Fields, in his 'Barry Cornwall
and his Friends,' gives a charming description of Dickens's dining
with the Procters, and launching into enthusiastic praise of "Mary
Berwick" in Mrs.
and his Friends,' gives a charming description of Dickens's dining
with the Procters, and launching into enthusiastic praise of "Mary
Berwick" in Mrs.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v20 - Phi to Qui
Arbuthnot'),
and going with them to Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's
degree in 1686. His first piece of clever writing, a parody of Dryden's
poem The Hind and the Panther,' was executed at this period in
collaboration with Charles Montagu, who, like Prior, was freshly wear-
ing his college honors. The greater part was Prior's, and the jeu
d'esprit was published as 'The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd to
the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse' (London, 1687),
and bore such mottoes as "Much Malice mingled with a little Wit. "
It has no great merit aside from boyish animal spirits, but may be
accepted as a prophecy of better work now that we know the better
MATTHEW PRIOR
## p. 11838 (#468) ##########################################
11838
MATTHEW PRIOR
work to have been accomplished. Some idea of the style of its
humor-exceedingly like that of the stock newspaper humorist in
the American press of to-day-may be appreciated by comparing
Dryden's lines,-
"A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and o'er the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin,"
-
with Prior's corresponding ones, ridiculing the idea of a quadruped
guiltless of sin:-
"A milk-white mouse, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on soft cheese, and o'er the dairy ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no gin. »
In 1688 Prior obtained a fellowship, and was also made tutor to
Lord Exeter's sons; and having won distinguished patronage, was
appointed secretary to the ambassador to Holland. After spending
three years at The Hague, he was sent to France in the same ca-
pacity. Returning to England in 1701, he entered Parliament, became
a Tory, and in 1711 was sent on a secret mission to Paris, where he
attracted the favor of Louis XIV. A letter from le Grand Monarque
to Queen Anne said at its close: "I expect with impatience the
return of Mr. Prior, whose conduct is very agreeable to me;" and
the English Queen replied: "I send back Mr. Prior to Versailles,
who, in continuing to conduct himself in the manner that shall be
entirely agreeable to you, does no more than execute, to a tittle, the
orders which I have given him. " Bolingbroke and Swift greatly ad-
mired his diplomatic qualities (although Pope sneered at them), and
archives exist in Paris that attest his faithful service. One of Prior's
favorite sayings was, "I had rather be thought a good Englishman
than be the best poet or greatest scholar that ever wrote. » When
the Whigs came into power, Prior returned to England in 1715 to
suffer imprisonment; and when discharged he settled at Down-Hall,
Essex, on an estate that he had purchased. He died at Lord Har-
ley's country-seat of Wimpole, Cambridge, September 18th, 1721, and
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Prior considered a long poem, Solomon, or the Vanity of the
World,' his most important work. It was greatly admired by Cow-
per, but is seldom read to-day. 'Alma, or the Progress of the Mind,' is
also long, but contains many witty Hudibrastic passages. The 'Tales'
are rather coarse for modern taste, and Prior's fame rests upon his
## p. 11839 (#469) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11839
lyrics, epigrams, and playful poems. In 'An English Padlock' occur
the often quoted lines as advice to a husband:-
"Be to her virtues very kind;
Be to her faults a little blind;
Let all her ways be unconfined,
And clap your Padlock-on her mind. "
Prior has always been a favorite with men of letters.
Gay said
that he was beloved by every Muse"; Allan Ramsay wrote a pastoral
on his death, beginning "Dear, sweet-tongued Matt! thousands shall
greet for thee;" Swift was extremely fond of him, and took great
trouble to find subscribers for his poems; and Thackeray in his 'Eng-
lish Humorists' calls him "a world-philosopher of no small genius,
good-nature, and acumen," and considers his "among the easiest, the
richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.
Horace is always in his mind," he continues; "and his song, and his
philosophy, his good sense, his happy, easy turns and melody, his
loves, and his epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most
delightful and accomplished master. " His poem 'To a Child of Qual-
ity Swinburne calls "the most adorable of nursery idyls that ever
was or will be in our language. " His own estimation of himself may
be learned by the following verses from his poem entitled 'For my
Own Monument':-
"Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
His virtue and vice were as other men's are;
High hopes he conceived, and he smothered great fears,
In a life particolored, half pleasure, half care.
"Not to business a drudge, not to faction a slave,
He strove to make int'rest and freedom agree;
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord! how merry was he!
"Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirled in the round, as the wheel turned about,
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust. "
TO A CHILD OF QUALITY
ORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band
L That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters,
Were summoned by her high command
To show their passions by their letters.
## p. 11840 (#470) ##########################################
11840
MATTHEW PRIOR
My pen amo
mong the rest I took,
Lest those bright eyes that cannot read
Should dart their kindling fires, and look
The power they have to be obeyed.
Nor quality nor reputation
Forbid me yet my flame to tell;
Dear five-year-old befriends my passion,
And I may write till she can spell.
For while she makes her silkworms beds
With all the tender things I swear,
Whilst all the house my passion reads
In papers round her baby's hair,
She may receive and own my flame;
For though the strictest prudes should know it,
She'll pass for a most virtuous dame,
And I for an unhappy poet.
Then, too, alas! when she shall tear
The lines some younger rival sends,
She'll give me leave to write, I fear,
And we shall still continue friends.
For as our different ages move,
'Tis so ordained, (would Fate but mend it! )
That I shall be past making love
When she begins to comprehend it.
SONG
N VAIN you tell your parting lover,
You wish fair winds may waft him over; —
Alas! what winds can happy prove,
That bear me far from what I love?
Alas! what dangers on the main
Can equal those that I sustain
From slighted vows and cold disdain?
Be gentle, and in pity choose
To wish the wildest tempests loose;
That thrown again upon the coast,
Where first my shipwrecked heart was lost,
I may once more repeat my pain;
Once more in dying notes complain
Of slighted vows and cold disdain.
## p. 11841 (#471) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11841
XX-741
TO A LADY
SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME IN
THE ARGUMENT
SPAR
PARE, generous Victor, spare the slave,
Who did unequal war pursue;
That more than triumph he might have,
In being overcome by you.
In the dispute whate'er I said,
My heart was by my tongue belied;
And in my looks you might have read
How much I argued on your side.
You, far from danger as from fear,
Might have sustained an open fight:
For seldom your opinions err;
Your eyes are always in the right.
Why, fair one, would you not rely
On Reason's force with Beauty's joined?
Could I their prevalence deny,
I must at once be deaf and blind.
Alas! not hoping to subdue,
I only to the fight aspired;
To keep the beauteous foe in view
Was all the glory I desired.
But she, howe'er of victory sure,
Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
And armed with more immediate power,
Calls cruel silence to her aid.
Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight;
She drops her arms, to gain the field;
Secures her conquest by her flight,
And triumphs when she seems to yield.
So when the Parthian turned his steed,
And from the hostile camp withdrew,
With cruel skill the backward reed
He sent; and as he fled he slew.
## p. 11842 (#472) ##########################################
11842
MATTHEW PRIOR
AN ODE
THE
HE merchant, to secure his treasure,
Conveys it in a borrowed name:
Euphelia serves to grace my measure,
But Chloe is my real flame.
My softest verse, my darling lyre,
Upon Euphelia's toilet lay:
When Chloe noted her desire
That I should sing, that I should play,
My lyre I tune, my voice I raise;
But with my numbers mix my sighs:
And whilst I sing Euphelia's praise,
I fix my soul on Chloe's eyes.
Fair Chloe blushed; Euphelia frowned;
I sung and gazed; I played and trembled:
And Venus to the Loves around
Remarked, how ill we all dissembled.
CUPID MISTAKEN
S AFTER noon, one summer's day,
A Venus stood bathing in a river,
Cupid a-shooting went that way,
New strung his bow, new filled his quiver.
With skill he chose his sharpest dart,
With all his might his bow he drew;
Swift to his beauteous parent's heart
The too well guided arrow flew.
I faint! I die! the goddess cried;
O cruel, couldst thou find none other
To wreck thy spleen on? Parricide!
Like Nero, thou hast slain thy mother.
Poor Cupid, sobbing, scarce could speak:
Indeed, mamma, I did not know ye;
Alas! how easy my mistake,—
I took you for your likeness Chloe.
## p. 11843 (#473) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11843
A BETTER ANSWER
D
EAR Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty face;
Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurled:
Pr'ythee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaff says)
Let us e'en talk a little like folks of this world.
How canst thou presume thou hast leave to destroy
The beauties which Venus but lent to thy keeping?
Those looks were designed to inspire love and joy:
More ord'nary eyes may serve people for weeping.
To be vexed at a trifle or two that I writ:
Your judgment at once, and my passion you wrong;
You take that for fact, which will scarce be found wit:
'Ods life! must one swear to the truth of a song?
What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The difference there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose;
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart.
The god of us verse-men,- you know, child, the sun,
How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
No matter what beauties I saw in my way,
They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war;
And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree:
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her,
As he was a poet sublimer than me.
D
A SIMILE
EAR Thomas, didst thou never pop
Thy head into a tinman's shop?
There, Thomas, didst thou never see-
'Tis but by way of simile—
A squirrel spend his little rage
In jumping round a rolling cage?
## p. 11844 (#474) ##########################################
11844
MATTHEW PRIOR
The cage, as either side turned up,
Striking a ring of bells a-top? -
Moved in the orb, pleased with the chimes,
The foolish creature thinks he climbs;
But here or there, turn wood or wire,
He never gets two inches higher.
