Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you.
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v02 - Aqu to Bag
866 (#288) ############################################
866
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath-
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.
WE
ISOLATION
TO MARGUERITE
E WERE apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learned-
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturned.
Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell-
Thou lov'st no more;-Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! -and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign-
Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
How vain a thing is mortal love,
## p. 867 (#289) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
867
Wandering in Heaven, far removed;
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth-to prove, and make thine own:
"Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone. "
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things-
Ocean and clouds and night and day;
Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
And life, and others' joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.
Of happier men- for they, at least,
Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollow lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour—
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh, might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire? -
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea
## p. 868 (#290) ############################################
868
MATTHEW ARNOLD
STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF OBERMANN' (1849)
IN
IN FRONT the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack,
Close o'er it. in the air.
Behind are the abandoned baths
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley-paths,
The mists are on the Rhone —
The white mists rolling like a sea!
I hear the torrents roar.
- Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee;
I feel thee near once more.
I turn thy leaves! I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o'er thy soul.
Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe'er thou art,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain-air
Fresh through these pages blows;
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows;
Though here a mountain-murmur swells
Of many a dark-boughed pine;
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine-
Yet, through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain-bee,
There sobs I know not what ground-tone
Of human agony.
Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
## p. 869 (#291) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
869
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?
And then we turn, thou sadder sage,
To thee! we feel thy spell!
-
- The hopeless tangle of our age,
Thou too hast scanned it well!
Immovable thou sittest, still
As death, composed to bear!
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,
And icy thy despair.
He who hath watched, not shared, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone.
He only lives with the world's life
Who hath renounced his own.
To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled
Where thou, O seer! art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold-
The world is colder yet!
And thou hast pleasures, too, to share
With those who come to thee-
Balms floating on thy mountain-air,
And healing sights to see.
-
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet-door, and seen
The summer-day grow late;
And darkness steal o'er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starr'd,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward,
Lake Leman's waters, far below!
And watched the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow;
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue
Through the pine branches play —
## p. 870 (#292) ############################################
870
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Listened and felt thyself grow young!
Listened, and wept-Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad guide, adieu!
I go, fate drives me; but I leave
Half of my life with you.
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
I in the world must live; - but thou,
Thou melancholy shade!
Wilt not, if thou can'st see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The Children of the Second Birth,
Whom the world could not tame.
Farewell! Whether thou now liest near
That much-loved inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie;
And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,
Between the dusty vineyard-walls
Issuing on that green place,
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger's face,
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;
Or whether, by maligner fate,
Among the swarms of men,
Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
## p. 871 (#293) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
871
The Capital of Pleasures sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave;-
-
Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!
MEMORIAL VERSES (1850)
OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
G Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe's death was told, we said,
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
-
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said. The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
## p. 872 (#294) ############################################
872
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And Wordsworth! -Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us--and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth,
On the cool, flowery lap of earth.
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
## p. 873 (#295) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
873
THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA
O
HUSSEIN
MOST just Vizier, send away
The cloth-merchants, and let them be,
Them and their dues, this day! the King
Is ill at ease, and calls for thee.
THE VIZIER
O merchants, tarry yet a day
Here in Bokhara! but at noon,
To-morrow, come, and ye shall pay
Each fortieth web of cloth to me,
As the law is, and go your way.
O Hussein, lead me to the King!
Thou teller of sweet tales,- thine own,
Ferdousi's, and the others',- lead!
How is it with my lord?
HUSSEIN
Alone,
Ever since prayer-time, he doth wait,
O Vizier! without lying down,
In the great window of the gate,
Looking into the Registàn,
Where through the sellers' booths the slaves
Are this way bringing the dead man. —
O Vizier, here is the King's door!
THE KING
O Vizier, I may bury him?
THE VIZIER
O King, thou know'st, I have been sick
These many days, and heard no thing
(For Allah shut my ears and mind),
Not even what thou dost, O King!
Wherefore, that I may counsel thee,
Let Hussein, if thou wilt, make haste
To speak in order what hath chanced.
## p. 874 (#296) ############################################
874
MATTHEW ARNOLD
THE KING
O izier, be it as thou say'st!
HUSSEIN
Three days since, at the time of prayer,
A certain Moollah, with his robe
All rent, and dust upon his hair,
Watched my lord's coming forth, and pushed
The golden mace-bearers aside,
And fell at the King's feet, and cried:-
"Justice, O King, and on myself!
On this great sinner, who did break
The law, and by the law must die!
Vengeance, O King! "
—
But the King spake :-
"What fool is this, that hurts our ears
With folly? or what drunken slave?
My guards, what, prick him with your spears!
Prick me the fellow from the path! "
As the King said, so was it done,
And to the mosque my lord passed on.
--
But on the morrow when the King
Went forth again, the holy book
Carried before him, as his right,
And through the square his way he took,
My man comes running, flecked with blood
From yesterday, and falling down
Cries out most earnestly:-"O King,
My lord, O King, do right, I pray!
