Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets. Lafcadio Hearn

in the Middle Ages; and while one of our very greatest English poets, he takes a place apart, for he does not reflect the century at all. He had the dramatic gift, but it was a gift in his case much more limited than that of Browning. Altogether we can safely give him a place in the first rank as a maker of poetry, but in all other respects we cannot classify him in any way. He remains a unique figure in the Victorian age, a figure such as may not reappear for hundreds of years to come. It was as if a man of the thirteenth century had been reborn into the nineteenth century, and, in spite of modern culture, had continued to think and to feel very much as men felt and thought in the time of the great Italian poet Dante.

      One reason for this extraordinary difference between himself and his contemporaries was that Rossetti was not an Englishman but an Italian by blood, religion, and feeling. In his verse we might expect to find something that we cannot find in any other English poet; and I think that we shall find it. The facts of his life—strange and pathetic—need not occupy us now. You need only remember for the present that he was a great painter before becoming a great poet, and that his painting, like his poetry, was the painting of another century than his own. Also it will be well to bear in mind that he detested modern science and modern philosophy—which fact makes it all the more remarkable that he uttered some great thoughts quite in harmony with the most profound philosophy of the Orient.

      In studying the best of his poetry, it will be well for us to consider it by groups, taking a few specimens from each group as examples of the rest; since we shall not have time to read even a quarter of all his production. Taking the very simplest of his work to begin with, I shall make a selection from what I might call the symbolic group, for want of a better name. I mean those poems which are parables, or symbolic illustrations of deep truths—poems which seem childishly simple, but are nevertheless very deep indeed. We may begin with a little piece called "The Mirror."

      She knew it not—most perfect pain

       To learn: this too she knew not. Strife

       For me, calm hers, as from the first. 'Twas but another bubble burst Upon the curdling draught of life— My silent patience mine again. As who, of forms that crowd unknown Within a distant mirror's shade, Deems such an one himself, and makes Some sign; but when the image shakes No whit, he finds his thought betray'd, And must seek elsewhere for his own.

      So far as the English goes, this verse is plain enough; but unless you have met with the same idea in some other English writer, you will find the meaning very obscure. The poet is speaking of a universal, or almost universal, experience of misplaced love. A man becomes passionately attached to a woman, who treats him with, cold indifference. Finally the lover finds out his mistake; the woman that he loved proves not to be what he imagined; she is not worthy of his love. Then what was he in love with? With a shadow out of his brain, with an imagination or ideal very pure and noble, but only an imagination. Supposing that he was worshipping good qualities in a noble woman, he deceived himself; the woman had no such qualities; they existed only in his fancy. Thus he calls her his mirror, the human being that seemed to be a reflection of all that was good in his own heart. She never knows the truth as to why the man loved her and then ceased to love her; he could not tell her, because it would have been to her "most perfect pain to learn."

      A less obscure but equally beautiful symbolism, in another metre, is "The Honeysuckle."

      I plucked a honeysuckle where

       The hedge on high is quick with thorn,

       And climbing for the prize, was torn,

       And fouled my feet in quag-water;

       And by the thorns and by the wind

       The blossom that I took was thinn'd,

       And yet I found it sweet and fair.

       Thence to a richer growth I came,

       Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,

       The honeysuckles sprang by cores,

       Not harried like my single stem,

       All virgin lamps of scent and dew.

       So from my hand that first I, threw,

       Yet plucked not any more of them.

      It often happens that a young man during his first struggle in life, when all the world seems to be against him, meets with some poor girl who love him. She is not educated as he has been; she is ignorant of many things, and she has suffered herself a great deal of hardship, so that although beautiful naturally and good-hearted, both her beauty and her temper have been a little spoiled by the troubles of life. The young man whom she loves is obliged to mix with a very poor and vulgar class of people in order to become intimate with her. There are plenty of rough common men who would like to get that girl; and the young man has a good deal of trouble in winning her away from them. With all her small faults she seems for the time very beautiful to her lover, because he cannot get any finer woman while he remains poor. But presently success comes to him, and he is able to enter a much higher class of society, where he finds scores of beautiful girls, much more accomplished than his poor sweetheart; and he becomes ashamed of her and cruelly abandons her. But he does not marry any of the rich and beautiful women. Perhaps he is tired of women; perhaps his heart has been spoiled. The poet does not tell us why. He simply tells a story of human ingratitude which is as old as the world.

      One more simple poem before we take up the larger and more complicated pieces of the group.

      THE WOODSPURGE

       The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

       Shaken out dead from tree and hill:

       I had walked on at the wind's will—

       I sat now, for the wind was still.

       Between my knees my forehead was—

       My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!

       My hair was over in the grass,

       My naked ears heard the day pass.

       My eyes, wide open, had the run

       Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

       Among those few, out of the sun,

       The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

       From perfect grief there need not be

       Wisdom or even memory:

       One thing then learnt remains to me—

       The woodspurge has a cup of three!

      The phenomenon here described by the poet is unconsciously familiar to most of us. Any person who has suffered some very great pain, moral pain, is apt to observe during that instant of suffering things which he never observed before, or to notice details never noticed before in common things. One reason is that at such a time sense-impressions are stimulated to a strange degree by the increase of circulation, while the eyes and ears remain automatically active only. Whoever among you can remember the pain of losing a parent or beloved friend, will probably remember with extraordinary vividness all kinds of little things seen or heard at the time, such as the cry of a bird or a cricket, the sound of the dripping of water, the form of a sunbeam upon a wall, the shapes of shadows in a garden. The personage of this poem often before saw the woodspurge, without noticing anything particular about it; but in a moment of great sorrow observing the plant, he learns for the first time the peculiar form of its flower. In a wonderful novel by Henry Kingsley, called "Ravenshoe," there is a very striking example of the same thing. A cavalry-soldier, waiting in the saddle for the order to charge the enemy, observes on the back of the soldier before him a grease-spot which looks exactly like the map of Sweden, and begins to think that if the outline of Norway were beside it, the upper part of the map would go over the shoulder of the man. This fancy comes to him in a moment when he believes himself going to certain death.

      Now we will take a longer poem, very celebrated, entitled "The Cloud Confines."

      The day is dark and the night

       To him that would search their heart;

       No lips of cloud that will part