Poems

Edward Dowden

Poems

PREFACE

Goethe says in a little poem

1

1

  “Sechzehn Parabeln,”

Gedichte

, Leoper’s edition (p. 180) of Goethe’s

Gedichte

.

 that “Poems are stained glass windows”—“

Gedichte sind gemalte Fensterscheiben

”—to be seen aright not from the “market-place” but only from the interior of the church, “

die heilige Kapelle

”: and that “

der Herr Philister

” (equivalent for “indolent Reviewer”) glances at them from without and gets out of temper because he finds them unintelligible from his “market-place” standpoint. This comparison is a pretty conceit, and holds good as a half truth—but not more than a half: for while the artist who paints his “church windows” needs only to make them beautiful from within, the maker of poems must so shape and colour his work that its outer side—the technical, towards the “market-place” of the public—shall have no lack of beauty, though differing from the beauty visible from the spiritual interior.

The old volume of

Edward Dowden’s Poems

 of 1876, which is now reprinted with additions, has been, to a limited extent, long before the public—seen from the “market-place” by general critics, who, for the most part, approved the outer side of the “painted windows,” and seen perhaps from within by some few like-minded readers, who, though no definite door was opened into “

die heilige Kapelle

,” somehow entered in.

But a great many people, to whom the author’s prose works are well known, have never even heard that he had written poetry. This is due in a measure to the fact that the published book of poems only got into circulation by its first small edition. Its second edition found a silent apotheosis in flame at a great fire at the publisher’s in London, in which nearly the whole of it perished.

Edward Dowden’s chief work has been as a prose writer. That fact remains—yet it is accidental rather than essential. In the early seventies he felt the urge very strongly towards making verse his vocation in life, and he probably would have yielded to it, but for the necessity to be bread-winner for a much-loved household. Poetry is a ware of small commercial value, as most poets—at least for a long space of their lives—have known, and prose, for even a young writer of promise, held out prospects of bread for immediate eating. Hence to prose he turned, and on that road went his way, and whether the accidental circumstances that determined his course at the parting of the ways wrought loss or gain for our literature, who can say?

But he never wholly abandoned verse, and all through his life, even to the very end, he would fitfully, from time to time, utter in it a part of himself which never found complete issue in prose and which was his most real self.

Perhaps the nearest approaches to his utterance in poetry occurred sometimes in his College lecturing, when in the midst of a written discourse he would interrupt it and stop and liberate his heart in a little rush of words—out of the depths, accompanied by that familiar gesture of his hands which always came to him when emotionally stirred in speaking. Some of his students have told me that they usually found those little extempore bits in a lecture by far the most illuminated and inspiring parts of it, especially as it was then that his voice, always musical in no common degree, vibrated, and acquired a richer tone.

In his prose writings in general he seemed to curb and restrain himself. That he did so was by no means an evil, for the habitual retinence in his style gave to the little rare outbreaks of emotion the quality of charm that we find in a tender flower growing out of a solid stone wall unexpectedly.

Not infrequently a sort of hard irony was employed by him, as restraint on enthusiasm, with occasional loosening of the curb.

In Edward Dowden’s soul there seemed to be capacities which might, under other circumstances, have made him more than a minor poet. His was a more than usually rich, sensuous nature. This, combined with absolute purity—the purity not of ice and snow, but of fire. And, superadded, was an unlimited capacity for sternness—that quality which, as salt, acts as preservative of all human ardours. He came from his Maker, fashioned out of the stuff whereof are made saints, patriots, martyrs, and the great lovers in the world. His work as a scholar never obliterated anything of this in him. By this, his erudition gained richness—the richness of vital blood. It was as no anæmic recluse that he dwelt amongst his book-shelves, and hence no Faust-like weariness of intellectual satiety ever came to him, no sense of being “

beschränkt mit diesem Bücherhauf

” in his surroundings of his library (which latterly had grown to some twenty-four thousand volumes). He lived in company with these in a twofold way, keenly and accurately grasping all their textual details, and at the same time valuing them for the sake, chiefly, of spiritual converse with the writers.

Besides the spiritual converse he gained thus, he found, as a book-lover, a fertile source of recreation in the collecting of literary rarities, old books, MSS. and curiosities. In this he felt the keen zest of a sportsman. This was his shooting on the moors, his fishing in the rivers. No living creature ever lost its life for his amusement, but in this innocuous play he found unfailing pleasure, and many a piece of luck he had with his gun or rod in hitting some rare bird, or landing some big prize of a fish out of old booksellers’ catalogues or the “carts” in the back streets.

