Essays Literary, Critical and Historical — A Closer Reading

blind his soul with clay.”

As to the characters of the two kings, they are well conceived and drawn. Ida’s father has an easy, loving disposition, and it is very evident that she inherits her strength of character from her mother. The Northern King is of a rough and violent type, which recalls the time when marriage was a capture:

“Look you—Sir! Man is the hunter; woman is the game; The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it and we ride them down.”

While the character of Florian is vague and indefinite, that of Cyril is well and clearly conceived. The latter is a wholesome, jovial and honest-hearted fellow. He is no dreamer and can always tell the substance from the shadow. He is not at all impressed by stately women, and so he tells the Princess that Love and Nature are more terrible than she.

The two widows, Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche, are in sharp contrast to each other. The former remains womanly under every circumstance. Even when discoursing on the nebular hypothesis in the lecture-room, we find that her babe, sweet Agläea, is by her side, and when she has lost it she bitterly reproaches herself for having left it behind.

Lady Blanche is the most unlovely woman in the whole gallery of Tennyson’s women. She has no thought but for herself, and even asperses the memory of her dead husband. She is full of envy and jealousy, nor has she even the affection of a mother for her sunny-hearted and winsome daughter, Melissa. She is a type of not a few who identify themselves with the Woman’s Rights movement of to-day, ostensibly to better the social and intellectual position of woman, but virtually to blow a bubble before the eyes of the world and gather about them an atmosphere of notoriety.

Having analyzed the poem as to its motive and plot, and shown the part which each character contributes to the development of the plot, we will now consider the purpose and import of the songs or ballads which the young ladies sing during the pauses or interludes in the poem. The songs did not appear at first, but were added by the poet to the third edition, which appeared in 1850. It will be noticed that they nearly all relate to children, and serve as choruses to guide and interpret the sympathies of the reader in the progress of the poem. Let us take them in their order, one by one. The first tells of a quarrel between a man and his wife, and of the reconciliation caused by the memory of their dead child:

“As thro’ the land at eve we went, And pluck’d the ripen’d ears, We fell out, my wife and I, O we fell out I know not why, And kiss’d again with tears. And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love And kiss again with tears! For when we came where lies the child We lost in other years, There above the little grave, O there above the little grave, We kiss’d again with tears.”

Here we have the abiding influence of the child reaching back from the grave and uniting by its memory the tearful and desolate hearts of the estranged parents.

The second represents how the toil and labor of the father are ennobled and lightened amid the perils of the deep through the memory of the little babe for whose life and love he fondly braves every danger:

“Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me, While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

“Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother’s breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.”

Sweet influence, indeed, this of the babe which reaches across the ocean and unites loving hearts.

The next song, “The Bugle,” is regarded by many as the finest lyric that has been written since the days of Shakespeare. Its real meaning is frequently not grasped by the casual reader. It is based upon the contrast between the echoes of a bugle on a mountain lake, which grow fainter and fainter in proportion to the receding distance, and the influence of soul upon soul through growing distances of time:

“The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

“O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: _Our_ echoes roll from soul to soul And _grow_ forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.”

The stress of meaning is in the words _our_ and _grow_. _Our_ echoes roll from _soul to soul_—from generation to generation—from grandparent to parent and grandchild. This poem represents unity through the family in its relation to the future, just as the first two songs represent that unity through the past and present.

The fourth is intended to show the influences of home and wedded love in nerving a man for the shocks and conflicts of life:

“Thy voice is heard thro’ rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands: A moment while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead—_for thine and thee_.”

We see by this lyric that patriotism and heroic effort have their root and origin in home affection.

The next song represents the influence of the family, of which the child is the bond, upon the mother:

“Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swoon’d nor utter’d cry: All her maidens, watching, said, ‘She must weep or she will die.’

“Then they praised him, soft and low, Call’d him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

“Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stept, Took the face-cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept.

“Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee— Like summer tempest came her tears— ‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’”

In this poem we see that desolation and despair have sealed the fountain of tears in the widowed wife—that the light of love has gone from her life and returns only through the influence of childhood, with all its tender links and memories.

The last song, “Ask Me No More,” is like the sestette in a sonnet—the application of all the preceding. These influences of the family, with all its sacred ties and affections, are too much for the strong and noble soul of the Princess, who throws aside all theories of intellectual independence for woman, and, yielding to the impulse of love and affection, proclaims the triumph of the womanly elements in her nature in the following sweet and tender lines:

“Ask me no more: the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answered thee? Ask me no more.