"How canst thou, ere thou hear, discern
If I speak folly? but a king,
Whether a thing be great or small,
Like Allah, hears and judges all.
"Wherefore hear thou! Thou know'st how fierce
In these last days the sun hath burned;
That the green water in the tanks
Is to a putrid puddle turned;
And the canal, that from the stream
Of Samarcand is brought this way,
Wastes, and runs thinner every day.
## p. 875 (#297) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
875
"Now I at nightfall had gone forth
Alone, and in a darksome place
Under some mulberry trees I found
A little pool; and in short space
With all the water that was there
I filled my pitcher, and stole home
Unseen; and having drink to spare,
I hid the can behind the door,
And went up on the roof to sleep.
"But in the night, which was with wind
And burning dust, again I creep
Down, having fever, for a drink.
"Now meanwhile had my brethren found
The water-pitcher, where it stood
Behind the door upon the ground,
And called my mother; and they all,
As they were thirsty, and the night
Most sultry, drained the pitcher there;
That they sate with it, in my sight,
Their lips still wet, when I came down.
"Now mark! I, being fevered, sick
(Most unblest also), at that sight
Brake forth, and cursed them-dost thou hear? —
One was my mother- Now, do right! "
But my lord mused a space, and said:-
:-
"Send him away, sirs, and make on!
It is some madman! ” the King said.
As the King bade, so was it done.
The morrow, at the self-same hour,
In the King's path, behold, the man,
Not kneeling, sternly fixed! he stood
Right opposite, and thus began,
Frowning grim down:-"Thou wicked King,
Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear!
What, must I howl in the next world,
Because thou wilt not listen here?
"What, wilt thou pray, and get thee grace,
And all grace shall to me be grudged?
Nay, but I swear, from this thy path
I will not stir till I be judged! "
## p. 876 (#298) ############################################
876
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Then they who stood about the King
Drew close together and conferred;
Till that the King stood forth and said,
"Before the priests thou shalt be heard. "
But when the Ulemas were met,
And the thing heard, they doubted not;
But sentenced him, as the law is,
To die by stoning on the spot.
Now the King charged us secretly:-
"Stoned must he be, the law stands so.
Yet, if he seek to fly, give way;
Hinder him not, but let him go. "
So saying, the King took a stone,
And cast it softly;- but the man,
With a great joy upon his face,
Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.
-
So they, whose lot it was, cast stones,
That they flew thick and bruised him sore,
But he praised Allah with loud voice,
And remained kneeling as before.
My lord had covered up his face;
But when one told him, "He is dead,"
Turning him quickly to go in,-
་་ Bring thou to me his corpse," he said.
-
THE VIZIER
And truly while I speak, O King,
I hear the bearers on the stair;
Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?
-Ho! enter ye who tarry there!
O King, in this I praise thee not.
Now must I call thy grief not wise,
Is he thy friend, or of thy blood,
To find such favor in thine eyes?
Nay, were he thine own mother's son,
Still, thou art king, and the law stands.
It were not meet the balance swerved,
The sword were broken in thy hands.
But being nothing, as he is,
Why for no cause make sad thy face? —
## p. 877 (#299) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
877
Lo, I am old! Three kings, ere thee,
Have I seen reigning in this place.
But who, through all this length of time,
Could bear the burden of his years,
If he for strangers pained his heart
Not less than those who merit tears?
Fathers we must have, wife and child,
And grievous is the grief for these;
This pain alone, which must be borne,
Makes the head white, and bows the knees.
But other loads than this his own
One man is not well made to bear.
Besides, to each are his own friends,
To mourn with him, and show him care.
Look, this is but one single place,
Though it be great; all the earth round,
If a man bear to have it so,
Things which might vex him shall be found.
All these have sorrow, and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer, and sing,
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No, nor on this dead dog, O King!
THE KING
O Vizier, thou art old, I young!
Clear in these things I cannot see.
My head is burning, and a heat
Is in my skin which angers me.
But hear ye this, ye sons of men!
They that bear rule, and are obeyed,
Unto a rule more strong than theirs
Are in their turn obedient made.
In vain therefore, with wistful eyes
Gazing up hither, the poor man
Who loiters by the high-heaped booths,
Below there in the Registàn,
Says: "Happy he, who lodges there!
With silken raiment, store of rice,
## p. 878 (#300) ############################################
878
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And for this drought, all kinds of fruits,
Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,
With cherries served in drifts of snow. "
In vain hath a king power to build
Houses, arcades, enameled mosques;
And to make orchard-closes, filled
With curious fruit-trees brought from far;
With cisterns for the winter rain;
And in the desert, spacious inns
In divers places-if that pain
Is not more lightened, which he feels,
If his will be not satisfied;
And that it be not, from all time
The law is planted, to abide.