So fares it with those merry blades
That frisk it under Pindus's shades:
In noble songs and lofty odes,
They tread on stars and talk with gods;
Still dancing in an airy round,
Still pleased with their own verses' sound:
Brought back, how fast soe'er they go,
Always aspiring, always low.
THE SECRETARY
WRITTEN AT THE HAGUE, MDCXCVI.
WH
HILE with labor assiduous due pleasure I mix,
And in one day atone for the business of six,
In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night,
On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right;
No memoirs to compose, and no postboy to move,
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love;
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee.
This night and the next shall be hers and be mine,
To good or ill fortune the third we resign:
Thus scorning the world, and superior to fate,
I drive on my car in processional state.
So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode;
Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse,
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse;
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose,
In Holland half drowned in interest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried,
When The Hague and the present are both on my side?
And is it enough for the joys of the day,
To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say?
When good Vandergoes and his provident Vrow,
As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow,
That search all the province, you'll find no man dar is
So blest as the Englishen Heer Secretar' is.
## p. 11845 (#475) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11845
A TEST OF LOVE
From Henry and Emma'
HENRY
AINLY thou tell'st me what the woman's care
VA Shall in the wildness of the wood prepare:
Thou, ere thou goest, unhappiest of thy kind,
Must leave the habit and the sex behind.
No longer shall thy comely tresses break
In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck,
Or sit behind thy head, an ample round,
In graceful braids with various ribbon bound;
No longer shall the bodice, aptly laced,
From thy full bosom to thy slender waist,
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees and beautifully less;
Nor shall thy lower garment's artful plait,
From thy fair side dependent to thy feet,
Arm their chaste beauties with a modest pride,
And double every charm they seek to hide.
Th' ambrosial plenty of thy shining hair,
Cropt off and lost, scarce lower than thy ear
Shall stand uncouth; a horseman's coat shall hide
Thy taper shape and comeliness of side;
The short trunk-hose shall show thy foot and knee,
Licentious and to common eyesight free:
And, with a bolder stride and looser air,
Mingled with men, a man thou must appear.
Vagrants and outlaws shall offend thy view;
For such must be my friends, a hideous crew:
By adverse fortune mixed in social ill,
Trained to assault, and disciplined to kill;
Their common loves a lewd abandoned pack,
The beadle's lash still flagrant on their back,—
By sloth corrupted, by disorder fed,
Made bold by want and prostitute for bread:
With such must Emma hunt the tedious day,
Assist their violence and divide their prey;
With such she must return at setting light,—
Though not partaker, witness of their night.
Thy ear, inured to charitable sounds
And pitying love, must feel the hateful wounds
Of jest obscene and vulgar ribaldry,
The ill-bred question and the lewd reply;
## p. 11846 (#476) ##########################################
11846
MATTHEW PRIOR
Brought by long habitude from bad to worse,
Must hear the frequent oath, the direful curse,-
That latest weapon of the wretches' war,—
And blasphemy, sad comrade of despair.
Now, Emma, now the last reflection make,
What thou wouldst follow, what thou must forsake:
By our ill-omened stars and adverse Heaven,
No middle object to thy choice is given.
Or yield thy virtue to attain thy love,
Or leave a banished man, condemned in woods to rove.
EMMA
-
O grief of heart! that our unhappy fates
Force thee to suffer what thy honor hates:
Mix thee amongst the bad, or make thee run
Too near the paths which virtue bids thee shun.
Yet with her Henry still let Emma go;
With him abhor the vice, but share the woe:
And sure my little heart can never err
Amidst the worst, if Henry still be there. .
For thee alone these little charms I drest;
Condemned them or absolved them by thy test.
In comely figure ranged my jewels shone,
Or negligently placed, for thee alone;
For thee again they shall be laid aside:
The woman, Henry, shall put off her pride
For thee; my clothes, my sex, exchanged for thee,
I'll mingle with the people's wretched lee,—
Oh, line extreme of human infamy!
Wanting the scissors, with these hands I'll tear
(If that obstructs my flight) this load of hair.
Black soot, or yellow walnut, shall disgrace
This little red and white of Emma's face.
These nails with scratches shall deform my breast,
Lest by my look or color be expressed
The mark of aught high-born, or ever better dressed.
Yet in this commerce, under this disguise,
Let me be grateful still to Henry's eyes;
Lost to the world, let me to him be known:
My fate I can absolve, if he shall own
That, leaving all mankind, I love but him alone.
## p. 11847 (#477) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11847
THE LADY'S LOOKING-GLASS
IN IMITATION OF A GREEK IDYLLIUM
ELIA and I the other day
Walked o'er the sand-hills to the sea:
The setting sun adorned the coast,
His beams entire, his fierceness lost;
And on the surface of the deep,
The winds lay only not asleep:
The nymph did like the scene appear,
Serenely pleasant, calmly fair;
Soft fell her words, as flew the air.
C
With secret joy I heard her say
That she would never miss one day
A walk so fine, a sight so gay.
But, oh the change! The winds grow high;
Impending tempests charge the sky;
The lightning flies; the thunder roars;
And big waves lash the frightened shores.
Struck with the horror of the sight,
She turns her head and wings her flight;
And trembling vows she'll ne'er again
Approach the shore or view the main.
"Once more at least look back," said I;
"Thyself in that large glass descry:
When thou art in good-humor drest,
When gentle reason rules thy breast,
The sun upon the calmest sea
Appears not half so bright as thee:
'Tis then that with delight I rove
Upon the boundless depth of love;
I bless my chain, I hand my oar,
Nor think on all I left on shore.
"But when vain doubt and groundless fear
Do that dear foolish bosom tear;
When the big lip and wat❜ry eye
Tell me the rising storm is nigh,-
'Tis then thou art yon angry main,
Deformed by winds and dashed by rain;
And the poor sailor, that must try
Its fury, labors less than I.
"Shipwrecked, in vain to land I make,
While Love and Fate still drive me back;
## p. 11848 (#478) ##########################################
1 1848
MATTHEW PRIOR
Forced to dote on thee thy own way,
I chide thee first, and then obey.
Wretched when from thee, vexed when nigh,
I with thee or without thee die. "
THE FEMALE PHAETON
HUS Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as a colt untamed,
THU
Bespoke the fair from whence she sprung,
With little rage inflamed:
Inflamed with rage at sad restraint,
Which wise mamma ordained;
And sorely vext to play the saint,
Whilst wit and beauty reigned:-
"Shall I thumb holy books, confined
With Abigails forsaken?
Kitty's for other things designed,
Or I am much mistaken.
"Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
And visit with her cousins?
At balls must she make all the rout,
And bring home hearts by dozens?
"What has she better, pray, than I,
What hidden charms to boast,
That all mankind for her should die,
Whilst I am scarce a toast?
"Dearest mamma! for once let me
Unchained my fortune try:
I'll have my earl as well as she,
Or know the reason why.
"I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score,
Make all her lovers fall:
They'll grieve I was not loosed before;
She, I was loosed at all. "
Fondness prevailed; mamma gave way:
Kitty, at heart's desire,
Obtained the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire.
1
## p. 11849 (#479) ##########################################
11849
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER
(1787-1874)
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
(1825-1864)
B
RYAN WALLER PROCTER was born in London, England, No-
vember 21st, 1787, according to his biographers, though he
himself put the date two years later. He came of good
farmer stock in Yorkshire; and, his father having accumulated con-
siderable fortune, he was sent to Harrow, where he was the contem-
porary of Byron and Peel. At twenty he
was bound to a solicitor at Calne, came up
to London in 1807 to live, and for the next
eight years was sufficiently occupied in do-
ing it. It was not until he was twenty-eight
that he began to write, "attracted," as he
says of himself, "to literature as a refined
amusement. "
Meanwhile he had formed the friend-
ships which were to influence his life; his
own personality and his excellent judgment
having their effect on his associates. Haz-
litt, who put himself out for few people,
thought so highly of his talents that he
always talked his best when Procter was
present. Talfourd says, "Charles Lamb regarded Procter as the spirit
most congenial with his own in its most serious moods;" and in his
celebrated letter to Southey in the London Magazine for October, 1823,
Lamb speaks of him as "Procter, candid and affectionate as his own
poetry. " Rogers introduced him to Moore as "well worth cultivat-
ing"; and his friendship with Leigh Hunt was maintained unclouded
throughout Hunt's long life. His father having bequeathed him a
comfortable property, Procter's first poems were written during years
of freedom and enjoyment. From 1819 to 1823 he wrote the 'Dra-
matic Scenes and Other Poems,' 'Marcia Colonna,' The Sicilian
Story,' metrical tales from Boccaccio's themes, Mirandola' (which
Macready produced at Covent Garden with great success), and The
Flood of Thessaly. ' Then too he laid the foundation of the lyrical
BRYAN W. PROCTER
## p. 11850 (#480) ##########################################
11850
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
collection which, published in 1832, continued to receive additions for
many years.
Meantime he had become engaged to Miss Skepper, the daughter
of Mrs. Basil Montagu. But his health had failed; the lady was an
invalid also; and somebody described the lovers as supping together
at nine o'clock on water gruel. In 1825 Lamb wrote to Leigh Hunt,
"Barry Cornwall has at last carried off the pretty A. S. They are
just in the treacle moon. Hope it won't clog his wings, 'gaum,' as
we used to say at school. "
Mrs. Procter was beloved and admired by all who knew her; her
house was the most popular rendezvous for literary men in London.
She had a sort of divination as to genius, recognizing it however
disguised. Monckton Milnes dedicated his life of Keats to her as
"A poet's wife, a poet's mother, and herself of many poets the fre-
quent theme and valued friend. " The admirable pen-and-ink sketch
of Keats in Milnes's 'Life' is by Mrs. Procter, who had as acute a
perception of likeness as she had of character.
