only man I ever knew to behave like a Christian to his wife," a youthful cynic gayly cried. So moved was Browning by this chance word that his voice failed him in speaking of it. A reference in a letter throws light on the intimacy between the two families : *' Our friends the Storys help the mountains to please us a good deal. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one another's houses." Again allusion is made to the Storys having se- cured apartments for them and upon their arrival receiving them "to lighted fires and lamps, as if coming home; and showing us their own smiling faces in the evening. " Ma- dame Ossoli, known in America as Margaret Fuller, lived while in Italy not far from the Brownings. She spent sever- al of her last evenings, before leaving for America, in their home. She and they strangely dreaded the parting. She left with them a small bible for Pen, in which she had written the name of her own little boy. Is it not possible that the companionship of a woman who was far her superior and who yet possessed a simple faith in Christ, may have brought about this mute confession from the intellectual and erstwhile doubting Margaret ? Per- haps Hawthorne was the Brownings' most valued Ameri- can friend. The silent guest came and went as he pleased, inviting no comment from either host or hostess. In the presence of Mrs. Browning his shyness van- ished; and he was more communicative with her than he was with most men. Julian Hawthorne in his pronounced Golden Winged Days 63 and somewhat irresponsible style has dashed down a few recollections of the Brownings : ** When I was a boy I lived in Italy, and ate figs off the trees. Our tower was not the only one in the neighborhood. On the contrary there was quite a crop of them thereabout. The Brownings, wife hus- band and son lived within ten minutes walk of our gate. And they being admirers of the Scarlet Letter, and we of their poetry, it followed that we saw a good deal of one another. Wishing to be strictly accurate the younger Hawthorne adds: ** I confess I had not read Aurora Leigh, and was less famil- iar with Sordello. Did not in fact suspect that such a poem existed. Mr. Browning appealed to me on the human basis solely. His talk was utterly incomprehensible to me; and I could see no reason for his habitual intellectual and emo- tional high pressure. He seemed to be always jumping about and apostrophizing." Julian disposes of the person- ality of poor little Pen in much the same ofF-hand fashion: " He was according to all accounts, a highly cultivated and excellent boy; but I know nothing about it from personal experience. For at that period when I met a strange boy my first thought used to be "Can I thrash him ?" and I was apt to follow it up by trying to do it. But I should no more have thought of knocking down Pennini Browning than if he had been a mantel ornament. And this first step toward a mutual understanding being impossible, we never got fur- ther than eyeing each other silently. " While Mrs. Browning still lived Browning looked for- ward in anticipation to '* an age so blest that youth seems the waste instead." But the sorrow of parting came all too soon, and the poet was left desolate. Immediately following the death of his wife Brownins; withdrew himself from social life, and seemed to grow not only sad but even morose. Fortunately, his writings began to receive wide attention; and 64 Golden Winged Days he himself was brought, perforce, into contact with other minds. Gradually human intercourse became more and more a necessity to him; and even the delightful coterie which his wife had gathered round them did not compare with the soceity which Browning, in the rich and ripe years of his own life, attracted to himself. When he returned to make his permanent home in England, he at once took his natural place among eminent Englishmen, and entered heartily into the life of an honored man of letters. From learned bodies he was extended high recognition. The University of Ox- ford conferred upon him the Master of Arts degree by diplo- ma; and the same month he was made honorary Fellow of Balliol College. Later he was offered the rectorship of the Universities of Glasgow and of St. Andrews. Academic honors brought with them new and prized associates. Browning became identified with the universities. His letters of 1877 refer to his enlarged life: ** I was welcomed on arriving (at Oxford) by a Fellow who installed me in my rooms. Then came Jowett who took me to tea with his other guests, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London, and Dean of Westminster. Then came the banquet. Lord Coleridge, in silvery speech, drank to the University; responded to by the Vice-chancellor. Professor Smith gave the two Houses of Parliament; Jowett the Clergy. Lord Lansdown drank to the bar; Mr. Green to Literature and Science, delivering a most undeserved eulogium on myself with a more rightly directed one on Arnold and Swinburne. The Dean of West- minster gave the Fellows and Scholars, and then — twelve o'clock struck. We were fully five and a half hours nailed to our chairs at the table. But the whole thing was brilliant, genial and suggestive of many and various thoughts to me. And there was a warmth and earnestness about it which I never experienced in any previous dinner. " Golden Winged Days 65 A lesser honor, but one which he appreciated, was the establishment of the Browning Society. The men who formed this body were sufficient to give it distinction. From the first its interests were furthered by Archdeacon Farrar and Dean Boyle of Salisbury. But notwithstanding its membership, its survival was always uncertain. The pub- lic and the press threw many a sly stone, and even the poet smiled at some of its eccentricities. We have heard of ad- mirers appealing to Browning for the meaning of certain passages in his works and how the poet's quizzical reply set the town laughing: *'I really can't explain. Ask the Brown- ing Society!" Browning now had friends among the intellectual men of all classes. One who had not seen him for twenty years, and met him at dinners, wrote about him: '* Had I never been told who Mr. Browning was I never would have recog- nized him. He was handsomer; his hair was white. His manner composed and serene. At table he was never ora- cular, nor did he care to Macaulayize. He kept to the quiet give and take of the best table-talk; but he had depths which were rather felt than seen. He was a perfect gentleman of not exactly an old school, but a sedate modern school. Browning's tastes drew him into companionship with clergy- men; not that he cared for theology, but that many cultured men were dignitaries of the church. A reciprocal appre- ciation and love existed between Browning and successive archbishops and bishops, deans of Westminster and St. Pauls. Among such friendly enemies the poet delighted to swing his free lance; while the clergymen often turned their heavy guns upon him only to acknowledge him the victor. He was also a frequent guest in castle and countryhouse: with Lord Carnarvon at Highclere castle and Lord Shrews- bury at Alton Towers, Lord Brownlee at Ashridge, and 66 Golden Winged Days others. As one jokingly said: ** Browning, like Thackeray, would not object to being met in Piccadilly, arm in arm with a duke. " Invitations into the best English houses continued to the last; but his acceptance of them grew less and less fre- quent. They had helped to furnish him with that which he most desired: an intimate knowledge of men. Here as else- where he found his affinities and allowed the others to pass. Browning did not reach his highest thought till well ad- vanced in years. Says one writer: " Browning's thought was progressive, taking on new shades of meaning to the very last." And Grosse writes: ** Long as he lived he did not live long enough for one of his ideals to vanish, for one of his enthusiasms to lose its heat." Near its close, life found him blessed with ''honor, love, obedience, troops of friends and all that should accompany old age. " To return to his best friend — his beloved wife — and that re-union which meant so much to each. It was to the inspiration of a per- fect love that Browning owed his final power of self-revela- tion. E'er he passed over to greet her, after long years of separation, he wrote: '* My own, see where the years conduct! At first 'twas something our two souls Should mix as mists do Think when our one soul understands The great Word which makes all things new — When earth breaks up and heaven expands, How will the change strike me and you. In the house not made with hands ?" Golden Winged Days 67 ROBERT BROWNING THE SCHOLAR Preliminary to the study of Browning's intellectual life, a glance should be given to his environment — social, political, and mental — during his most fruitful years. His youth v^as a day of quiescence: there were no outer forces to rouse and stimulate his faculties. But later on came strife and stir in all the world about him; and with his glorious zest he threw himself into the midst of things. The fourth quarter of the nineteenth century is a period anomalous in the ages. It is approached only by the epoch immediately following the French Revolution, and by the time of Shakespeare. The last thirty years are notable not only for mental expansion, but for moral and social phenomena which doubtless it caused. It is unnecessary deviation to recount the various influences making for a higher civilization, which rose sim- ultaneously throughout Europe. The silent revolutions in public opinion with regard to individualism; the clashing of men's views concerning the origin and destiny of the race; the slow undermining of long accepted dogmas together with the blind groping for actualities; all these things have disturbed the social atmosphere, and kept responsive minds in a constant state of unrest. The prophets of the time are Jerem.iahs and Isaiahs, whether they storm like Carlyle or sing in minor like Arnold. Tennyson's noble voice is possi- bly the greatest among them; but others like George Eliot, Ruskin, Newman, Macaulay and Thackeray, have set in motion various and powerful currents of influence which may never be reckoned. The political turmoil, the religious struggles, the triumph of science, there were too many prob- lems for all but the strongest minds. Then was Browning's occasion : just at his own life's prime. We propose to study not so much the poet's gifts as his 68 Golden Winged Days acquirements, not so much his genius as his scholarship. Great in talent, he was greater in self-culture. His vast knowledge was not confined to any clime or any time or any theme: he knew countries, he knew ages, he knew people and things. Of his various climes Walkes says: *' It is inter- esting to note the mere geographical breadth of his subjects :" Strafford y and A Blottn the Scutcheon, are English; Peracelsus and Colombe's Birthday, are German; The Return of the Druses, is Eastern. But of all countries he loved Italy best. Among his many Italian poems are Sordello, Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, Luna, A Soul's Tragedy, Dramatic Lyrics, and Dramatic Romances. Of his divers times Dawson says: " His poems cover strangely vivid and exact productions of medieval life and thought, glimpses of the authentic life of the ancient world not less than of the modern; yet all touched with the precision which marks the student and the scholar. " [To the diversity of his times and the variety of his climes only a collective refer- ence is possible. We now leave generalization, and attempt a more specific study of his many themes.] How shall we ever recount his multitudinous themes ? His special subjects were art, music, religion, and classic lore. He also chose a variety of general topics; and occa- sionally he presented a vigorous phase of science. Browning has written more nobly and more sympathet- ically than almost any other poet upon art and music; but he has scorned every form of dilettanteism. In Old Pic- tures if7 Florence is found his creed with respect to art. There are many poems which reflect the artist's tempera- ment and ideals. Some of them are little bits of stories told in the exquisite jargon of Bohemia; others are themselves word-paintings. His knowledge of technique and his wide familiarity with art subjects are shown in Andrea del Sarto, Golden Winged Days 69 Fra Lippo Lippi, and The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's. His best landscapes are impressions: a few dashes of the brush and the certain color and sure stroke tell the tale: *' In at heaven and out again Lightning! where it broke the roof Blood-like, some few drops of rain." His detailed miniature work is done only when he is writing for a child, as in The Englishman in Italy. His familiarity with oriental architecture is shown in the description of Constantinople, which opens Part H oi Paracelsus: Over the waters of the vaporous West, The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold. Behind the arm of the city, which between, With all the length of domes and minarets, Athwart the splendor, black and crooked runs Like a Turk verse along a scimitar. " The varieties of knowledge shown in these few lines is a fair sample of much of Browning's poetry. He has interpreted the workings of the artistic spirit as it finds expression in poetry, in painting, and in architecture; but perhaps«.most ot all in music. He was alive to the influence of harmony through his intelligence as well as through his emotions. He was master of the theory of music as appears in a great varie- ty of poems. In A Toccata of Galuppi's the music brings so many pictures to his mind that he seems to have lived in Ven- ice "where merchants were kings. " The music reflects for him not only the joyousness of Italian life, but its sadness as well: " Its lesser thirds so plaintive, it's sixth diminishing sigh on sigh, tell the votaries of pleasure something; its sus- pensions, its solutions, its commiserating sevenths awaken in them their hold on life. That question the music an- 70 Golden Winged Days swers." Writing on Browning's knowledge of music as revealed in Abt Vogler, Kirkman says: ** The beautiful ut- terances of Richter alone approach to the value of Brown- ing's on music. He speaks of melody as Dante does of heaven: as of an experienced joy. Even musical Milton has given nothing of the nature o^ Abt Vogler. It should be per- fectly learned by heart; and it will be ever whispering anal- ogies to the soul in daily life." Browning's treatment of religious themes is found in Easter Day, Christmas Eve, Death in the Desert, Epistle of Karshish, The Monk in the Spanish Cloister, and Saul. The first two poems preserve inviolate his conception of Christ- ianity. Christmas Eve has in it something also of his humor; and the changing scene from the little Dissenting chapel in Rome to the agnostic lecture hall in Gottingen, reveals his mental quickness and impressibility. Easter Day is sombre throughout; and the refrain of the poem is in the first two lines : ** How very hard it is to be A Christian!" In A Death in the Desert his reasoning might be objected to. We here realize that Browning was a reader of Strauss and Renan; else he could not have thwarted their subtle arguments so easily. The unreasonableness of the poem lies in the fact that St. John could not have known of these arguments save by prophetic insight. It is interesting to note what Symonds calls "the stilled sweetness and medita- tive tenderness of the beloved disciple." An Epistle of Karshish, more than any other poem, gives one a strong realization of Christ's miraculous power. Before passing from Browning's treatment of religious subjects, a reference should be made of his views of hypocrisy and kindred re- ligious shams. The Monk in the Spanish Cloister furnishes Golden Winged Days 71 a revelation of human depravity such as is not often found in literature. In few of his poems is Browning's genius more apparent (nor truth to tell more repellent) than where he throws an intense furnace glare upon abnormal forms of spiritual life. Sometimes the effect is overwhelming. Of himself he says: I have gone the whole round of creation. I saw and I spoke. I report as a man may, on God's work — all's love yet all's law." It is a pleasure to turn from the soul-scourging to a high- er expression of his genius. Saul is one of his finest poems, and is a fitting close to this part of the subject. The theme is found in I Samuel, Chap. XVI; i-23rd. The scene be- tween David and the king shows the poet's mastery over oriental details: The tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered; and sparkles' 'gan dart Fromthejewelsthatwoke in his turban, at once with a start — All its lordly male sapphires and rubies courageous at heart. We come now to those studies from which he drew in- spiration for many of his greatest poems: the inexhaustible fount of classical literature. In his earliest poem, Pauline, lies(to change the figure) the germ of almost all the qualities, humor excepted, which appear in his mature work. Love of art and music, intensity of religious belief together with a keeninsight in to thehuman soul and admirationoftheGreek classics — these are already manifest. No characteristic is more apparent, in the light of subsequent achievement, than the familiarity with Greek literature, shown not merely by the reference to Plato and to Agamemnon, but also in the 72 Golden Winged Days passage ending: . Never morn broke clear as those On the mid clustered isles of the blue sea; The deep groves and w^hite temples and wet caves. " At the risk of being accused of pedantry he occasionally brings a little Latin into a poem; as for instance where Cris- tina cries out in classical terms, when we would think her ex- citement so great she would naturally fall into the vernacu- lar: Here's the gallery they trod, both together, he her god, She his idol — lend your rod, chamberlain! aye, there they are Quts separabit? . So familiar was the poet with the Greek and Latin classics that a mere reference in one of the old writers would start within his mind a wonderful train of thought. In an ode in the third book of Horace the lines, '* 'Justem et tenacem propositi virum," roused his poetic fire by the allusion to stern and relentless qualities. An old Latin MS. which he found in Rome was the basis of '' The Ring and the Book. " The little, square, old, yellow volume was duly translated from the Latin before he began to develop his great poem : " Bit by bit I dug The lingot truth, that memorable day; Assayed: and knew my piece-meal gain was gold. " As he was charmed with the Latin writers so he was devoted to the Greek poets. In Balaustion he acquired so much of the ancient phraseology that in the minds of some he out- rivals Euripides. But however exaggerated the too intense Browningism may become, and whatever may be said of the blank verse o{ Balaustion, in one unmistakable sense the poet has shown his scholarship — I mean in the translation. Browning's own canon of translation is characteristic: *' To Golden Winged Days 73 be literal at every cost save that of violence to our language. '* The only justifiable criticism lies in the omissions; and the length, not the difficulty, of the Greek text may have been the obstructing cause. In one feature of his work as a transla- tor he certainly v^^arms the heart of every true exegete of the Greek tongue. He is not only literal in the sense of following the original word for word, but what is far more important to a lover of the classics, he gives the exact root meaning of words. Thus Browning becomes one of the greatest of poets; since with his gift he is also in the highest and most conscien- tious sense a scholar. In Aristophanes'' Apology he goes still deeper into classic lore. This poem was not published until 1875, and is a sequel to Balaustions Adventure. It opens with a defense made by Aristophanes of his treatment of Euripides. Balaustion replies by reading the whole of Herakles (which here Browning translates). Thus the poem is seen to contain two parts : the Apology of Aristophanes and the translation of the play of Euripides. In Balaustion s Adventure the translation is worked into the body of the poem; while the Browning verse is spoken of as "the amber which embalms Alcestis." In the Apology the translation is almost like a detached manuscript. The same accuracy is observable in this translation as in the former. There is also an added charm in the lyrical rendering of the lyrical parts of the play. The original parts of the Apology show more profound classical knowledge than the original parts of Balaustion. In the Apology Browning seems to have be- come so imbued with the spirit of the old drama that there is not even the semblance of a modern about him. It is severe reading for any but a thorough Greek scholar; for the allu- sions to recondite subjects are not only numerous but con- tinuous, and there is no thought which does not present a 74 Golden Winged Days dull, scholastic tone. After all, though the local color is so heavily laid on, the atmosphere is not really Grecian. Athe- nian customs, Greek names, the plays of Euripides and Aris- tophanes suggest pictures of Grecian life fascinating indeed; but it may be questioned whether in reading the Browning parts of the Apology one becomes more interested in the poem or in the necessarily copious annotations. Perhaps the highest value of the original verse lies in its being looked upon as a contribution to criticism, showing as it does *'a vital knowledge of the Attic drama and the work and person- ality of Aristophanes and Euripides." The only experi- ment which Browning made in classic style (though as we know he many times chose classic themes) was Artemis Pro- logizes, which afterward became a part of a longer work. In this poem he first adopted Greek spelling of proper names; a practice which he continued (more consistently, as it seems to me) in writings which were direct transcripts from the Greek. We have already referred to Browning's theory of translation. In one of his most erudite studies he prefaces the volume v/ith that theory carefully amplified. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus is the work of a scholar rather than that of a poet. We quote at length from the preface, since the laws laid down are only those which he signally ob- served himself. In translating from a work so famous. Browning says, ' ' The use of certain allowable constructions which, happening to be out of daily favor, are all the more appropriate to archaic workmanship, is no violence. " He continues: " I should especially decline, what might appear to brighten up a passage, the employment of a new word for some old one, ttoVo? or /^eyo? or t€\o<;, with its congeners recurring four times in three lines. And lastly, I should expect the result to be very hard reading indeed if it were meant to resemble Aeschylus." Along so Golden Winged Days 75 difficult a line Browning proceeded to his task. What is the result? It is as it could not fail to be: a valuable translation from the Greek — a veritable photograph of the Agamemnon. But v^here is the poet ? He is lost in the scholar. At the time of its publication tvs^o very criti- cal reviews of it appeared, one in the Athenaeum and one in the Academy. After a skillful analysis of the infinitesimal accuracies and minute phraseology of the poem, one review- er, who seems himself to be something of a student, remarks rather naively, *' The reading is so very hard that it is some- times necessary to refer to the Greek for the explanation of the English." Certainly a novel method for a busy man with scholarly tastes to enjoy dipping into his Aeschylus, through a friendly translation! This critic gives several references to ** minute and happy accuracies of phrase re-creations of the very thoughts of Aeschylus," and of " incomparable dex- terity in matching word for word, and maintaining the exact order of the original." Browning's desire to render the turn of each phrase in as Greek a fashion as English will bear has led him to use phrases "which are native to Greek but foreign to English." The result, so uncertain as to its gen- eral acceptability, is most welcome to the student since he finds so much to please him in this ** attempt to give our lan- guage the similitude of the Greek by close and sustained grappling, word for word, with so sublime and difficult a masterpiece." We pass quickly over Echetlos, the legend of Marathon, in which the mysterious helper came to the Greeks in rustic garb and armed with plough; and over the Virgilian legend, treating lightly of '* Arcadia, night, a cloud. Pan, and the moon. " One of the most beautiful passages in Browning is the reference in Ixion to the potency beyond even the great Zeus. (The poem presents a number of equally memorable lines — the theme and verse in harmony): 76 Golden Winged Days " Back must I fall, confess " Ever the weakness I fled ?" No, for beyond, far, far is a Purity all-unobstructed! Zeus was Zeus — not Man: wrecked by his weakness, I whirl. Out of the wreck I rise — past Zeus to the Potency o'er him! I — to have hailed him my friend! I — to have clasped her — my love! Pallid birth of my pain, — where light, where light is, aspiring Thither I rise, whilst thou — Zeus, Keep the godship and sink! It is a most singular fact that v^ith all Browning's weight of learning he did not assimilate the Greek spirit, which is essential to the truly cultured classical scholar. Sor- dello is a notable example of the way in which his knowledge fettered his imagination. At this period he must have been familiar with Greek models, yet he chose to disregard them. Says Walker: " Sordello is a chaotic and disjointed poem, neither epic nor dramatic, nor any proper union of the two. The poem exhibits none of that restraint on the part of the author, which the Greek poet never forgot to impose upon himself. " In the Return of the Druses, however, contrary to his frequent lapses in this regard, he consistently observes the classic unities of time and place: the time is limited to one day, the place throughout the tragedy is the Prefect's palace. In its intensity the poem is Greek. It is