In _The Well at the World's End_ green trees and enchanted waters are
shown to us, as they were understood by old writers, who thought that
the generation of all things was through water; for when the water that
gives a long and fortunate life and that can be found by none but such
a one as all women love is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of
the ruined land, becomes green.
shown to us, as they were understood by old writers, who thought that
the generation of all things was through water; for when the water that
gives a long and fortunate life and that can be found by none but such
a one as all women love is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of
the ruined land, becomes green.
Yeats
' Who can keep always to
the little pathway between speech and silence, where one meets none
but discreet revelations? And surely, at whatever risk, we must cry
out that imagination is always seeking to remake the world according
to the impulses and the patterns in that great Mind, and that great
Memory? Can there be anything so important as to cry out that what we
call romance, poetry, intellectual beauty, is the only signal that the
supreme Enchanter, or some one in His councils, is speaking of what has
been, and shall be again, in the consummation of time?
1901.
THE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS.
I
ROSSETTI in one of his letters numbers his favourite colours in the
order of his favour, and throughout his work one feels that he loved
form and colour for themselves and apart from what they represent. One
feels sometimes that he desired a world of essences, of unmixed powers,
of impossible purities. It is as though the last judgment had already
begun in his mind and that the essences and powers, which the divine
hand had mixed into one another to make the loam of life, fell asunder
at his touch. If he painted a flame or a blue distance, he painted as
though he had seen the flame out of whose heart all flames had been
taken, or the blue of the abyss that was before all life; and if he
painted a woman's face he painted it in some moment of intensity when
the ecstasy of the lover and of the saint are alike, and desire becomes
wisdom without ceasing to be desire. He listens to the cry of the flesh
till it becomes proud and passes beyond the world where some immense
desire that the intellect cannot understand mixes with the desire of a
body's warmth and softness. His genius like Shelley's can hardly stir
but to the rejection of nature, whose delight is profusion, but never
intensity, and like Shelley's it follows the Star of the Magi, the
Morning and Evening Star, the mother of impossible hope, although it
follows through deep woods, where the star glimmers among dew-drenched
boughs and not through 'a windswept valley of the Apennine. ' Men like
him cannot be happy as we understand happiness, for to be happy one
must delight like nature in mere profusion, in mere abundance, in
making and doing things, and if one sets an image of the perfect before
one it must be the image that draws her perpetually, the image of a
perfect fulness of natural life, of an Earthly Paradise. One's emotion
must never break the bonds of life, one's hands must never labour to
loosen the silver cord, one's ears must never strain to catch the sound
of Michael's trumpet. That is to say, one must not be among those that
would have prayed in old times in some chapel of the Star, but among
those who would have prayed under the shadow of the Green Tree, and on
the wet stones of the Well, among the worshippers of natural abundance.
II
I do not think it was accident, so subtle are the threads that lead the
soul, that made William Morris, who seems to me to be the one perfectly
happy and fortunate poet of modern times, celebrate the Green Tree and
the goddess Habundia, and wells and enchanted waters in so many books.
In _The Well at the World's End_ green trees and enchanted waters are
shown to us, as they were understood by old writers, who thought that
the generation of all things was through water; for when the water that
gives a long and fortunate life and that can be found by none but such
a one as all women love is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of
the ruined land, becomes green. To him indeed as to older writers Well
and Tree are all but images of the one thing, of an 'energy' that is
not the less 'eternal delight' because it is half of the body. He never
wrote, and could not have written, of a man or woman who was not of the
kin of Well or Tree. Long before he had named either he had made his
'Wanderers' follow a dream indeed, but a dream of natural happiness,
and all the people of all his poems and stories from the confused
beginning of his art in _The Hollow Land_ to its end in _The Sundering
Flood_, are full of the heavy sweetness of this dream. He wrote indeed
of nothing but of the quest of the Grail, but it was the Heathen Grail
that gave every man his chosen food, and not the Grail of Malory or
Wagner; and he came at last to praise, as other men have praised the
martyrs of religion or of passion, men with lucky eyes and men whom all
women love.
We know so little of man and of the world that we cannot be certain
that the same invisible hands, that gave him an imagination preoccupied
with good fortune, gave him also health and wealth, and the power to
create beautiful things without labour, that he might honour the Green
Tree. It pleases me to imagine the copper mine which brought, as Mr.
Mackail has told, so much unforeseen wealth and in so astonishing a
way, as no less miraculous than the three arrows in _The Sundering
Flood_. No mighty poet in his misery dead could have delighted enough
to make us delight in men 'who knew no vain desire of foolish fame,'
but who thought the dance upon 'the stubble field' and 'the battle
with the earth' better than 'the bitter war' 'where right and wrong
are mixed together. ' 'Oh the trees, the trees! ' he wrote in one of his
early letters, and it was his work to make us, who had been taught to
sympathize with the unhappy till we had grown morbid, to sympathize
with men and women who turned everything into happiness because they
had in them something of the abundance of the beechen boughs or of the
bursting wheat-ear. He alone, I think, has told the story of Alcestis
with perfect sympathy for Admetus, with so perfect a sympathy that he
cannot persuade himself that one so happy died at all; and he, unlike
all other poets, has delighted to tell us that the men after his own
heart, the men of his _News from Nowhere_, sorrowed but a little while
over unhappy love. He cannot even think of nobility and happiness
apart, for all his people are like his men of Burg Dale who lived 'in
much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately or desiring things
out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves;
and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry; to-morrow
was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they would fain
forget; life shamed them not nor did death make them afraid. As for the
Dale wherein they dwelt, it was indeed most fair and lovely and they
deemed it the Blessing of the earth, and they trod the flowery grass
beside its rippled stream amidst the green tree-boughs proudly and
joyfully with goodly bodies and merry hearts. '
III
I think of his men as with broad brows and golden beards and mild eyes
and tranquil speech, and of his good women as like 'The Bride' in
whose face Rossetti saw and painted for once the abundance of earth
and not the half-hidden light of his star.
the little pathway between speech and silence, where one meets none
but discreet revelations? And surely, at whatever risk, we must cry
out that imagination is always seeking to remake the world according
to the impulses and the patterns in that great Mind, and that great
Memory? Can there be anything so important as to cry out that what we
call romance, poetry, intellectual beauty, is the only signal that the
supreme Enchanter, or some one in His councils, is speaking of what has
been, and shall be again, in the consummation of time?