Literature had been the pastime of Procter's leisure. He had pub-
lished all his poems under the pen-name of "Barry Cornwall"; not,
as Moore somewhat maliciously quotes, "because he was a gentleman
of fortune, and did not like to have his name free in the reviews,"
but because of that intellectual reserve and sensitiveness that influ-
enced his whole life, and of a curious underestimate of his talent.
After his marriage, when his partial loss of fortune made it neces-
sary to add to his income, he had neither strength nor ambition
to pursue literature in the intervals of business, but returned with
energy to his conveyancing. His idealism in verse contrasts strangely
with the cautious prudence of his external life. He sat up two nights
in the week to do his professional work; he took pupils, among whom
were Eliot Warburton and Kinglake; and he was a commissioner of
lunacy for many years.
His life was full of happiness and success; and during his age the
devotion of John Kenyon, of Dickens, of Thackeray (who dedicated
'Vanity Fair' to him), and after their deaths, the friendship of
Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Lord Houghton, and a host of others,
made an Indian summer around the old man's hearth. In person he
greatly resembled Walter Scott; and he was not unlike Scott in
his genius, with its union of romance and practicality. "Everybody
loves him," wrote Crabb Robinson. "The beloved and honored Barry
Cornwall, whose minstrel name I venture to speak," says Hawthorne.
He died in London, October 4th, 1874.
Procter's early verse was greatly influenced by his contemporaries.
Lamb was his guide in the fields of Elizabethan drama, Leigh Hunt
taught him poetic methods (as he in turn afterwards taught Poe),
## p. 11851 (#481) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11851
and Keats appealed to his æsthetic side. But Keats, infinitely richer
and more fertile, wrote of what he imagined; Procter of what he had
seen and read, not of what he had felt or experienced. On the other
hand, he was already a finished workman when at twenty-eight he
began to write, with a nature sensuous indeed but sane.
Among the 'Dramatic Sketches,' the 'Return of Mark Antony,'
'Julian the Apostate,' and 'The Way to Conquer,' are simple and
passionate; and the poem 'The Flower,' from the last named, has
the flavor and the picturesque detail of Shakespeare. Charles Lamb
said that there was not one of the 'Dramatic Sketches' which he
would not have placed in his collection if he had found it in the
Garrick plays at the British Museum. Even Carlyle pressed Procter
to continue his dramatic writings, as the best expression of his gift.
But while the modern reader has an acute pleasure in recognizing
how perfectly he has caught the spirit of the Elizabethan, or rather
the Jacobean drama, the quality of that pleasure soon reveals the
quality of Procter's talent. The interest in the 'Dramatic Scenes' is
purely literary; and 'Mirandola,' which was acted for sixteen nights,
and for which the author got six hundred and thirty pounds, owes its
popularity to the judgment of his literary contemporaries, who with
it have passed away.
Throughout his tragedies were scattered little lyric songs, in which
we see the groundwork of his later eminence; for he was to find his
place as a lyric poet. The dramatic quality, which in his 'Sketches'
excites a mere literary interest, perfectly expressed itself in musical
outbursts of thought, sorrow, and delight. They include all poetic
feelings "from sweetest melancholy to glad animal joy. " Not Pros-
pero's tricksy spirit has more glorious liberty than "The Stormy
Petrel'; the virile barytone quality, as Mr. Stedman describes it, of
"The Hunting Song,' wakes the lusty morn; 'Drink and Fill the
Night with Mirth' has the lightness of Anacreon; 'King Death' is
as fantastic as one of Doré's paintings; and perhaps the most perfect
lyric ever addressed by a poet to his wife is the little song set to
Neukomm's music:-
"How many summers, Love,
Have I been thine ? »
The delicate perfume of a flower is in the melody,
"Sit down, sad soul,
The moment's flying;"
and such songs as Touch us gently, Time,' 'The Sea, the Sea, the
Open Sea, and the dirge, 'Peace, what can tears avail? ' have touched
three generations of readers, some of whom, like Miss Martineau,–
## p. 11852 (#482) ##########################################
11852
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
whose brilliant sketch of Procter has best preserved his personality,
are not easily moved.
-
Early in his career he wrote much prose for the Literary Gazette,
showing great satirical power, a faculty he rarely exercised. It was
this characteristic, perhaps, that induced Jeffrey to try to secure him
for the Edinburgh; and perhaps the consciousness that he possessed
it decided him to decline. His Life of Lamb' was written after he
was seventy-seven years old; but although it is the most entertaining
of books, it fails to leave on the reader the impression of a character.
Lamb's personality had a piquancy which must be suggested, - not
explained, as is Procter's straightforward way.
What he failed to do for Lamb, Coventry Patmore did for him, in
his admirable Life of Bryan Waller Procter' (1877); a portrait con-
ceived as a whole, and suffused with its hero's indefinite charm.
-
ADELAIDE PROCTER, the daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, was
born in London in 1825. A shy and gentle girl, "my golden-tressèd
Adelaide," as he called her, she was her father's intimate companion
almost from her birth, when he addressed to her the lovely lines be-
ginning "Child of my heart. " She wrote her first poems for Dickens's
Household Words; but, afraid that the editor might accept them on
account of his friendship for the family, sent them under the pen-
name of Mary Berwick. Mr. James T.
Fields, in his 'Barry Cornwall
and his Friends,' gives a charming description of Dickens's dining
with the Procters, and launching into enthusiastic praise of "Mary
Berwick" in Mrs. Procter's presence, who, in the secret, revealed with
tears the real name of the author.
The 'Lyrics' were collected and published in 1853; and in seven
years had reached their ninth edition,- Tennyson's poems not exceed-
ing them in popularity. They take single emotional themes, usually
permeated by a gentle piety. "It is like telling one's beads," says
Mr. Stedman, "or reading a prayer-book, to turn over her pure pages. "
Miss Procter became a Catholic in her later life, and was devoted to
works of charity and philanthropy. She died in London, February 3d,
1864.
## p. 11853 (#483) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11853
THE SEA
HE Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.
THE
I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love (oh! how I love) to ride
On the fierce foaming bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull tame shore
But I loved the great Sea more and more;
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest:
And a mother she was and is to me
For I was born on the open Sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the Ocean-child!
I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,-
But never have sought, nor sighed for change;
And death, whenever he come to me,
Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea!
## p. 11854 (#484) ##########################################
11854
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
A PETITION TO TIME
OUCH us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently, as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!
Του
Humble voyagers are we,
Husband, wife, and children three.
(One is lost, an angel, fled
To the azure overhead! )
Touch us gently, Time!
We've not proud nor soaring wings:
Our ambition, our content,
Lies in single things.
Humble voyagers are we,
O'er Life's dim unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime:
Touch us gently, gentle Time!
――――――
WⓇ
E ARE born; we laugh; we weep;
We love; we droop; we die!
Ah! wherefore do we laugh or weep?
Why do we live or die?
LIFE
Who knows that secret deep?
Alas, not I!
We toil
Why doth the violet spring
Unseen by human eye?
Why do the radiant seasons bring
Sweet thoughts that quickly fly?
Why do our fond hearts cling
To things that die?
through pain and wrong;
We fight and fly;
We love; we lose; and then, ere long,
Stone-dead we lie.
O life! is all thy song
"Endure and - die "?
## p. 11855 (#485) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11855
INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN
EST! This little Fountain runs
RES Thus for aye: it never stays
For the look of summer suns,
Nor the cold of winter days.
Whosoe'er shall wander near,
When the Syrian heat is worst,
Let him hither come, nor fear
Lest he may not slake his thirst:
He will find this little river
Running still, as bright as ever.
Let him drink and onward hie,
Bearing but in thought that I,
EROTAS, bade the Naiad fall,
And thank the great god Pan for all!
"SIT DOWN, SAD SOUL»
IT down, sad soul, and count
The moments flying:
Come- tell the sweet amount
That's lost by sighing!
How many smiles? - a score?
Then laugh, and count no more;
For day is dying.
S¹T
Lie down, sad soul, and sleep,
And no more measure
The flight of Time, nor weep
The loss of leisure;
But here, by this lone stream,
Lie down with us, and dream
Of starry treasure.
We dream-do thou the same;
We love forever;
-
We laugh, yet few we shame,—
The gentle, never.
Stay, then, till Sorrow dies;
Then hope and happy skies
Are thine forever!
## p. 11856 (#486) ##########################################
11856
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
THE POET'S SONG TO HIS WIFE
ow many summers, Love,
Have I been thine?
HOW
How many days, thou dove,
Hast thou been mine?
Time, like the winged wind
When 't bends the flowers,
Hath left no mark behind,
To count the hours.
Some weight of thought, though loth,
On thee he leaves;
Some lines of care round both
Perhaps he weaves;
Some fears a soft regret
For joys scarce known;
Sweet looks we half forget;
All else is flown.
-
Ah! with what thankless heart
I mourn and sing!
Look where our children start,
Like sudden Spring!
With tongues all sweet and low,
Like a pleasant rhyme,
They tell how much I owe
To thee and Time!
"PEACE! WHAT DO TEARS AVAIL? »
EACE! what do tears avail?
She lies all dumb and pale;
And from her eye
The spirit of lovely life is fading,
And she must die!
Why looks the lover wroth? the friend upbraiding?
Reply, reply!
PEA
Hath she not dwelt too long
'Midst pain and grief and wrong?
Then why not die?
## p. 11857 (#487) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11857
Why suffer again her doom of sorrow,
And hopeless lie?
Why nurse the trembling dream until to-morrow?
Reply, reply!