characterized by much learned allusion, or as the irrever- ent Steadman says, a "good deal of trite and pedantic language. " The themes covered by Browning's general knowledge are countless and may be only touched upon. Among them are history, physiology, medicine, law, linguistics, oriental studies and philosophy. He knew history. Pro- fessor Gardiner, our best authority on the Stewart period, says: ** Browning has seized the real Strafford, the man of critical brain, of rapid decision, of tender heart, who strove for the good of the nation; without sympathy for Golden Winged Days 77 the generation in which he lived." In King Victor and King Charles he sustains his own claim to historic accuracy. In Count Grismond appears what may be called Browning's medieval temper, since it shows the poet to be so imbued with the chivalrous and romantic spirit of the Middle Age. Among other historic poems are Holy Cross Day and Love Among the Ruins. Of his historical gift Symonds writes: '* It is the learning of the scholar which sets up a fragment of the broken past as an appropriate or harmonious back- ground. " He had an insight of physiology, and he knew something of medicine. In the Arab Physician the poet's thought illumines a difficult subject. In Paracelsus a. reference is made to the medical use of herbs: *' I notice on the flowering pool Blue flowering burrage, the Aleppo sort Aboundeth, very nitrous. " He was a careful student of law, specially Italian law. In the Ring and the Book, Guido's argument has been pro- nounced one of the keenest and most subtle pieces of special pleading that has ever been written, in poetry certainly, possibly in prose. His tastes were linguistic. His knowledge of his own tongue was remarkable. Dawson writes: *' His significance as a man of letters is that he has enlarged the possibilities of English poetry by adding to it a bold, nervous, masculine vocabulary; and by using it as it was never used before, save by Shakespeare himself, for the analysis and portrayal of human character and motive. " And again, of Browning's choice of words, he says: " No word is too common for him, no phrase too hackneyed or too idiomatic, or tooscholastic, or too bizarre, if it will carry his thought home." His familiarity with Italian is illus- trated in a piece of blank verse called Cenciaja. The mo- tif was taken from an old Italian MS. published by the yS Golden Winged Days Philobiblon Society. Browning surmises that he may be criticised for appropriating Shelley's peculiar subject, so he concocts a title, the meaning of which only an adept can divine without his assistance. The Cenctaja are lines in the nature of a note to Shelley's incomparable Cenci. Browning quotes an old Italian proverb and says that the ^aja is generally an accumulative yet depreciative ter- mination, hence 'Cenciaja': a bundle of rags, a trifle. The proverb means: " Every poor creature will be pressing into the company of his betters." Says Browning: " I used it to depreciate the notion that I intended any- thing of the kind. " He had a scholar's taste for oriental studies. In the Return of the Druses he treats of the Drusian religion and strange superstitions; and refers to Allah, the sixth calif of Egypt, as the founder of that faith. In another Eastern poem the scene is laid in Arabia: it is a lament for a lost Arabian steed and is full of oriental color and passion. In his famous Eastern poem Ferishtah's Fancies there is a strong Hght; but he states clearly that he makes no attempt to express Persian thought. ** The Persian garment," says one, *'is a disguise, not a habit"; and we can readily acknowledge the disguise is complete. Who would imagine that behind the Shah Abbas lie Brown- ing's own ideas of faith ? or that Mirhab Shah conceals his views on the meaning of evil and of pain t There is, how- ever a singular charm in the name of one poem, Cherries . It is a pretty fancy which sees in the name, gratefulness to God for small benefits. He understood philosophy. Occasionally he presents other men's systems, as in Rabbi Ben Ezra; but almost always when he speculates he reveals himself as the philosopher. An appropriate title to his works would be: The Burden of Robert Browning to the Nineteenth Century. His earliest poems, Pauline and Golden Winged Days 79 Paracelsus, show his attitude toward things, in what direc- tion he had set his face — in brief, his philosophy of Hfe. His most elaborate exposition of that philosophy is the long, labored, discursive speech of the Pope in the Ring and the Book. Last of all, Browning was of a scientific turn. In some respects this part of his work is notable and deserves careful attention, since it shows not only the many-sidedness of his knowledge, but also the actual relation of poetry to science. Caliban, that most singular and marvelous pro- duction, viewed from any point, is more than anything else a scientific interpretation of the undeveloped ideas of a rudimentary human creature. Paracelsus is nothing if not scientific. Dawson says the most astonishing thing about Paracelsus is the vision of evolution which is found in its concluding pages — pages written many years before Darwin published the Origin of Species. A few lines from Browning will illustrate this comment: In the solitary waste strange groups Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like. Staring together with their eyes on flame — God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod; But spring wind like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it: rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks.'* And then follows one of the finest passages in Browning; the description of man's final evolution: Thus God dwells in all, From life's minute beginnings up at last To man the consummation of this scheme Of being . . . whose attributes had here and there Been scattered o'er the visible world before 8o Golden Winged Days Asking to be combined; dim fragments, meant To be united in some wondrous whole; Imperfect qualities throughout creation, Suggesting some one creature, yet to make Some point where all these scattered rays should meet Convergent in the faculties of man." It seems unjust to Browning to end the quotation here; for he has not yet exerted his poet's prerogative to scan with hopeful eyes the dim future of the race To Browning, gracious poet that he is, evolution does not end with the phy- sical perfection of man. He looks still beyond to a far no- bler perfection, the perfect development of the spirit in man: " When all mankind alike is perfected Equal in full-bloom powers, then, not till then I say begins man's general infancy. In completed man begins anew A tendency to God ... In man's self arise August anticipations, symbols, types. Of a dim splendor ever on before In that eternal circle life pursues. " The accuracy of Browning's knowledge commanded the respect of his contemporaries. Whatever rank as a poet posterity may accord to him, his wide and deep scholarship will doubtless stand unquestioned. He is and will remain England's great poetic scholar and her illustrious scholarly poet. Book III . — Fiction PRESENT STATUS OF THE NOVEL The modern novel is a vast, luxuriant vegetation. Like an exotic it has been rapid in its growth: scarcely a quarter of a century having passed since it appeared in its present form of living fiction. It springs from a rich soil, finding its origin in poetry, in history, and in the drama. For the most part the story writers of the past have been largely yarn- spinners. The earliest novelists represented, in their fiction, to the length of three or four volumes, highly sensational circumstances, preposterous conditions, and artificial types of character. Later novelists, even the greatest, like Scott or Dickens, often violated artistic proportion. Until the distinctly modern novel arose the principle of unity seemed to be unknown, or if known, unobserved; except possibly by a few, of whom Thackeray and George Eliot are the best examples. The novel to-day(to change the figure) is like a thousand little rills purling through all lands. In some climes it often moves murky and poisonous; in other countries it frequent- ly runs pure and sweet. With the freedom of the press the spread of pernicious writing seems inevitable; and fiction, the most popular literary form, is an easy channel for its distribution. In all countries there is a class of novels not only harmful to individuals, but subversive to public mor- als. Laws have been enacted to prevent the publishing of such narration; but the degree of legitimate restriction being 81 82 Golden Winged Days debatable, the laws are often impotent. It is not only the impure novels which are demoralizing, but that class of fiction in which are hidden views attacking the foundations of society: the conjugal relation, the claims of reason and conscience, and the righteous authority of human govern- ment. Due recognition should be given to the fact that there is such iniquitous writing; but the evil is partly coun- terbalanced by the prevalence, in all countries, of a fiction which is clean, wholesome, and attractive. The latter is the only form of narration worthy of attention: the fiction which is literature. The recent novels of Continental Europe, England and America are of many distinct varieties; and each variety is again differentiated by its own local influences. In almost every instance there is the unconscious charm of spontanei- ty. The Athenaeum, in a late general review of foreign fic- tion, attributes to the novels of Italy, Spain, and Hungary marked sign of declension; while from Germany, France and Russia (or Paris where Russian books are largely print- ed) fiction in point of quality is recognized to be in the as- cendant. Making allowance for the exceptions, and for that output in every land of deleterious novels, Europe has, notwithstanding, a remarkable table of fiction. In foreign narration to-day, there is a noticeable freedom from con- ventionalism, both in composition and in thought. Of the various schools, Germany, so fearless in rationalistic criti- cism, is in fiction perhap*» the most conservative. In truth were the present novels and the late scholastic literature of Germany printed in diflTerent tongues they might well be regarded as coming from alien peoples. In science, art, belles-lettres y and biblical criticism Germany is radical. In poetry and fiction she is home-loving and sentimental. The narrative art of Europe finds its apex in Russia and in Golden Winged Days 83 France. As it is more illustrious in those countries than it is in other lands, it is also (especially in France) more corrupt. Of modern English novels it is difficult to speak. There seem to be few living w^riters of fiction who, either in brilliancy of mind or in knowledge of the narrative art, equal or even compare with Continental models. Mrs. Humphrey Ward has closely followed George Eliot, tradi- tionally, in public esteem; but the inequality of her work renders it only measureably comparable to the finished productions of England's greatest novelist. America is the natural home of fiction. As a whole, American novels are neither poetic, romantic, nor philosophical. But every- where they are vital and (more than can be said of foreign novels) they are pure and harmless. The characteristic of English fiction is purity without brilliancy; the dis- tinguishing feature of French fiction is brilliancy without purity; but it remains for America to produce a fiction which, generally speaking, is at once pure and brilliant. The varieties of talent shown by American novelists have somewhat dimmed individual lustre. There are so many men and women of ability here that necessarily few are recognized as world novelists. The United States and almost every European country furnishes at least one writer of fiction sufficiently great to be regarded as of no country, but as one belonging to the world. America's exponent of fiction is William Dean Howells. He is indeed a consummate artist, and one whom his country delights to honor. Tolstoi — expatriated of his own — readily becomes a world writer. His place may not be checked off in a sentence. A few of his novels were better left unwritten. But the man must needs express himself wholly — with conscience turned bare to the gaze of inquisitive and often uncomprehending eyes. Europe 84 Golden Winged Days has her ranks filled with remarkable novelists; but there is one who outstrips all praise. Among the world novelists none may quite equal Guy de Maupassant. His inimitable prose is thus described by Brander Matthews: '* Guy de Maupassant had a Greek sense of form, a Latin power of construction, and a French felicity of style. His stories are simple, most of them; direct, swift, inevitable, and inexorable in their straightforward movement. If art con- sists in the suppression of non-essentials, there have been few greater artists than Maupassant. He had the abundance and ease of the very great artists; and his best stories are among the very best stories of any language." The prema- ture death of this sovereign writer is greatly to be deplored. Novel writing from being a patchwork has become a distinct art. While the novels of the past were long, false and poorly constructed, the novels of the present are short, true to life and artistically correct. There are two kinds of modern fiction: the novel and the Short Story. The longest novel of the present is brief compared to the most curtailed novel of the past. The Short Story is not strictly a modern form. It was in existence before the novel; but it was a treasure in a barley loaf: its value was not suspected. It has recently risen into prominence. The Short Story — the most perfect form of fiction — has entered literature; and it is even now modifying and vastly improving the modern novel. The essential characteristics of literature as laid down by Matthew Arnold, Taine, Hazlitt, Stevenson and even Bret Harte are applicable to fiction, as one of its recognized forms. The concensus of such opinion is that literature must have as its factors, diction, rhythm, emotion, purity of expression, truth, imagination, characterization, suppressions, and precision. All these qualities the best fiction of to-day may justly claim to possess. Golden Winged Days 85 The narrative art, though moving forward rapidly, has not always advanced nobly. This is partly due to the low esteem in which the novelist has been held almost from his earliest tentative effort. But slowly there has come about a change: a master in narration is regarded at the present time as the peer of any artist in whatever province. The novelists' promotion to the standing of an artist is com- mensurate with the increased consideration given to the study of fiction itself. Its recognized importance as a literary form is witnessed by the fact that it now commands the attention of the best critics: Howells has written a volume on Criticism and Fiction, Brander Matthews one on Aspects of Ficiton, and Richard Burton another on Forces in Fiction. From being read in secret by the idle and the vicious the novel has advanced to the dignity of pulpit quotation and scholastic acknowledgment. It is not unusual for Christian ministers (those of them who possess limited power to expound the Scriptures) to find a welcome text in the last new novel; and what is more sig- nificant still, the curriculum of our colleges is now sufficiently enlarged to include within the English course lectures de- voted exclusively to the study of fiction. Says Professor Matthews: "An increasing attention has been given to the history of fiction and to the principles of narrative art. In many of the leading universities the modern novel has been serving as the subject of lectures and the material for private study." The present status of fiction may be difficult to deter- mine (since we are growing wheat and tares together) but there is little doubt that, though the tares are insuperable, the wheat is firm, and the general trend is a benign growth which is upward and toward the light. Book IV. — Drama EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR Some one has said: " An imitation of action by action is in germ a drama. " It is, however, no part of literary art until it assumes a form regulated by literature. Though inseparable, the histrionic and the dramatic arts have seemed at times almost antagonistic. They are convergent in that the actor is dependent upon the talent of the dramatist and the dramatist requires an interpreter in the actor; they are divergent in that the histrionic art may flourish without the aid of the literary drama, and the dramatic art is often im- peded by the artificial glamour of mere stage effects. In the annals of the drama the histrionic art and the dramatic art (though forever united) has each retained its inherent features. The art of acting preceded the art of dramatic composition. The earliest known origin of personation was in India, Egypt, and China; but its highest forms of antiquity were Grecian and Roman. From its inception in Greece it was a religious worship; and even in Rome it had a semi-religious character. The acted drama also preceded the literary drama in Europe and in England. In its earliest Christian as well as its earliest pagan form it had a religious signification. It was used as a means of moral instruction, and found its first expression in miracle and mystery plays. Almost all nations have a drama; only ajvery limited number of nations have a dramatic literature. The beginnings of the dramatic art (as distinguished from the histrionic art) of all races so far as known are found in 86 Golden Winged Days 87 their lyric and epic poetry. The EngHsh is the only Ger- manic people which has been able to transform the medieval drama into a permanent dramatic literature. This trans- formation, otherwise slow and imperceptible, was quickened by the Revival of Learning. During the period of change the classics were carefully studied, and Seneca's plays were used as models. With this beneficial influence from antiquity there was also a contemporary influence not so pure: it came from Italy and was a passionate, lurid fire. The British spirit, however, was strong enough to prevail over both influences, with the result that the imitative works of the queen's earlier reign were succeeded by the unsur- passed productions of the later Elizabethan period. In the history of English dramatic literature the Shake- sperian era stands pre-eminent. During its greatest period, the drama expressed its highest and its lowest elements. Often a playwright soared and swore in the same breath. The people possessed a strangely mixed taste. Says Green: " The people itself brought its nobleness and its vileness to the boards. No stage was ever so human, no poetic life so intense. Wild, reckless, defiant of all past tradition, of all conventional laws, the English dramatists owned no teacher, no source of poetic inspiration but the people itself. " Even so early as this there was a clearly defined distinction drawn between poets and playwrights. The poet's place and the state of poesy were held in general esteem, as Jonson in one of his finest passages shows: ** The state of poesy Blest, eternal and most true, divine. Set high in spirit with the precious taste Of sweet philosophy, which is most Crowned with the rich traditions of a soul That hates to have her dignity profaned 88 Golden Winged Days With any relish of an earthly thought; O then how proud a presence doth she bear ? Then is she like herself fit to be seen Of none but grave and consecrated eyes/' In contrast to the honor given to the poets and to the poetic art, was the contumely cast upon the actors, and the re- flected discredit which fell to the lot of the dramatist. Lodge, a writer of plays (but a man of good ancestry, and one who had never trod the boards) speaks of the vocation of the play-maker as "sharing the odium attaching to the actor." Several agencies may be credited with bringing about a change of public opinion with regard to dramatic composition. Queen Elizabeth favored the play; the "literary authorities began to weigh the endeavors of the English dramatists in the balance of respectful criticism"; and the more educated and thoughtful public (who shrank from vicious and idle pastime) were inclined to uphold in the abstract the legitimate claims of both tragedy and come- dy. But to the local and peculiar agencies should be added a more general influence, or what Green calls "the restless- ness and curiosity which characterized the age. " The newly aroused poetic impulse took everywhere a dramatic shape. In consequence of the intangible but unmistakable encouragement which such composition re- ceived, a remarkable group of pla}^wrights appeared and bore fruitage at this time. Of the lesser poets (any one of whom, had he alone flourished, would have brought credit to his day) there was an innumerable company: Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Lyly, Sackville, and others. Among them there was but one, however, who aside from Shake- speare, still stands unrivaled. Ben Jonson, through his genius, his individuality, and the surrounding circum- stances easily excels his contemporaries, and is thought by some to approach even the great dramatist himself. Golden Winged Days 89 Few poets have met with more ardent supporters and more implacable detractors than Jonson. Taine — the last, one would think, to give him a sympathetic hearing — is unequivocal in his appreciation of the poet's manly stature and the heroic mould of his verse. The very dignity of Jonson is something of an incubus to his productions. Says Taine, " He is too much of a writer and moralist, not enough of a mimic and actor." Green makes the usual charge of pedantry; but concedes to Jonson a certain grace and real poetic feeling. He says: **In the breadth of his dramatic quality, his range over every kind of poetic excel- lence, Jonson was excelled by Shakespeare alone. " It remains for Hazlitt to deny Jonson all mead of praise. He writes: ** There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse nor ease about his genius. It was all forced, up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. " In Jonson's lyrics, masks, and pastorals, there is a wealth of lightest fancy, gorgeous coloring, and delicate ten- derness; but Every Man in his Humour is the work upon which his fame largely rests. The story may be told in a word: it is made up of variations of the one theme, jealousy. The couple who have been chasing each other round, each suspecting the other of faithlessness, finally collide in the most unexpected manner. Justice Clement turns their tradegy into a comedy, by his wise counsel. To the irate Master and Mistress Kitely he addresses himself: " I smell mischief here, plot and contrivance. However if you will step into the next room and talk coolly of the matter, you'll find some trick has been played on you. I fear there have been jealousies on both parts; and the wags have been merry with you. " The story ends, as all good tales should, with a moral. Master and Mistress Kitely go off arm in 90 Golden Winged Days arm, to the discountenancing of all the mischief-makers. The play is said, by early writers, to act better than it reads. Doubtless when galvanized into life by such an actor as Shakespeare (who discovered it, brought it out in his own theatre and assumed the principal role himself) Every Man in his Humour shown with a brilliancy far more histrionic than literary. But the characters of the play are wooden, having neither vitality nor initiative. It is as a work of dramatic art, and not as a play to be acted, that the pro- duction continues to claim attention. Every Man in his Humour ranks high as literature. It has come down to us in two forms. The earlier is given in the great quarto of 1601. This edition prints the play as it was first staged. The prologue, which is retained in both forms, is an attack upon the methods of other play- wrights. Jonson acknowledges that he wishes to draw attention to faults: I mean such errors as you'll all confess By laughing at them they deserve no less. " The first form in which the play appeared was Italian. The unpopularity of the foreign names and places caused the poet to alter the drama to better suit the simple tastes and the patriotism of the English people. The later Eng- lish form of the play was given in folio 1616; and was printed as amended by Jonson. The scenes were shifted from Italian to English soil: from Florence to London. The sturdy familiar characters, with their high-sounding titles, were re-clothed in plain English fashion, and re- christened with honest English names — much to the satis- faction of Jonson's countrymen. Concerning the Angliciz- ing of the drama Lamb says: *' I laud Jonson that having framed the play in Italian he changed the scenes to England. The names of the first edition were Lorenzo, Stephano, etc. Golden Winged Days 91 And say, you reader, does not Master and Mistress Kitely read better?" In the later form there lingers only a faint allusion to foreign traits. The unchanged reference to death by poison is said to be ** almost the only trace of Italian manners." The drama is a satire. Jonson, in a raging passion throughout, fiercely ridicules the follies, affectations, and vices of city and court. The play paints "not so much human nature as temporary manners; not so much the characters of men as their humors." Being directed against existing persons and things, with their passing the play has lost much of its pith. Many of the references are timely hits, and are wholly unintelligible to moderns. Such obscure allusions are illumined and become interesting only as the customs of the age are made fa- miliar to us. Among the topics uppermost in the minds of Jonson's contemporaries were fencing (a lately revived pastime) the use of tobacco (a new importation) astrology and physic (misunderstood but widely affected sciences) and poesy (a much abused art). Against all of these idiosyncracies of the day, Jonson turned the shafts of his keenest ridicule. Fencingwhich was practiced among the Romans both on and off the stage, was revived in England during the Eliza- bethan age. Its return was met with