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JOHN RUSKIN: 1819

The Open Sky. From "Modern Painters."

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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 :
Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ;

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 :
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty :
This city now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,

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;
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven,`
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.

Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft :
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left;
For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be
That mountain floods should thunder as before,
And ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee !

Milton.*

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men :
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart :

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

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.

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HE will awake no more, oh, never more !
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace *
His extreme t way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger ‡ sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law

Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

Oh, weep for Adonais !—The quick § Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,

Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,—

Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,

But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,||
They ne'er will gather strength, nor find a home again.

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;

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.
Pain of birth.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew

Washed his light limbs as if embalming them ;
Another clipt her profuse * locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,†
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful grief would break

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
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath

With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress § upon its icy lips;

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,
Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;

And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,

Came in slow pomp ;--the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,

* 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.

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