Death! Take her to thine arms,
In all her stainless charms,
And with her fly
To heavenly haunts, where, clad in brightness,
The Angels lie.
Wilt bear her there, O Death, in all her whiteness?
Reply, reply!
THE STORMY PETREL
THOUSAND miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea;
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast.
The sails are scattered abroad like weeds;
The strong masts shake like quivering reeds;
The mighty cables and iron chains,
The hull which all earthly strength disdains,—
They strain and they crack; and hearts like stone
Their natural, hard, proud strength disown.
Up and down! up and down!
From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam,
The stormy petrel finds a home;
A home, if such a place may be
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,
And only seeketh her rocky lair
To warm her young, and to teach them to spring
At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!
O'er the deep! o'er the deep!
Where the whale and the shark and the sword-fish
sleep-
Outflying the blast and the driving rain,
The petrel telleth her tale-in vain;
For the mariner curseth the warning bird
Which bringeth him news of the storm unheard!
XX-742
## p. 11858 (#488) ##########################################
11858
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
Ah! thus does the prophet of good or ill
Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still;
Yet he ne'er falters-so, petrel, spring
Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing!
[The three poems immediately following are by Adelaide Anne Procter. ]
A DOUBTING HEART
HERE are the swallows fled?
Frozen and dead,
WHERE
Perchance upon some bleak and stormy shore.
O doubting heart!
Far over purple seas,
They wait, in sunny ease,
The balmy southern breeze,
To bring them to their northern homes once more.
Why must the flowers die ?
Prisoned they lie
In the cold tomb, heedless of tears or rain.
O doubting heart!
They only sleep below
The soft white ermine snow
While winter winds shall blow,
To breathe and smile upon you soon again.
The sun has hid its rays
These many days;
Will dreary hours never leave the earth?
O doubting heart!
The stormy clouds on high
Veil the same sunny sky
That soon (for spring is nigh)
Shall wake the summer into golden mirth.
Fair hope is dead, and light
Is quenched in night.
What sound can break the silence of despair?
O doubting heart!
Thy sky is overcast,
Yet stars shall rise at last,
Brighter for darkness past,
And angels' silver voices stir the air.
## p. 11859 (#489) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11859
A WOMAN'S QUESTION
EFORE I trust my fate to thee,
Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee, question thy soul to-night for me.
B
I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
A shadow of regret:
Is there one link within the past
That holds thy spirit yet?
Or is thy faith as clear and free as that which I can pledge to thee?
Does there within thy dimmest dreams
A possible future shine,
Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
Untouched, unshared by mine?
If so, at any pain or cost, oh, tell me before all is lost.
Look deeper still. If thou canst feel
Within thy inmost soul,
That thou hast kept a portion back,
While I have staked the whole,-
Let no false pity spare the blow, but in true mercy tell me so.
Is there within thy heart a need
That mine cannot fulfill ?
One chord that any other hand
Could better wake or still?
Speak now-lest at some future day my whole life wither and decay.
Lives there within thy nature hid
The demon-spirit Change,
Shedding a passing glory still
On all things new and strange?
It may not be thy fault alone - but shield my heart against thy own.
Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day,
And answer to my claim,
That Fate, and that to-day's mistake,-
Not thou,- had been to blame?
Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou wilt surely warn and
save me now.
Nay, answer not, I dare not hear:
The words would come too late;
-
## p. 11860 (#490) ##########################################
11860
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
So comfort thee, my Fate:
Whatever on my heart may fall,-remember, I would risk it all!
A LOST CHORD
SEAT
EATED one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
That came from the soul of the organ
And entered into mine.
It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;
It may be that only in heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.
## p. 11861 (#491) ##########################################
11861
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
(50 ? -15? B. C. )
BY GEORGE MEASON WHICHER
ITTLE is known of Propertius beyond the scanty information
to be gleaned from his own works. He was a provincial,
like so many prominent literary men of the day; of a good
Umbrian family. Most of his life seems to have been passed in
Rome, where he came to complete his education; but scarcely an
event in it can be dated with certainty. The latest allusion in his
works seems to refer to events of the year
16 B. C. , and it is surmised that he was
born about the year 50. It is a matter of
comparative indifference, however, whether
these and other conjectures are correct or
not. His five short books, mostly love po-
ems, sufficiently reveal the man; and there
is little in them which we could read with
greater interest for knowing who walked
behind lictors when it was written.
Propertius was one of that group of poets
who enjoyed the friendship and patronage
of Mæcenas, and who undertook to create
a new school of Latin poetry by following
still more closely Greek models. While
Virgil meditated "something greater than the Iliad," and Horace
wedded Eolian song to Italian measures, the younger and more
ardent Propertius devoted himself to erotic poetry and the perfecting
of the elegy. Gallus and Catullus had already naturalized this form
of poetry at Rome; Tibullus was winning great applause with it at
this very time; but with characteristic ambition and self-confidence
Propertius claimed it as his own especial field. The success of his
first volume, devoted to the praises of his mistress Cynthia, had
won him the favor of the all-powerful Mæcenas. In the three or four
succeeding books, - the division is uncertain,- he feels little doubt
that he has vindicated his right to be called the Roman Callimachus,
the "first initiate into the rites of Philetas's sacred grove," as he
expresses it. It was only with much doubt that so good a critic as
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
## p. 11862 (#492) ##########################################
11862
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
Quintilian denied his pre-eminence; and modern readers are still
more inclined to admit that with all his defects, Propertius is un-
doubtedly the master of the Latin elegy. It is an instrument of
somewhat narrow compass at best; but Propertius, more than all his
rivals, shows us its full range. Whether in the transcription of a
national legend, or in celebrating the glory of Augustus, or writing the
epitaph of Gallus or Marcellus, or most of all, in depicting the mani-
fold phases of a lover's mind, his work reveals a vigor and a sin-
cerity of spirit, a fertility of fancy, a pathos and a passion, which
are unequaled by any other elegiac poet. Some of them may excel
him in certain qualities, but none has his power and his variety com-
bined.
Even his warmest admirers must admit that his work is marred
by very grave defects. To begin with, he did not choose his models
wisely. Like all of his contemporaries he was fascinated by Alexan-
drine erudition; but he did not learn, as did the greatest poets of his
age, to correct this tendency by a close study of the earlier masters.
Indeed it is surmised, in the absence of the poems of Callimachus,
that Propertius has gone beyond his instruction. Doctus was a favor-
ite adjective with which to compliment a poet of that age, and Pro-
pertius strove to merit it by displaying his learning in and out of
season. He delights to refer to the most abstruse of myths, or to
their least familiar characters. Never poet stood more in need of
Corinna's advice; for his sack contained only the toughest nuts of the
Greek legend. The obscurity created by this fondness for mythologic
lore is too often increased by an abruptness of thought occasionally
bordering on incoherence. Images are not always clearly conceived.
in his impetuous imagination; and there is not infrequently an
awkwardness of phraseology, or an inexactness of expression. Some-
times one is faintly reminded of Persius and his verbal contortions,
or of other poets who fancy they have made poetry when they have
only written impossible prose.
All these are serious faults; and more likely to endear an author
to schoolmasters and editors than to lovers of poetry. But the per-
sonality of Propertius is strong enough to dominate them all. Few
writers win for themselves a more willing indulgence, or give a
clearer impression of a talent greater than its best work. Sooner or
later his readers come to believe that he might have done greater
things had he so chosen. He chose, however, to lavish his power
upon love elegies; and it is by them that he is usually judged. In
intensity of passion, in utter simplicity and directness of its expres-
sion, Propertius is inferior to Catullus,-as who is not? But as a
poet of love he may safely challenge comparison with any but Ca-
tullus. His Cynthia is never to be classed with the shadowy Chloes
## p. 11863 (#493) ##########################################
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
11863
and Leuconoës of Horace's bloodless affections. The genuineness of
his love is undoubted. His delight in the charms and accomplish-
ments of his mistress; the jealousy provoked by her infidelities; his
sorrow at parting from her, even in fancy; the rapture of a recon-
ciliation; these and many another aspect of love, and the "evil cares
which it has," are depicted with unmistakable sincerity. For Cyn-
thia's sake he will give up a career, and abandon his plans for travel
abroad. At times he even refuses to write on any other subject:
Cynthia is the first and will be the last of his songs.
The day came, however, when he could narrate his own infidel-
ity, and picture Cynthia's successor filching jewelry from her funeral
pyre. More and more throughout his later books, it is apparent that
other themes were claiming part of his attention. To most men his
great passion will hardly seem a less genuine experience because he
too came to feel that life is greater than love. Believers in poetical
fitness may insist that he died shortly after ceasing to write on the
all-absorbing theme; but the man Propertius, though not the poet,
is quite as likely to have lived to found the family which Pliny
expressly ascribes to him.
Some of the most pleasing of the poems are among the num-
ber not concerned with Cynthia. The "queen of elegies," his noble
epitaph on Cornelia, is deservedly famous, though marred by his
characteristic faults. In the last book are found also a few poems,
dealing with the legendary history of Rome. Whether we regard
them as among his earliest, or as their metrical structure would
seem to indicate, his latest works, they are an interesting evidence of
the manner in which his intense nature responded to the appeal of
national and patriotic themes. It has been surmised that they prob-
ably suggested to Ovid the plan of his 'Fasti. ' Ovid mentions Pro-
pertius with warm admiration, and many imitations and echoes show
clearly the impression made by Propertius upon the poets of the
younger generation. By later Roman writers Propertius is seldom
cited, and there are no selections from his works in the anthologies.