favor by the cox- combs; and from being an art it became a fashionable foible. The various fencing schools had certain rules adopted from Italy, which later during the reign of Chas. II were discarded for the more novel rules of France. The Italian rules, however, were the ones which prevailed en- tirely during Jonson's time. They are also the ones enum- erated by Shakespeare and other poets of the period. Jon- son makes the boasting Brobadil a typical coward; and by giving him the use of the sword, the poet causes the art of 92 Golden Winged Days fencing to appear especially absurd. Brobadil was of opinion that skill in fencing would save "three parts of the queen's yearly charge in holding war against what enemy soever. " Questioned as to how this could be done he replies : I would select nineteen gentlemen of good spirit, strong and able constitution. And I would teach these nineteen the special rules of your punto, your reverse^ your staccato, your imbroccatto, your passada, your montanto, till they could all play as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, we twenty would come into the field and challenge twenty of the enemy. We would kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them. Challenge twenty more, kill them: in two hundred days kill them all up." In this fancy sketch of fencing Brobadil's courage is better than his arithmetic. Authorities differ as to the courtier who intro- duced tobacco into England. Foreigners attribute its importation to Sir Francis Drake; but some of the poets give the doubtful honor to Sir Walter Raleigh. Discussion as to its merits and demerits ran rife. King James opposed its introduction. The poets, speaking for the people, re- ceived it favorably. So important was the subject con- sidered that the question of the expediency of sanctioning the traffic was publicly argued at Oxford; and the king sat in solemn state as moderator. The monarch's distaste for ''the Indian weed" was emphasized by his Counterblast of Tobacco, in which he says: ** Smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining chamber." And he follows his pub- licly expressed opinion by inaugurating a tobacco tax. Shakespeare is the only dramatic writer of the age of James who does not condescend to notice nicotine. All the other poets abound in allusions to it. Spencer, in the Faerie Queen, has a reference which is construed by some to be a compliment to Sir Walter Raleigh, as its transporter: Golden Winged Days 93 " There, whether it divine tobacco were Or panachaea, etc. " Jonson refers to it many times. His characters discuss its use, pro and con. Brobadil is eloquent in its praise: ** By Hercules, I do hold it and affirm it before any prince in Europe to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man." And poor old Cobb, who for venturing to have an opinion averse to its use was promptly beaten by Brobadil, says: " Odds me, I marvel what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It's good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers." Among the fashionable foibles of the time was the ex- ploitation of astrology and physic. Much credence was given to astrology, a perverted science which is little less than a superstition. It relates to the foretelling of human events, by the position of the heavenly bodies. Three kinds were rec- ognized: horary, judicial, and natural. Judicial astrology is the only kind against the practice of which, laws (even in ancient times) were enacted. According to the Jewish and Roman law, its exercise implied idolatry and high treason; and met with severe penalties. With the beginnings of exact science astrology was brought into merited disfavor, and finally relegated to the place of kindred delusions. Medical science began in Homeric Greece, was disbursed through Alexandria, continued through Arabia and Rome, until the founding of the School of Salerno. In the monasteries ancient medical works were preserved in Latin. They were a mixture of superstition, magic, and ancient science. In medical history there is no real break. A continuous thread of learning and practice connects the last period of Roman medicine with the beginnings of science in the 94 Golden Winged Days Middle Age. The Revival of Learning gave a new impluse to physic; and the study of botany was accelerated by the variety of new plants brought from America. Such were the beginnings of medicine, the noblest and chief- est of modern sciences. In Jonson's time physic and astrology were equally regarded, and often confused by people and by poets. In his Account of Diseases and Casualties, 1632, Grant writes: ** Apoplex and meagrim, seventeen; planet-struck, thirteen, etc." The expres- sion, 'planet-struck' as commonly used by the people may mean the influence credited to the stars by the astrolo- gers, or it may mean any sudden attack for which the phy- sicians could then find no name. Jonson's use of the term, however, had but one import: to throw ridicule upon the claims of astrology. Brobadil, the warrior coming out worsted in one of his encounters, cries: **I never sustained the like disgrace, by heaven! Sir I was struck with a planet thence; for I had no power to touch my weapon." To which Knowel replies: **Ay, like enough. I have heard of many that have been beaten under a planet. Go get you to a surgeon." According to the old physicians the four 'humours' in man were blood, choler, phlegm, and melan- choly. Says Trench: '*The words good-humour, bad- humour, humerous and the like rest altogether on a now exploded but very old and widely extended theory of medi- cine, according to which there were four principal moistures or humours in the natural body, on the due proportion and combination of which the disposition of body and mind depended. " The poets availed themselves of this fanciful conception which so conveniently accounted for the varia- bility of the human disposition. Even Milton was a dupe to the popular notion, which lasted till long after his time. He says: Golden Winged Days 95 ** Believe not these suggestions, which proceed From anguish of the mind and humours black That mingle with the fancy.'* Jonson's plays reflects the supposed humours of men. Six varieties of disposition are shown — though several of them are mere deferentiations of the four primal humours. These changeful moods appear in the characters of Cobb, Clem- ent, Master Matthew, Downright, Brobadil, and Wellbred. Cohb : " Nay, I have my rheum. And I can be angry as well as another. " Wellhred: " Justice Clement will commit a man for anything if it come in the way of his humour. " Matthew: '* I wrote the rime in a humour. " Wellbred : " The quarrel is one of my brother's ancient humours." Brobadil: *' It was opposite my humour, alas soon tried." Wellbred : ** Oh, strange humour, my breath hath poisoned Kitely. " The Elizabethan era was marked by two kinds of me- trical composition: the foolish rhymes of flippant youth, and the serious verse of great poets. Jonson was especially sensitive to the prevalence of the rhyming habit; for he was of all poets most conscientious and sincere. Satire (his weapon of attack against every evil) was sharpened anew for an onslaught on this growing literary vice. He makes the father of one of those callow youths say: Knowel : ** Could I by any practice wean the boy 96 Golden Winged Days From one vain course of study he affects! Dreaming on naught but idle poetry — That fruitless and unprofitable art, Good unto none but least to the professors. *' And again in referring to the versifiers he causes the old Justice to say: Clement: "These paper-peddlers, these ink-dabblers! They cannot expect reprehension or re- proach — They have it in the fact. " In contradistinction to the derision which Jonson casts on mere rhyming, appears in the quarto this fine eulogy upon the art of poetry. *' That this infected age Should set no difference twixt these empty spirits And a true poet — than which reverenced name Nothing can more adorn humanity. '* Jonson has been accused of imitation. The wide range of his originality and genius should refute the charge. But such is the penalty paid for his extreme classicism: a love of the ancient models so unrestrained that his own composi- tion is often hidden neath a weight of citation, or deflected by the classic turn which he gives his sentences. His ac- knowledged masters are Terence and Plautus; and there are indications of a resemblance to many other ancient writers. Jonson may have borrowed somewhat from the Adelphi of Terence in the fine passage beginning: There is a way of winning more by love." The quarto contains only two lines, where eight are found in the later editions. *' When I was young, etc.'* has special reference to lines in Juvenal; and in the entire soliloquy, Satire XIV is largely drawn upon for the poet's Golden Winged Days 97 inspiration. Other passages occur in which similarity is noticed to the thoughts of Aristotle and to those of Florus. Most of them may be explained by unconscious influence. Jonson is also said by some to imitate Shakespeare. It is an unworthy suggestion. The men were wholly unlike : the plodding common sense of the one being in every way dis- similar to the surpassing inspiration of the other. The drama is carefully constructed. The unities of time and place (a fact of considerable satisfaction to the author himself) are scrupulously observed. The action is limited to one day and the place to one neighborhood. The play upon its appearance, immediately raised Jonson to the rank of one of the greatest dramatists of his age; and judged by Every Man in his Humour, that proud place he still con- tinues to hold. ANCIENT AND MODERN DRAMA COMPARED The drama, according to Woodbridge, is "the presen- tation of an action or series of actions expressed directly by means of speech and gesture." Where other composition is concerned more or less with the sequence of events, the drama relates wholly to cause and effect. Throughout its changes — which have been fewer than those of any kindred branch of Hterature — it has been distinguished from all other helle-lettres by its form, its material, its viewpoint, and its themes. Dramatic form, according to the exposition of it by the Greek writers down to the authorities of the present day, has remained comparatively fixed. The scenic art origi- nated in the Greek recitation, a worship of praise to the gods. The ceremonies were made a regular feature of the Bacchic holiday. The spectacle, being one to which the whole pop- ulation were invited, soon spread over Greece; and the Attic drama became a national institution. At first the scenery 98 Golden Winged Days was simple, the acting massive, and the recitation a half chant But from the time the theory of the drama began to engage the attention of the philosophers, its advance was rapid and assured. Aristotle in his Poetics laid down certain laws which have not only governed the construction of the drama, but have been the basis of all subsequent technical systems. ** The Aristotelian law,'* says Whitney, "demanded that nothing should be admitted irrelevant to the simple plot; and that there should be no shifting of the scenes. " The principles concerning the unities were more and more closely adhered to until in the time of Corneille they be- came iron-clad. The French poet taught that the action of every play should be within the walls of a certain city, the time within twenty-four hours, and the place limited to such localities as a man could go to and from in a day. Moderns are not so stringent concerning form. Says Ward: ** The so-called unities of time and place are purely fictitious prin- ciples to either of which it may be convenient to adhere in order to make the unity of the action more perceptible; and either of which may with equal propriety be disregarded in order to give the action probability. " Modern Drama is the child of Ancient Drama and Romance (or Medieval Story). The union of the two was felicitous: Romance broke down absolute scenic unity — the scope of the ancient drama; and Ancient Drama gave to modern plays the strict dramatic form necessary to their artistic completion. Mod- ern Drama has added nothing new to the classic form, but has considerably diversified it. Recent plays have, however, been moulded more by the Greek dramatists than by the old English writers. The modern plays of the French are built largely upon the models of Seneca. All other recent dramas are wholly difl^erent, especially those built upon the models of Shakespeare. Speaking generally the modern Golden Winged Days gg drama has a character intermediate between the French seventeenth century and the EngHsh EUzabethan and Stewart drama. Says Woodbridge: "The best modern work combines the complexity and variety of the best EngHsh manner with the more careful form of the French." Dramatic material has varied with the ages; but in all periods it has included definite types of people and certain varieties of circumstances. In the absense of such indi- viduals the play will lack clearness. The essential person- ages are the hero, the explanatory and supplementary char- acters. The value of the hero is comparative and has con- tinually changed. In ancient drama the importance of the hero is everywhere manifest, and all other characters are made subordinate to him. Since opportunities for great deeds came solely to the eminent, the Greek regarded only princes, and esteemed the residue of mankind collectively, or as it were en masse. The ancients had but one type of hero. Says Aristotle: " He must be renowned and prosperous and of illustrious family. " In later drama th^ hero is less in evi- dence; and the modern playwright sometimes even dispenses with him altogether. Until of late the intriguer has always had a place. But more important still have been the ex- planatory personages: the Chorus and the confidential friend. The Chorus explained the situation to the ancients; and the friend, taken from Seneca, lived for centuries to tell the story. The playwrights easily swept aside the Chorus. They have also tried for ages to banish the confidential friend; but modern writers who, like Ibsen, have scorned him, have suflFered in the obscurity of their plays. There are likewise personages who have always been regarded as unfit for dramatic usage. Feeling, so essential in every play, is futile if there is no intelligence through which it may be in- terpreted. Expression impHes culture; and there must be LOfC. 100 Golden Winged Days sufficient culture in the dramatis personae to reveal emotion. The anguish of the stupid and the torture of the ignorant are painful to witness; but the unfortunate subjects in their dumb suffering are not suitable persons to be used as material by the dramatist. Without incidents sufficiently dramatic the play will drag. The laws controlling the choice of cir- cumstances, though few and negative, are inviolable. They indicate more the occurrences which are not available to the playwright rather than those which are suitable for his use. Accidents in a play are a sign of decay and melodrama. As speechless pain is a pitiful spectacle, so also is an acci- dent; but the circumstances in each instance are unwar- ranted material. The dramatic viewpoint has continually and steadily changed. The whole drama of Greece and Rome consisted of a single development. Underneath all classic thought lay the idea of a tragic, resistless Fate. Grecian drama had largely to do with one hero: his conflicts and his efforts to overcome an adverse Fate. Says Freytag: *' The an- cients dispensed with a natural world order and with the in- terlinking of events." Their dramatic viewpoint taking cognizance only of man's relation to Destiny, was based en- tirely on a struggle with outward circumstances. This aspect prevailed until the time of Euripides. Then came the long tract of the dark ages. The Latin and the Greek plays, no longer popular, passed to the scholars in the monasteries. Fiction in prose and in verse was scattered by wandering minstrels. Thus Drama and Story existed separately till nearly the close of the medieval period, when there appeared a sort of religious ceremonial, the Miracle Play. With the Renaissance ancient literature was once more opened up, and public pageants took a classical form. Under the com- bined influence of ancient and medieval story, the Moralities Golden Winged Days loi ,'( gradually merged into the Elizabethan; and thus to Shake- speare and the new laws and ideals which he revealed. Shakespeare taught that instead of each act being complete in itself, the play is a network of actions — a complex of moods. And he was the first to emphasize in his tragedies the struggle of the soul. Since Shakespeare's time the slow decline of aristocracy and the rapid rise of democracy have wrought vast transformations in society. The democratic idea brought with it a conception of the importance not of the station but of the man. The moderns are freer men than the ancients. As one writer says: "Vital questions have been reconsidered to the extent in later days of a revo- lution in public opinion." Says Woodbridge: " The spiritual and moral nature of man, the relation of the indivi- dual to he race and the highest forces of life, the idea of freedom and the conception of the Divine Being — all these things have undergone great changes." With the muta- tion in social conditions has come a gradually altered dra- matic viewpoint. We of today recognize no other Fate than such as rises from our own acts. Man is overtaken by no Destiny save that which is the natural sequence of his own thought and conduct. The modern dramatic viewpoint is based upon a struggle within; and modern drama lies in the conflict of man — not with cruel outward circumstances — but of man with untamed inward forces. The themes of the ancient drama were of a profoundly sacred and intellectual nature. This came about naturally, since with the Greeks the dama was a vehicle of thought and the Chorus lent itself to meditation. The themes, though varied, were largly those relating to mythology and such subjects as could be used in the celebration of religious and political festivals. Greek tragedy was the worship of Destiny; and the dramatis personae were of importance 102 Golden Winged Days only in their relation to that Power. A large number of themes circled around Apollo. Says Moulton: ''Physical brightness is his, and the sun's rays are arrows from his bow. " The worship of brightness took two forms : the light versus the shade, and the ascension of youth in contrast to the descension of age. The Bacchanals and subjects relating to family life were also frequently used. Other themes were the Horrors, natural and supernatural. Cruel imagin- ings had a prominent place in classic thought. There were however as many poetical as there were base conceptions. The Greeks observed hospitality as a form of worship; and its dignity was celebrated in the rich Chorus. Also the re- pression of grief appeared among their themes, and a wide variety of other subjects such as women, social pleasures, nature, etc. Pre-eminently among modern themes are those relating to soul struggle, as found in all of Shake- speare's tragedies to begin with; and coming down to our own time, in many of Browning's and a few of Tennyson's plays. Some modern themes treat of man's relation to God and to his fellow-men; and occasionally of his aspiration to bear a part in world betterment. These subjects are how- ever largely limited to the closet drama. It is often asserted that the play came to an end in England in 1616; and in Germany in 1832. However sweeping such a statement may be, it is undoubtedly true that modern drama is of un- certain tone and of questioning spirit. The plays which hold the boards are spectacles, problem plays, and dramas of introspection. The stage has for centuries been utilized for purposes of amusement only. The histrionic art to the exclusion of the dramatic art has prevailed. As the natural result of the decline of the dramatic art many modern themes are those which relate to the abnormalities and sickness of society and to the ultra radical conduct and neurasthenia Golden Winged Days 103 of individuals. Some critics are hopeful as to the vitality of the dramatic art. Says Woodbridge: " One of the signs of the life of the drama is that it is changing. Just as w^e cannot arrive at the truest judgment if we leave out the Greeks, so v^e cannot if we ignore our own contemporaries." Everything connected with the dramaturgic art (ex- cept the fixed form of the play which has varied rather than altered) is different in the ancient and in the modern periods: the life aspect, the heroic type, the governing purpose, and the conception of tragic interest. Ancient drama condemned Age as repellent and superfluous, and glorified youth as all of life. Modern drama reveres Age as the em- bodiment of wisdom, and apologizes for youth as the per- sonification of folly. The ancients had but one type of hero, usually a king and powerful; the moderns choose their heroes from all sorts and conditions of men. Says a playwright to-day:*' Station and circumstance are both immaterial.'* In ancient drama the governing purpose was Destiny; in modern plays it is free-will. Ancient tragic interest centered in man's powers to conquer natural calamities, modern tragic interest lies in man's strength to overcome evil within. Such then have been the changes in the drama as a whole: its development into a less rigid form; its leveling down of the one and leveling up of the many; its recognition not so much of the power of nature and the control of circumstances as of the invincibility of human force and intelligence. The result of all these general changes may be defined as a revolt from faith in casualty to belief in self. The drama has lost irretrievably in thought, knowledge, and contemplation; it has gained immeasurably in freedom, originality, and versatility. 104 Golden Winged Days JONES' RENAISSANCE OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA Henry Arthur Jones, dramatic author, born Grand- borough, Buckinghamshire, Sept. 28th, 1851, son of Syl- vanus Jones, farmer; educated at Winston, Buckingham- shire." So runs a brief biographical note concerning the author of the Renaissance of the English Drama. As to the character of Mr. Jones the only data from which one may form an opinion are at the best indirect. Nor does person- ality lie in the province of criticism. But individuality may; and an author's primal characteristics as a v^riter are a legitimate topic of interest. The only available means of becoming acquainted with this author's temperamental qualities seem to be through the unconscious revelations of himself which appear in his book. It is evident that he is plainspoken, for he says in the preface under review that his friends ''advise him to hold his tongue on the subject of the drama. " He is also independent, for he at once talks all the harder on the forbidded theme. Mr. Jones' instinct is that of a playwright; but as a matter of principle he steps aside to explain his theories of dramatic art. Referring to the Nemesis of carping friends he says: *' I can truly say that to nobody have these addresses and papers been a source of such endless vexation, irritation and weariness as to myself; whom they have continually plagued and interrupted in the most delightful task of writing plays. " Similarly, in another place, is caught a glimpse of Mr. Jones' mental poise. He says, ''I am accused of sourmindedness, churlishness, and illiberality. " And proceeds to deny that he has ever been acrimonious toward anything except the things which de- grade. To these, he says *'I have indeed been venomous; but never to mere fun and nonsense." And again occurs Golden Winged Days 105 a delicate personal reference in this: " I have been accused of discontent with my actors, my managers, audiences, and critics; and of rebellion against them. There is a great dif- ference between discontent with the position of one's art, and discontent with one's own personal status in it. " All men are more or less influenced by their ideals; and Mr. Jones seems in an especial way to feel the impress of Matthew Arnold and of Ruskin upon his moral sense. Not that he is in anyway their disciple, but that he would wear their man- tles in turn of critic and of master. A light is thrown upon this pedagogical phase of his character by a conversation which he reports having heard in a railway carriage: " Ah, who wrote that play?" said one. " That man, Henry Arthur Jones," replied his neighbor. " I hate that fellow," said the other, " He's always educating people." Mr. Jones has written voluminously. Ever since he essayed dramatic composition in 1879 he has averaged one work each year. From his own references to his plays, it appears that many of them have been very successfully staged, often enjoying long runs in the leading London theatres, and having in their casts eminent actors. He frankly confesses that for some time he wrote what he re- gards as concessions to the pubHc taste; but having achieved independence, he set about writing plays to please himself, and products of art which were in harmony with his own conception of the drama. After writing those literary plays the next step was to educate the public to a just appreciation of them. Mr. Jones is doubtless an earnest and honest man, and has deeply at heart not only the renaissance of the En- glish drama, by a total extermination of the vapid and Phil- istine plays of the recent past, but a profound desire to build up and firmly establish a national school of British drama even as there is (so he thinks) an Enghsh school of music io6 Golden Winged Days and painting. To this end, therefore, he bent all his energies: he lectured, he wrote, he talked, he even scold- ed on occasion. And after he had spent some time diffusing his views throughout all England, he collected the various essays and addresses and published them between two covers in the form of a volume. In any adequate review of a book, the first considera- tion is its arrangement and style; and the second, its themes and subject matter. The Renaissance of the English Drama is composed of essays and lectures addressed, as Mr. Jones says, ** to widely different audiences and classes." Here are articles written for magazines from the Nineteenth Century to the Dramatic Mirror; from the New Review to To-day. The papers are arranged in chronological order as they were printed. There are addresses delivered to audiences from the National Sunday League to the Playgoer's Club; from the London College to the public in a common hall at Brad- ford. The lectures appear in the order in which they were presented. At the end of the book, there is a sort of pot pouri made up of fragments and extracts and prefaces and jottings. Mr. Jones says in explanation: ** Where there are apparent contradictions it will I think be found on examina- tion, that they are different and mutually reconciling aspects of the same truths.'