His physical nature was fully and strongly developed, and it is out of strong physical instincts that strong spiritual instincts often grow—the boundary line between them being undefined.

His one athletic exercise—swimming—was to him a joy of no common sort. He gave himself to the sea with an eagerness of body, soul and spirit, breasting the bright waters exultingly on many a summer’s day on some West of Ireland or Cornish shore, revelling in the sea’s life and in his own.

And akin to that, in the sensuous, spiritual region of the soul, was his feeling for all External Nature, his deep delight in the coming of each new Spring—its blackthorn blossoms, its hazel and willow catkins, its daffodils—and his response, as the year went on in its procession, to the glory of the furze and heather glow and to all Earth’s sounds and silences.

And of a like sort was his enjoyment of music which had the depth of a passion.

Very possibly, if his lot had been cast in early Christian or mediæval times, all these impulses towards the joy and beauty of the earth might have been sternly crushed out by the moral forces of his character.

Looking at a picture of St. Jerome one day—not unlike E. D. in feature—I said to him, “There’s what

you

 would have been if you had lived in those times.” (The saint is depicted there as lean, emaciated and woefully dirty!).

It was well for Edward Dowden that he was laid hold of in his early life by that great non-ascetic soul, William Wordsworth. He was initiated into the inner secret of Wordsworth. He had experience of the Wordsworthian ecstasy—that ecstasy which comes, if at all, straight as a gift from God, and is not to be taught by the teaching of the scribes.

Through kinship a man who is born potentially a poet comes first into relation with poets, and with E. Dowden’s sensuousness of capacities it was natural that he should be in his early years attracted to Keats, to the long, deep, rich dwelling of his verse on the vision and the sounds of Nature. It was not until he had advanced some way towards middle life that he came into vital contact with Shelley. He had felt aloof from him; but the attraction, when once owned, became very powerful, and he yielded to the delight of the swift motion of the Shelleyan utterances.

He always recognized Robert Browning’s greatness profoundly, and responded to all his best truths, especially as regards the relation, in love, of Man and Woman, but he never became pledged to an all-round Browning worship; his admiration had no discipleship in it.

For Walt Whitman, with whom a personal friendship, strong on both sides, was formed, he felt the cordial reverence due to the giver of what he reckoned as a gift of immense value. While condemning whatever was unreticent in

Leaves of Grass

, he at the same time saw there the great flood of spirituality available as a force for emancipation of our hearts from pressure of sordidnesses in the world.

It is somewhat remarkable that with all his trend towards the great spiritual and mystical forces in literature he was all along never without a keen appreciation of the writers who brought mundane shrewdness and wisdom. The first book he bought for himself in childhood with the hoarded savings of his pocket-money was

Bacon’s Essays

, with which as a small boy he became very familiar. And all through his life he sought with unfailing pleasure the companionship of Jane Austen again and again. And amongst the books which he himself made, it was perhaps his

Montaigne

 that gave him, in the process of making, the delicatest satisfaction—the satisfaction of witnessing and analysing the dexterous play of human intellect and character on low levels.

His attraction to Goethe—very dominant with him in middle life—came, I imagine, from the fact that he saw in that mightiest of the Teutons two diverse qualities in operation—the measureless intellectual spirituality and the vast common-sense of mundane wisdom.

In this attraction there was also the element of the magnetism which draws together opposites—not less forcible than the attraction between affinities.

As regards the moral nature, his own was as far as the North Pole is from the South from that of the great sage of Weimar, whose serenely-wise beneficence contained no potentialities of sainthood, martyrdom or absolute human love. He sought gain from Goethe just

because

 of that unlikeness to what was in himself.

At one period of his literary work he was intending to make as his “

opus magnus

” a full study of Goethe’s life and works, and with that intent he carried on a course of reading, and laid in a great equipment of workman’s tools—Goethe books in German, French and English. From this project he was turned aside by a call to write the life of Shelley—a long and difficult task. But he never lost sight of Goethe. In one of the later years of his life, as recreation in a summer’s holiday in Cornwall, he translated the whole of the “West-Eastern Divan” into English verse, and previously, from time to time, isolated essays on Goethe themes appeared amongst his prose writings. And yet it is not unlikely that even if the task of Shelley’s biography had not intervened, no complete study, such as he had at first planned, might have been ever accomplished by him on Goethe, for with experience there came to him a growing conviction that his best work in criticism could only be done in dealing with what was written in his mother-tongue.