Thou wast a sinner, thou poor man!
Thou wast athirst, and didst not see
That, though we take what we desire,
We must not snatch it eagerly.
And I have meat and drink at will,
And rooms of treasures, not a few,
But I am sick, nor heed I these;
And what I would, I cannot do.
Even the great honor which I have,
When I am dead, will soon grow still;
So have I neither joy nor fame-
But what I can do, that I will.
I have a fretted brickwork tomb
Upon a hill on the right hand,
Hard by a close of apricots,
Upon the road of Samarcand;
Thither, O Vizier, will I bear
This man my pity could not save,
And plucking up the marble flags,
There lay his body in my grave.
Bring water, nard, and linen rolls!
Wash off all blood, set smooth each limb!
Then say: "He was not wholly vile,
Because a king shall bury him. "
## p. 879 (#301) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
879
THE
DOVER BEACH
HE sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Egean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
## p. 880 (#302) ############################################
880
MATTHEW ARNOLD
WEARY
SELF-DEPENDENCE
EARY of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you. "
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:-
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see. "
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
:-
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery! "
## p. 881 (#303) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
881
I
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
H, HIDE me in your gloom profound,
Ο" Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!
For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a passed mood, and outworn theme —
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!
Ah, if it be passed, take away
At least the restlessness, the pain!
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone-
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!
But if you cannot give us ease
Last of the race of them who grieve,
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent the best are silent now.
―
Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb;
Silent they are, though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.
Our fathers watered with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail;
Their voices were in all men's ears
Who passed within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute and watch the waves.
II-56
## p. 882 (#304) ############################################
882
MATTHEW ARNOLD
For what availed it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men? -
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then?
The sufferers died, they left their pain-
The pangs which tortured them remain.
What helps it now that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mocked the smart,
Through Europe to the Etolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?
What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?
Inheritors of thy distress,
Have restless hearts one throb the less?
Or are we easier to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or châlets near the Alpine snow?
Ye slumber in your silent grave!
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we -we learnt your lore too well!
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But while we wait, allow our tears!
## p. 883 (#305) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
883
A SUMMER NIGHT
IN
IN THE deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world, but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon's rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!
And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene:
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long wide sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair-
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.
And the calm moonlight seems to say:-
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,
--
Never by passion quite possessed
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway? —
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield, and be
Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
## p. 884 (#306) ############################################
884
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.
And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
Listeth will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity:
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.
Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
Clearness divine!
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;
Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,
And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil!
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain
But I will rather say that you remain
## p. 885 (#307) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
885
A world above man's head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free;
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still!
THE BETTER PART
L
ONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!
"Christ," some one says, "was human as we are;
No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;
We live no more when we have done our span. "—
"Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?
Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! »
So answerest thou; but why not rather say,
"Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see? —
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? -Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he! "
THE LAST WORD
REEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
C
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still.
They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged - and sank at last.
Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!
## p. 886 (#308) ############################################
886
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
(Eighth to Twelfth Centuries)
BY RICHARD JONES
OR nearly a thousand years, the Arthurian legends, which lie
at the basis of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' have fur-
nished unlimited literary material, not to English poets
alone, but to the poets of all Christendom. These Celtic romances,
having their birthplace in Brittany or in Wales, had been growing
and changing for some centuries, before the fanciful Historia Bri-
tonum' of Geoffrey of Monmouth flushed them with color and filled
them with new life. Through the version of the good Benedictine
they soon became a vehicle for the dissemination of Christian doc-
trine. By the year 1200 they were the common property of Europe,
influencing profoundly the literature of the Middle Ages, and becom-
ing the source of a great stream of poetry that has flowed without
interruption down to our own day.
