JOHN RUSKIN: 1819 The Open Sky. From "Modern Painters." See p. 118. In Modern Painters" Ruskin groups around his wide, deepthoughted inquiry into the aim and essence of art, most of his ideas and convictions concerning man and man's life, with an eloquence and poetry of enthusiasm seldom surpassed. ONE says, it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits till they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire; but in the still, small voice. They are but the blunt and low faculties of our nature which can only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are to be found always, yet each found but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: 1770-1850. Four Sonnets. See p. 162. These sonnets are rightly held to be amongst the noblest in our language. The World. THE world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus * rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. Westminster Bridge. EARTH has not anything to show more fair : The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! On the Subjugation of Switzerland. Two Voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty! *Proteus and Triton were divinities of the sea. There came a tyrant, and with holy glee Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven; Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft : Milton.* MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour: Of inward happiness. We are selfish men : Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; So didst thou travel on life's common way, PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: 1792-1822. From "Adonais." Percy Bysshe Shelley was born near Horsham, in Sussex. From his earliest years misunderstood and treated with all want of sense and kindliness by his kin, from his earliest song misunderstood and reviled by his people, he became a wanderer on the face of the earth, with a heart full of hunger for love, unsatisfied, unrealized—a head full of lofty, impracticable schemes for the reformation of mankind. No singer *Written 1802. L we have ever possessed was more subtle master of melody, more deeply thrilled with "the still, sad music of humanity," more rapturously moved with the sounds and sights of Nature. Through him Nature has become more intelligible, has found a voice to speak with. Yet, alas! with all his deep love for and trustfulness in man, he had no practical, realizable side to his character; in all his schemes he is enthusiastic without knowledge, eager without definiteness. He is but a sweet, sad, loving voice crying in a wilderness, whose paths all his power cannot set straight. His most purely beautiful poem is his lament over the untimely death of Keats, to whom he gives the musical name of Adonais." The following are a few stanzas selected from it. HE will awake no more, oh, never more ! Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. Oh, weep for Adonais !—The quick § Dreams, Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." Lost angel of a ruined Paradise! She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. Death. * Mark out; conduct along. § Living. A.S. cwic. + Last. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs as if embalming them ; Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak; And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.‡ Another Splendour on his mouth alit, That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath With lightning and with music: the damp death And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,|| It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. And others came,-Desires and Adorations, And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Came in slow pomp ;--the moving pomp might seem All he had loved, and moulded into thought Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, * Streaming down (in large quantities). Lat. profundo. + A band or wreath for the head. Dull the fierce fire of her grief against his cold cheek. § Chilled its warm kiss. || Embraces; holds. A.S. clyppan. |