The extant manuscripts are for the most part late, and much
interpolated, as might be expected in the case of a writer so often
obscure. The same quality has caused the earlier editions of the
elegies to be loaded with useless conjectures, and subjected to the
most arbitrary rearrangement.
and going with them to Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's
degree in 1686. His first piece of clever writing, a parody of Dryden's
poem The Hind and the Panther,' was executed at this period in
collaboration with Charles Montagu, who, like Prior, was freshly wear-
ing his college honors. The greater part was Prior's, and the jeu
d'esprit was published as 'The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd to
the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse' (London, 1687),
and bore such mottoes as "Much Malice mingled with a little Wit. "
It has no great merit aside from boyish animal spirits, but may be
accepted as a prophecy of better work now that we know the better
MATTHEW PRIOR
## p. 11838 (#468) ##########################################
11838
MATTHEW PRIOR
work to have been accomplished. Some idea of the style of its
humor-exceedingly like that of the stock newspaper humorist in
the American press of to-day-may be appreciated by comparing
Dryden's lines,-
"A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and o'er the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin,"
-
with Prior's corresponding ones, ridiculing the idea of a quadruped
guiltless of sin:-
"A milk-white mouse, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on soft cheese, and o'er the dairy ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no gin. »
In 1688 Prior obtained a fellowship, and was also made tutor to
Lord Exeter's sons; and having won distinguished patronage, was
appointed secretary to the ambassador to Holland. After spending
three years at The Hague, he was sent to France in the same ca-
pacity. Returning to England in 1701, he entered Parliament, became
a Tory, and in 1711 was sent on a secret mission to Paris, where he
attracted the favor of Louis XIV. A letter from le Grand Monarque
to Queen Anne said at its close: "I expect with impatience the
return of Mr. Prior, whose conduct is very agreeable to me;" and
the English Queen replied: "I send back Mr. Prior to Versailles,
who, in continuing to conduct himself in the manner that shall be
entirely agreeable to you, does no more than execute, to a tittle, the
orders which I have given him. " Bolingbroke and Swift greatly ad-
mired his diplomatic qualities (although Pope sneered at them), and
archives exist in Paris that attest his faithful service. One of Prior's
favorite sayings was, "I had rather be thought a good Englishman
than be the best poet or greatest scholar that ever wrote. » When
the Whigs came into power, Prior returned to England in 1715 to
suffer imprisonment; and when discharged he settled at Down-Hall,
Essex, on an estate that he had purchased. He died at Lord Har-
ley's country-seat of Wimpole, Cambridge, September 18th, 1721, and
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Prior considered a long poem, Solomon, or the Vanity of the
World,' his most important work. It was greatly admired by Cow-
per, but is seldom read to-day. 'Alma, or the Progress of the Mind,' is
also long, but contains many witty Hudibrastic passages. The 'Tales'
are rather coarse for modern taste, and Prior's fame rests upon his
## p. 11839 (#469) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11839
lyrics, epigrams, and playful poems. In 'An English Padlock' occur
the often quoted lines as advice to a husband:-
"Be to her virtues very kind;
Be to her faults a little blind;
Let all her ways be unconfined,
And clap your Padlock-on her mind. "
Prior has always been a favorite with men of letters.
Gay said
that he was beloved by every Muse"; Allan Ramsay wrote a pastoral
on his death, beginning "Dear, sweet-tongued Matt! thousands shall
greet for thee;" Swift was extremely fond of him, and took great
trouble to find subscribers for his poems; and Thackeray in his 'Eng-
lish Humorists' calls him "a world-philosopher of no small genius,
good-nature, and acumen," and considers his "among the easiest, the
richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.
Horace is always in his mind," he continues; "and his song, and his
philosophy, his good sense, his happy, easy turns and melody, his
loves, and his epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most
delightful and accomplished master. " His poem 'To a Child of Qual-
ity Swinburne calls "the most adorable of nursery idyls that ever
was or will be in our language. " His own estimation of himself may
be learned by the following verses from his poem entitled 'For my
Own Monument':-
"Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
His virtue and vice were as other men's are;
High hopes he conceived, and he smothered great fears,
In a life particolored, half pleasure, half care.
"Not to business a drudge, not to faction a slave,
He strove to make int'rest and freedom agree;
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord! how merry was he!
"Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirled in the round, as the wheel turned about,
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust. "
TO A CHILD OF QUALITY
ORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band
L That wear the fair Miss Mary's fetters,
Were summoned by her high command
To show their passions by their letters.
## p. 11840 (#470) ##########################################
11840
MATTHEW PRIOR
My pen amo
mong the rest I took,
Lest those bright eyes that cannot read
Should dart their kindling fires, and look
The power they have to be obeyed.
Nor quality nor reputation
Forbid me yet my flame to tell;
Dear five-year-old befriends my passion,
And I may write till she can spell.
For while she makes her silkworms beds
With all the tender things I swear,
Whilst all the house my passion reads
In papers round her baby's hair,
She may receive and own my flame;
For though the strictest prudes should know it,
She'll pass for a most virtuous dame,
And I for an unhappy poet.
Then, too, alas! when she shall tear
The lines some younger rival sends,
She'll give me leave to write, I fear,
And we shall still continue friends.
For as our different ages move,
'Tis so ordained, (would Fate but mend it! )
That I shall be past making love
When she begins to comprehend it.
SONG
N VAIN you tell your parting lover,
You wish fair winds may waft him over; —
Alas! what winds can happy prove,
That bear me far from what I love?
Alas! what dangers on the main
Can equal those that I sustain
From slighted vows and cold disdain?
Be gentle, and in pity choose
To wish the wildest tempests loose;
That thrown again upon the coast,
Where first my shipwrecked heart was lost,
I may once more repeat my pain;
Once more in dying notes complain
Of slighted vows and cold disdain.
## p. 11841 (#471) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11841
XX-741
TO A LADY
SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME IN
THE ARGUMENT
SPAR
PARE, generous Victor, spare the slave,
Who did unequal war pursue;
That more than triumph he might have,
In being overcome by you.
In the dispute whate'er I said,
My heart was by my tongue belied;
And in my looks you might have read
How much I argued on your side.
You, far from danger as from fear,
Might have sustained an open fight:
For seldom your opinions err;
Your eyes are always in the right.
Why, fair one, would you not rely
On Reason's force with Beauty's joined?
Could I their prevalence deny,
I must at once be deaf and blind.
Alas! not hoping to subdue,
I only to the fight aspired;
To keep the beauteous foe in view
Was all the glory I desired.
But she, howe'er of victory sure,
Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
And armed with more immediate power,
Calls cruel silence to her aid.
Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight;
She drops her arms, to gain the field;
Secures her conquest by her flight,
And triumphs when she seems to yield.
So when the Parthian turned his steed,
And from the hostile camp withdrew,
With cruel skill the backward reed
He sent; and as he fled he slew.
## p. 11842 (#472) ##########################################
11842
MATTHEW PRIOR
AN ODE
THE
HE merchant, to secure his treasure,
Conveys it in a borrowed name:
Euphelia serves to grace my measure,
But Chloe is my real flame.
My softest verse, my darling lyre,
Upon Euphelia's toilet lay:
When Chloe noted her desire
That I should sing, that I should play,
My lyre I tune, my voice I raise;
But with my numbers mix my sighs:
And whilst I sing Euphelia's praise,
I fix my soul on Chloe's eyes.
Fair Chloe blushed; Euphelia frowned;
I sung and gazed; I played and trembled:
And Venus to the Loves around
Remarked, how ill we all dissembled.
CUPID MISTAKEN
S AFTER noon, one summer's day,
A Venus stood bathing in a river,
Cupid a-shooting went that way,
New strung his bow, new filled his quiver.
With skill he chose his sharpest dart,
With all his might his bow he drew;
Swift to his beauteous parent's heart
The too well guided arrow flew.
I faint! I die! the goddess cried;
O cruel, couldst thou find none other
To wreck thy spleen on? Parricide!
Like Nero, thou hast slain thy mother.
Poor Cupid, sobbing, scarce could speak:
Indeed, mamma, I did not know ye;
Alas! how easy my mistake,—
I took you for your likeness Chloe.
## p. 11843 (#473) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11843
A BETTER ANSWER
D
EAR Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty face;
Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurled:
Pr'ythee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaff says)
Let us e'en talk a little like folks of this world.
How canst thou presume thou hast leave to destroy
The beauties which Venus but lent to thy keeping?
Those looks were designed to inspire love and joy:
More ord'nary eyes may serve people for weeping.
To be vexed at a trifle or two that I writ:
Your judgment at once, and my passion you wrong;
You take that for fact, which will scarce be found wit:
'Ods life! must one swear to the truth of a song?
What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The difference there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose;
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart.
The god of us verse-men,- you know, child, the sun,
How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
No matter what beauties I saw in my way,
They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war;
And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree:
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her,
As he was a poet sublimer than me.
D
A SIMILE
EAR Thomas, didst thou never pop
Thy head into a tinman's shop?
There, Thomas, didst thou never see-
'Tis but by way of simile—
A squirrel spend his little rage
In jumping round a rolling cage?
## p. 11844 (#474) ##########################################
11844
MATTHEW PRIOR
The cage, as either side turned up,
Striking a ring of bells a-top? -
Moved in the orb, pleased with the chimes,
The foolish creature thinks he climbs;
But here or there, turn wood or wire,
He never gets two inches higher.
So fares it with those merry blades
That frisk it under Pindus's shades:
In noble songs and lofty odes,
They tread on stars and talk with gods;
Still dancing in an airy round,
Still pleased with their own verses' sound:
Brought back, how fast soe'er they go,
Always aspiring, always low.
THE SECRETARY
WRITTEN AT THE HAGUE, MDCXCVI.