Sixty years after the Historia Britonum' appeared, and when the
English poet Layamon wrote his 'Brut' (A. D. 1205), which was a
translation of Wace, as Wace was a translation of Geoffrey, the theme
was engrossing the imagination of Europe. It had absorbed into itself
the elements of other cycles of legend, which had grown up inde-
pendently; some of these, in fact, having been at one time of much
greater prominence. Finally, so vast and so complicated did the body
of Arthurian legend become, that summaries of the essential features
were attempted. Such a summary was made in French about 1270,
by the Italian Rustighello of Pisa; in German, about two centuries
later, by Ulrich Füterer; and in English by Sir Thomas Malory in
his 'Morte d'Arthur,' finished "the ix. yere of the reygne of kyng
Edward the Fourth," and one of the first books published in England
by Caxton, "emprynted and fynysshed in th'abbey Westmestre the last
day of July, the yere of our Lord MCCCCLXXXV. " It is of interest
to note, as an indication of the popularity of the Arthurian legends,
that Caxton printed the Morte d'Arthur' eight years before he
printed any portion of the English Bible, and fifty-three years before
the complete English Bible was in print. He printed the 'Morte
d'Arthur' in response to a general "demaund"; for "many noble
and dyvers gentylmen of thys royame of England camen and de-
maunded me many and oftymes wherefore that I have not do make
and enprynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal, and of the moost
## p. 887 (#309) ############################################
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
887
renomed crysten kyng, fyrst and chyef of the thre best crysten and
worthy, kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge
us Englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges. "
Nor did poetic treatment of the theme then cease. Dante, in the
'Divine Comedy,' speaks by name of Arthur, Guinevere, Tristan, and
Launcelot. In that touching interview in the second cycle of the
Inferno between the poet and Francesca da Rimini, which Carlyle
has called "a thing woven out of rainbows on a ground of eternal
black," Francesca replies to Dante, who was bent to know the primal
root whence her love for Paolo gat being:—
"One day
For our delight, we read of Launcelot,
How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Oft-times by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our altered cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed. The book and writer both
Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day
We read no more. "
This poetic material was appropriated also by the countrymen of
Dante, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, by Hans Sachs in Germany, by
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton in England. As Sir Walter Scott
has sung:-
"The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorned not such legends to prolong. "
Roger Ascham, it is true, has, in his 'Scholemaster' (1570 A. D. ),
broken a lance against this body of fiction. "In our forefathers'
tyme," wrote he. "whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and
ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng
certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure,
which, as some say, were made in Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or
wanton Chanons; as one for example, Morte Arthure': the whole
pleasure of which booke standeth in two special poyntes, in open
mans slaughter. and bold bawdrye in which booke those be counted
the noblest Knights, that do kill most men without any quarrell,
and commit foulest aduoulteries by sutlest shiftes. "
But Roger's characterization of "the whole pleasure of which
booke" was not just, nor did it destroy interest in the theme. "The
generall end of all the booke. " said Spenser of the 'Faerie Queene,'
## p. 888 (#310) ############################################
888
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
"is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle
discipline;" and for this purpose he therefore "chose the historye of
King Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being
made famous by many men's former workes, and also furthest from
the daunger of envie, and suspition of present tyme. "
The plots for Shakespeare's 'King Lear' and 'Cymbeline' came
from Geoffrey's 'Historia Britonum,' as did also the story of 'Gorbo-
duc,' the first tragedy in the English language. Milton intended at
one time that the subject of the great poem for which he was "plum-
ing his wings" should be King Arthur, as may be seen, in his 'Man-
sus' and 'Epitaphium Damonis. ' Indeed, he did touch the lyre upon
this theme,-lightly, it is true, but firmly enough to justify Swin-
burne's lines:-
"Yet Milton's sacred feet have lingered there,
His lips have made august the fabulous air,
His hands have touched and left the wild weeds fair. »
But his duties as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth diverted him
from poetry for many years, and when the Restoration gave him
leisure once more to court the Muse, he had come to doubt the exist-
ence of the Celtic hero-king; for in 'Paradise Lost' (Book i. , line
579) he refers to
"what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son;"
and in his 'History of Britain' (1670 A. D. ) he says explicitly:- "For
who Arthur was, and whether ever any such reign'd in Britan, hath
bin doubted heertofore, and may again with good reason. "
Dryden, who composed the words of an opera on King Arthur,
meditated, according to Sir Walter Scott, a larger treatment of the
theme:-
:-
"And Dryden in immortal strain
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald King and Court
Bade him toil on to make them sport. »
Sir Walter himself edited the old metrical romance of 'Sir Tristram,·
and where the manuscript was defective, composed a portion after
the manner of the original, the portion in which occur the lines,
"Mi schip do thou take,
With godes that bethe new;
Two seyles do thou make,
Beth different in hewe:
## p. 889 (#311) ############################################
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
889
«Ysoude of Britanye,
With the white honde,
The schip she can se,
Seyling to londe;
The white seyl tho marked sche.