“Ask me no more; what answer should I give? I love not hollow cheek or faded eye: Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die! Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live; Ask me no more.

“Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal’d: I strove against the stream and all in vain: Let the great river take me to the main: No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; Ask me no more.”

What bearing these six lyrics, which are truly miracles of workmanship, have upon the main theme of the story will be readily perceived. They not only contribute to the unity of the poem proper but are in themselves linked together by a kindred bond and purpose. They are the voice of the heart singing through the night, cheered by the kindly stars of faith, hope and love.

Having analyzed the poem and reached its central thought, let us now consider who is the hero or heroine of the story. Assuredly it is not the Prince, for he has been ignominiously thrust out of Ida’s gates in draggled female clothes. Nor is it his jovial-hearted companion, Cyril, nor Arac, who cares for nothing save the tournament. It cannot even be the high-souled and stately Princess, for has she not been vanquished at the very moment of triumph? The only one who comes out triumphantly is Psyche’s baby—she is the real heroine of the epic. The little blossom, sweet Agläea, is the central point upon which the plot turns. In the poem, in the songs—everywhere—this unconscious child, the concrete embodiment of nature itself, exerts an overpowering influence, shaping, directing, nurturing the tender instincts of womanhood and clearing away all intellectual theories which tend to usurp the sacred offices of mother and home.

In the despatch which Ida sends to her brother she acknowledges the power of the child in the following lines:

“I took it for an hour in mine own bed This morning: there the tender orphan hands Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence The wrath I nursed against the world.”

“I felt Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast In the dead prime.”

Notice, too, how ubiquitous the babe is. Ida carries it with her everywhere. It is on her judgment seat, it shares in her song of triumph when the tournament is ended, and is with her on the battlefield when she is tending her wounded brothers.

The babe is indeed the heroine of the story, holding the epic along the channel of its main motive, despite every current and breeze stirred by foreign elements in its course.

It is not hard to read in this poem Tennyson’s solution of the woman question, though there are some who maintain that it is vague and unsatisfactory. Such persons forget that it is the office of the poet not so much to affirm principles on a subject as to inspire the sentiments which ought to preside over the solution.

It seems to us that the transfiguration of Ida’s nature under the influence of the affections is the only solution possible that could be offered by the poet for the questions raised in “The Princess.” It is the office of poetry, not to guide the conclusions of the intellect, but to tone the feelings in accordance with truth and duty. Poetry is not to teach the truth—it is truth itself.

Those who have the interest of the true advancement of woman at heart should remember that neither the whole race nor woman herself can be benefited by any system of education for woman at variance with Nature and not co-ordinate with the highest needs of the race. It is idle to discuss the equality or inequality of gifts and faculties as between man and woman. Every person knows that woman is not only the equal of man in many respects, but his superior in not a few; yet this does not justify her in waging a war with Nature and, with her heart clothed in an iron panoply, riding forth into the arena of dust and turmoil to perform services for which the strong hand and knightly heart of man as well as the vocation of centuries have fitted him alone.

As to her education, that which enables her every faculty to grow and unfold its beauty and power, with no harm to her distinctive womanhood—that should be her privilege and right to enjoy, whether it be obtained in convent or co-education hall. That woman needs a greater breadth and solidity of intellectual culture goes without saying, and this for two reasons—to better fit her for the high moral offices which belong to her domestic mission, and to keep alive in her a just sympathy with the larger social movements of which she is the passive, but ought not to be the uninterested spectator.

If Ida’s theories were carried out, the child element in woman and the feminine element in man would be crushed out, and it is this very feminine element in man which gives him moral insight—it constitutes the poetic side of his nature. Without the feminine element in his nature Chaucer never could have written “The Canterbury Tales.”

Ida was right in seeking for a more generous culture, but the spirit in which she sought it was wrong. Mrs. Browning’s Aurora Leigh would be an artist first and then a woman. Ida, too, would crush out the womanly elements in her nature in her eagerness to satisfy the claims of the intellect. She set the claims of the head above those of the heart, and, like Aurora Leigh, she failed.

Enthusiasts often point to the glories achieved by women through the centuries, and make this a pretext for their vagaries and Utopian dreams. Because Corinna won the lyric prize from Pindar, and Judith delivered her people from Holofernes, and Joan of Arc repulsed the English from the walls of Orleans, and Queen Elizabeth laid the foundation of England’s supremacy upon the sea, is it meet that the whole social order should be turned upside down and Nature wounded in its very heart? Such enthusiasts forget that the mother of Themistocles was greater than the vanquisher of Pindar, the mother of St. Louis of France greater than the Maid of Orleans, and the mother of Shakespeare greater than she who held with firm grasp the sceptre of English sovereignty during the closing years of the Tudor period.