1901.
THE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS.
I
ROSSETTI in one of his letters numbers his favourite colours in the
order of his favour, and throughout his work one feels that he loved
form and colour for themselves and apart from what they represent. One
feels sometimes that he desired a world of essences, of unmixed powers,
of impossible purities. It is as though the last judgment had already
begun in his mind and that the essences and powers, which the divine
hand had mixed into one another to make the loam of life, fell asunder
at his touch. If he painted a flame or a blue distance, he painted as
though he had seen the flame out of whose heart all flames had been
taken, or the blue of the abyss that was before all life; and if he
painted a woman's face he painted it in some moment of intensity when
the ecstasy of the lover and of the saint are alike, and desire becomes
wisdom without ceasing to be desire. He listens to the cry of the flesh
till it becomes proud and passes beyond the world where some immense
desire that the intellect cannot understand mixes with the desire of a
body's warmth and softness. His genius like Shelley's can hardly stir
but to the rejection of nature, whose delight is profusion, but never
intensity, and like Shelley's it follows the Star of the Magi, the
Morning and Evening Star, the mother of impossible hope, although it
follows through deep woods, where the star glimmers among dew-drenched
boughs and not through 'a windswept valley of the Apennine. ' Men like
him cannot be happy as we understand happiness, for to be happy one
must delight like nature in mere profusion, in mere abundance, in
making and doing things, and if one sets an image of the perfect before
one it must be the image that draws her perpetually, the image of a
perfect fulness of natural life, of an Earthly Paradise. One's emotion
must never break the bonds of life, one's hands must never labour to
loosen the silver cord, one's ears must never strain to catch the sound
of Michael's trumpet. That is to say, one must not be among those that
would have prayed in old times in some chapel of the Star, but among
those who would have prayed under the shadow of the Green Tree, and on
the wet stones of the Well, among the worshippers of natural abundance.
II
I do not think it was accident, so subtle are the threads that lead the
soul, that made William Morris, who seems to me to be the one perfectly
happy and fortunate poet of modern times, celebrate the Green Tree and
the goddess Habundia, and wells and enchanted waters in so many books.
In _The Well at the World's End_ green trees and enchanted waters are
shown to us, as they were understood by old writers, who thought that
the generation of all things was through water; for when the water that
gives a long and fortunate life and that can be found by none but such
a one as all women love is found at last, the Dry Tree, the image of
the ruined land, becomes green. To him indeed as to older writers Well
and Tree are all but images of the one thing, of an 'energy' that is
not the less 'eternal delight' because it is half of the body. He never
wrote, and could not have written, of a man or woman who was not of the
kin of Well or Tree. Long before he had named either he had made his
'Wanderers' follow a dream indeed, but a dream of natural happiness,
and all the people of all his poems and stories from the confused
beginning of his art in _The Hollow Land_ to its end in _The Sundering
Flood_, are full of the heavy sweetness of this dream. He wrote indeed
of nothing but of the quest of the Grail, but it was the Heathen Grail
that gave every man his chosen food, and not the Grail of Malory or
Wagner; and he came at last to praise, as other men have praised the
martyrs of religion or of passion, men with lucky eyes and men whom all
women love.
We know so little of man and of the world that we cannot be certain
that the same invisible hands, that gave him an imagination preoccupied
with good fortune, gave him also health and wealth, and the power to
create beautiful things without labour, that he might honour the Green
Tree. It pleases me to imagine the copper mine which brought, as Mr.
Mackail has told, so much unforeseen wealth and in so astonishing a
way, as no less miraculous than the three arrows in _The Sundering
Flood_. No mighty poet in his misery dead could have delighted enough
to make us delight in men 'who knew no vain desire of foolish fame,'
but who thought the dance upon 'the stubble field' and 'the battle
with the earth' better than 'the bitter war' 'where right and wrong
are mixed together. ' 'Oh the trees, the trees! ' he wrote in one of his
early letters, and it was his work to make us, who had been taught to
sympathize with the unhappy till we had grown morbid, to sympathize
with men and women who turned everything into happiness because they
had in them something of the abundance of the beechen boughs or of the
bursting wheat-ear. He alone, I think, has told the story of Alcestis
with perfect sympathy for Admetus, with so perfect a sympathy that he
cannot persuade himself that one so happy died at all; and he, unlike
all other poets, has delighted to tell us that the men after his own
heart, the men of his _News from Nowhere_, sorrowed but a little while
over unhappy love. He cannot even think of nobility and happiness
apart, for all his people are like his men of Burg Dale who lived 'in
much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately or desiring things
out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves;
and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry; to-morrow
was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they would fain
forget; life shamed them not nor did death make them afraid. As for the
Dale wherein they dwelt, it was indeed most fair and lovely and they
deemed it the Blessing of the earth, and they trod the flowery grass
beside its rippled stream amidst the green tree-boughs proudly and
joyfully with goodly bodies and merry hearts. '
III
I think of his men as with broad brows and golden beards and mild eyes
and tranquil speech, and of his good women as like 'The Bride' in
whose face Rossetti saw and painted for once the abundance of earth
and not the half-hidden light of his star.