"Fairer ladye ere
Did Britannye never spye,
Swiche murning chere,
Making on heighe;
On Tristremes bere,
Doun con she lye;
Rise ogayn did sche nere,
But thare con sche dye
For woe:
Swiche lovers als thei
Never schal be moe. "
Of the poets of the present generation, Tennyson has treated the
Arthurian poetic heritage as a whole. Phases of the Arthurian
theme have been presented also by his contemporaries and suc-
cessors at home and abroad,- by William Wordsworth, Lord Lytton,
Robert Stephen Hawker, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Algernon
Charles Swinburne, in England; Edgar Quinet in France; Wilhelm
Hertz, L. Schneegans, F. Roeber, in Germany; Richard Hovey in
America. There have been many other approved variations on
Arthurian themes, such as James Russell Lowell's 'Vision of Sir
Launfal,' and Richard Wagner's operas, Lohengrin,' Tristan and
Isolde,' and 'Parsifal. ' Of still later versions, we may mention the
'King Arthur' of J. Comyns Carr, which has been presented on the
stage by Sir Henry Irving; and Under King Constantine,' by Katrina
Trask, whose hero is the king whom tradition names as the successor
of the heroic Arthur, "Imperator, Dux Bellorum. "
This poetic material is manifestly a living force in the literature
of the present day. And we may well remind ourselves of the rule
which should govern our verdict in regard to the new treatments
of the theme as they appear. This century-old Dichterstoff,' this
poetic treasure-store through which speaks the voice of the race, this
great body of accumulated poetic material, is a heritage; and it is
evident that whoever attempts any phase of this theme may not
treat such subject-matter capriciously, nor otherwise than in har-
mony with its inherent nature and spirit. It is recognized that the
stuff whereof great poetry is made is not the arbitrary creation of
the poet, and cannot be manufactured to order. "Genuine poetic
material," it has been said, "is handed down in the imagination of
man from generation to generation, changing its spirit according to
## p. 890 (#312) ############################################
890
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
the spirit of each age, and reaching its full development only when
in the course of time the favorable conditions coincide. " Inasmuch
as the subject-matter of the Arthurian legends is not the creation of
a single poet, nor even of many poets, but is in fact the creation of
the people. -indeed, of many peoples widely separated in time and
space, and is thus in a sense the voice of the race, it resembles
in this respect the Faust legends, which are the basis of Goethe's
world-poem; or the medieval visions of a future state, which found
their supreme and final expression in Dante's 'Divina Commedia,'
which sums up within itself the art, the religion, the politics, the
philosophy, and the view of life of the Middle Ages.
Whether the Arthurian legends as a whole have found their final
and adequate expression in Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' or
whether it was alread, too late, when the Laureate wrote, to create
from primitive ideas so simple a poem of the first rank, is not
within the province of this essay to discuss. But manifestly, any
final judgment in regard to the treatment of this theme as a whole,
or any phase of the theme, is inadequate which leaves out of con-
sideration the history of the subject-matter, and its treatment by
other poets; which, in short, ignores its possibilities and its signifi-
cance. With respect to the origin and the early history of the
Arthurian legend, much remains to be established. Whether its
original home was in Wales, or among the neighboring Celts across
the sea in Brittany, whither many of the Celts of Britain fled after
the Anglo-Saxon invasion of their island home, no one knows. But
to some extent, at least, the legend was common to both sides of
the Channel when Geoffrey wrote his book, about 1145. As a matter
of course, this King Arthur, the ideal hero of later ages, was a less
commanding personage in the early forms of the legend than when
it had acquired its splendid distinction by borrowing and assimilating
other mythical tales.
It appears that five great cycles of legend, —(1) the Arthur, Gui-
nevere, and Merlin cycle, (2) the Round Table cycle, (3) the Holy
Grail cycle, (4) the Launcelot cycle, (5) the Tristan cycle, - which at
first developed independently, were, in the latter half of the twelfth
century, merged together into a body of legend whose bond of unity
was the idealized Celtic hero, King Arthur.
This blameless knight, whose transfigured memory has been thus
transmitted to us, was probably a leader of the Celtic tribes of
England in their struggles with the Saxon invaders. His victory at
Mount Badon, described by Sir Launcelot to the household at
Astolat,
"Dull days were those, till our good Arthur broke
The pagan yet once more on Badon Hill,» —
## p. 891 (#313) ############################################
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
891
this victory is mentioned by Gildas, who wrote in the sixth century.
Gildas, however, though he mentions the occasion, does not give the
name of the leader. But Nennius, who wrote in the latter part of the
eighth century, or early in the ninth, makes Arthur the chieftain,
and adds an account of his great personal prowess. Thus the Arthur
legend has already begun to grow. For the desperate struggle with
the Saxons was vain. As the highly gifted, imaginative Celt saw
his people overwhelmed by the kinsmen of the conquerors of Rome,
he found solace in song for the hard facts of life. In the fields of
imagination he won the victories denied him on the field of battle,
and he clustered these triumphs against the enemies of his race
about the name and the person of the magnanimous Arthur. When
the descendants of the Saxons were in their turn overcome by Nor-
man conquerors, the heart of the Celtic world was profoundly stirred.
Ancient memories awoke, and, yearning for the restoration of British
greatness, men rehearsed the deeds of him who had been king, and
of whom it was prophesied that he should be king hereafter.
this moment of newly awakened hope, Geoffrey's Historia' appeared.
His book was not in reality a history. Possibly it was not even
very largely founded on existing legends. But in any case the
chronicle of Geoffrey was a work of genius and of imagination.
"The figure of Arthur," says Ten Brink, "now stood forth in brill-
iant light, a chivalrous king and hero, endowed and guarded by
supernatural powers, surrounded by brave warriors and a splendid
court, a man of marvelous life and a tragic death. "
At
Geoffrey's book was immediately translated into French by Robert
Wace, who incorporated with the legend of Arthur the Round Table
legend. In his 'Brut,' the English poet-priest Layamon reproduced
this feature of the legend with additional details. His chronicle is
largely a free translation of the 'Brut d'Engleterre' of Wace, earlier
known as 'Geste des Bretons. ' Thus as Wace had reproduced Geof-
frey with additions and modifications, Layamon reproduced Wace. So
the story grew.