Some of Edward Dowden’s friends, Nationalist and Unionist both, have felt regret that he, the gentle scholar, gave such large share of his energies to the strife of politics, as if force were subtracted thereby from his work in Literature. They are mistaken. The output of energy thus given came back to the giver, reinforcing his prose writing with a mundane vigour and virility, exceeding what it might have had if he had kept himself aloof from the affairs of the nation.

Yet, strangely enough, between his politics and his poetry there was a water-tight wall of separation. Other men, to take scattered instances, Kipling, Wordsworth, Milton, fused in various ways their political feeling and their poetical. This Edward Dowden never attempted. I cannot analyse the “why.”

Confining myself to some points which seem left out of sight in most of the admirably appreciative obituary notices in last April’s newspapers, I have tried to say here, in a fragmentary way, a few things about a man of whom many things—infinitely many—might be said without exhausting the total. He was himself at the same time many and one. He had multiform aspects—interests very diverse—and yet life was for him in no wise “patchy and scrappy,” but had unity throughout.

In Shakespeare, whose faithful scholar he was, there are diversities: and yet, do we not image Shakespeare to our minds as one and a whole?

In the volumes now issued by Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons is contained all the verse that the author left available for publication, with the exception of a sequence of a hundred and one lyrics (which by desire is separately published under the somewhat transparent disguise of editorship). That little sequence, named

A Woman’s Reliquary

, is his latest work in verse. Much in it re-echoes sounds that can be heard in his old poems of the early seventies.

E. D. D.

September 1913.

THE WANDERER

I cast my anchor nowhere (the waves whirled

My anchor from me); East and West are one

To me; against no winds are my sails furled;

—Merely my planet anchors to the Sun.

THE FOUNTAIN

(An Introduction To the Sonnets)

Hush, let the fountain murmur dim

Melodious secrets; stir no limb,

But lie along the marge and wait,

Till deep and pregnant as with fate,

Fine as a star-beam, crystal-clear,

Each ripple grows upon the ear.

This is that fountain seldom seen

By mortal wanderer,—Hippocrene,—

Where the virgins three times three,

Thy singing brood, Mnemosyne,

Loosen’d the girdle, and with grave

Pure joy their faultless bodies gave

To sacred pleasure of the wave.

Listen! the lapsing waters tell

The urgence uncontrollable

Which makes the trouble of their breast,

And bears them onward with no rest

To ampler skies and some grey plain

Sad with the tumbling of the main.

But see, a sidelong eddy slips

Back into the soft eclipse

Of day, while careless fate allows,

Darkling beneath still olive boughs;

Then with chuckle liquid sweet

Coils within its shy retreat;

This is mine, no wave of might,

But pure and live with glimmering light;

I dare not follow that broad flood

Of Poesy, whose lustihood

Nourishes mighty lands, and makes

Resounding music for their sakes;

I lie beside the well-head clear

With musing joy, with tender fear,

And choose for half a day to lean

Thus on my elbow where the green

Margin-grass and silver-white

Starry buds, the wind’s delight,

Thirsting steer, nor goat-hoof rude

Of the branch-sundering Satyr brood

Has ever pashed; now, now, I stoop,

And in hand-hollow dare to scoop

This scantling from the delicate stream;

It lies as quiet as a dream,

And lustrous in my curvèd hand.

Were it a crime if this were drain’d

By lips which met the noonday blue

Fiery and emptied of its dew?

Crown me with small white marish-flowers!

To the good Dæmon, and the Powers

Of this fair haunt I offer up

In unprofanèd lily-cup

Libations; still remains for me

A bird’s drink of clear Poesy;

Yet not as light bird comes and dips

A pert bill, but with reverent lips

I drain this slender trembling tide;

O sweet the coolness at my side,

And, lying back, to slowly pry

For spaces of the upper sky

Radiant ’twixt woven olive leaves;

And, last, while some fair show deceives

The closing eyes, to find a sleep

As full of healing and as deep

As on toil-worn Odysseus lay

Surge-swept to his Ionian bay.

IN THE GALLERIES

I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE

Radiance invincible! Is that the brow

Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped?

Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead

That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou:

For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow

And break us, and at best when we have bled,

And are much marred, perchance propitiated

A little doubtful victory they allow:

We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains

A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less.

O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great

And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains

Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness,

—Even to worship thee I come too late.

II. THE VENUS OF MELOS

Goddess, or woman nobler than the God,

No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas

Shifting and circling past their Cyclades

Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod

First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad

Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees,

And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase,

Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod.