* The dates of the original publication and delivery of these articles and addresses run from 1883-93. Whatever may be said of Mr. Jones as a writer of plays, his style as a writer of serious prose is somewhat infelicitous. The word he brings is needed; and it is one which requires a sincere and enthusiastic advocate. All this the cause finds in Henry Arthur Jones. What then is wanting ? Nothing so much, on the part of this writer, as conscientious care in the framing of his message. In one or two instances there Golden Winged Days 107 are fine contributions to literature in the language which h e uses to elucidate his teaching. But in the main, the chief characteristics of his style (as shown in this particular work) are a tendency to repetition and imitation. | Both defects might easily have been remedied. It is a mistake for an author to collect everything he has written upon one theme, when years have intervened between his utterances, and hope to produce a valuable work. It may be done; but it can be done only by the closest and most exact revision; ex- punging whole pages if the same thoughts have been ex- pressed in a different essay. This revision the Renaissance certainly never received, and were it not for one's conviction that Mr. Jones had a desire to educate the people to higher dramatic standards, one would almost feel assured that the writer had intentionally tried to give his book the substan- tial appearance of an authoritative work. Mr. Jones does not lack originality of style; but there are, in many places, a strained imitation of others. The pedagogical manner of addressing his audiences, above referred to, as well as the constant use of the acknowledged tenets of Ruskin is a reminder on many pages of that master. It is, however, a far cry: for Ruskin is a poet as well as a critic. Mr. Jones is capable, however, of using a very excellent form of expression. Perhaps the two extremes may be best illus- trated by two quotations. The following single sentence is a specimen of Mr. Jones' prose style at its worst: ** Nothing concerns us so much as our own lives, and there is no art so searching, so sympathetic, so consoling, so unusual in its appeal, so flexible in its aim, so gorgeous in its setting, so far-reaching and so helpful in its ministry to the human spirit, so various in its sources of pleasure, so gigantic in its possibilities, as this art of Shakespeare, this art of compact literature, of painting and of sculpture. " A really delightful io8 Golden Winged Days bit of reading is found in an essay called the Playwright* s Grumble. It is headed by a quotation from Ruskin; and in its coloring the opening page reflects the Ruskin tint. Here it is : ** From my study windows the hillside slopes down a quar- ter of a mile to one of the prettiest and most old-fashioned of Buckinghamshire villages. The red tiled roofs, subdued by lichen, just overlook the orchard trees, or throw up a bright- ish red chimney here and there where the branches hang low enough to give them a peep, or half or wholly hide amongst the tall spreading elms. The clean blue smoke lazily smears the deep masses of dark green foliage. The noble church- tower with its *never-sere' garland of ivy rises four-square and dominant above the irregular housetops, commanding them with its heavenward purpose as the precepts of its re- ligion command the waywardness and fickleness of human life. Haystacks and cornstacks dot the shorn fields. All through the year men are pursuing their healthy primal tasks of tilHng and sowing and reaping; those blessed occu- pations that, as Keats says. Deity delights to ease its heart of love in holding peaceful sway over." This pretty de- scription was originally all in one sentence. I have taken the liberty to divide it into five. As far as there is correlation of thought in the Renaissance, it is found in the continuous exposition which Mr. Jones makes of his theory of the drama. In the preface the writer's views upon the scenic art are very clearly laid down. He says: *' Three things I have fought for during the last ten years. First I have fought for the distinction between the art of the drama on the one hand, and popular amusement on the other. Second I have fought for the freedom of the modern dramatist: freedom of search, phrase and treatment. Third I have fought for sanity and whole- someness, largeness and breadth of view. " Mr. Jones' Golden Winged Days 109 conceptions of the drama are of the highest. He will con- sider the art only as it is exemplified in the work of the world's masters. And everywhere he strives to induce others to accept the same standard. He reverts often to Shakespeare, who of course is his ideal. Speaking of the dignity of his theme he says: " There is in the drama an immense power of inculcating a wide knowledge of life.'* And again: *' The greatest dramas concern themselves about the greatest and most central truths." Scattered here and there throughout the book are many allusions to the drama of the past, criticisms of the drama of the present and pro- phecies concerning the drama of the future. There are also a few pages devoted to the technique of dramatic con- struction; and there are entire essays given to the drama in its relation to other arts, more especially to that of literature. Writing of the scenic art in the past he says: *' A generation ago a portion of every playhouse was set aside for social Pariahs. And even Macready interspersed songs between acts to please the buffoonery of his time. Twenty years ago there was no question of a difference between art and amuse- ment: the drama was regarded as simply an entertainment. Ten years ago it seemed almost hopeless to look for any change in the public taste as would allow sincere treatment and representation of life on the stage or in the success of any play not addressed to a crowd seeking amusement on the lowest and easiest terms." However, a little light ap- pears in the East; and he continues more hopefully: "But I perceive amongst playgoers a growing dissatisfaction with the stale devices of the theatre; and a growing disposition to welcome a less trivial form of English drama." In the opinion of Mr. Jones the present drama has not only to overcome the false taste of the past, but — and it seems to him even a greater evil — the effects of modern realism. no Golden Winged Days With all his might he strives to destroy what he calls "the cramping and deadening influence of modern pessimistic realism: its littleness, its ugliness, its narrowness, its paro- chialisms. '* In something of a spirit of sadness he remarks : " The Victorian drama bears no such relation to the Vic- torian literature as the Elizabethan drama bears to the Elizabethan literature. But," he adds with renewed as- surance, ** never since the days of Elizabeth has the En- glish drama had such a chance of establishing itself as a national art and as a great power in our national life as it has to-day. " Lest he should become too sanguine he re- minds himself that "at present it is only a tendency, a symp- tom, a foreshadowing. It is popular with the masses as a spectacle; but it has not won a position for itself as an art." Then he reaches the goal of his argument — the real pur- pose of his propaganda: " The English theatre must be made a national art with a definite literary and intellectual basis." His watchword thenceforward is the applause of Matthew Arnold, who exclaimed to him " The theatre is the thing. Organize the theatre!" To this end Mr. Jones seems to have laboured indefatigably. Owning to the grad- ual change which he thinks has taken place both in the in- tellectuality of audiences and in their mental attitude toward the play, he lays down principles upon which alone a school of modern English drama may be founded. He says: "If the English drama is to live, it must draw its nourishment from the spiritual and intellectual forces of the nation. We are on the threshold of not merely an era of magnificent spectacular and archaeological revivals, but a living, breath- ing modern drama." And he thus concludes: " First, art and entertainment are two utterly different things. Second, art pleasure is altogether greater and higher than amuse- ment pleasure. Third, it is worth while to establish a mod- Golden Winged Days ill ern national drama on a national basis." In the brief references which Mr. Jones makes to the technique of the drama, as for all portions of his art, he is an enthusiast. He says: " The mere technique of the modern English play is as fine as the deftest goldsmith's work.'* His discursive argument for a national theatre occupies the greater part of this work. But an essential portion of the book is that which treats of the relation of the dramatic art to religion, science, education, painting, and most of all to literature. These phases of the subject are all, save literature, touched upon very lightly. Mr. Jones esteems each to have its place of affiliation with the supreme art: the drama. Literature is the bedrock for the upbuilding of a national dramatic school; and the remainder of his book is largely a plea for the development of a dramatic literature. *' If I were asked," he writes, "to name two cardinal tests for discover- ing the merits of any play I would suggest those of charac- ter painting and literature." And again he reiterates: The true test of a play is not only will it act, but will it act and read. Literature is the chief quality. Character drawing is valuable and permanent only when it is embodied in language of lasting beauty." And then as if in appeal, he says: " The modern stage has not received its due share of recruits from the greatest writers of the age. The highest literary judgment of the time has ruled modern acted drama outside literature altogether." For Mr. Jones' last word on a theme which his very earnestness ennobles, we have this: '' The influence most needed on the stage to-day is an influence akin to that which Wordsworth brought into En- glish poetry at the beginning of the century: the influence of naturalness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, sincerity, devotion to nature and to truth. The advent of his spirit, his love of the sanctities of life would work as great a reformation on the stage as the man himself eflPected in poetry. " Book V. India. — Old and New LITERATURE OF INDIA The history of India is a labyrinth through whose in- tricate paths few, even, of the greatest scholars, are able to tread. But the course of Indian literature may be far more easily followed. Owing to racial antiquity and the altera- tion and transmission of MSS. it is not possible to fix the periods in which all the various literary forms have flourish- ed; but approximate dates may be given to those epochs which are the most illustrious. About 2000 B. C. tribes of warrior heroes came down through the bleak mountain pas- ses and overran all India. The coming down of the Aryans among the dark-skinned natives was the beginning of the literary life of India. Generally speaking that literary life is divided into two great ages: the Vedic Period and the Classic Period. The entire body of Hindu writings is more or less religious; and the distinction between the literature of the two periods is one of degree rather than of nature: the Vedic writings are intensely and wholly religious, the Classic writings are only tinged as it were with the devotional spirit. The Vedic Period includes literature which belongs to the earliest history of the race; the Classic Period presents Hindu literature in the highest develop- ment it has known. When the fair invaders came down into India they sang praises to their gods that their journey was ended and that they had been victorious over their enemies. These devotional writings are called the Vedas and are sacred to the Hindu, since they are the foundation of his religious faith. The Brahmin teachings were handed down orally through many centuries. Then they were written in the Sanscrit tongue. The Vedas (a word meaning 112 Golden Winged Days 113 sacred knowledge) are divided into four books: Hymns, Chants, Prayers, and Artharvan Lore. The oldest and greatest Hymns in the sacred books are called the Rig- Veda. This is a venerable work, and the fountain head of Vedic literature. The Hymns are addressed to various gods; but occasionally there seems to be sung the praises of one only God. The Rig- Veda is filled with startHng contrasts. Amidst much that is unquotable we find this beautiful hymn: To The Golden Child **In the beginning there arose a golden child He was the one born Lord of all that is. He established the earth and the sky: The God to whom we offer sacrifice. He who gives life, he who gives strength; Whose command the bright gods revere. Whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death: The God to whom we offer sacrifice. He who by his might looked even over the water- clouds — The clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice. He who alone is God above all gods: The God to whom we offer sacrifice. " And again occurs this lovely song: To The Dawn "She shines upon us like a young wife rousing every living being to go to his work. 114 Golden Winged Days She rose up, spreading far and wide and moving every- where. She grew in brightness wearing her brilliant garment. The leader of the day, she shown lovely to behold. " In the sacred books the fourth Veda is sometimes omitted. In addition to the Chants, Prayers, and Artharvan Lore, which are devotional writings of varying merit, the Vedas in- clude two other kinds of religious books : one 'relating to the forests' (or meditations to be used by those who have retired from the world) and the other a group of speculations (which are the first known attempt to formulate a philoso- phy). There has also grown up around the Vedas a number of explanatory works, or what we would call commentaries. These 'limbs' or members of the body, while frequently in- cluded in the sacred canon and highly regarded by the faithful, are not reverenced as revelations; and are therefore known under the general title of Tradition. It is only with- in recent years that the Vedas were translated for the first time into English. Says Reed: " In restoring these old MSS. our scholars have preserved reHcs more ancient than the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. " At first the translators gave us only the gems from the Vedas, omitting all the in- ferior parts; but modern scholars, according to the princi- ples of right criticism, have translated the original with per- fect candor. Portions often are found unfit for print; but in the interest of truth, even the offending passages have been appended in the standard translations. The scholars have met with opposition, from the Hindu scribes, to the full rendering of the original text; for such translations, though admittedly authentic, disprove the claim that the moral teaching of the Vedas is equal to that of the Christian Scrip- tures. The Brahmins long asserted that there is no com- mandment in the Old Testament, and no precept in the Golden Winged Days 115 New, which is not anticipated in the Vedas. This asser- tion, according to the interpretation of English scholarship, is now proven to be false. Of their songs. Max Miiller says : " They are tedious, low, and commonplace." But under- neath a great quantity of rubbish, there is occasionally a brilliant and beautiful passage. While some of their hymns, as we have seen, may well rank high as literature. The Classic Period includes Poetical and Scientific literature. Of these two forms the Poetical literature pos- sesses the greater value; embracing as it does the Ancient Epic and Drama. The first portion of the poetical litera- ture are the ancient epics. These two great poems, the Ramayana znd the M a habharat a were compiled by cultured and learned Brahmins for the purpose of giving rehgious standing to the folklore and traditions of the people. One poem was for the West of India and the other was for the East. They were at first a mass of traditions, demonology, and hero-worship; but being united the whole forms a series of connected stories. These two great epics of Sanscrit literature are often called the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Hindus. The Ramayana in many ways resembles the Iliad. The subject of both Hindu and Greek poem is a war for the recovery of a beautiful woman, the wife of one of the warriors. In the Hindu story, Sita is a more ideal charac- ter than Helen of Troy. She is true to her husband while the Trojan princess is faithless. Among the most beautiful passages are the words of Sita to her husband beseeching that she may join him in his exile: A wife must share her husband's fate. My duty is to follow thee where e'er thou goest. Roaming with thee the desert wastes, a thousand years will be a day. Close as the shadow would I cling to thee, in this life; and hereafter. " ii6 Golden Winged Days The Mahabharata is the most gigantic poetical work known to literature. It has two hundred and twenty thousand lines, while the Iliad and the Odyssey combined have only about thirty thousand. It is divided into eighteen sec- tions; each one of which would make a very large volume. This epic also is the story of a great war. The poem con- tains profound information on the history, religion and social life of the Hindus. As a specimen of the style I give one strong passage descriptive of the encounter of two heroes : " Now sprang they toward each other mace in hand. And first, as cautiously they circled round Whirling their weapons as in sport, the pair Seemed matched in equal combat. Now like the roar of crashing thunder-clouds Sounded the clashing iron. Then their clubs Brandished aloft, eight paces they retired; And swift again advancing to the fight Met in the midst like two huge mountain crags Hurled into contact." This is magnificent and compares favorably with any of the mortal combats of Homer. The great dramatist of classical India is Kalidasa; and his finest work is called Shakuntala. This poet was the Shakespeare of India; and though no definite date may be assigned to him, it is thought he lived about 500 B. C. His poem is written in Sanscrit, and though in dramatic form was not intended wholly for personation; many of its finest passages having been written for the de- light of scholars. It is composed in the highest form of Hindu dramatic art; and sets forth heroic characters and good deeds. Shakuntala has been translated into modern languages only within the last few generations; but it no sooner appeared than it was at once recognized as one of Golden Winged Days 117 the world's masterpieces. Goethe says of it: " Wilst du den Himmel die Erde mit einem namen begreifen Neu ich Shakuntala dich, und so ist alles gesaght. '' Of less renown, but perhaps more typical of the people is a play called the Mud Cart. This drama was written about the beginning of the Christian Era; and is more life like than any other Indian poem. Its touch of nature has made it appreciated in Europe. The play is written in Sanscrit, and opens with a prayer to Shiva, the dread god, whose neck encircled by the arm of his wife, is likened to a cloud crossed by a line of lightning. The first scene presents the de- jected prince and his friend in conversation. The prince is in deep poverty and his friend tries to comfort him: Prince : '* Truly I take no heed of my lost wealth. By the course of Fate, riches come and go. One thought burns me; and that is how the world falls off From friendship with one whose wealth has fled." And in another place, seeking to detain the woman he loves Prince: " Why do you fly ? All your ornaments jingling as you go. " Friend (As the maiden still hastens away): " An elephant may be held by a rope, a horse by a bridle, but Have you not heard, a woman can be held only by her heart?" The Poetical literature includes also, in addition to its an- cient epics and dramas, a few lesser modern epics, legends, and lyrical poems, and a certain style of ficton. The body of this modern work is of inferior merit. Indian novels are of course of recent origin, and they show a decidedly Occi- Ii8 Golden Winged Days dental influence. They treat of Indian social life and of questions affected by the encroachments of western civiliza- tion. . . The Scientific literature finds its highest ex- pression in philosophy; which is in itself a great study. The Hindu mind is not scientific, but is essentially reflective and introspective: hence its singular adaptability to the pur- suit of philosophy. Hindu religion and philosophy are so interwoven that they are inseparable; while Hindu science is science only in name. In India there are six orthodox and two heretical systems of philosophy. The central idea of Hindu thought is that individual souls all spring from one essence, as sparks issue from the fire. Man's spirit is from God, so it is destined to return and to become absorbed in the being of God. This seems to the Hindus the only ex- planation of the problem of existence; and it is a solution that is never once called in question by them. The only study in which they are remarkable as profound thinkers is that of philosophy; but the distinction of their thought lies always in its intricacy rather than in its logic. In ad- dition to philosophy their so-called Scientific literature, claims to include a number of other branches of learning. India has an immense legal lore. The Smriti is regarded as the embodiment of laws revealed from God. These laws were not codified until the eleventh century; and from that time Indian jurists have been occupied reconciling their contradictions. Grammar is an especially important study, as it is one of the Mimbs' of the Veda, or means of explaining their sacred scriptures. The dictionaries of the Hindus are more interesting than ours, being arranged in the form of verse. Sanscrit prosody has variety of metre and har- moniousness of rhythm. Music has been studied by the Hindus from the earliest times. In their Scientific litera- ture there are two standard works upon harmony. Indian Golden Winged Days 1 19 music consists almost entirely of melody. Literary compo- sition is a theme particularly attractive to the Hindus. Their literature upon rhetoric (treating of style, ornamen- tation, alliteration, etc.) is voluminous and dates from the tw^elfth century. In ancient India some efforts were made to understand the healing art. Indian medical authorities are, however, of no value: their therapeutics being almost pure superstition, and their practice consisting of rites, incantations, and magic, such as the most ignorant classes of Europe employ. The science of medicine (as introduced through Christian medical missionaries and taught by Eu- ropeans) is a modern innovation which is being recognized and welcomed in India. One word concerning the Fusing Point of the old and new. The conflict between Eastern and Western thought began when occidental civilization entered India. Europe has been slow to comprehend or appreciate the sacred books and the learning of the East. From their first coming, the concern of foreigners was for wealth; and all that treasury of literature and song was overlooked. In the years fol- lowing, an occasional enthusiast strived to bring the West to a recognition of the writers of India; but for many years all efforts were unavailing. The Asiatic Society has done much to inform the Occident concerning the history, an- tiquities, arts, science, and literature of the Orient. As one has said: " Europe cannot afford to be obdurate to the intellectual greatness of India. We need her long record of how man has striven for some solution of himself, and toward an ideal completeness. " On the other hand while the Occident has been slow to realize the existence of East- ern literature, the Orient has been far more impervious to Western thought. A certain writer says: " The best of the intellectual heritage handed down from the Grecian, 120 Golden Winged Days Semitic, and Roman genius are borne to India from the West; and yet the result of all these forces seems doubtful. '* If Europe cannot afford to be ignorant of Indian thought much less can India afford to reject the ideas of Europe. With- out question the man who has done most to educate India concerning Western civilization is William Carey, who in 1822 started the first newspaper in Hindu. He wrote two dictionaries and four grammars in the vernacular. He was made professor of Sanscrit at Fort St. Williams. His work included the establishment of twenty schools for the educa- tion of native children, and the printing of the Christian Scriptures in twenty vernaculars. However slow India may be to awaken intellectually, morally she is moving im- perceptibly toward the higher life. Says Chendar Sen, a native Hindu: " It is Christ who rules India, and not the British government. England has sent out a tremendous moral force in the life and character of that mighty prophet to conquer and hold this vast empire. None but Jesus none but Jesus, none but Jesus, ever deserved this bright, this precious diadem, India; and His she shall be." KIPLING'S INDIA There is probably no man living better qualified to write upon the picturesque side of India — her oriental life and scenes — than is Rudyard Kipling. Though of English descent and educated in England, he lived through his childhood in India, and returned thither in manhood; where old memories were revived and new