In the mean time, other poets in other lands had
taken up the theme, connecting with it other cycles of legend already
in existence. In 1205, when Layamon wrote his 'Brut,' unnumbered
versions of the history of King Arthur, with which had been woven
the legend of the Holy Grail, had already appeared among the
principal nations of Europe. Of the early Arthurian poets, two of
the more illustrious and important are Chrestien de Troyes, in France,
of highest poetic repute, who opened the way for Tennyson, and
Wolfram von Eschenbach, in Germany, with his 'Parzival,' later the
theme of Wagner's greatest opera. The names of Robert de Borron
in France, Walter Map in England, and Heinrich von dem Türlin in
Germany, may also be mentioned.
## p. 892 (#314) ############################################
892
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
In divers lands, innumerable poets with diverse tastes set them-
selves to make new versions of the legend. Characteristics of the
Arthurian tale were grafted upon an entirely different stock, as was
done by Boiardo in Italy, making confusion worse confounded to the
modern Arthurian scholar. Boiardo expressly says in the 'Orlando
Innamorato' that his intention is to graft the characteristics of the
Arthurian cycle upon the Carlovingian French national epic stock.
He wished to please the courts, whose ideal was not the paladins,
but Arthur's knights. The "peers" of the Charlemagne legend are
thus transformed into knights-errant, who fight for ladies and for
honor. The result of this interpenetration of the two cycles is a
splendid world of love and cortesia, whose constituent elements it
defies the Arthurian scholar to trace. Truly, as Dr. Sommer has
said in his erudite edition of Malory's 'La Morte d'Arthur,' "The
origin and relationship to one another of these branches of romance,
whether in prose or in verse, are involved in great obscurity. " He
adds that it would almost seem as though several generations of
scholars were required for the gigantic task of finding a sure path-
way through this intricate maze. And M. Gaston Paris, one of the
foremost of living Arthurian scholars, has written in his 'Romania':
"Some time ago I undertook a methodical exploration in the grand
poetical domain which is called the cycle of the Round Table, the
cycle of Arthur, or the Breton cycle. I advance, groping along, and
very often retracing my steps twenty times over, I become aware
that I am lost in a pathless maze. »
There is a question, moreover, whether Geoffrey's book is based
mainly upon inherited poetical material, or is largely the product of
Geoffrey's individual imagination. The elder Paris, M. Paulin Paris
inclined to the view that Nennius, with hints from local tales, sup-
plied all the bases that Geoffrey had. But his son, Professor Gaston
Paris, in his 'Littérature Française au Moyen Age,' emphasizes the
importance of the "Celtic" contribution, as does also Mr. Alfred
Nutt in his 'Studies in the Arthurian Legend. ' The former view
emphasizes the individual importance of Geoffrey; the latter view
places the emphasis on the legendary heritage. Referring to this
so-called national poetry, Ten Brink says:—
"But herein lies the essential difference between that age and our own:
the result of poetical activity was not the property and not the production of
a single person, but of the community. .
866
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath-
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.
WE
ISOLATION
TO MARGUERITE
E WERE apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learned-
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturned.
Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell-
Thou lov'st no more;-Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! -and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign-
Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
How vain a thing is mortal love,
## p. 867 (#289) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
867
Wandering in Heaven, far removed;
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth-to prove, and make thine own:
"Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone. "
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things-
Ocean and clouds and night and day;
Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
And life, and others' joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.
Of happier men- for they, at least,
Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollow lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour—
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh, might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire? -
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea
## p. 868 (#290) ############################################
868
MATTHEW ARNOLD
STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF OBERMANN' (1849)
IN
IN FRONT the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack,
Close o'er it. in the air.
Behind are the abandoned baths
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley-paths,
The mists are on the Rhone —
The white mists rolling like a sea!
I hear the torrents roar.
- Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee;
I feel thee near once more.
I turn thy leaves! I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o'er thy soul.
Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe'er thou art,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain-air
Fresh through these pages blows;
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows;
Though here a mountain-murmur swells
Of many a dark-boughed pine;
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine-
Yet, through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain-bee,
There sobs I know not what ground-tone
Of human agony.
Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
## p. 869 (#291) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
869
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?
And then we turn, thou sadder sage,
To thee! we feel thy spell!
-
- The hopeless tangle of our age,
Thou too hast scanned it well!
Immovable thou sittest, still
As death, composed to bear!
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,
And icy thy despair.
He who hath watched, not shared, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone.
He only lives with the world's life
Who hath renounced his own.
To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled
Where thou, O seer! art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold-
The world is colder yet!