WH
HILE with labor assiduous due pleasure I mix,
And in one day atone for the business of six,
In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night,
On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right;
No memoirs to compose, and no postboy to move,
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love;
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee.
This night and the next shall be hers and be mine,
To good or ill fortune the third we resign:
Thus scorning the world, and superior to fate,
I drive on my car in processional state.
So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode;
Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse,
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse;
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose,
In Holland half drowned in interest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried,
When The Hague and the present are both on my side?
And is it enough for the joys of the day,
To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say?
When good Vandergoes and his provident Vrow,
As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow,
That search all the province, you'll find no man dar is
So blest as the Englishen Heer Secretar' is.
## p. 11845 (#475) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11845
A TEST OF LOVE
From Henry and Emma'
HENRY
AINLY thou tell'st me what the woman's care
VA Shall in the wildness of the wood prepare:
Thou, ere thou goest, unhappiest of thy kind,
Must leave the habit and the sex behind.
No longer shall thy comely tresses break
In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck,
Or sit behind thy head, an ample round,
In graceful braids with various ribbon bound;
No longer shall the bodice, aptly laced,
From thy full bosom to thy slender waist,
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees and beautifully less;
Nor shall thy lower garment's artful plait,
From thy fair side dependent to thy feet,
Arm their chaste beauties with a modest pride,
And double every charm they seek to hide.
Th' ambrosial plenty of thy shining hair,
Cropt off and lost, scarce lower than thy ear
Shall stand uncouth; a horseman's coat shall hide
Thy taper shape and comeliness of side;
The short trunk-hose shall show thy foot and knee,
Licentious and to common eyesight free:
And, with a bolder stride and looser air,
Mingled with men, a man thou must appear.
Vagrants and outlaws shall offend thy view;
For such must be my friends, a hideous crew:
By adverse fortune mixed in social ill,
Trained to assault, and disciplined to kill;
Their common loves a lewd abandoned pack,
The beadle's lash still flagrant on their back,—
By sloth corrupted, by disorder fed,
Made bold by want and prostitute for bread:
With such must Emma hunt the tedious day,
Assist their violence and divide their prey;
With such she must return at setting light,—
Though not partaker, witness of their night.
Thy ear, inured to charitable sounds
And pitying love, must feel the hateful wounds
Of jest obscene and vulgar ribaldry,
The ill-bred question and the lewd reply;
## p. 11846 (#476) ##########################################
11846
MATTHEW PRIOR
Brought by long habitude from bad to worse,
Must hear the frequent oath, the direful curse,-
That latest weapon of the wretches' war,—
And blasphemy, sad comrade of despair.
Now, Emma, now the last reflection make,
What thou wouldst follow, what thou must forsake:
By our ill-omened stars and adverse Heaven,
No middle object to thy choice is given.
Or yield thy virtue to attain thy love,
Or leave a banished man, condemned in woods to rove.
EMMA
-
O grief of heart! that our unhappy fates
Force thee to suffer what thy honor hates:
Mix thee amongst the bad, or make thee run
Too near the paths which virtue bids thee shun.
Yet with her Henry still let Emma go;
With him abhor the vice, but share the woe:
And sure my little heart can never err
Amidst the worst, if Henry still be there. .
For thee alone these little charms I drest;
Condemned them or absolved them by thy test.
In comely figure ranged my jewels shone,
Or negligently placed, for thee alone;
For thee again they shall be laid aside:
The woman, Henry, shall put off her pride
For thee; my clothes, my sex, exchanged for thee,
I'll mingle with the people's wretched lee,—
Oh, line extreme of human infamy!
Wanting the scissors, with these hands I'll tear
(If that obstructs my flight) this load of hair.
Black soot, or yellow walnut, shall disgrace
This little red and white of Emma's face.
These nails with scratches shall deform my breast,
Lest by my look or color be expressed
The mark of aught high-born, or ever better dressed.
Yet in this commerce, under this disguise,
Let me be grateful still to Henry's eyes;
Lost to the world, let me to him be known:
My fate I can absolve, if he shall own
That, leaving all mankind, I love but him alone.
## p. 11847 (#477) ##########################################
MATTHEW PRIOR
11847
THE LADY'S LOOKING-GLASS
IN IMITATION OF A GREEK IDYLLIUM
ELIA and I the other day
Walked o'er the sand-hills to the sea:
The setting sun adorned the coast,
His beams entire, his fierceness lost;
And on the surface of the deep,
The winds lay only not asleep:
The nymph did like the scene appear,
Serenely pleasant, calmly fair;
Soft fell her words, as flew the air.
C
With secret joy I heard her say
That she would never miss one day
A walk so fine, a sight so gay.
But, oh the change! The winds grow high;
Impending tempests charge the sky;
The lightning flies; the thunder roars;
And big waves lash the frightened shores.
Struck with the horror of the sight,
She turns her head and wings her flight;
And trembling vows she'll ne'er again
Approach the shore or view the main.
"Once more at least look back," said I;
"Thyself in that large glass descry:
When thou art in good-humor drest,
When gentle reason rules thy breast,
The sun upon the calmest sea
Appears not half so bright as thee:
'Tis then that with delight I rove
Upon the boundless depth of love;
I bless my chain, I hand my oar,
Nor think on all I left on shore.
"But when vain doubt and groundless fear
Do that dear foolish bosom tear;
When the big lip and wat❜ry eye
Tell me the rising storm is nigh,-
'Tis then thou art yon angry main,
Deformed by winds and dashed by rain;
And the poor sailor, that must try
Its fury, labors less than I.
"Shipwrecked, in vain to land I make,
While Love and Fate still drive me back;
## p. 11848 (#478) ##########################################
1 1848
MATTHEW PRIOR
Forced to dote on thee thy own way,
I chide thee first, and then obey.
Wretched when from thee, vexed when nigh,
I with thee or without thee die. "
THE FEMALE PHAETON
HUS Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as a colt untamed,
THU
Bespoke the fair from whence she sprung,
With little rage inflamed:
Inflamed with rage at sad restraint,
Which wise mamma ordained;
And sorely vext to play the saint,
Whilst wit and beauty reigned:-
"Shall I thumb holy books, confined
With Abigails forsaken?
Kitty's for other things designed,
Or I am much mistaken.
"Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
And visit with her cousins?
At balls must she make all the rout,
And bring home hearts by dozens?
"What has she better, pray, than I,
What hidden charms to boast,
That all mankind for her should die,
Whilst I am scarce a toast?
"Dearest mamma! for once let me
Unchained my fortune try:
I'll have my earl as well as she,
Or know the reason why.
"I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score,
Make all her lovers fall:
They'll grieve I was not loosed before;
She, I was loosed at all. "
Fondness prevailed; mamma gave way:
Kitty, at heart's desire,
Obtained the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire.
1
## p. 11849 (#479) ##########################################
11849
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER
(1787-1874)
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
(1825-1864)
B
RYAN WALLER PROCTER was born in London, England, No-
vember 21st, 1787, according to his biographers, though he
himself put the date two years later. He came of good
farmer stock in Yorkshire; and, his father having accumulated con-
siderable fortune, he was sent to Harrow, where he was the contem-
porary of Byron and Peel. At twenty he
was bound to a solicitor at Calne, came up
to London in 1807 to live, and for the next
eight years was sufficiently occupied in do-
ing it. It was not until he was twenty-eight
that he began to write, "attracted," as he
says of himself, "to literature as a refined
amusement. "
Meanwhile he had formed the friend-
ships which were to influence his life; his
own personality and his excellent judgment
having their effect on his associates. Haz-
litt, who put himself out for few people,
thought so highly of his talents that he
always talked his best when Procter was
present. Talfourd says, "Charles Lamb regarded Procter as the spirit
most congenial with his own in its most serious moods;" and in his
celebrated letter to Southey in the London Magazine for October, 1823,
Lamb speaks of him as "Procter, candid and affectionate as his own
poetry. " Rogers introduced him to Moore as "well worth cultivat-
ing"; and his friendship with Leigh Hunt was maintained unclouded
throughout Hunt's long life. His father having bequeathed him a
comfortable property, Procter's first poems were written during years
of freedom and enjoyment. From 1819 to 1823 he wrote the 'Dra-
matic Scenes and Other Poems,' 'Marcia Colonna,' The Sicilian
Story,' metrical tales from Boccaccio's themes, Mirandola' (which
Macready produced at Covent Garden with great success), and The
Flood of Thessaly. ' Then too he laid the foundation of the lyrical
BRYAN W. PROCTER
## p. 11850 (#480) ##########################################
11850
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
collection which, published in 1832, continued to receive additions for
many years.
Meantime he had become engaged to Miss Skepper, the daughter
of Mrs. Basil Montagu. But his health had failed; the lady was an
invalid also; and somebody described the lovers as supping together
at nine o'clock on water gruel. In 1825 Lamb wrote to Leigh Hunt,
"Barry Cornwall has at last carried off the pretty A. S. They are
just in the treacle moon. Hope it won't clog his wings, 'gaum,' as
we used to say at school. "
Mrs. Procter was beloved and admired by all who knew her; her
house was the most popular rendezvous for literary men in London.
She had a sort of divination as to genius, recognizing it however
disguised. Monckton Milnes dedicated his life of Keats to her as
"A poet's wife, a poet's mother, and herself of many poets the fre-
quent theme and valued friend. " The admirable pen-and-ink sketch
of Keats in Milnes's 'Life' is by Mrs. Procter, who had as acute a
perception of likeness as she had of character.
Literature had been the pastime of Procter's leisure. He had pub-
lished all his poems under the pen-name of "Barry Cornwall"; not,
as Moore somewhat maliciously quotes, "because he was a gentleman
of fortune, and did not like to have his name free in the reviews,"
but because of that intellectual reserve and sensitiveness that influ-
enced his whole life, and of a curious underestimate of his talent.