impressions were re- ceived. Of all strange countries of the Orient, India is one Golden Winged Days I2I where is especially felt what has been called "the irresistible magic of scorching suns, subject empires, uncanny religions and smothered up women; heat and cold, danger and dust. " What has Kipling done with material so heterogeneous ? Mirthful, intelligent, exuberant, laughing to himself con- sumedly at all the strange adventures of Mowgli and Chal- long; the quips and cranks of his Soldiers Three; hearing in resident English quarters the gossip of the mess, the draw- ing-room and the boudoir ; he saw every phase of Indian life, felt it all and told it. Kipling's Indian works are of two kinds: real India, as given in his letters of travel, and imaginary India as con- ceived in his Indian tales. In his Letters of Marque the chapters on new and old India seem to alternate. And everywhere are facts lightened by fancies; observations valuable and entertaining. As a traveler he tells of modern India: the actual people and country. But as an artist he loves best to dwell upon old India: the land of dreams. Kipling's descriptions of Indian scenery are like delicate water-colors, in the care and exquisite taste with which they are drawn. Here is a sketch from his notes of travel, " Jeypore a pink city set on the border of a blue lake, and surrounded by the low red spurs of the Aravalis." And this: ** I have seen Chitor by moonlight. I will never try to describe what I have seen, but will keep it as a love letter, a thing for one pair of eyes only — a memory. " The desert with its mystery is lightly drawn: ** When the black dusk had shut down, I climbed up a little hill and saw the stars come out over the desert. Very far away some camel drivers had lighted a fire and were singing as they sat by the side of their beasts. Their voices came into the city wall and beat against it in multiplied echoes. " And again, writing of the camels he says: "Wherever the eye falls it sees a camel or a 122 Golden Winged Days string of camels: lean racer-built camels; or heavy, black, shaggy-haired trading ships. Through the night the air is alive with the babbling and howling of the brutes, who assur- edly must suffer from nightmare. In the morning the chorus is deafening. A camel has as wide a range of speech as an elephant. I found a little one crooning to itself alone in the sand. Its nose-string was broken; hence its joy. But a big man beat it and it rose up and sobbed." The ancient country, lying dead centuries below living India, made a deep impress upon Kipling, who thus writes of it: "I stum- bled across more ruins, and passed between ruins of dead Ranis till I came to a flight of steps built out and cut out from the rock, going down as far as I could see into a growth of trees on the terrace below me. The stone of the steps had been worn and polished by naked feet, till it shone by its markings clear as agate. The air was thick with stale in- cense, and grains of rice were scattered upon the steps. But there was no one to be seen. I slipped on the rocks and fell into a dull blue tank, sunk between walls of timeless m.ason- ry. It was as though the descent had led me two thousand years away from my own country. I endured it as long as I could — about two minutes. Then it came upon me that I must go quickly out of this place of years and blood and must get back into the afternoon sunshine." Writing on a nobler theme he dwells on that marvelous offering of im- mortal love: " The Taj was the ivory gate through which all good dreams come. It was the realization of the glim- mering halls of dawn that Tennyson sings of, and the sigh made stone of a lesser poet. It seemed the embodiment of all things pure, all things holy, all things unhappy. . . To one who watched and wondered, that November morning, the thing seemed full of sorrow, the sorrow of the man who built it for the woman he loved, the sorrow of the workmen Golden Winged Days 123 who died in the building. And in the face of this sorrow the Taj flushed in the sunlight and was beautiful, after the beauty of a woman who has done no wrong. " Kipling's imaginary India is found in his Eastern fiction. There are three varieties of stories, corresponding to three distinct phases of his own Indian experiences. These are his tales of native life, stories of the army, and narratives of social and -^nglo-Indian hfe. From the tales of native life Indian scenes are flaming on every page. In Kim, where that little beggar travels with his holy man far up the Hills, there is a subHme view of the Himalayas; and in the same book, by way of contrast, there are ghmpses of the Low Country, where the natives work in the fields, *'to the creeking of the well-wheels, the shouting of ploughmen be- hind their cattle and the clamour of the crows. " Again we find this little descriptive bit: "There was a drowsy buzzing of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of doves and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. " One scene, taking in as it does all manner of Indian life, is typical of the land: ** It was beautiful to watch the people on the road, little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and saffron, turning aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and grow- ing small across the level plain." In another place Kip- ling describes a dust storm: " The air grew hotter and hot- ter, and a burning hot wind began lashing the orange trees with a sound like the voice of the sea. The dust-storm was on us, and everything was roaring, whirling darkness. The light vanished. The air was heavy with dust, and sand from the bed of the river filled the boots and pockets and drifted down necks and coated eyebrows." The approach to the Hill Country is thus described: ** You pass through big, still, deodar forests, and under big, still cliffs, and over 124 Golden Winged Days big, still grass-downs swelling like a woman's breasts; and the wind across the grass, and the rain among the deodars says *hush, hush, hush.' " In Dinah Shad, Kipling looks at the tropic sky: *' Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all picked out in one place, but preserving an orderly perspective, draw the eye through the velvet darkness of the void, up to the barred doors of Heaven itself." One of Kipling's greatest short stories is the End of the Passage. It is an awful study of the human conscience; but it is of interest here for its native scenes: " Every door and window was shut, for the outside air was that of an oven. The thermometer within was 104°. The odor of the native tobacco, baked brick and dried earth send the heart of many a strong man down to his boots; for it is the smell of the great Indian Empire when she turns her- self into a house of torment. " In contrast to this view is one from Mine Own People: "The night had closed in, rain and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of the valley. For miles away, untouched by cloud or storm, the white shoul- der of Donja Pa — the mountain of the council of the gods — upheld the evening star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roots in the fern-draped trees; and the last pufF of the day wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood, smoke, dripping undergrowth and rolling pine-cones. The smell is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if it once gets into the blood of a man, he will at the last, forgetting all else, turn to the Hills to die." . . . Kipling draws native character — the na- tive as he is in his haunts — with a strong stroke, because with the Hindu he has lived and worked. "No man," says one of his heroes, "can tell what natives think unless he mixes with them, with the varnish off and not always then. " Of their irregular habits he says: " All hours in twenty-four Golden Winged Days 125 are alike to orientals. " Referring to their superstition, the lama in Kim is not disturbed by the nearness of the cobra: Let him live out his life. May thy release come soon, brother. " In another story allusion is made to the innum- erable wandering hosts of pious scholars: " All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues, shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dream- ers, babblers, and visionaries." The antiquity of the In- dian race causes the native to hold the European in scorn. There is a grandeur in the personality of the Hindu repre- sentative of a people so old that European civilization is newly born beside it. Says Kipling's Frenchman, viewing a motionless Hindu: " 'Look at the folds of the drapery. Look at his eyes, how insolent! Why does he make one feel we are so young a people ?' He scowled at the placid face and monumental calm of the Indian's pose." The native princes appear occasionally in Kipling's pages: **The king was dressed in a purple velvet jacket, white muslin trowsers and saffron yellow turban. He gave me an audi- ence in a room opening off the palace courtyard. This place was occupied by the elephant of state. The great beast was sheeted from trunk to tail; and the curves of his back stood out against the skyline. The king cast a wreath of heavy scented flowers around my neck. He said since I had set my magnificent foot in his kingdom, the crops would probably yield 70 per cent, more than the average. Then we sat down on clean white cushions; and I was at the king's right hand." In his early twenties while Kipling was toiling over journalistic work in India, the Duke of Connaught, hap- pening to meet him, enquired what literary line he wished to follow. To which the young man instantly replied, " Tommy Atkins. " The prince was pleased that Kipling 126 Golden Winged Days desired to study the British soldier; and he at once gave the writer admittance to every regiment under his command. After that Kipling lived among the troops, and became thoroughly versed in the ways of the rough, brave, and often carousing Tommy Atkins. The soldiers looked upon him as their prophet. Some of the most rollicking, irresistibly comical stories in our tongue are those of the adventures in India of the British soldier. Mulvaney is the best type of them all. For graphic description this account of his own adventures by the ubiquitous Mulvaney is unsurpassed: *Then the doors of all the parlequins slid back and the women bundled out. 'Twas more glorious than transfor- mations or a pantomime. For they were in pink and blue and silver and red and grass-green, wid diamonds and imeralds and great red rubies. I never saw the like and I never will again!' 'Seeing that you were watching, in all probability, the wives and daughters of most of the kings of India, the chances are that you wont,' I said; for Mulvaney had stumbled upon a big queen's praying bee at Benares. *They prayed an' the incense thurned everything blue, as they were all ablaze and twinklin'. They took hold of the god's knees and cried out and threw themselves about; and the world-without-end music was thrivin' them mad. " In his stories of Anglo-Indian life, Kipling studied the resident English as they dwell either segregated from the Hindus or as they live in close touch with the natives at every point. Society in India is wholly foreign; and is composed of the officers, their wives and families. The Gadshy*s and Others is a collection of such stories. The men characters flavor a little of rowdyism in private and perfunctory parade in public; the women of frivolity as well as cleverness, both in public as well as private — ''rattling, riding ladies," as James calls them. And all lead an idle, gay, happy-go-lucky life Golden Winged Days 127 which is calculated to improve neither their morals nor their usefulness. Le Gallienne and others have justly criticised Kipling for throwing his large energies on the side of brute force, to the exclusion of that refinement of thought which is as much a component part of a really great writer as is strength itself. Le Gallienne says certain influences advance and certain influences retard civilization; and that Kipling's is an in- fluence which retards. In the Indian stories, however, there is an occasional grave note. Here are expressed ra- ther serious views with reference to the eff^ect of Indian in- fluence upon the character development of the English peo- ple. "In most cities," says one of Kipling's heroes, "the natives will tell you of Englishmen turned Hindu or Mussel- men, and who live more or less as such. The missionaries cannot reach them: their change of creed lowers them past redemption. Such was Blank. Life in India had made him what he was. *Good heavens,' he cried, T was an Ox- ford man. On the soul which I have lost, on the conscience which I have killed, I tell you I cannot feel. " What is the abiding distinction of Kipling ? Does it lie in his verse, or traveler's tale or fantastic fiction? In none of these so much as in one fact: he discovered India. He tracked the British soldier and the native, over the land. Kipling's genius is versatile and his fame is deservedly great; but his chiefest glory, present and to come, are the tales that he brought from his marvelous Ind. PART SECOND i INVOCATION Ariel Verse writes itself. And oft its run is mischievous And is not guided by the will nor yet by common-sense. It takes the pen, and in a whirligig of mirth Goes dancing forth; and will not find its thought nor sus- tenance In things most valuable. But with a nonch'lant air Doth pass them by; and guiltily doth stand Where wisdom least invites. It beckons too and smiles; and e'er you travel in its steps Is off and gone. And flitting far away, eludes your sight; As e'en out-witting you, it hath your grasp. Oh, vain delusive Verse ! I would not tame thee if I could : For bright and winsome thou — a thing of dreams and soft delights. And in thy golden passing from the earth A dismal void dost leave. So come thou gentle Sprite! And make thy visits brief Or long or what thou wilt, and ever thou shalt find A welcome warm and sure; while my worn heart is com- forted And gladdened by thy stay. When thou dost go — as go thou must, — Thy presence in my heart will still abide: I will remember thee with smiles and tears And tender thoughts of love. 131 Book I . — Nature A RIVER OF LIFE Since that far, dim and pre-historic age, E'er from the North the giant glaciers came, Or Indian midst these wooded wilds appeared, Hath Mississippi flowed from fount to sea. II Its secret source in silver spring is sought 'Neath matted moss and tasseled, tangled grass; And there in mystic music, murmurs soft Its tender, light and happy melody. Ill So sweet the waters at that fairy fount. That nectar from the over-hanging flowers (Which border bright in bloom along its brink) Seems to have been distilled into it! IV On it doth go, till midst the golden fields It pauses, dallying — indifferent; Like as a charming child on errand sent. With laggard step it moveth 'long its way. 132 Golden Winged Days 133 V Now in a changeful mood, tumultuously It rageth as it runneth o'er the rocks, And throweth back its myriad-colored mane, And scatt'reth wide its angry froth and foam. VI Then as a modest maiden in her 'teens Seeks out of sight to sink, neath shelt'ring robe, Lest one observe her form and lovely face, So 'neath the hanging crag doth river hide. VII On 'twixt the rocky steep and barren cliff. From sparkling, shining light to shadows deep; Reflective, thoughtful, contemplative stream — The slow and silent river sadly flows. VIII Anon the waters glide midst thousand isles That only for enchantment have been made; And circling round, emerge upon a view: A space serene that seems a glimpse of heaven. IX O Pipin fair, as on thy shore I stand And wid'ning waters note, and emerald sheen That traceth rivers edge, I ask no more Of Paradise — our final bourne — than this. 134 Golden Winged Days X The radiant colors of thy sky and sea, How rapturously each into each they blend! Thine islands stretching in their slender length, Entice and deviate the course of ships. O mighty stream, a river thou of life ^ Which glad refreshment gives to men Mrho come I And (gath'ring from all climes along thy brink) « Seek fainting — rest and satisfaction here. ^ I Si XII Thou dost to nations of the world belong; But more to us — in an especial sense — Who live upon thy borders broad and fair. And know thee well; and know thee but to love. Book II — Fragment Group i DELIVERANCE Not now. The pangs are past. Travailed ambition in my soul — But it hath burst its bonds! The wild unrest That fretted every fibre of my being. No longer drives me on. And in its place has come a blessed calm I listen joyous to the morning song That greets my wak'ning ear; And smile at all the testiness of day; And sink content upon my restful couch With thankful prayer God's will is best. Not now. The pangs are past. DIVINE IMMANENCE A flowret as the day grew late, Peeped out to greet the sun. A telephonic message straight From flower to sun was run: 136 Golden Winged Days II ** You're high and strong and full of power, You flood the world with light; While I, a timid little flower, Am nothing in your sight. Ill But in the centre of my heart Creation's spirit dwells. Of all the world of life a part: One mighty Love propels. IV A moment of organic life Is worth an age of force; Suns know not what it is to live Through cycles of their course. I lift my blooms to catch your rays, And close them in the night. Responsive I will sing His praise From whom come life and light. " THE IMPROVISATORE Chords, minor chords. I Hsten to the strain That on the soft and silent evening air Golden Winged Days 137 Floats to me here — O, ecstacy of pain! An artist's heart is breaking unaware. NATURE'S VACUUM The heart that may no love contain Doth like an empty shell remain: The smiles, the sighs, the joys, the tears, (The melodies of vanished years) Are past and gone; and even this Sweet music but an echo is! THE DUAL SELF I PHYSICAL The folly I have writ doth pall on me. Oh, I would turn and in derision fly! Is there no fount where one may quench his thirst ? No panacea mild for human ill ? No mountain peak where silent and alone, The soul with God may hold communion sweet ? They weary me: the dull and senseless sounds Of platitude, which purposeless prevail. II SUBLIMINAL Come, gentle Muse, and all my senses stirring, Bring to me rapture from holy realms of light. 13^ Golden Winged Days That I may trace, with pen of fire unerring, Visions from thee which break upon my sight. Tune thou my heart to melodies celestial (Seraphs descending from the distant throne) That I may hear, though breathing air terrestrial. Angelic songs to mortal ear unknown. Group ii COMFORTING SEA Oh, the long, clean stretches of sand Where the tide has gone out of the bay! The shelterless sky, the unfeeling land That blend at the close of the day. Oh, the gripping and griping of pain. As the lights come out on the shore! Oh, the soothing and endless refrain — Soft murmur of waves o'er and o'er' CLOSED DOOR The portal's closed! Oh, what's beyond? My fancy's rife with guesses. She's standing by her mirror. Sweet! That all her grace confesses. Golden Winged Days 139 II And now she dips her pretty hand In waters white and crystal. And now her shoe she laces swift; And now the merry missile III Of eyes turned through the op'ning door Fires all my soul, and leaves me Upon the carpet lying prone — Now surely she believes me! IV She lifts me with her slender hand You may not know the reason; But this your visit, sir, " she says, Is wholly out of season. But come this evening in the place Of early morning rising I may have something more to say That's equally surprising. VI For maids and men and childen too Care not for intsrlopeis; 140 Golden Winged Days But child and maid and man agree That night's the time for lovers. " INTERPRETATION Anything you please you can make from Skakespeare's lines. For Truth is many-sided and is seen By the vision of the Seer from the point on which he stands ; And luminous the light which lies between. WAITING TO MARK TWAIN Compulsions not for me; nor any bugle calls. Soon dark my tent within; without the darkness falls. Lights out!" The guns are stacked in peace; the camp-fire burneth low. The signal calm await; I stand attention now. " Lights out!" NON-RESISTANCE A little leaf that floating down the stream Knows naught of what the angry billows be Is typical of lives that are controlled By wisdom and by high philosophy. Golden Winged Days 141 The strenuous part of living is in growth. But time is ripe when every leaf must fall; And unseen forces acting thereupon, Its future fate are likely to forestall. Ah, foolish little leaf to burn and glow With burnished gold and ruby's flushed lip, Submit to be engulfed or carried on The blue and tranquil bosom of the deep. Group hi TRANSLATION Oh, strange, mysterious night! The gently moving mist doth slowly mount And mingle with the shim'ring light of silver moon. The trees, like forms in black, stand out against the sky. The wind, with icy touch comes cutting from the North. And all is still, save distant sound of tinkling bell. From out the shadowy darkness of the night My spirit sings and soars and sings; And singing doth to moonlight vistas rise. And soaring mingle with the tender mist. There far away it balances twixt heaven and earth: Sojourning from without the clay. And soaring ever sings, A human voice doth call — and all is o'er. My spirit to its prison-house returns: For life is death. And only death is life. 142 Golden Winged Days MY LADY BEAUTIFUL From out a cloud of pink one face beams forth. She 'minds me of the rosy dawn Clad radiantly in robes of light; Or as a flower in June, comes budding slow, And by her blushes soft, betrays Her secret yearning for the sun. Beam, rosy dawn ! Bud tenderly, sweet flower ! | And into transport throw my happy heart. ) For beauty is it's own excuse I And for it's being needeth none. | I would not have thy light or color less — J Nor other canst thou be in loveliness. POESY Verse hath no arbitrary laws To silence poet's song. Tis for his aid the laws exist: Eliminate the wrong. For like the chisel in the hand Upon the marble laid, Poetic law perfection gives E'er artist's hand be stayed. REFRESHMENT Rested, the dusty pathway tread, I rise and go. Unwearied still my buoyant heart beats on! Golden Winged Days 143 A beam of hope burns steadily before — A beacon in the midnight darkness of the world; Afar it shines ! and out of mist and gloom Triumphant brings me nearer to my final goal Of perfect peace in God. VIVA! I find all life a constant show: The children dancing in the wind; The lady in her furbelow; The slowly moving patient kine Which go for aye by halter led; The up-turned cart (a way-side speech, The owner's mute appeal for bread) A finished sketch: a picture each Which movement doth but emphasize. In sunny gallery of the brain Reflected there it hangeth high; And each reflection but a scene Of that without: illusive bright Entrancing to the sens'tive sight. Group iv GOLDEN WINGED DAYS Oh, for a more abundant life Beyond the best that earth may bring; 144 Golden Winged Days A higher life than now I live, I truer song than now I sing! The days go by on golden wings; I greet them laughing in the morn, I lightly scatter them aside, I gayly waste them one by one. Like little falcon birds they come And feebly perch upon my hand: ** Will you not aid me swift to rise ? Oh, lift me high from off the land!" And lift I do — but where the flight Of happy bird and happy day ? 'Tis gone, I know not where nor how; It's precious worth, ah, who may say ? Oh, golden winged happy day I may not ever find again. Remain to teach me how I may The meaning true of life attain! WILD ROSE Of all the flowers that cluster round my door And upward spring, like thoughts in happy dreams, Or purposeless appear save for expression pure Of God's own spontaneity of love, The gladsome wild-wood rose lies nearest me. I may not touch it's petals soft, alas, (Those petals dipped in color of the West) Golden Winged Days 145 Or instantly they droop and fall away. Nor e'en may venture in relaxed hand Too long to lightly hold its slender stem : For there is that within its fragile make That even love inviolate may not invade. Its presence by its fragrance e'en is felt — A wraith-like breath, illusive, faint and fleet. But breath and hue and form are for a day. A moment only doth it take its place in time. And then all peacefully it gently falls And mingles with the crumbled dust: The substance sweet of former flowers. And now my wildling too is gone And leaves to me a memory — a memory. ACORNS The little acorn dropping on my roof Reminds me of the flight of summer days : How brief the time when from its tiny cup It drank the dew-drops and the sun-light rays! And now the acorns — full of life become — Are loosening from the boughs their slender hold: They fall upon the ground and scatter far, And of a forest, promises unfold. Oh, little acorns, teach me how to live That I my chalice too may bring with me; And pouring out a wealth of love on earth A forest of good deeds there yet may be ! 146 Golden Winged Days AT THE AUDITORIUM A decolette gown at the opera she wore And above the soft fabric her shoulders shone white. From Diva the songstress my eyes wandered o'er To the maiden alone who remained in my sight. Sing, ho hi, hey, for the maid in rhe light Decolette gown at the opera that night! TEMPERAMENT ARTISTIQUE " Their young men shall see visions and their maidens shall dream, dreams." VOIX D ESPRIT Something there is in beauty which upon my soul Doth leave it reeling, half intoxicate. O, I could shout and sing for very joy: Such strange effects doth beauty in me stir. The sunshine slanting through the grasses long; The south wind bending gladiolus tall; What witchery of shifting, glinting light! What grace, incomprehensible and soft! CLOSED DOOR All things but leave me in a rapture of delight That I should live to feel and hear and see so much; And harmonies of sight and thought and sound This earth should daily give to me, and ne'er withhold. Golden Winged Days 147 II JE RESPONDE When first, a little girl, I took my brush And tried to paint on canvas all I felt, The strange, distorted images reflected there Turned me in cruel anger on myself. And then on instrument I placed my hand And strove therew^ith now^ to express my w^ill; But unresponsive keys remained to my touch — And I was doomed to disappointment still. Then on a bright and memorable day A kindly hand was laid upon mine own; " Your little song, sweetheart, has touched me so; Will you not sing it once again ? " he said. And since that welcome, long-awaited hour (A medium found at last for every mood) I sing my joy and sorrow and my dower Of riches vast of faith and hope and love. Group v THE ANNIVERSARY (Sept. 23d.) How shall we our wedding day fitly celebrate ? Shall we dance a roundelay .? Shall we dine in state ? 