And thou hast pleasures, too, to share
With those who come to thee-
Balms floating on thy mountain-air,
And healing sights to see.
-
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet-door, and seen
The summer-day grow late;
And darkness steal o'er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starr'd,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward,
Lake Leman's waters, far below!
And watched the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow;
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue
Through the pine branches play —
## p. 870 (#292) ############################################
870
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Listened and felt thyself grow young!
Listened, and wept-Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad guide, adieu!
I go, fate drives me; but I leave
Half of my life with you.
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
I in the world must live; - but thou,
Thou melancholy shade!
Wilt not, if thou can'st see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The Children of the Second Birth,
Whom the world could not tame.
Farewell! Whether thou now liest near
That much-loved inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie;
And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,
Between the dusty vineyard-walls
Issuing on that green place,
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger's face,
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;
Or whether, by maligner fate,
Among the swarms of men,
Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
## p. 871 (#293) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
871
The Capital of Pleasures sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave;-
-
Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!
MEMORIAL VERSES (1850)
OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
G Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe's death was told, we said,
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
-
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said. The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
## p. 872 (#294) ############################################
872
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And Wordsworth! -Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us--and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth,
On the cool, flowery lap of earth.
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
## p. 873 (#295) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
873
THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA
O
HUSSEIN
MOST just Vizier, send away
The cloth-merchants, and let them be,
Them and their dues, this day! the King
Is ill at ease, and calls for thee.
THE VIZIER
O merchants, tarry yet a day
Here in Bokhara! but at noon,
To-morrow, come, and ye shall pay
Each fortieth web of cloth to me,
As the law is, and go your way.
O Hussein, lead me to the King!
Thou teller of sweet tales,- thine own,
Ferdousi's, and the others',- lead!
How is it with my lord?
HUSSEIN
Alone,
Ever since prayer-time, he doth wait,
O Vizier! without lying down,
In the great window of the gate,
Looking into the Registàn,
Where through the sellers' booths the slaves
Are this way bringing the dead man. —
O Vizier, here is the King's door!
THE KING
O Vizier, I may bury him?
THE VIZIER
O King, thou know'st, I have been sick
These many days, and heard no thing
(For Allah shut my ears and mind),
Not even what thou dost, O King!
Wherefore, that I may counsel thee,
Let Hussein, if thou wilt, make haste
To speak in order what hath chanced.
## p. 874 (#296) ############################################
874
MATTHEW ARNOLD
THE KING
O izier, be it as thou say'st!
HUSSEIN
Three days since, at the time of prayer,
A certain Moollah, with his robe
All rent, and dust upon his hair,
Watched my lord's coming forth, and pushed
The golden mace-bearers aside,
And fell at the King's feet, and cried:-
"Justice, O King, and on myself!
On this great sinner, who did break
The law, and by the law must die!
Vengeance, O King! "
—
But the King spake :-
"What fool is this, that hurts our ears
With folly? or what drunken slave?
My guards, what, prick him with your spears!
Prick me the fellow from the path! "
As the King said, so was it done,
And to the mosque my lord passed on.
--
But on the morrow when the King
Went forth again, the holy book
Carried before him, as his right,
And through the square his way he took,
My man comes running, flecked with blood
From yesterday, and falling down
Cries out most earnestly:-"O King,
My lord, O King, do right, I pray!
"How canst thou, ere thou hear, discern
If I speak folly? but a king,
Whether a thing be great or small,
Like Allah, hears and judges all.
"Wherefore hear thou! Thou know'st how fierce
In these last days the sun hath burned;
That the green water in the tanks
Is to a putrid puddle turned;
And the canal, that from the stream
Of Samarcand is brought this way,
Wastes, and runs thinner every day.
## p. 875 (#297) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
875
"Now I at nightfall had gone forth
Alone, and in a darksome place
Under some mulberry trees I found
A little pool; and in short space
With all the water that was there
I filled my pitcher, and stole home
Unseen; and having drink to spare,
I hid the can behind the door,
And went up on the roof to sleep.
"But in the night, which was with wind
And burning dust, again I creep
Down, having fever, for a drink.
"Now meanwhile had my brethren found
The water-pitcher, where it stood
Behind the door upon the ground,
And called my mother; and they all,
As they were thirsty, and the night
Most sultry, drained the pitcher there;
That they sate with it, in my sight,
Their lips still wet, when I came down.
"Now mark! I, being fevered, sick
(Most unblest also), at that sight
Brake forth, and cursed them-dost thou hear? —
One was my mother- Now, do right! "
But my lord mused a space, and said:-
:-
"Send him away, sirs, and make on!
It is some madman! ” the King said.
As the King bade, so was it done.
The morrow, at the self-same hour,
In the King's path, behold, the man,
Not kneeling, sternly fixed! he stood
Right opposite, and thus began,
Frowning grim down:-"Thou wicked King,
Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear!