After his marriage, when his partial loss of fortune made it neces-
sary to add to his income, he had neither strength nor ambition
to pursue literature in the intervals of business, but returned with
energy to his conveyancing. His idealism in verse contrasts strangely
with the cautious prudence of his external life. He sat up two nights
in the week to do his professional work; he took pupils, among whom
were Eliot Warburton and Kinglake; and he was a commissioner of
lunacy for many years.
His life was full of happiness and success; and during his age the
devotion of John Kenyon, of Dickens, of Thackeray (who dedicated
'Vanity Fair' to him), and after their deaths, the friendship of
Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Lord Houghton, and a host of others,
made an Indian summer around the old man's hearth. In person he
greatly resembled Walter Scott; and he was not unlike Scott in
his genius, with its union of romance and practicality. "Everybody
loves him," wrote Crabb Robinson. "The beloved and honored Barry
Cornwall, whose minstrel name I venture to speak," says Hawthorne.
He died in London, October 4th, 1874.
Procter's early verse was greatly influenced by his contemporaries.
Lamb was his guide in the fields of Elizabethan drama, Leigh Hunt
taught him poetic methods (as he in turn afterwards taught Poe),
## p. 11851 (#481) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11851
and Keats appealed to his æsthetic side. But Keats, infinitely richer
and more fertile, wrote of what he imagined; Procter of what he had
seen and read, not of what he had felt or experienced. On the other
hand, he was already a finished workman when at twenty-eight he
began to write, with a nature sensuous indeed but sane.
Among the 'Dramatic Sketches,' the 'Return of Mark Antony,'
'Julian the Apostate,' and 'The Way to Conquer,' are simple and
passionate; and the poem 'The Flower,' from the last named, has
the flavor and the picturesque detail of Shakespeare. Charles Lamb
said that there was not one of the 'Dramatic Sketches' which he
would not have placed in his collection if he had found it in the
Garrick plays at the British Museum. Even Carlyle pressed Procter
to continue his dramatic writings, as the best expression of his gift.
But while the modern reader has an acute pleasure in recognizing
how perfectly he has caught the spirit of the Elizabethan, or rather
the Jacobean drama, the quality of that pleasure soon reveals the
quality of Procter's talent. The interest in the 'Dramatic Scenes' is
purely literary; and 'Mirandola,' which was acted for sixteen nights,
and for which the author got six hundred and thirty pounds, owes its
popularity to the judgment of his literary contemporaries, who with
it have passed away.
Throughout his tragedies were scattered little lyric songs, in which
we see the groundwork of his later eminence; for he was to find his
place as a lyric poet. The dramatic quality, which in his 'Sketches'
excites a mere literary interest, perfectly expressed itself in musical
outbursts of thought, sorrow, and delight. They include all poetic
feelings "from sweetest melancholy to glad animal joy. " Not Pros-
pero's tricksy spirit has more glorious liberty than "The Stormy
Petrel'; the virile barytone quality, as Mr. Stedman describes it, of
"The Hunting Song,' wakes the lusty morn; 'Drink and Fill the
Night with Mirth' has the lightness of Anacreon; 'King Death' is
as fantastic as one of Doré's paintings; and perhaps the most perfect
lyric ever addressed by a poet to his wife is the little song set to
Neukomm's music:-
"How many summers, Love,
Have I been thine ? »
The delicate perfume of a flower is in the melody,
"Sit down, sad soul,
The moment's flying;"
and such songs as Touch us gently, Time,' 'The Sea, the Sea, the
Open Sea, and the dirge, 'Peace, what can tears avail? ' have touched
three generations of readers, some of whom, like Miss Martineau,–
## p. 11852 (#482) ##########################################
11852
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
whose brilliant sketch of Procter has best preserved his personality,
are not easily moved.
-
Early in his career he wrote much prose for the Literary Gazette,
showing great satirical power, a faculty he rarely exercised. It was
this characteristic, perhaps, that induced Jeffrey to try to secure him
for the Edinburgh; and perhaps the consciousness that he possessed
it decided him to decline. His Life of Lamb' was written after he
was seventy-seven years old; but although it is the most entertaining
of books, it fails to leave on the reader the impression of a character.
Lamb's personality had a piquancy which must be suggested, - not
explained, as is Procter's straightforward way.
What he failed to do for Lamb, Coventry Patmore did for him, in
his admirable Life of Bryan Waller Procter' (1877); a portrait con-
ceived as a whole, and suffused with its hero's indefinite charm.
-
ADELAIDE PROCTER, the daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, was
born in London in 1825. A shy and gentle girl, "my golden-tressèd
Adelaide," as he called her, she was her father's intimate companion
almost from her birth, when he addressed to her the lovely lines be-
ginning "Child of my heart. " She wrote her first poems for Dickens's
Household Words; but, afraid that the editor might accept them on
account of his friendship for the family, sent them under the pen-
name of Mary Berwick. Mr. James T.
Fields, in his 'Barry Cornwall
and his Friends,' gives a charming description of Dickens's dining
with the Procters, and launching into enthusiastic praise of "Mary
Berwick" in Mrs. Procter's presence, who, in the secret, revealed with
tears the real name of the author.
The 'Lyrics' were collected and published in 1853; and in seven
years had reached their ninth edition,- Tennyson's poems not exceed-
ing them in popularity. They take single emotional themes, usually
permeated by a gentle piety. "It is like telling one's beads," says
Mr. Stedman, "or reading a prayer-book, to turn over her pure pages. "
Miss Procter became a Catholic in her later life, and was devoted to
works of charity and philanthropy. She died in London, February 3d,
1864.
## p. 11853 (#483) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11853
THE SEA
HE Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.
THE
I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love (oh! how I love) to ride
On the fierce foaming bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull tame shore
But I loved the great Sea more and more;
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest:
And a mother she was and is to me
For I was born on the open Sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the Ocean-child!
I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,-
But never have sought, nor sighed for change;
And death, whenever he come to me,
Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea!
## p. 11854 (#484) ##########################################
11854
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
A PETITION TO TIME
OUCH us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently, as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!
Του
Humble voyagers are we,
Husband, wife, and children three.
(One is lost, an angel, fled
To the azure overhead! )
Touch us gently, Time!
We've not proud nor soaring wings:
Our ambition, our content,
Lies in single things.
Humble voyagers are we,
O'er Life's dim unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime:
Touch us gently, gentle Time!
――――――
WⓇ
E ARE born; we laugh; we weep;
We love; we droop; we die!
Ah! wherefore do we laugh or weep?
Why do we live or die?
LIFE
Who knows that secret deep?
Alas, not I!
We toil
Why doth the violet spring
Unseen by human eye?
Why do the radiant seasons bring
Sweet thoughts that quickly fly?
Why do our fond hearts cling
To things that die?
through pain and wrong;
We fight and fly;
We love; we lose; and then, ere long,
Stone-dead we lie.
O life! is all thy song
"Endure and - die "?
## p. 11855 (#485) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11855
INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN
EST! This little Fountain runs
RES Thus for aye: it never stays
For the look of summer suns,
Nor the cold of winter days.
Whosoe'er shall wander near,
When the Syrian heat is worst,
Let him hither come, nor fear
Lest he may not slake his thirst:
He will find this little river
Running still, as bright as ever.
Let him drink and onward hie,
Bearing but in thought that I,
EROTAS, bade the Naiad fall,
And thank the great god Pan for all!
"SIT DOWN, SAD SOUL»
IT down, sad soul, and count
The moments flying:
Come- tell the sweet amount
That's lost by sighing!
How many smiles? - a score?
Then laugh, and count no more;
For day is dying.
S¹T
Lie down, sad soul, and sleep,
And no more measure
The flight of Time, nor weep
The loss of leisure;
But here, by this lone stream,
Lie down with us, and dream
Of starry treasure.
We dream-do thou the same;
We love forever;
-
We laugh, yet few we shame,—
The gentle, never.
Stay, then, till Sorrow dies;
Then hope and happy skies
Are thine forever!
## p. 11856 (#486) ##########################################
11856
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
THE POET'S SONG TO HIS WIFE
ow many summers, Love,
Have I been thine?
HOW
How many days, thou dove,
Hast thou been mine?
Time, like the winged wind
When 't bends the flowers,
Hath left no mark behind,
To count the hours.
Some weight of thought, though loth,
On thee he leaves;
Some lines of care round both
Perhaps he weaves;
Some fears a soft regret
For joys scarce known;
Sweet looks we half forget;
All else is flown.
-
Ah! with what thankless heart
I mourn and sing!
Look where our children start,
Like sudden Spring!
With tongues all sweet and low,
Like a pleasant rhyme,
They tell how much I owe
To thee and Time!
"PEACE! WHAT DO TEARS AVAIL? »
EACE! what do tears avail?
She lies all dumb and pale;
And from her eye
The spirit of lovely life is fading,
And she must die!
Why looks the lover wroth? the friend upbraiding?
Reply, reply!
PEA
Hath she not dwelt too long
'Midst pain and grief and wrong?
Then why not die?
## p. 11857 (#487) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11857
Why suffer again her doom of sorrow,
And hopeless lie?
Why nurse the trembling dream until to-morrow?
Reply, reply!
Death! Take her to thine arms,
In all her stainless charms,
And with her fly
To heavenly haunts, where, clad in brightness,
The Angels lie.
Wilt bear her there, O Death, in all her whiteness?
Reply, reply!
THE STORMY PETREL
THOUSAND miles from land are we,
Tossing about on the roaring sea;
From billow to bounding billow cast,
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast.