148 Golden Winged Days Love, there is one only way, for a time so great In our hearts, by which we may duly mark the date. Where but in the wooded glade should we hie away. E'er the blossoms fall and fade on our wedding day ? Haste thee, sweetheart, to the shade of the forest gray — Soft for lovers hath been made light through which to stray! We will wander, we will sing till the sun falls low; Then beneath night's darkened wing, happy slumber know. Naught this good old world may bring, naught this life be- stow E'er shall sever golden ring, shatter sacred vow! VACATION Speeding far and speeding fast. Just the night for summering In the green and mossy dells — What care I for slumbering! One must learn the rigmarole Of old books quite logical — I prefer a fishing pole To things pedagogical! Hunter's hope and hunter's mind. Gay the wildwood canvassing! Bed of verdure freely find. With no thought of trespassing. Speeding fast and speeding far, Far from life's monotonv; Golden Winged Days 149 I care most for living flower — Naught care I for botany! HOMER SYNDICATE It hurts for us to have in mind A day when we shall be In literature like grains of sand With lost identity. You form the head (perhaps the ear) I may foot-notes indict; Another, honors false may wear From books he could not write. Where then the inspiration pure Of high desire and lofty thought } 'Twill buried be beneath the pier Of *copy' which the firm has bought! THE VISITOR House-cleaning time! House-cleaning time! Things buried long from sight; From out this heart-shaped box of mine Love letters brought to light. I sit me down with pensive sigh Upon the attic floor. I feel a gentle presence nigh — My husband's at the door! 150 Golden Winged Days SEMPER FIDELIS There is but one who claims allegiance And whole heart love from me. I grant him this And more. If visited by faintest thought Of faithlessness, oh, may I stricken be! For womanhood abased stands That may not look her husband in the eyes And say that he is all in all to her. Oh, true and tried, a rock that shelt'reth me — Immovable! I am not worthy to be called Your wife if I might find in desert sands E'en but a temporary lodging place. Thou art my home, my rest, my strong right arm. My seeing eye and understanding heart. My peace on earth, in heaven my joy and crown. Group vi THINGS THAT ARE BEHIND " Forgetting the things which are behind." Phil. iii. 13. 'Tis passing strange That for the children of the brain one careth not. And like the savage mother with her brood (When they have been cast off) one never more Doth give them single thought; though they were dear To mind and heart, and one hath o'er them bent And labored tenderly with pain. And nurtured them from faintness back to life, Golden Winged Days 151 And given them the best one had of strength — They pass from sight. And now are quite forgot- NATURE'S RISIBLES Satire hath a place in nature Hid within deep-sea domains; Or where mammoth Dinosauria Pre-historic roamed the plains. While for humor and for laughter Little creatures fill the earth With a constant curious banter Challenging our human mirth. SMALL LIFE A wondrous world, in August days, Of little forms comes into life. They silent spring from woody ways: No sound of joy, no note of strife. As blossoms gay that bloom in May They rise from no one knows just where; Like winged flowers they fly away And vanish in the summer air. The one I love — sweet spirit moth — As glad he opes his filmy wing. Of all alas, no voice he hath Or as he flits away would sing. 152 Golden Winged Days What is that little rasping sound That through the long, still August hours Comes creaking up from out the ground Beneath the warm, soft grass and flowers ? The cricket and the katidid A moment own the happy earth; But low and brief their lives are hid — Extinction quickly follows birth. THE OPEN FIRE (memorabilia, I 1 What bright amenities are with our open fire Associate! the jest, the talk, the laughter light Of girls and matrons, youths and sages gray — Who here have gathered on a Friday night. II The pictures rise, and as I see them one by one My mind itself in meditation sweet employs: For distance is not needed to enhance The charms of home and wholesome household's joys. III The fire-place with its wainscott high of oak, Hath for its setting tiles of Delft, old blue; Golden Winged Days 1 53 The great brass andirons stand on guard before And lambent flame reflect, that runneth through. IV In dainty costume, quite within the mode, I see the women drawing round the hearth; And barristers (the wisest of them all) Unbend their joints and minister to mirth! Not always is the talk of lightest kind : For problems deep and questions may arise. Oh, brows will knit, and lips forget to smile And chase away the light of laughing eyes. VI The cup that cheers but not inebriates Is now brought steaming from the little board, And by the maid is gravely given to all — Each guest becoming clamorous for more! VII My Friday evenings, what they are to me As down the quiet path of life I tread! I number them as slowly passing by They soon will snow-flakes drop upon my head. 154 Golden Winged Days Group vii SONGS O'THE NIGHT A little bird perched high on winter branch Against a sun-set sky of emerald Is parable of Christmas day's experience That hath so much bestowed, so much withheld: The sky translucent and the hovering cloud, The golden ball of slowly sinking sun. The spare, bleak outline of the winter wood, The silent little bird whose song is done. But hope though silent lives upon the bough. Alert she turns her head from left to right. Hark! through the melting sky I hear her now: She singeth to my heart, " Good-night! Good-night!" THE GENTLE HAND A certain power there is in every hand When gently laid upon one as in love: The current that electrical doth flow Into another that doth power receive. So 'twas in the anointing; not the oil But virtue going out that one hath healed. And strength renewed in touch so personal Is felt by all; though cause remains concealed. ■* Golden Winged Days 155 ATMOSPHERE Into a home there came a lovely flower (Twas sent by some one who had points to gam) 'Twas felt to be a harbinger of ill *Twas met with coldness and with sad disdain. Its petals, fragrant, large and wide and full, Extending out and reaching for the light. Began to slowly fade and shrink and fall. Till one by one they vanished from sight. The branches too, all green and beautiful — At chill disfavor daily round them spread — Seemed cruelly to feel the atmosphere: Soon branches, flower, stem and leaf were dead. NOCTURNE The fairy forests on my window-pane That every morning fill me with delight Are wrought by facile fingers. Ah, so light The tracery of silver thereupon! II Whence come the little spirits through the dark ? From freezing cold of far away Northland; Each bearing on his back and well in hand His stencil and his^tube of white, for work. 156 Golden Winged Days III He lays them soft — no one shall ever know How rapidly he plies his blithesome trade! None shall molest and none shall make afraid, Till finished : frosty picture fair in snow. THE CAVE OF THE WINDS The cave is haunted by the winds Where, like the specters of the dead, They sadly through the darkness roam. Hark! Hear you not their plaintive wail ? As through the stony corridors They sigh and sob, and shivering Proclaim their endless misery: The pain of parting from their own, The grief for unforgiven sins. The penitence and heavy woe, The thoughts that nevermore will down, Re-echoing from wall to wall: And with sustained and anguished cries Fill underworld with mystic sighs — Strange, surging sounds, that sink and rise: A sad lament that never dies. Golden Winged Days 157 Group viii JANUARY DAWN How silently the day steals slowly on! The flick'ring lamps of village one by one Grow dim and die. Far out across the snow The stillness broods and comforteth the earth. Behold! Whence cometh radiant, roseate glow Wide circling all the heavens, illumining As from the face of God, rejoicing world ? It is the matchless Dawn, who openeth And spreadeth wide her wings; and far beyond The ken of man, to boundless realms of space (Extended arms and quivering in flight) Doth soar, and scattereth particles of light. THE BEQUEST There's something in the heritage of honored name; To be accosted and deferred to for the sake Of one who left an unforgotten mark on earth, And was beloved for work he hath accomplished. The rough, uncouth, unlettered that hold You meritorious for that dear one's sake; And so regard you still with reverence Because you haply bear insignia of birth From such a sire. Ah, heritage most blessed, Such name; above the price of rubies and of pearls. 158 Golden Winged Days MT. SHASTA Oh, as the snow upon the mountain top Doth melt and through the vale in rivulet Precipitantly downward purling come, So stand I on the summit of my grief. Till neath thy gen'rous magnanimity My frozen feelings slow disintegrate: How doth my ice-bound heart dissolve in tears! What need hath earth of all the chilly snows That crown the mountains through the weary years ? No need save as in crystal drops they come — The water falls refreshing fields below. And oh, what need have I of cruel pain Save that it may take form of kindly sigh ? A sympathy for those who low remain In shadow and in silence of the vale. IN DOING DEEDS COMMENDABLE There are three acts that do become a man To leave behind him e'er he quits this earth: A house that hath been builded by his hand, A youth that hath been trained to his will, A tree that hath been planted by his spade. So done he knows that round him he hath shed A blessing on the swiftly coming age: Golden Winged Days 159 BUILDING The house that I have built doth stand Before me like a monument To all my aspiration here Of calm domestic life, content. Oh, how the windows graciously Flood lavish light on walls and floors ! Like welcoming which runneth where There open wide the friendly doors. The very chairs do so extend Their arms in generosity. They give to all a noble pledge- A guerdon: hospitality. A kind of warming welcoming It cometh from the earth below And riseth to high turret there) Doth permeate and whisper low. As though it were of rooms a part, And shared by building and by land (So spread it is around my seat) Dear house I've built with mine own hand! i6o Golden Winged Days II TRAINING My Jock is but a merry lad With little thought for wisdom's ways. But mind he hath, and so I strive Oft to improve his futile days. If he but learns! aye, there's the rub (For Jock hath not a mind to learn) Oh, I will give the moments fleet; And I will guide and I will train. Some day, some day — ah glorious hour! (His brain no longer running rife) I may perchance see Jock a man Full panoplied for useful life. Ill PLANTING Beneath the shining sky on sward of green The soft and fragrant earth I slow upturn. And low I measure there (deep spade I sink) A cavity for roots of sapling oak. For sure return of life I watch and sigh. I see at last my tree revivify! A sign which visible my branch doth yield That verdant, it will gladden all the field. Golden Winged Days i6i Group ix GALERIE D'APOLLON I passed within the Louvre and wandered there Through galleries that led I know not where. I came upon an alcove lined with red: I stood before the statue of a god. Divine Apollo! calm of form and face, A creature filled with quiet, supple grace. Thou dost, within, a mighty strength reserve: A power for great occasion still preserve. One movement of thy lifted finger, fraught With meaning as of deep and godlike thought; One turn of head, denoting that thy sight Is cognizant of all beneath its light; One swiftly glancing smile, as if in man Thou seest being for diversion giv'n; And then thou passest on indifferent. Apollo's bow on other forms is bent. THE CATHERINE-WHEEL AT CHARTRES I linger long within the shadowed aisles Of ancient Chartres, as night comes slowly on; And fix my eyes in transport on the wall Where famous Catherine window glows and gleams. 1 62 Golden Winged Days Sapphires and rubies glinting with the light Of sunsets soon forgot and radiant days That dazzled through their pure transparency, Now in the gloaming (like some faint remembered dream) Soft, soft reflect their heavenly coloring! What are the thoughts inspired by sight like this Celestial window ? Through the ages there In old cathedral, every day and night The wheel doth bloom and glow and burn And flame; and slowly melt in dying fire. It meaneth more to soul than symphony, That only stirs the pulse to quicker beat. It meaneth life eternal in its lines Of intricate and perfect grace. No less It meaneth, in the tints reflected there Of matchless color, all that heaven can hold Of love eternal, human and divine! THE REFINING TOUCH In music, grief is often vocalized. The bird in meshes caught with broken wing Hath joy at heart forever sacrificed; But sweeter far its note for tender ring! Alas, one little soulless bird doth sing Within his cage a meaningless refrain: So doth the poet who hath naught to bring But piping notes content, untouched by pain. Golden Winged Days 163 LOVE'S EQUIVALENT The gold of Mexico in value stands (Although denomination be the same) Below the currency of other lands: Its worth lies largely in its glit'ring name. And so it is with love's equivalent: But small percentage of love's joy is found (The recompense Recamier sought) in fame — One, coin of heaven; one, metal of the ground. MY STRADIVARIUS moulded instrument of mellow trees, There sleepeth here how many melodies Within thy timbers frail, diaphanous! Thy songs may never from their death-like sleep Awake, nor even stir in slumber deep. Till Love doth call they lie low, passionless. 1 think upon thy powers and hold thee now. Impelled by love my fingers grasp the bow — Close to my heart, my Stradivarius! With what caresses light I touch thy string, And strain my ear for note I long to bring: The secret song my heart may ne'er confess. What thoughts, that in expression verbal fail, From thee are outward drawn in trembling wai (Consenting thou, with greater willingness.) 164 Golden Winged Days First incoherent, fanciful and faint; Then wavering still, but freer from constraint. (Come gently now, my Stradivarius!) Breaks forth triumphant song (my thoughts repeat;) And shattered like the waves, falls at my feet A crest and diamond shower all glorious! Group x CHERRIES "Be grateful for small benefits." Teaching of the Vedas. In gratitude for trifling benefits The Hindus hold as emblem, cherries, red, As most significant of mercy still From God above to erring, wayward men. So do I mind a little gift from thee Of wooden cup adorned with favored fruit. Tis not the gift ('twere small and trifling too) But cherries may denote my gratitude. WHERE STAND THE HOUSEHOLD GODS The family hearth should be the countenance That doth express the honor of the home; And it should be kept clean, immaculate, Without a vestige that suggests the sod. Golden Winged Days 165 Or, as the Romans in their opulence, (And in their poverty 'twas even so) Placed image of their gods on either hand. So Christian hearth should be kept holy too. ALLAH IS HIS NAME The Orient hath many treasures there Of deftest hand-work, and of value rare. But one I mind — a certain Rug of Prayer Which fingers dark, and dusky midnight eyes Have wrought in magic out of matchless dyes,- Doth, like a new creation, still surprise. II Fair fabrics filled the space, but of them all (Which hung extended on a chosen wall. Where light was regulated and could fall In slanting ray upon each roseate part) My rug was fairest. By devoted heart Designed, that one might kneel and pray apart III It was a vision brought by fairy wand; A texture woven by some hidden hand; It was a dream from far-off summerland. 1 66 Golden Winged Days It was a tale of hours of happy toil: Creation, exquisite of golden foil In convolution and in slender coil. IV Here were the purple threads of amethyst; And there faint, dewy touches like the mist; Here flood of color no one may resist. There was the figment fine where pattern stops And endeth suddenly in ruby drops — As if Imagination now exhausted, droops While bordered all around was marvelous frieze ^ Which no man's brain could waking e'er devise — O'er all a tender sheen, when moved by breeze. The races must but follow single course: None may excel in knowledge, art and force. ^ Of beauty, Daghestan doth hold the source. ^ HUMILITAS Oh I delight, with long dishevelled hair And garments loosely thrown around my form, That leave me free with arms and shoulders bare, To so rebuke the oft disdainful Muse! She Cometh not when I do most prepare. Golden^ Winged^Days 167 II How strange is she — my whilom visitor — Who doth refuse to sit in solemn state. And like as not she turns inquisitor When I have other things to think about: For converse chooses inconvenient hour. Ill She mandate makes, and orders ne'er rescinds " It must be so. I shall not tarry, else. " So braided locks are given to the winds. And downward falleth garments in a heap: " Oh, any perch will do, a seat that lends. " IV " I do not love you much," I stern reply, ** But you are useful to my purpose, hence I give you ground of vantage while you're nigh. Begone when you have had your saucy say! I'm ready any time to give good-bye. " She garbles o'er some meaningless refrain: " Alack, you do not love me! Well-a-day, To you the loss; to me the blessed gain." And then with mocking laughter turns to go — But sends a parting shot to long remain: 1 68 Golden Winged Days VI Oh, naught doth come to one in cynic mood (You may not know me yet my fairest dame) But Charon's curse and Lethe's bitter flood. Until you learn to love and love to learn The earth will not be yours, nor any good. " Group xi ORIGINAL MS. If you but keep it long enough 'Twill bring you many a sou: Since it was new, so high it grew — Original MS. Its characters so mystical, " Appealing" to the sight! It is so bright, it is so light — Original MS. It starts out quite poetical And endeth in decline: A certain sign, that it is fine — Original MS. ULYSSES The Scylla and Charybdis to poet's left and right Are solemn, dull pompos'ty or flippant phrase and trite. To steer his course between them a center line he takes- Or else on rocks of rhet'ric a wreck of verse he makes. Golden Winged Days 169 PAN As little bird whose note is brief And finished e'er it is begun, So doth he play, and ending soon Give to his thought a quick relief. The register of bird and man Is limited to single bar: The rising note returneth where Its piping music first began. It may not add to melody Of planet great or distant star; But though it may not float afar It yet to one may solace be. So pipe sweet Pan and pipe sweet bird. And barren fields and thirsty brooks And all forsaken bowers and nooks Will brighter be where song is heard. LATIN LYRIST Here's a bumper to old Horace As he stands upon my shelf. Frowning down in dusty silence- So unlike his youthful self! . He was young and he was witty With a twinkle in his eye; 170 Golden Winged Days He could turn a merry ditty; He could breath a lover's sigh. So in grateful computation, Reck'ning run through many years, i (Dormant loves and sleeping fancies, i Secret sighs and tender tears,) ] All to good old Horace tracing, | Would I now this tribute bring: 1 Horace lives and may he never Cease in human hearts to sing!" THE SACRIFICE The poet's heart is fuel to his genius. And unconsumed and inconsumably Burns ever on the altar to his god. And Love, though unappeased, doth tenderly Watch curling flame and smoking sacrifice. MY LIBRARY The slanting rays of setting sun Rest gently on my volumes old. Arranged confusedly they run, (In Russia leather traced with gold. Or brown with age) along the walls : They soft absorb the gath'ring gloom — The shadowy night that cross them falls And filters through the dark'ning room. Golden Winged Days 171 The blood-red letters luminous (By painter's art and tooling bright) Are clearly visible; no less Are vellum volumes, milky white. Books silent voices register: 'Tis Monmouth Geoffrey, through the hall. Or Richard of Cirencester, Or Virgil, Horace, Juvenal. And high above the stately throng Are modern notes — like benison: The heavy swing, the lithe, sweet song Of Browning and of Tennyson. But now a hush, as night comes on, (The fire doth flicker low and fail) Naught doth disturb the tender tone Of ancient verse and madrigal. Group xii BENEDICTUS With lattice raised I look upon a quiet sky Where saileth ship of gold, slow dipping down the West On tranquil sea of blue. The beatific calm Of scene doth touch and sooth my trembling heart to rest. The Benedictus, or the hymn before sunrise, That nature sings for worshipper and penitent. Doth comfort more than all the droning chants of day That heavenward, in appeal by burdened heart, are sent. l^2 Golden Winged Days IPISSIMA VERBA Translations from the classics, pure should be Close clinching the original, each word. Not leaving to the vain imagining Of translator a single false excuse To vaunt his folly or his ignorance. Oh, any other course doth deviate From true simplicity and righteousness And intellectual honesty, as well. If in the manuscript there is no word That to the sentence giveth meaning full, So state it frankly — let it go at that — And hold thy scholar's craft immaculate. IGNIS EST To catch the thought while flitting through the brain And pinion it with ready, swift intent; To harbor in the heart its meaning deep Till it hath fashioned form and substance grown — These, these are moments sweet to mortal minds. For human likeness to the gods is this : To understand the mysteries divine Which shining moments to our souls reveal; And changing revelation into words, Give credence to the halting faith of men. Golden Winged Days 1 73 MEDITATION How is it as the years go gently by New mysteries are opened on my sight, That hidden were through all my obdurate life ? Revealing day hath dawned from covert night. And sounds that I have never heard before Appeal anew to long unheeding ear; And I am standing on Mt. Carmel's brow With seraphim and cloud approaching near. An inward vision now doth quicken me, And there's a glamour over all below: A spell in shadows deep and in the light. In tree and flower and early falling snow. An inward auditory sense doth hear A voice of music — as of lesser thirds — In cadence soft of kindly spoken tones; And e'en a charm in sound of certain words. Tis naught but that divine content of soul Which mellowed is by Meditation's breath Like as (fore Nature's annual pause for rest) Full fruitage followeth the zephyr's path. THE NOTE THAT FALLETH LOW The day is done. And past the shadow and the gloom Of all the weary hours, there lengtheneth One note of sweet content. It singeth still 174 Golden Winged Days Within my heart, since it hath fallen low From lips all sanctified with love of God. gracious song! that given is for comforting. What would we do if we should be deprived Of ministry so full of solace and of strength ? That note that falleth low hath found a place Which no appeal, though set with fiery flame From tone of orator, may yet secure; Nor gain a hearing half so fraught with joy; Nor find a welcome so intense and full. It lightens too each burden and each pain, And pours upon the aching heart a balm Like to the blessed balm of Gilead. 