A Hero and Some Other Folks Part 10

"And in the meadows tremulous aspen-trees And poplars made a noise of falling showers."

"No greatness, save it be some far-off touch Of greatness to know well I am not great."

"Hurt in the side, whereat she caught her breath; Through her own side she felt the sharp lance go."

"Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart, As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long A little bitter pool about a stone On the bare coast."

"Thy shadow still would glide from room to room, And I should evermore be vext with thee In hanging robe or vacant ornament, Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair."

"Far off a solitary trumpet blew.

Then, waiting by the doors, the war-horse neigh'd As at a friend's voice, and he spake again."

"Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow."

"And slipt aside, and like a wounded life Crept down into the hollows of the wood."

"Then Philip, with his eyes Full of that lifelong hunger, and his voice Shaking a little like a drunkard's hand."

"Had he not Spoken with That, which being everywhere Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone, Surely the man had died of solitude."

"Because things seen are mightier than things heard."

"For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck See through the gray skirts of a lifting squall The boat that bears the hope of life approach To save the life despair'd of, than he saw Death dawning on him, and the close of all."

"And he lay tranced; but when he rose and paced Back toward his solitary home again, All down the narrow street he went, Beating it in upon his weary brain, As though it were the burthen of a song, 'Not to tell her, never to let her know.'"

"Torn as a sail that leaves the rope is torn In tempest."

"Nay, one there is, and at the eastern end, Wealthy with wandering lines of mount and mere."

"p.r.i.c.k'd with incredible pinnacles into heaven."

"An out-door sign of all the warmth within, Smiled with his lips--a smile beneath a cloud; But Heaven had meant it for a sunny one."

"All the old echoes hidden in the wall."

"Their plumes driv'n backward by the wind they made In moving, all together down upon him Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North sea, Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears, with all Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, Down on a bark, and overbears the bark, And him that helms it, so they overbore Sir Lancelot and his charger."

"There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.

The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling through the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea.

Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning; but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The crown of Troas."

"One seem'd all dark and red--a tract of sand, And some one pacing there alone, Who paced forever in a glimmering land, Lit with a low large moon.

One show'd an iron coast and angry waves.

You seem'd to hear them climb and fall And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves, Beneath the windy wall.

And one, a full-fed river winding slow By herds upon an endless plain, The ragged rims of thunder brooding low, With shadow-streaks of rain.

And one, the reapers at their sultry toil.

In front they bound the sheaves. Behind Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil, And h.o.a.ry to the wind.

And one, a foreground black with stones and slags, Beyond, a line of heights, and higher All barr'd with long white cloud the scornful crags, And highest, snow and fire.

And one, an English home--gray twilight pour'd On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep--all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace."

Each stanza is a picture, bound, not in book nor gold, but in a stanza.

"Like flame from ashes."

"Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, When all the goodlier guests are past away."

"As the crest of some slow-arching wave Heard in dead night along that table-sh.o.r.e Drops flat, and after the great waters break Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, From less and less to nothing."

"Belted his body with her white embrace."

"And out beyond into the dream to come."

"Thus, as a hearth lit in a mountain home, And glancing on the window, when the gloom Of twilight deepens round it, seems a flame That rages in the woodland far below."

Looking at these landscapes, can words add weight to the claim for Alfred Tennyson as a painter?

And Tennyson is as pure as the air of mid-ocean. His moral qualities are in no regard inferior to his artistic qualities, although from centuries of poets we might have been schooled to antic.i.p.ate that so sensitive and poetic a nature had been sensual, concluding a lowered standard of ethics, theoretical or practical, one or both, especially considering his earliest literary admiration was that poetic Don Juan, Lord Byron, whose poems were a transcript of his morals, where a luxuriant imagination and a poetic diction were combined in a high degree, and so the poet qualified to be a bane or blessing of a commanding order, he choosing so to use his extraordinary gifts as to pollute the living springs from which a generation of men and women drank. What we do find is, a Tennyson as removed from a Byron in moral mood and life as southern cross from northern lights. The morals of both life and poems are as limpid as the waters of pellucid Tahoe; and purest women may read from "Claribel" to "Crossing the Bar," and be only purer from the reading. Henry Van d.y.k.e has written on "The Bible in Tennyson," an article, after his habit, discriminating and appreciative, in the course of which he shows how some of the delicious verse's of the laureate are literal extracts from the Book of G.o.d, so native is poetry to that sublime volume; though I incline to believe the larger loan of the Bible to Tennyson is the purity of thought evidenced in the poet's writings, and more particularly in the poet's life. Who has not been touched by the Bible who has lived in these later centuries? Modern life may no more get away from the Bible than our planet may flee from its own atmosphere. We can never estimate the moral potency of such a poet, living and writing for sixty years, though we may fairly account this longevity of pure living and pure thinking and pure writing among the primary blessings of our century.

That two such pure men and poets as Tennyson and Browning were given a single race in a single century is abundant cause for giving hearty thanks to G.o.d. They have purified, not our day only, but remote days coming, till days shall set to rise no more, and have given the lie to the poor folly of supposing highest genius and purest morality to be incompatibles; for in life and poem, and in the poem of life, they have swept clouds from our sky, until all purity stands revealed, fair as the morning star smiling at Eastern lattices. In Tennyson is no slightest appeal to the sensual. He hates pruriency, making protest against it with a voice like the clangor of angry bells. In "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," he speaks wisely and justly, in sarcasm that bites as acids do:

"Rip your brother's vices open, strip your own foul pa.s.sions bare: Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward, naked--let them stare.

Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer; Send the drain into the fountain lest the stream should issue pure.

Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the trough of Zolaism, Forward, forward, aye and backward, downward, too, in the abysm.

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men."

And this is Tennyson the aged, whose moral eyes were as the physical eyes of Moses on Pisgah, "undimmed." Bless him for his aged anger!

Happily, to-day, realism has lost its charm. We have had enough living in sewers, when the suburbs were near with their breezy heights and quiet homes. Stench needs no apostle. The age has outgrown these hectic folk, who, in the name of nature, lead us back to Pompeii.

Gehenna needs not to be a.s.sisted. Jean Valjean, bent on an errand of mercy, fled to the sewers of Paris, his appeal to these foul subways being justified, since he sought them under stress for the preservation of a life. Does this prove that men should take promenades in the sewers as if they were boulevards? An author is not called on to tell all he knows. Let writers of fiction a.s.sume that the public knows there are foul things, and needs not to be reminded of them, and let the romancist avoid them as he would a land of lepers.

Those who companied with Tennyson through his beautiful career were helped into a growing love of purity. He had no panegyric for l.u.s.t and shame and sensuality, but made us feel they were shameful, so that we blushed for those who had not the modesty to blush for themselves. We are ashamed for Guinevere and Lancelot, and are proud of Enid and Elaine and Sir Galahad and King Arthur; and in them, and in others, have been helped to see the heroic beauty of simple virtue. This is an incalculable gain for soul. When we have learned that profligates, whatever their spasms of flashy achievements, are poor company, and that the pure are evermore good company, and goodness is a quest worthier than the quest for the golden grail, we have risen to n.o.bility of soul which can never become out of date.

Noah was not more clearly a preacher of righteousness in his day than Tennyson in his, of whom say, as highest encomium we know to p.r.o.nounce, "He made goodness beautiful to our eyes and desirable to our hearts; and, beyond this, made it easier for us to be good."

Over all this poet wrote, he might have looked straight in G.o.d's eye, and prayed, as King Arthur:

"And that which I have done May he within himself make pure!"

And we chant, sending our muse after him,--