The sails are scattered abroad like weeds;
The strong masts shake like quivering reeds;
The mighty cables and iron chains,
The hull which all earthly strength disdains,—
They strain and they crack; and hearts like stone
Their natural, hard, proud strength disown.
Up and down! up and down!
From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam,
The stormy petrel finds a home;
A home, if such a place may be
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,
And only seeketh her rocky lair
To warm her young, and to teach them to spring
At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!
O'er the deep! o'er the deep!
Where the whale and the shark and the sword-fish
sleep-
Outflying the blast and the driving rain,
The petrel telleth her tale-in vain;
For the mariner curseth the warning bird
Which bringeth him news of the storm unheard!
XX-742
## p. 11858 (#488) ##########################################
11858
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
Ah! thus does the prophet of good or ill
Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still;
Yet he ne'er falters-so, petrel, spring
Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing!
[The three poems immediately following are by Adelaide Anne Procter. ]
A DOUBTING HEART
HERE are the swallows fled?
Frozen and dead,
WHERE
Perchance upon some bleak and stormy shore.
O doubting heart!
Far over purple seas,
They wait, in sunny ease,
The balmy southern breeze,
To bring them to their northern homes once more.
Why must the flowers die ?
Prisoned they lie
In the cold tomb, heedless of tears or rain.
O doubting heart!
They only sleep below
The soft white ermine snow
While winter winds shall blow,
To breathe and smile upon you soon again.
The sun has hid its rays
These many days;
Will dreary hours never leave the earth?
O doubting heart!
The stormy clouds on high
Veil the same sunny sky
That soon (for spring is nigh)
Shall wake the summer into golden mirth.
Fair hope is dead, and light
Is quenched in night.
What sound can break the silence of despair?
O doubting heart!
Thy sky is overcast,
Yet stars shall rise at last,
Brighter for darkness past,
And angels' silver voices stir the air.
## p. 11859 (#489) ##########################################
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
11859
A WOMAN'S QUESTION
EFORE I trust my fate to thee,
Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee, question thy soul to-night for me.
B
I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
A shadow of regret:
Is there one link within the past
That holds thy spirit yet?
Or is thy faith as clear and free as that which I can pledge to thee?
Does there within thy dimmest dreams
A possible future shine,
Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
Untouched, unshared by mine?
If so, at any pain or cost, oh, tell me before all is lost.
Look deeper still. If thou canst feel
Within thy inmost soul,
That thou hast kept a portion back,
While I have staked the whole,-
Let no false pity spare the blow, but in true mercy tell me so.
Is there within thy heart a need
That mine cannot fulfill ?
One chord that any other hand
Could better wake or still?
Speak now-lest at some future day my whole life wither and decay.
Lives there within thy nature hid
The demon-spirit Change,
Shedding a passing glory still
On all things new and strange?
It may not be thy fault alone - but shield my heart against thy own.
Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day,
And answer to my claim,
That Fate, and that to-day's mistake,-
Not thou,- had been to blame?
Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou wilt surely warn and
save me now.
Nay, answer not, I dare not hear:
The words would come too late;
-
## p. 11860 (#490) ##########################################
11860
BRYAN W. AND ADELAIDE PROCTER
Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
So comfort thee, my Fate:
Whatever on my heart may fall,-remember, I would risk it all!
A LOST CHORD
SEAT
EATED one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
That came from the soul of the organ
And entered into mine.
It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;
It may be that only in heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.
## p. 11861 (#491) ##########################################
11861
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
(50 ? -15? B. C. )
BY GEORGE MEASON WHICHER
ITTLE is known of Propertius beyond the scanty information
to be gleaned from his own works. He was a provincial,
like so many prominent literary men of the day; of a good
Umbrian family. Most of his life seems to have been passed in
Rome, where he came to complete his education; but scarcely an
event in it can be dated with certainty. The latest allusion in his
works seems to refer to events of the year
16 B. C. , and it is surmised that he was
born about the year 50. It is a matter of
comparative indifference, however, whether
these and other conjectures are correct or
not. His five short books, mostly love po-
ems, sufficiently reveal the man; and there
is little in them which we could read with
greater interest for knowing who walked
behind lictors when it was written.
Propertius was one of that group of poets
who enjoyed the friendship and patronage
of Mæcenas, and who undertook to create
a new school of Latin poetry by following
still more closely Greek models. While
Virgil meditated "something greater than the Iliad," and Horace
wedded Eolian song to Italian measures, the younger and more
ardent Propertius devoted himself to erotic poetry and the perfecting
of the elegy. Gallus and Catullus had already naturalized this form
of poetry at Rome; Tibullus was winning great applause with it at
this very time; but with characteristic ambition and self-confidence
Propertius claimed it as his own especial field. The success of his
first volume, devoted to the praises of his mistress Cynthia, had
won him the favor of the all-powerful Mæcenas. In the three or four
succeeding books, - the division is uncertain,- he feels little doubt
that he has vindicated his right to be called the Roman Callimachus,
the "first initiate into the rites of Philetas's sacred grove," as he
expresses it. It was only with much doubt that so good a critic as
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
## p. 11862 (#492) ##########################################
11862
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
Quintilian denied his pre-eminence; and modern readers are still
more inclined to admit that with all his defects, Propertius is un-
doubtedly the master of the Latin elegy. It is an instrument of
somewhat narrow compass at best; but Propertius, more than all his
rivals, shows us its full range. Whether in the transcription of a
national legend, or in celebrating the glory of Augustus, or writing the
epitaph of Gallus or Marcellus, or most of all, in depicting the mani-
fold phases of a lover's mind, his work reveals a vigor and a sin-
cerity of spirit, a fertility of fancy, a pathos and a passion, which
are unequaled by any other elegiac poet. Some of them may excel
him in certain qualities, but none has his power and his variety com-
bined.
Even his warmest admirers must admit that his work is marred
by very grave defects. To begin with, he did not choose his models
wisely. Like all of his contemporaries he was fascinated by Alexan-
drine erudition; but he did not learn, as did the greatest poets of his
age, to correct this tendency by a close study of the earlier masters.
Indeed it is surmised, in the absence of the poems of Callimachus,
that Propertius has gone beyond his instruction. Doctus was a favor-
ite adjective with which to compliment a poet of that age, and Pro-
pertius strove to merit it by displaying his learning in and out of
season. He delights to refer to the most abstruse of myths, or to
their least familiar characters. Never poet stood more in need of
Corinna's advice; for his sack contained only the toughest nuts of the
Greek legend. The obscurity created by this fondness for mythologic
lore is too often increased by an abruptness of thought occasionally
bordering on incoherence. Images are not always clearly conceived.
in his impetuous imagination; and there is not infrequently an
awkwardness of phraseology, or an inexactness of expression. Some-
times one is faintly reminded of Persius and his verbal contortions,
or of other poets who fancy they have made poetry when they have
only written impossible prose.
All these are serious faults; and more likely to endear an author
to schoolmasters and editors than to lovers of poetry. But the per-
sonality of Propertius is strong enough to dominate them all. Few
writers win for themselves a more willing indulgence, or give a
clearer impression of a talent greater than its best work. Sooner or
later his readers come to believe that he might have done greater
things had he so chosen. He chose, however, to lavish his power
upon love elegies; and it is by them that he is usually judged. In
intensity of passion, in utter simplicity and directness of its expres-
sion, Propertius is inferior to Catullus,-as who is not? But as a
poet of love he may safely challenge comparison with any but Ca-
tullus. His Cynthia is never to be classed with the shadowy Chloes
## p. 11863 (#493) ##########################################
SEXTUS PROPERTIUS
11863
and Leuconoës of Horace's bloodless affections. The genuineness of
his love is undoubted. His delight in the charms and accomplish-
ments of his mistress; the jealousy provoked by her infidelities; his
sorrow at parting from her, even in fancy; the rapture of a recon-
ciliation; these and many another aspect of love, and the "evil cares
which it has," are depicted with unmistakable sincerity. For Cyn-
thia's sake he will give up a career, and abandon his plans for travel
abroad. At times he even refuses to write on any other subject:
Cynthia is the first and will be the last of his songs.
The day came, however, when he could narrate his own infidel-
ity, and picture Cynthia's successor filching jewelry from her funeral
pyre. More and more throughout his later books, it is apparent that
other themes were claiming part of his attention. To most men his
great passion will hardly seem a less genuine experience because he
too came to feel that life is greater than love. Believers in poetical
fitness may insist that he died shortly after ceasing to write on the
all-absorbing theme; but the man Propertius, though not the poet,
is quite as likely to have lived to found the family which Pliny
expressly ascribes to him.
Some of the most pleasing of the poems are among the num-
ber not concerned with Cynthia. The "queen of elegies," his noble
epitaph on Cornelia, is deservedly famous, though marred by his
characteristic faults. In the last book are found also a few poems,
dealing with the legendary history of Rome. Whether we regard
them as among his earliest, or as their metrical structure would
seem to indicate, his latest works, they are an interesting evidence of
the manner in which his intense nature responded to the appeal of
national and patriotic themes. It has been surmised that they prob-
ably suggested to Ovid the plan of his 'Fasti. ' Ovid mentions Pro-
pertius with warm admiration, and many imitations and echoes show
clearly the impression made by Propertius upon the poets of the
younger generation. By later Roman writers Propertius is seldom
cited, and there are no selections from his works in the anthologies.
The extant manuscripts are for the most part late, and much
interpolated, as might be expected in the case of a writer so often
obscure. The same quality has caused the earlier editions of the
elegies to be loaded with useless conjectures, and subjected to the
most arbitrary rearrangement.