1 grieve that I may never hear that song again. i But no; it lingers still and will remain Re-echoing in memory forevermore. Group xiii SISTER ARTS There is affinity in all the arts; But two have likeness and similitude, As fair descendants of one parent stem Or strain in stanza and in interlude. The arts histrionic and poetic live Byi innate sympathy with heart's appeal: They spend themselves by what they live upon- And yet they perish if they cease to feel. Golden Winged Days 175 So do these arts sincere, interpret life As may no other facile instrument; And like the harp by breezes played upon, Give forth a melody by feeling lent. EPISTLE TO THE POETS Add to your inspiration clear A fine and gentle tact; And to your tact add taste supreme, Then knowledge add, compact. HER LITTLE SERENE HIGHNESS My little princess riding in her cart Attended by a happy, loving train, Doth take the homage given in perfect part As heritage she naturally doth claim. The children dancing round her in delight, The fond old grandam jogging in the rear, Are only courtiers w^hich she has by right: If she but speaks they hold their breath to hear. Reign, little maiden through the sunny hours. And brandish high your tiny sceptre now! The time may come, when e'en with witching powers No vassal humbly at your feet will bow. 176 Golden Winged Days CRADLE SONG Lullaby baby, my bird in the nest, Mother is near thee to guard and to bless. Guarding and blessing and loving am I — Lullaby baby dear, lullaby by! Softly the fairies come up from the dew, Softly their calling my loved one to you. Thou art my fairy, and tenderly nigh Mother doth tend thee dear, lullaby by! Lullaby baby, my bird in the nest. Lullaby baby, my fairy at rest. Little bird, fairy-bird, fly av^ay far, Little boy's sleeping in Slumberland car. THE PURITAN AND THE SCOT In Highlands of the Scots is found the home Of conscience to the European v^orld. And in America no spot is know^n More true to God than States of Puritan. To me hath come a conscience amplified By ages of restricted discipline: Stern influence maternal from the Scots, And from my sires the Puritan constraint. The one is typical of old w^orld's power To hold in bondage every human thought; Golden Winged Days 177 The other is the frigid element That binds America in icy chains. But power directed is of highest worth And golden, chains that link us to the stars. Oh, I would not that honored power disdain Nor sever ties with value so replete. Group xiv LIVING STONES In Scotland near the old, historic site Of castle that by Robert Bruce was built, A homely hut of roughest earth doth stand — Constructed clumsily by peasant's hand. The ancient builders, though they nothing knew Of architecture from its highest view, Yet realized the strength and quality That still in fallen palace rock might be. So, set in walls where one would least expect. Are found strange stones all luminous with text. Preserved forever in their bed of clay And full of beauty. There they safely lay. The words of Jesus evermore are set (Their wisdom shining forth, lest we forget) In writings of the saints; and stand today Like living stones surrounded by the clay. 178 Golden Winged Days THE ANGLO-SAXON The ancient Caedmon on his dying bed Lay watching sunset's slowly fading beams. His yellow hair streamed o'er his pillov/ whitt, And clasped in prayer his hands on counterpane. " The Eucharist," the poet murmured low, As wearily he turned from light of day And sought for consolation in the cup And bread — memorials of his sufF'ring Lord. The chalice placed within his trembling hand Great Caedmon drank, and lifting holy bread To lip, he partly rising said aloud: " Receive me Lord ! " and falling back was dead. The sunlight resting on the hallowed brow Soft kissed away each trace of pain and care And left it as though angel hov'ring near Had placed upon it seal of blessing there. FRIENDSHIP There's no foundation for a friendship here; For one hath not the truthful principle. The basic fact of friendship standeth where Is righteousness of individual. Golden Winged Days 179 THE BRIDE OF CHRIST What hath he not done to the Bride of Christ — The holy Church, whom he trampleth on! He hath wounded and hurt and sullied the name There should be neither spot nor blemish upon. O think of the grief of the Lord himself As He looks on the Church for whom He hath died: How low she is brought by unthinking souls — A name to make sport of, a name to deride. Awake thou that sleepest and answer the call; The Master demands protection for her He loveth so well He hath sacrificed all. Go! Raise your right arm, let nothing deter! THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL Old Lambeth Palace looms against the skies Like some enchanted castle of the Moors, Or dream in marble wrought. At peace it hes : For time and for eternity endures. The treasures rare that Lambeth has bequeathed Unto the Church may never numbered be; As prayers to heaven the holy saints have breathed- I may not count them on my rosary. Symbolical of angels visits here — Memorials which Lambeth Palace holds — i8o Golden Winged Days Decrees of God, divine and just and pure; Insignia of flocks and earthly folds. The lost brought safely to the Shepherd's arms By men made diligent with anxious cares, And laid low at His feet with sad alarms. And offered now with suppliant tears and prayers. The Palace as it stands aloof, alone (A heavenly mansion in material world) Bespeaks another House beside a throne. When final books of judgment be unfurled. I ^ Group xv MIRAGE There is no elevation in the thoughts Which come from closest contact with the world. That which doth most appeal to poet's heart Lies not in artificiality; But rather in the verities of life: Primeval calls and deep experiences. Or else it may be found in symphonies That rise and fall with winds and stormy sea, Or whisper in the watches of the night. And next to nature for supreme up-lift, Is impulse (from a contemplation kind Of dire distress) to run and render aid. Golden Winged Days i8l These things alone touch springs of sympathy: They rouse within a joy unspeakable, Or purpose strong and high and resolute To offer unto God and men their due. While contact with the world doth turn from paths That nature and that love have glorified. THE QUIET HOUR I think it is the color in the early morning sky, And in the heaping sun-set clouds the brilliant rainbow dye, That separate the day in parts and give to each its own Distinctive character and worth: the Evening and the Dawn. The sun at noon hath naught to lend of strange and heavenly light 'Tis full of dazzling brilliancy — resplendent to the sight. But where the weird suggestiveness of other life than ours ? Its glamour drives the thought away: we faint neath radiant powers. But softly stealing light that comes upon us unawares Doth draw contemplative away the thought from human cares. Or slowly sinking setting sun! how hallowed in thy might Thou dost so gently lead us on into the shades of night. 1 82 Golden Winged Days CREATION The first man Adam was made a living soul. " —St, Paul. Their presence twain doth animate the place (As yet no children needed in their close) He with his dome-like forehead full of thought; She — fleeting smile and cheek of tinted rose. II United thus they stand within their gate, Complete created couple by the leave Of God himself; who hath pronounced them A pristine Adam and a virtuous Eve. THE NEW CREATION >> " The second Adam was made a quickening Spirit. —St. Paul. One generation comes and another passeth by And leaveth man established still in sin. There is none that loveth God, that worshippeth the Lord; There's none that in his heart is pure within. But a new creation groans in travail with the birth Of a holy and a perfect first-born son : Golden Winged Days 183 The Wonderful, the Prince, the everlasting God, The mighty Father who to earth has come. In the old man all must die; in the new be made alive. And the impulse that doth quicken from the dead Is the Spirit of our God who in Jesus hath appeared: " The new creation's first-born" as he said. THE ORDINANCE SUPREME " The Redeemed say so." The master passion of the human heart Lies not in mortal love; but deeper down In that Necessity which actuates To all endeavor, strenuous and pure. 'Tis outraged conscience which doth glow and glare And cruel havoc make with purposes And plans of men. Why must we in despair Forever look above and see no sign. Nor kind acknowledgement of our estate, Nor re-assurance ehat our God doth live ? Yet we believe His Word doth prove thus much. The Powers we know are round us evermore. Their presence fills our lives with influence 184 Golden Winged Days Supernal; yet we cannot tell from whence The influence comes. O knowledge true of Self! (Those rights all personal — inviolate — That sacred are to every single soul) What is that Ego but the instrument On which the spirits of the dead may play To guide, if but obeyed to ways of peace ? Or if but slightly spurned to drive us on And downward to Inferno's very realm ? He giveth angels charge concerning us. Somewhere, somewhere there mindful liveth one Who lightly on the chords of entity For every man doth play, and moveth him This way and that; and bribeth him to feel Himself free-agent still. Whate'er it be. His guardian angel, messenger of God, I know not who or what; but recognize That man must bend and sway and yield himself To holy influence or be destroyed. Come angels then and ministers of grace And lift me to your heights of heavenly hope! That I may nevermore despair nor grieve, Nor e*en succumb to miseries of earth. And render strength divine to hand and heart That in life's conflict I may never fail, Nor vanquished be by trivialities. Nor faint forgetful of the Verities. But find the joy of living to obey My sacred Duty's supreme ordinance. What e'er I need of heavenly ministry, O spirits of the dead made perfect, send To keep me in fixed purpose to the end! Book III — Immortality TESTIS Man sleeps and In sorrow doth rise; He treadeth the wine-press alone. He lifteth his eyes to the cold, silent skies- There is none whom he knoweth his own. II Within him he lowereth his eyes; Naught seeth, but something returns. A voice low replies : " The Ego ne'er dies- So He liveth for whom thy soul yearns. ' FINALE Why should I die when I have just begun to live .? The portals of the sky are op 'ning wide and high- Why should I die ? The vistas far and free new daily visions give; The violet star to sight a soft and trembling light. On comes the night. 185 1 86 Golden Winged Days The night! the night! Oh, vanished rosy dawn and bright! Oh, pure and passing star! Oh, life's departing light! Oh, darkness deep! Oh, night! MAGNUM OPUS Complete my work! Life's single aim doth center all in this. O that I might forever live! My passion is for toil. The brain doth move with force and might when prompts a motive high, And e'en the palsied hand obeys when driven by power within. Ah, labor is its own reward — seeks naught save perfect work; But time is finite and the mind must in its limits move. Then blessed, peaceful rest; mayhap annihilation comes. II Cut bono?** cries the soul, " Must man in labor, life and love Delighting for a single day, renounce them at the grave ? Not so! Appreciation's terms alone shall gauge his joy; And his capacity for life, all that may e'en limit him. When he has reached the bounds of Nature's full endow- ment kind. She gives him soft release; and ushers into wider fields. There in amazement he doth stand. He sees before him things Of which in its imaginings, his heart hath ne'er conceived. Golden Winged Days 187 III ** Cut bono?*' Ah, thrice blessed good! This life is all of good Since wisely and by laws of God, life strangely makes the soul Fit for conditions higher still. Right joyous on we go! We claim life's blessings as we pass. And with reluctant hands Slow loose our hold on things of earth: as child doth drop his toys, To sleep in mother's arms, and moving in his happy dreams Hears voice remind him of the morn when he shall wake and find New joys forever round his path, with promises of larger gifts In keeping with his dignity as perfect, full-grown man. IV Man's finished work is laid aside. He knows no restless fears: For on him now is Nature's hand, and o'er his head the stars. He biddeth earth a long farewell — lies down to pleasant dreams — And softly sighs and gently sleeps; and smiling as he sleeps He rests in glorious hope, through Christ, of immortality. 1 88 Golden Winged Days V It may be in the interstices of the stars Amidst the myriad and the varied forms of life Some high intelligence there is that hath control For every sep'rate star some sovereign prince. VI O one hath said, " I long to guide and mould The great affairs of nations on the earth. " And when he passes to another sphere He yet doth hope some planet in the skies To have entrusted solely to his care. Yet he hath not himself e'en well in hand And how could he aught human or divine Improve and model, on defective plan ? VII It seemeth unto me an evidence Of God's supreme design for men That we should have ourselves and small affairs Belonging to ourselves, to guide on earth; That those who most by wisdom here below Do show themselves prepared (when called hence) Shall so be given the guardianship of worlds; Arid realize indeed that destiny For which from the beginning they were formed : Their magnum opus so shall they attain When they ascend to nature of their God. Book IV — Love Songs LOVE'S ESSENCE Oh, what is love ? Oh, what is love ? Giving, receiving nothing, nor complain. Asking for light, yet willing be In deepest darkness to remain. Finding no joy where thou art not, A sorrow in thine absence, though a gain In happiness: for certainty of thy return. This, this alone is love. All else is vain. RHAPSODY Where wast thou love, when I in golden fields Roamed merrily, or sought for giant foes At rain-bow*s end; or midst the honey-bees Found sweets to tempt me from my garden close ? II O somewhere in the large and boundless world Thou then did'st live in bright and happy youth. Oh, did'st thou dream of me and sigh in vain For one who was — but lost to thee, in sooth ? 189 iqo Golden Winged Days III Or sane and frank, wast thou, from mystic claim Of soul connection with another, free ? Nor found in boyhood's merry careless day Room for a lover's dream of bride to be ? IV Enough! thou comest now a man to me. I am no longer jealous of that day When I was nothing to your restless need: And all you loved was thoughtless, joyous play. Thou fold'st me here in large and manly hold Of loving arms and tender sweet embrace. Enough! enough! I linger near thy way — I am content to look upon thy face! LOVE'S PASSING The day love died within my heart I do not know, I cannot tell; His silent passing was not marked By mournful sound or funeral knell. Golden Winged Days 191 II He passed. The smile upon his face Deceived the watchers, with them me; They did not know he even slept, That he was dead I could not see. Ill Till waking from a dreadful dream I saw Love stretched upon his bier. I buried him without a sigh. "He's dead," I said, without a tear. IV The sting that hides in cruel words Will put to flight the truest love. And when it strikes its sure to kill The little Spirit from above. WILL|0' THE|WISP Love is a strange mysterious thing, tra la la! tra la la! It's likely ever to take wing, tra la la, tra la la! And if your love has come to an end, tra la la! tra la la! And you have gone further than you intend, tra la la; tra la la! 192 Golden Winged Days II The only way so far as I see, tra la la! tra la la! (The secret I'll tell 'twixt you and me) tra la, la! tra la la! Just skip the town as fast as you can, tra la la! tra la la! Tell her you've gone to meet a man, tra la la, tra la la! Ill She'll hopefully watch for you every day, tra la la! tra la la! But don't be dismayed by this I pray, tra la la, tra la la! Write her a line that you've missed the train, tra la la! tra la la! And probably you will ne'er meet again, tra la la, tra la la! IV The lass will weep a few tears I ween, tra la la ! tra la la ! But she'll get another as fast as she can, tra la la, tra la la! For maids are just like men you know, tra la la! tra la la! They never do love but a day or so, tra la la ! tra la la ! LONGING For thee my heart is waiting. I wait, for thee I sigh! For thee my heart is pining — To meet thee e'er I die. Oh, thou dost read my meaning In voice, in sigh, in tear; Golden Winged Days 193 And thou alone art bringing The word I long to hear. The wind, the cloud, the tempest Are threatening every hour To part us soon forever — The storm e'en now doth lower! So tarry not beloved — O leave me not alone! For if too long delaying Thy foot-steps may not come! DAPHNE 'Tis *leven o' the clock, and light still gleams From out the window of my little Love; While I stand silent now beside her gate And ponder on the mysteries above. Around her in the day there ever shines A soft effulgence, as of radiance Outstripping e'en the sun and making it Diminish and appear like darkness dense. Oh, in the night, when from my presence flown, She vanisheth like Dryad into grove. But see! she holdeth shining torch aloft To so entice me should I chance to rove. 194 Golden Winged Days MORTAL LOVE O I was fit to fill my heart With passion so divine That heaven and earth it's vast resource Could nevermore contain. II But love passed on and left me here As one whose simple song Could not be heard in orchestra Of earthly chorus strong. Ill I'll tune my lyre and sing awhile To wierd and mystic sound — ril set my sight upon the sun; i ril rise from off the ground: SPIRIT LOVE The spell is broken and he comes no more For whom my soul but yesterday did long. Think you that I have lost or given o'er The dear delights that round his presence throng ? Golden Winged Days 195 II Ah, though I may not see him face to face, Nor evermore by voice be comforted, I still shall feel anew that kindly grace, Though one I mourn be numbered with the dead. Ill Strange that I count his nearness to my soul In just the measure that he lives again One set apart and sanctified and whole And diverse widely from the run of men. IV The part of him that most is of this earth Hath naught responsive found akin in me. Tis spirit of the man which draws me on — The part which is divine in him I see. So stay or go it ever is the same, My satisfaction and my hope are sure; For I have met and now I know and claim My Spirit love, all holy, cleansed and pure. APPRECIATIONS 'Tis'not that I am keeping the heart thou gavest me — 'Tis not in love returning my heart goes out to thee; 196 Golden Winged Days *Tis what thou art, my dear one, what now thou givest me: Reflections of thy being, large full and strong and free! It would not do for me to tell you all I feel; For then the bitterness of death would come To you as well as me. And that rare intercourse Of mind and heart which now exists between us twain Would be forever rent; and you would banished be From out my sight. While I alas, would in my stress And poverty of soul, pour out my grief alone, In darkness and in silence of the night. So stay beloved by my side awhile, And hold me by enchantment of thy word — So kind and gentle and beneficent That I would listen though I may not know Or hear more than the cadence of thy voice. Alas that human weakness so imperative Demandeth still to learn what is the depth To which your heart (which seemeth moved) is stirred — Or if perchance it may be stirred at all! I put the thought far from me and I bend To Fate's decree that thou and I good friends Shall be, and nothing more; while influence strange Which followeth me as coming from thy soul Shall be as though it were not, and had never been. From this time on the common-place of life The watch-word evermore between us twain. Golden Winged Days 197 May'est thou through all thy length of days rejoice — The sky is fair for you dear and for me! THE KISS RETURNED Cold is the kiss that only is returned For one in love and adoration given; Tis like reply of v^ind from cruel North To salutation of a breeze from heaven. THE GIFT I need your love far more than anodyne To drive away the pain of heart and head, ril gather now the withered flowers and dead — ril treasure them no more, those gifts of thine. It nothing meaneth to my penitence When you upon me empty emblems shower Expressive of eternal love whose power For you existeth not in any sense. Ah, give me gifts that worthy are of you And of that love you once professed and felt, When in a passion of humility you knelt And thine own Soul didst offer me anew! MY PLACE With opening door comes inquiry Solicitous of me : igS Golden Winged Days " Hath she returned to her home ? Where can my loved one be ? '* And oft I hide me from his sight Just to remembered be: That inquiry, that inquiry Solicitous of me! MY PART ** No one is there if you're not there. " Ah, doleful chord in symphony! It droppeth from a solemn strain To one of plaintive euphony. The message shall not be unheard — I rise, I run, I'm flying thence: I'll go beloved if that is all It takes to make an audience! THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE The symbols of the love he beareth me Are ever found in precious gifts concealed; (Significance but partially revealed To one alone who hath the eyes to see.) Three thoughts are constant in finality, And by their sweet insistnece strengthen troth: They tell of dear Remembrance and of Truth, And intimate love's Immortality. Ah, wee and dainty flower *for-get-me-not. And tender lover's tie of ribbon blue, Golden Winged Days 19Q Ye vivify and evermore renew And consecrate allegiance of thought. And golden, floating wing of butterfly, (That to the ancient Greeks hath meant so much) How do ye bring me into sacred touch : Love's precious hope of immortality. THE MOMENT PSYCHOLOGICAL The moment psychological (The golden opportunity To close unite our shattered hearts) Arrived; but could not last. It came, (your Reason logical Resisted importunity) It paused — a minute point of time — It went forever past. PARADISO Tve traveled a long road to reach your heart: Through years of desert sand Tve tread my way, IVe halted by the springs to weep and pray — Repined at distance keeping us apart. But now the gates approaching, once within, I find they slowly swing and hold rae there. I offer song of praise (unlike the prayer Upon my parched lips) and enter in! 200 Golden Winged Days SONATA APPASSIONATA Across the memory of years comes echoing strain. Persistent, pulHng at my heart it draws me on, A Hving voice I hear through melody sublime. List! It intones my name — impelling me to come. Cease. Cease. I hear thee not. Speak not one word again. Tis vain. Unanswered thy despair and wild appeal. ] In momentary calm, I waver not nor fear: \ And fair response from me thou find'st unuttered still O call me not! Thy distant voice unheard shall be — i, For I have gone and to return no more. Remaineth naught but this: that thou dost know The anguish and the struggle of my soul At call of thee; and that thou pittiest me. What now befalleth thee ? Alone art thou ? A duplicate in suffering of me ? My well-beloved! Silent One, art dead ? What wilt thou then in mercy have me do ? Awake! Awake! Or dying call to me, And falling on thy corse I gladly follow thee! Golden Winged Days 201 VIOLETS To be so loved doth make the blushes come. (Oh, he is just as coy as any maiden is; And would not tell it for the world — That secret, silent, sacred love of his.) And more especially he hides from me The sentiment he would not desecrate; Dissembleth he in such deceptive guise As rose-bud dropping random at my feet. Or snowy, fair, w^hite shawl (embroidered o'er With lover's knots that furnish a surprise: Suggestive of the nature of his love) With which to greet my happy, wondering eyes. I would not love thee, dear — nay half so much Were I of thine affection only sure By blair of trumpets or monotonous sound Of loving protestation o'er and o'er. The rather would I choose to be beloved In quiet, manly fashion all thine own, Which recognition scarcely may receive — So little to observer is it shown. In violets that lie beside me here (Without one word save that which blossoms tell) I, like an adept, see thine offering: Symbolical of all thou wouldst reveal. 202 Golden Winged Days TRIOLOGY I Estrangement All youth is now forever gone from me Since I no longer can restrain my tears. I've garnered all my smiles and given to thee; And naught remains but grief throughout the years. The shadow in the light of perfect love Is due to prescience of jealous heart; And like the dial in the light of sun Doth shade malignant cast of gloom athwart. CHORUS Never kiss me dear again, 'Till Love touches soft your lip (Oh, a shadow in its light is hanging o'er!) I will wait in patience still — I will sit low at your feet — I will on my face lie prostrate at your door. II Reconciliation Peace is restored. And out upon the field I look to see my love swift crossing it. 