So thy victorious fairness, unallied

To bitter things or barren, doth bestow

And not exact; so thou art calm and wise;

Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow

Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side,

And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS

(In the British Museum)

Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath

And clustered berries burdening the hair?

Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware

O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath,

Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth!

The gods are free, and drink a stainless air,

And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear

A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death

Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine.

O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught

Crowned forehead, must thy drooped eyes ever see

The glut of pleasure, those pale lips of thine

Still suck a bitter-sweet satiety,

Thy soul descend through cloudy realms of thought?

IV. LEONARDO’S “MONNA LISA”

Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair

Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait

Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate

Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear?

Secret perfection! Mystery too fair!

Tangle the sense no more lest I should hate

Thy delicate tyranny, the inviolate

Poise of thy folded hands, thy fallen hair.

Nay, nay,—I wrong thee with rough words; still be

Serene, victorious, inaccessible;

Still smile but speak not; lightest irony

Lurk ever ’neath thine eyelids’ shadow; still

O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy

Allure us and reject us at thy will!

V. ST LUKE PAINTING THE VIRGIN

(By Van der Weyden)

It was Luke’s will; and she, the mother-maid,

Would not gainsay; to please him pleased her best;

See, here she sits with dovelike heart at rest

Brooding, and smoothest brow; the babe is laid

On lap and arm, glad for the unarrayed

And swatheless limbs he stretches; lightly pressed

By soft maternal fingers the full breast

Seeks him, while half a sidelong glance is stayed

By her own bosom and half passes down

To reach the boy. Through doors and window-frame

Bright airs flow in; a river tranquilly

Washes the small, glad Netherlandish town.

Innocent calm! no token here of shame,

A pierced heart, sunless heaven, and Calvary.

ON THE HEIGHTS

Here are the needs of manhood satisfied!

Sane breath, an amplitude for soul and sense,

The noonday silence of the summer hills,

And this embracing solitude; o’er all

The sky unsearchable, which lays its claim,—

A large redemption not to be annulled,—

Upon the heart; and far below, the sea

Breaking and breaking, smoothly, silently.

What need I any further? Now once more

My arrested life begins, and I am man

Complete with eye, heart, brain, and that within

Which is the centre and the light of being;

O dull! who morning after morning chose

Never to climb these gorse and heather slopes

Cairn-crowned, but last within one seaward nook

Wasted my soul on the ambiguous speech

And slow eye-mesmerism of rolling waves,

Courting oblivion of the heart. True life

That was not which possessed me while I lay

Prone on the perilous edge, mere eye and ear,

Staring upon the bright monotony,

Having let slide all force from me, each thought

Yield to the vision of the gleaming blank,

Each nerve of motion and of sense grow numb,

Till to the bland persuasion of some breeze,

Which played across my forehead and my hair,

The lost volition would efface itself,

And I was mingled wholly in the sound

Of tumbling billow and upjetting surge,

Long reluctation, welter and refluent moan,

And the reverberating tumultuousness

’Mid shelf and hollow and angle black with spray.

Yet under all oblivion there remained

A sense of some frustration, a pale dream

Of Nature mocking man, and drawing down,

As streams draw down the dust of gold, his will,

His thought and passion to enrich herself

The insatiable devourer.

Welcome earth,

My natural heritage! and this soft turf,

These rocks which no insidious ocean saps,

But the wide air flows over, and the sun

Illumines. Take me, Mother, to thy breast,

Gather me close in tender, sustinent arms,

Lay bare thy bosom’s sweetness and its strength

That I may drink vigour and joy and love.

Oh, infinite composure of the hills!

Thou large simplicity of this fair world,

Candour and calmness, with no mockery,

No soft frustration, flattering sigh or smile

Which masks a tyrannous purpose; and ye Powers

Of these sky-circled heights, and Presences

Awful and strict, I find you favourable,

Who seek not to exclude me or to slay,

Rather accept my being, take me up

Into your silence and your peace. Therefore

By him whom ye reject not, gracious Ones,

Pure vows are made that haply he will be

Not all unworthy of the world; he casts

Forth from him, never to resume again,

Veiled nameless things, frauds of the unfilled heart,

Fantastic pleasures, delicate sadnesses,

The lurid, and the curious, and the occult,

Coward sleights and shifts, the manners of the slave,

And long unnatural uses of dim life.

Hence with you! Robes of angels touch these heights

Blown by pure winds and I lay hold upon them.

Here is a perfect bell of purple heath,

Made for the sky to gaze at reverently,

As faultless as itself, and holding light,

Glad air and silence in its slender do