In spite, therefore, of all theories to the contrary, in spite of many zealous but misguided women who are looking in the near future for the reign of woman and the complete subserviency of man, the true mission of woman is, and always will continue to be, within the domestic sphere, where she conserves the accumulated sum of the moral education of the race, and keeps burning through the darkest night of civilization upon the sacred altar of humanity, the vestal fires of Truth, Beauty, and Love.

POETRY AND HISTORY TEACHING FALSEHOOD

POETRY AND HISTORY TEACHING FALSEHOOD.

The function of the poet is to speak essential truths as opposed to relative truths, and Mrs. Browning in “Aurora Leigh” testifies to this fact in the following lines:

“I write so Of the only truth-tellers now left to God, The only speakers of essential truth Opposed to relative, comparative, And temporal truths; the only holders by His sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms; The only teachers who instruct mankind From just a shadow on a charnel wall To find man’s veritable stature out Erect, sublime,—the measure of a man; And that’s the measure of an angel says The Apostle.”

It is much to be regretted that the poetry of the present day does not always fulfil this high purpose. The poets of to-day—and by poets of to-day I mean the poets of the past half-century—are not “the only truth-tellers now left to God.” Nay, they are often disseminators of falsehood. It is true the non-Catholic poet—a Wordsworth, a Byron, a Longfellow, or a Tennyson—by being true to art and inspiration, which has as its basis Catholic truth, sometimes unwittingly expresses a Catholic truth of the deepest significance. But as poetry is only a reflection of life idealized, and as there is nothing in poetry but what is in life, we may expect the anti-Catholic seeds scattered about by prejudiced hearts in the garden of the world to bear the poisonous blossoms of falsehood as they are translated and reflected in the pages of modern poetry.

And this is sometimes done indirectly. Sometimes, too, it is done by expressing a half truth or by seizing on some exceptional phase of Catholic religious life and impressing it upon the non-Catholic mind with an “_Ab uno disce omnes_.”

A concrete example will best illustrate this. Browning has a poem entitled “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church.” Now Browning’s poetic workshop was Italy, so this great psychological poet wrote:

“Open my heart and you shall see Graven on it Italy.”

He found in the land of Dante and Michael Angelo fit subjects for his dramatic monologues. The art world of Italy opened up to Browning new themes, new thoughts. The intense life of its people, full of the sweetness and aroma of virtue and the dark tragedy of vice, gave him scope which he could not find elsewhere. Pity it is that he presents only the dark side of Italian character. Pity it is that the paganized and sensual Bishop of the Italian Renaissance depicted by Browning in “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” did not find setting, in his poems, as a foil to the pure and pious men and women who prayed before the shrines and in the cloisters of Italy when the new wine of old classicism poured from Homeric flasks and casks had intoxicated the head and heart of that garden of Europe and turned possible saints into satyrs.

De Maistre, the great French publicist, has said that history for the past three hundred years has been a conspiracy against truth. Aye, and poetry, too, whose countenance should reflect the beauty of heavenly truth, often wears the mask of the assassin. To-day there are so-called advanced and up-to-date scholars in our universities and clubs who hold that “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” is a true reflection of the religious life of the Italian Renaissance. They quote Ruskin as saying of that poem:

“I know of no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the Central Renaissance, in thirty pages of the ‘Stones of Venice,’ put into as many lines, Browning’s being also the antecedent work.”

We would say just here to students of literature and history: Let not the shadow of a great literary name overawe you. John Ruskin did a great deal for art and criticism, but he is far from being an infallible apostle of truth in either domain; and though he loved the lowly, brown-hooded friars of St. Francis, this love was not based on spiritual affinity, but on the poetry and art bound up in their humble lives.

John Ruskin and Robert Browning, respectively art critic and poet, have done the religious life of the Italian Renaissance a grievous wrong—nay, they grossly misrepresent it when they say that this abnormal picture of a Renaissance Catholic bishop truly represents and reflects the religious life of Italy at that period. No doubt but a certain amount of abuses and corruption prevailed in the Church at that time, largely as a consequence of the worldly spirit which had gained entrance into it during its exile at Avignon.