'Tis not that a concession he doth yield — 'Tis not that I am dear and doubted it; Golden Winged Days 203 'Tis that the scales have fallen from my eyes And I can see his perfect love's bequest. My heart doth sing and leap in glad surprise: I see myself a being all too blest! Ill Perfect Love There's never been a question of my love, And yet — and yet — if very truth were known I have a love more truly love today Than e'er my heart would e'en confess to own. Oh, it hath been a recognition calm; And it hath been quiescence deep and blest — Acknowledgement of virtues manifold That gave to me a certain sense of rest. But now comes new-born love to re-info rce (As if in hands of strength it held my soul) Its law divine, to animate my life And make it fruitful, rich, intense and whole! PART THIRD THE HUNT An Idyll of the Field Part i The background for the hunter's tale Is EngHsh manor, old and beautiful. Within, a palace filled with works of art; Without, demesne extending far and wide. The Hall was built in centuries long past: In time of Conquest, when the Normans bold O'er-ran the British Isles And vanquished native Britons in their holds; And *stabHshed moated castles midst The wooded wilds, well fortified. The first of this great House was one Who came with William to those shores. He fought beside his monarch brave; And as reward received this estate Of fair extent and beauty unsurpassed. And then his sovereign knighted him. That *mongst the people of the realm This subject might have reverence supreme From lord and serf alike. Now since that olden time so long ago Hath sprung a race of noble sons who claim The Dunloe heritage: A fair demesne and name all glorious. The Castle too has changed. And added to its massive walls 207 2o8 Golden Winged Days Are many more abutments great, Projecting out from every side. And over all impenetrable green: The ancient ivy vines in festoons trail, Or fall in curtains from o'erhanging eaves. Or cling insistently to door and window-ledge. Around the castle runs the moat, With still its drawbridge old; Where came the knights in former time To seek a refuge from their foes. But now no longer raised is the bridge When strangers cross the moat and enter in: Fixed to its place it long hath stood; And fixed forever shall remain. Song of the Wildwood Mid scenes of sylvan beauty Extending round those walls, The elves and fairies nightly Dance to the water-falls. II They dance and sing and whirling Seek flowers where dew is found; And sweet refreshment drinking Trip lightly o'er the ground. Golden Winged Days 209 III They quaff to joy of lady, They pledge to health of lord; And e*er the dawn is breaking They flit beyond the ford. Within the Hall are chambers wide That lead, now here to open balconies; And there to vast ancestral galleries Where hang the portraits of the dead: Those young Sir Knights and ladies fair Who once with gallantry and grace Moved joyously among these scenes. But ah! long since they've given o'er Their armor bright and laces exquisite To these inheritors of all. The sons have stacked within the Armory The helmets bronze, and now long rusted swords. But with the laces that came down to them And precious pearls of Ophir — jewels rare — The daughters of the house adorn themselves. But now 'tis season of the Hunt. And guests from far and near Have gathered at the Hall; Some with a retinue of servants trained To do their master's slightest will, And some from far across the seas Who gayly mock at feudal ways. And much is going on below the stairs Of surmise and of wonderment 2lo Golden Winged Days Concerning one who hath but just arrived: *La Belle American.' For so amidst the courteous throng Was Rosalind Randolph called; And servants picking up the name, Now knew no other than the one That had been given her in loving jest By youthful lord, and Lady Grace, Her kindly welcoming hosts. The company invited to the Meet Had not its equal in the land: The ladies for their beauty and their wit, The men for gallant courtesy. And one among them — lovliest of them all — The fair American was there. (For Rosalind, the friend of Lady Grace, Invited was through the Ambassador; And with her aged aunt *the dowager,' Had left her distant home across the seas And come to give these sombre walls Effulgence of her presence bright). La Belle American O she is sweet to look upon! Her face of oval, pure; Her starry eyes drooped low and meek; Her manner mild, demure. Golden Winged Days 2ii II With just a touch of coquetry As if to ask perchance Why one should find a single grace In her, or in her glance! Ill She smiles, and all the youths around Join trembling in her train. She is the princess of the Hall — La Belle American! Among the men of courtly mien Was one, the heir and lord of all, Who with his sister. Lady Grace, Oft sought the side of fair American. He had been all around the world : And softly pouring in her list'ning ear His story marvelous. Had filled her with amazement at his tales Of wondrous sights and incidents And harrowing escapes. And oft she heard him breathlessly; And sweet her converse low, As with her eyes upon the ground, She listened to the stranger's voice. And pondering these things within her heart In restless dreams she saw him striving still Arrayed against the dragons in the field. Or vanquishing some dark and dangerous foe. 212 Golden Winged Days Of Norman Blood is He Tall, straight and dark; a man of might, With strength enough for three, Lord Dunloe ever strove to win: * Of Norman blood is he!' II His crest still bore the strange device From sires of ages past. In Latin writ: '* I strive to win Where e'er my lot is cast. " III He strives to win ? Ah, none gainsaid What strife there soon would be; But he must win and win he will: *Of Norman blood is he!' Part ii Assembled all the guests within the Hall. And each had donned his gayest hunting garb. The men with high-top boots and cracking whips Make gallant sport, while loud their laughter rings. The ladies each with gay and merry voice. Prepare in suitable attire to join the chase; Golden Winged Days 213 And in their habits dark and close appear Like portraits, which ancestral line the walls. Anon is heard the heavy bray of hounds Which in the hands of keepers still remain; While pulling at their ropes they drive and run And howling, long to follow after prey. A clatter on the pavement now is heard, As rearing into court the horses come. The grooms in reassuring voices call — The noble beasts are anxious for the fray. The great door swings and pouring down the steps, The joyous, merry crowd now seek their steeds. And one among them fairer than the rest, Doth trembling choose the horse she wills to ride. They are all bred to hunting with the hounds And none surmise my lady's timid heart, Save Roland who now closely at her side Sees color fade and only white remain. For Rosalind, the fair American, Is of a spirit proud yet diffident; And none should know though she should die for it That she as well as others may not ride. The shouts subside while all right busily Engaged are with bridle, strap and steed. The hounds alone accompaniment do keep With braying deep to horses stamping feet. Then off they go — a gorgeous, brilliant host Comparisoned in red and black and gold 214 Golden Winged Days With here and there a flash of silver white Intensifying colors of their garb. Moving of the Minions "And Duncan's horses beauteous and swift- The minions of their race." — Shakespeare, Sing ho! for the Hunt and av^^ay we are moving, The horse and his rider and fair lady too! While leading the train is the brave tawny ranger Which panting doth point for the pack, full in view. II Sing ho, hi hey! for the lord and his ladye! Sing hi! for the horses, and ho! for the Danes! We are off, we are off! there's no one not ready We wait for the morning no longer, my friends! Ill Sing ho, hi, hey! the dogs are all leading. And echo throws back their melodious bray. We are off, we are off! no longer we tarry; We ride to the hounds at the break of the day! The calvacade fast clatters down the drive Through avenues of tall and stately trees; Till reaching outer limits of the park Golden Winged Days 215 They enter swift along the walled way That leads to lodge and to the greater gate. Like music now the treading of the hoofs Upon the soft and green and sodden earth. And all the sounds peculiar to the Court Are by the distance hushed, as hunters forward move. Ah, there's no spot in all the world So sweet as this," thought Rosalind, As riding by Lord Dunloe*s side She viewed the crumbling stones on either hand Close matted o'er with moss; while high above The drooping branches from the ancient oaks (That in a forest tangle grew; and crowded 'gainst And canopied in shadowy green the towering walls) Seemed soft to murmur as they shed A benediction on her head. And now the minions move through massive gate That groans on heavy hinge to let them pass. And on they go like ordered cavalry O'er old-time drawbridge, creaking neath their feet; Out into road, which castle rampart circles round. And grateful 'twas to Rosalind To reach the outer world, where more at home She seemed — and less in land of dreams. And laughing gay to Roland now she spoke; And sat her horse, and rode with graceful ease. She even glanced around, And took in beauties of the fields; And wondered how she could have feared An outing such as this of lovely country road With hedges lined; into which now they turned. I A 2i6 Golden Winged Days ^» And thinking thus, in happy mood, She slackened slow her gait; and fell behind — In maiden meditation, fancy free. She rode her gentle steed at halting pace. She was not long alone. For e'en the flower of English youth had marked her charm And longed to joy within her radiance; But held aloof for Roland's sake. Right soon the road was passed, And they had reached the open fields; Where to her trembling sight Long, stubborn walls appeared across the way — And these all must be scaled! Alas! Alas! She knew not how. But she was re-assured; and told with laughing jest To 'leave it to the horse — he knew right well The business of the hour, and ne'er would fail.' So subtly bending her lithe form. She touched her steed and lightly scaled the wall; Amidst the merry plaudits of her mates. And now across the distant fields Were echoed baying sounds, which brought The maiden's heart to highest beat. She feared no more the chase; But in the roused excitement of her hosts Joined mind and heart and hand. And on she rode, as with her slender whip She urged her fretting steed. Golden Winged Days 217 The chase was at its height: The walls, the fences, brooks — All, all were scaled with ease, As after hounds the frenzied beasts Plunged, reared and ran! And neck to neck The animals apace fled on To one impelling signal heard: The endless baying signal of the hounds. The Hunter's Song The hunt! the hunt! Shall dogs come home at last! Shall hunters — horse and man — all sleep and sleep, alas! Survive it if we can, disgrace when all is past! II The hunt! the hunt! O rise upon the wind And follow in the race! Forget those left behind — The honor of the chase the only thought in mind! Ill The hunt! the hunt! O where is sport like this, Where all a man is worth is given o'er to bliss Which nothing can impair, save death or woman's kiss! And now the fields are crossed; And only final brook remains for leaping steeds. 2i8 Golden Winged Days They all have passed save Rosalind. The danger's slight, there's naught to fear — If 'twere not for the battered fence Which borders on the opp'site side of stream. At this the horse rebels. He rears! He doth refuse to spring! And Rosalind, exasperate, applies the whip. And in a rage the beast gives one bold dash And horse and rider are in mid-stream fall'n. Oh, touching sight! that slender form All battered now and torn And tangled in the bridle of her steed, Which struggles, panting, midst the foam. Gone are her friends. And Rosalind is left alone, Till with the eye of quick discerning love. Lord Dunloe now doth miss her from the train, And glances round to see If gay and beautiful, she follows still. Oh, sight to break a lover's heart! The horse hath given way and fall'n Beneath his loved one's form; and she is lost Midst cruel waves! He turns and shouts And in command bids hunt to cease. And with a wildly beating pulse He bends his steed to side of stream Where all distraught, the maiden lies. .1.1 m Golden Winged Days 219 Part hi Not far from scene of sad event And just beyond the hedge (which close and high Protected it from view) there stood an humble home. The house was built of rough hewn logs; and chimney old Clung to its side. The roof was low and thatched. While all around the roses grew In wild profusion, sweet. Of all the flowers that bloomed there No reckoning could well be made: Varieties of plants no longer grown On English soil. Quaint, old-time buds That mind us of the days of gentle Will. An English Garden Old The only blossoms that remain of sweet old English growth Are periwinkle, lover's blue, and violet for troth. Fair Cambridge cHngs to tender hue; and Oxford owns the same Sweet sentiment in violet — no others do they claim. II Tis but in garden such as this (oh, memories so dear!) Where grow the flowers of the past; once loved and tended here. The flowers of which the poet sang (in days beyond recall) With creepers and with vines which cling to trellis and to wall. 220 Golden Winged Days III The Maisies pied and violets blue, and lady-smocks all silver white/ The *cuckoo-buds of yellow hue' — a beauteous garden to the sight. And queen among them stands the Rose, whose rule is long; and e'en today The lovliest of them all is she, in garden old or king's high- way. Within the house an ancient crone of impulse kind Presided o'er the meager board. And from her corner where she sat and plied her loom Oft would she give to strangers coming to her door A wond'rous tale of Shakespeare's Love, who once lived here: The merry *Anne who Hath-a-way,' as poet saith. Near Shottery the cottage stood. And here they brought the gentle maid — America's fair child, To place her on a humble couch Of old and kindly dame; While hast'ning homeward cross the moor And meadows far they rode To bring physicians, nurses and those things Most needed for her good. By nightfall all the troop returned With|,lovely burden to the Hall; And sadly bore her through the gates, Golden Winged Days 221 And upward o'er the marble stair, To chamber facing toward the East; Where softly there they laid her down. Refrain Oh, weary hours of illness and of pain, Oh, rest that cometh not with night or day, Oh, peace which only home and friends may bring, Oh, loved ones o'er the ocean far away! ^ II I cannot sleep, I cannot slumber here; My pillow soft a stone doth seem to me! The mellow light intended to give ease Doth blind my sight — I nevermore may see! Ill Oh, home and loved ones, could I fly away Across the broad and deep and briny sea, I ne'er would leave my father's hearth again — Could I once more but hear him welcome me! IV Rest, rest, no rest, I lie in bitter strait; Alone, deserted in a foreign land. Oh, father hear me! mother dear, come nigh! Come! come! or coming not to me. I die." 222 Golden Winged Days Thus in delirium, moaned the suffering maid, And all agreed the parents must be called — Lest verily in truth the child should die. A cablegram was sent, and o'er the wires The answer swift returned that one would come And bear the maiden back to native land. But so it chanced that e'er the day grew old (Which followed close upon the fall Of horse and rider, fair) The patient's strength began to mend: She even looked about with smiles And asked with wak'ning interest Concerning welfare of her gallant steed. Consent was given that soon she might receive Her anxious host, who hovered near her door, And hearing this the color swift appeared And stained the deadly pallor of her cheek. The days rolled slowly by; and Roland chafed At weary, long delay for interview: He must, he would see Rosalind 'fore night; In truth it was imperative he should. A fortnight passed. The fair American Had now been gi'en permission to arise: And clad in robes of shim'ring blue and white The little lady waited for her host. It was the twilight hour. And wide the casement had been thrown To let in balmy breeze. The soft moon-light Golden Winged Days 223 Came filt'ring down through old oak's trembling leaves And fell across the maiden sitting there Beside the window, pillowed in her chair. The great room was abandoned now To lovers twain, (by mutual consent Of all attendants and of friends) And Roland given right of way To presence of his lady-love. He came; and at the threshold paused And gave a signal low, lest Rosalind Not hearing him, should startled be. And yet she heard him not. And standing on the threshold there Of room which to his vivid thought Seemed full of mystery divine. He caught one glimpse of Rosalind, And to himself he breathed: " More beautiful than I had dreamed; More beautiful than angels are!" And falling on his knees implored That he might never banished be From out her presence more. Soft, soft, was heard the nightingale. As if she sang in sweet response To lover's passioned words. The spirit of that heavenly song Seemed with the heart of Rosalind to plead: The voice of lover and of bird Were one to her. And resting there With moonlight drifting over her, She closed her eyes and smiled. 224 Golden Winged Days Song of the Nightingale I have lived and loved and v^aited, I have borne in silence all! I have loved in sorrow ever, While thou dost my heart enthrall! II Lowly, softly, softly, lowly To thy heart beyond the wall I would sing of love in sorrow. Though 'tis silent, love is all! Ill I have waited. May'st thou ever Know true love and suffer less! I have loved. Ah, may'st thou never Know the pain I now confess! Part iv Since coming of the Pilgrims to these shores Have Randolphs ever been identified With movements bearing on their country's good. In time of Revolution they had given Of their best blood to 'stablish well and strong Foundations of Republic, fair. Golden Winged Days 225 And when in later days, the French and Indian wars Had needed volunteers, the Randolph sons were there. The same was true when Mexico embroiled was With native land: the foremost in the field Were ever of this House; all loyal they and true E*en to the Conflict dire, that families Hath severed as it hath hearts. Requiem Oh, bay leaves bring and spread them here 0*er graves of heroes dead: The lads who passed in happy youth To soldiers' marching tread. II And sing a song to those long gone. Who battled for the land Which gave them birth; and for it's good Sealed all with blood and hand. Ill They're lying there — the rank and file — America's brave sons; Our tears now fall upon them all : The known and unknown ones. 226 Golden Winged Days IV Sleep, sleep, ye brave and noble men, Whose span of life was spent For all ye held most high and dear, Midst battlefield and tent. The house in which the Randolphs dwelt Was built of stone. Upon an eminence it stood And view commanded far and wide Of little inland sea. 'Twas fashioned in the old Colonial style: With pillared porch, and hallway running through. And, like Republic, simple was and strong. 'Twas made for use and comfort and good cheer And gen*rous hospitality. The grounds on every side of Forest Home Were deeply shaded by the trees — Old maples, walnuts, oaks — Of every kind indigenous to the soil. And some among them stood in stately rank Of avenue, from distant gate To always friendly open door. The paths for lovers had been made: So shady, cool and intricate; As winding in and out among the trees They seemed but to invite to love and loitering. And hid among the shadows deep Were fountains playing soft at eve. And everywhere amidst the grass Were blooming flowers of wild varieties : Golden Winged Days 227 Anemone and Indian-root And ' Johny-jump-up * blue — The kind that little children love And search for in the woodland, by the hour. Sweet, sweet this home; and sweet the happy days That flitted by on angel wings To all who gathered there. Here often came from foreign climes The stranger; and right royally he was received By aged Squire, who with his gentle Dame Presided over all with kindly grace. The Mother Love Oh, where may mother love it's equal find ? In cottage small or palace grand: Tis everywhere the same. II It riseth early with the morning clear, In anxious thought for 'little dear': It calleth each by name. Ill It willing lab'reth with untiring hand To satisfy each small demand Of every tender frame. 228 Golden Winged Days IV The weary night doth find it busy still; Nor rest it knows till Sleep doth well The children all to claim. And even then, soft breathing in the air — The mother love is everywhere : v The Presence of the home. Twas here that Rosalind was born; And here she passed her happy youth. And from these walls a slender girl She sallied forth with aged chaperone To see the world, and visit places known to her From books, and people (who from grand-sire's tales She long had loved) of Anglo Saxon race — The stock in ages past, from which she sprang. Her visit now was o'er. And health restored she had returned home. A score of months had passed since that eventful eve When she in sweet retirement sat Within the boudoir of the castle old. And heard from lips of her young host His tale of tender love. Right loyally he sent by every post A message of devotion true: All full of faith and constancy And wild impatience, too , Golden Winged Days 229 For leave to come and claim her as his bride. Her little secret she at first had kept. But, as the winter days came on, And blazing hearth drew sympathies more near, She sought her father's side; And then, with golden head laid low upon his knee. To list'ning ear the child beloved poured forth her heart. The Secret What is it like, my love, my love ? Tis like the roundelay Which little bird doth ever sing Throughout the live-long day. II It is the name 'bove every name (The dearest one to me) That o'er and o'er within my heart Doth ever chant of thee. Ill And so it haps I needs must find Some one to whom I may Confide the hidden love I feel Or perish in the way! 230 Golden Winged Days 'Twas freely passed 'mongst Rosalind's friends That soon the lovely girl would wed; Since the parental blessing which she sought Had never been withheld. " I choose to tell him all myself," she said, Referring to her sire, whose heart she owned; And so he could interpret well All she would say, before 'twas said. For like Cordelia and King Lear Were those, the parent and the child: One tender, fond, obedient. The other full of father love. Lord Dunloe thought this way of winning bride A most unusual one; but acquiesced — Since she whom he would wed was not an English maid But fairest flower from over sea, 'La Belle American.' And so within the quiet of her home 'Twas all arranged; and word was sent By cablegram for Roland now to come. The preparations for the feast Went on apace. A balmy day in June Was just the one for Rosalind And so the happy day was set. Part v The day dawned fair and beautiful. The waters of the little lake Had never looked so bright. 1 Golden Winged Days 231 And all the foliage was out; And perfume sweet from every leaf and flower Filled with delicious scent the atmosphere. The fountains played all day in happy rhyme To heart of little girl, who tremblingly Awaited foot-fall of her coming love. For he had safely crossed the sea And found his way o'er continent And 'en so far as this her home. ** Oh, whither shall I fly ? " in gay delight, She cried aloud when the great knocker fell. And she in surety now became aware There could from him be no escape. Impatient still he opened wide the door And entering he clasped her in his arms. My Rosalind," he said, and all the strain Of long and weary months broke in his voice. The Welcome Song I My lover comes, oh priceless gain That he to me restored is! To wait in vain, in grief and pain For him, to be deplored is II Arise, arise, we leave this spot For that in which the fountains play 232 Golden Winged Days The world forgot, for have we not Each other found this happy day ? The Wedding The twilight hour came slowly on. And gathered there beneath the trees Were all the happy joyous guests. Not far beyond lay waters blue Of Minnetonka, fair, serene — Reflecting pure and cloudless sky While on the surface of the distant lake The merry white-caps rose and fell: (Remembrancers of yesterday. When wind-storm lashed the sea, And dashed the boats upon the shore) But now the sails were out again. And fairly dotted liquid blue With wide-spread wings of snowy white. A Summer Sail Lightly, lightly, o'er the waters. Now upon the crest Flitting, flying, sailing, swimming — Without pause or rest. Upward, downward, lifting, falling In the billow's nest. Golden Winged Days 233 Rising, running, skipping, skimming — Joy of life the best! A lovely bower of alder blooms And slender ferns, grouped in a mass of green Formed nature's altar for the bridal pair. A stillness fell upon the scene. And slowly now from all the hills The violet shadows cast a mystic spell. Bridal Chorus Stilly o'er the distant hills Rose the moon at eventide. Birdling, nestling, sweetly trills To her mate o'er waters wide. II Setting sun, and evening star (Just above the golden light), Mingling with the moon-beams clear: Marriage sweet of day and night III Softly rippled by the breeze Break the waves upon the shore; 234 Golden Winged Days Trailing neath the shadowy leaves Come the trooping maidens fair. IV Garlands in their arms they bring; Wreaths of alder, pure and white; Softly Lohengrin they sing. Coming slow through rosy light. And even as the maidens forward moved, The groom came forth from woody dell And sought his place within the bower: w jk The very picture of a youth in flower, So tall and straight and strong and good To see, as glancing round He strove to find his loved one's face. A look of pain flashed o'er his countenance, As nowhere could he see the one he loved; And 'twixt the anguish of his sense of loss And sorrow that he saw her not, He leaned hard on sturdy oak; And wondered if there aught could come At that last hour to part him from his bride. At last, at last, he sees her now! No need of sympathizing word From one who will officiate: The clergy have their place — But only to make one the lover and beloved. H Golden Winged Days 235 Longing Like an angel comes she now, Or a spirit of delight; Clad in robes of purest white; Angel face and angel brow. II Hush, my heart! she draweth near, Slowly she descends the stair. No more sadness, no more care — Lo, she comes. The bride is here. And as she bent her steps to fairy bower All eyes were turned on girlish form To note if she would fail or fall — So earnest her desire to walk alone, And meet her lover where he stood. But Roland would not, could not wait. And with a face all lit with joy Pressed forward to her side; And kneeling, kissed impassionate her hand, And whispered " Love, forgive. As beauty is it's own excuse So love doth offer none. For thou art fair, beloved. And I — oh, what am I That thou should'st look on me .? " 236 Golden Winged Days And all forgetful of the place, Suffused with blushes Rosalind replied: ** Thou art my knight, and I am glad To wear thy colors, love. For see, I cherish them and proudly here Will place them where they do belong — Upon my heart." And saying this she threw aside her cloak Of softest white; and lo the ribbons bright Which she had seen her Roland wear When in the chase he rode. The little by-play now was o'er. And all the guests were wondering What strange event could have occurred The wedding to impede. And scarce an answer yet had found When Roland gave his hand to Rosalind And gently led her to the priest. With closing of the solemn nuptial words, A chorus sweet of maiden voices rose. The brides-maids, flut'ring near, now gathered round And like the forms of some angelic host Assembled, and appeared to crown the bride. Then softly singing, forth they led; The bride and bride-groom slowly following. The wedding feast was scarcely o'er When mellow bells intoned the hour For swift departure of the pair: The boats were waiting by the shore. tt Golden Winged Days 237 And e'er the guests knew when or how She disappeared. Sweet Rosalind had gone, And with her lover said farewell To Minnetonka evermore, And to the dear ones of her youth. The Old Home Farewell, beloved Forest Home, Thy dear old trees and winding path Thy fountain pure and blooming sward To thee I sing this aftermath. II Thou art the house where I was born Of adamantine early date. With windows of a hundered panes, And wide veranda facing gate. Ill Here grow the sweet wistaria vines Like curtain falling round the porch. Here honey-suckle, coral red, O'erTdoorway runneth forming arch. 238 Golden Winged Days IV Within — ah, there my heart stands still! Where loved ones gathered round the hearth I ne'er may contemplate the scene — Within the home that gave me birth. But Love now calls. I brush the tears, And stifle back the rising sigh; " My love I come! Beloved one, Thine, thine through life Thine till I die " The snow-white sail slow vanished. Which bore the lover and the loved. And lonely hearts were left behind To mourn in vain the absent child. But bounding on the bosom of the deep Floats craft that beareth Rosalind. As Dunloe's bride she happily Hath sailed away to find a home Among new friends, impatiently' Who wait to welcome as their own, (To England — dear old Mother-land' *Xa Belle American." II !!■».