What, must I howl in the next world,
Because thou wilt not listen here?
"What, wilt thou pray, and get thee grace,
And all grace shall to me be grudged?
Nay, but I swear, from this thy path
I will not stir till I be judged! "
## p. 876 (#298) ############################################
876
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Then they who stood about the King
Drew close together and conferred;
Till that the King stood forth and said,
"Before the priests thou shalt be heard. "
But when the Ulemas were met,
And the thing heard, they doubted not;
But sentenced him, as the law is,
To die by stoning on the spot.
Now the King charged us secretly:-
"Stoned must he be, the law stands so.
Yet, if he seek to fly, give way;
Hinder him not, but let him go. "
So saying, the King took a stone,
And cast it softly;- but the man,
With a great joy upon his face,
Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.
-
So they, whose lot it was, cast stones,
That they flew thick and bruised him sore,
But he praised Allah with loud voice,
And remained kneeling as before.
My lord had covered up his face;
But when one told him, "He is dead,"
Turning him quickly to go in,-
་་ Bring thou to me his corpse," he said.
-
THE VIZIER
And truly while I speak, O King,
I hear the bearers on the stair;
Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?
-Ho! enter ye who tarry there!
O King, in this I praise thee not.
Now must I call thy grief not wise,
Is he thy friend, or of thy blood,
To find such favor in thine eyes?
Nay, were he thine own mother's son,
Still, thou art king, and the law stands.
It were not meet the balance swerved,
The sword were broken in thy hands.
But being nothing, as he is,
Why for no cause make sad thy face? —
## p. 877 (#299) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
877
Lo, I am old! Three kings, ere thee,
Have I seen reigning in this place.
But who, through all this length of time,
Could bear the burden of his years,
If he for strangers pained his heart
Not less than those who merit tears?
Fathers we must have, wife and child,
And grievous is the grief for these;
This pain alone, which must be borne,
Makes the head white, and bows the knees.
But other loads than this his own
One man is not well made to bear.
Besides, to each are his own friends,
To mourn with him, and show him care.
Look, this is but one single place,
Though it be great; all the earth round,
If a man bear to have it so,
Things which might vex him shall be found.
All these have sorrow, and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer, and sing,
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No, nor on this dead dog, O King!
THE KING
O Vizier, thou art old, I young!
Clear in these things I cannot see.
My head is burning, and a heat
Is in my skin which angers me.
But hear ye this, ye sons of men!
They that bear rule, and are obeyed,
Unto a rule more strong than theirs
Are in their turn obedient made.
In vain therefore, with wistful eyes
Gazing up hither, the poor man
Who loiters by the high-heaped booths,
Below there in the Registàn,
Says: "Happy he, who lodges there!
With silken raiment, store of rice,
## p. 878 (#300) ############################################
878
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And for this drought, all kinds of fruits,
Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,
With cherries served in drifts of snow. "
In vain hath a king power to build
Houses, arcades, enameled mosques;
And to make orchard-closes, filled
With curious fruit-trees brought from far;
With cisterns for the winter rain;
And in the desert, spacious inns
In divers places-if that pain
Is not more lightened, which he feels,
If his will be not satisfied;
And that it be not, from all time
The law is planted, to abide.
Thou wast a sinner, thou poor man!
Thou wast athirst, and didst not see
That, though we take what we desire,
We must not snatch it eagerly.
And I have meat and drink at will,
And rooms of treasures, not a few,
But I am sick, nor heed I these;
And what I would, I cannot do.
Even the great honor which I have,
When I am dead, will soon grow still;
So have I neither joy nor fame-
But what I can do, that I will.
I have a fretted brickwork tomb
Upon a hill on the right hand,
Hard by a close of apricots,
Upon the road of Samarcand;
Thither, O Vizier, will I bear
This man my pity could not save,
And plucking up the marble flags,
There lay his body in my grave.
Bring water, nard, and linen rolls!
Wash off all blood, set smooth each limb!
Then say: "He was not wholly vile,
Because a king shall bury him. "
## p. 879 (#301) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
879
THE
DOVER BEACH
HE sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Egean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
## p. 880 (#302) ############################################
880
MATTHEW ARNOLD
WEARY
SELF-DEPENDENCE
EARY of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you. "
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:-
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see. "
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
:-
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery! "
## p. 881 (#303) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
881
I
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
H, HIDE me in your gloom profound,
Ο" Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!
For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a passed mood, and outworn theme —
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!
Ah, if it be passed, take away
At least the restlessness, the pain!
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone-
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!
But if you cannot give us ease
Last of the race of them who grieve,
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent the best are silent now.
―
Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb;
Silent they are, though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.
Our fathers watered with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail;
Their voices were in all men's ears
Who passed within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute and watch the waves.
II-56
## p. 882 (#304) ############################################
882
MATTHEW ARNOLD
For what availed it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men? -
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then?
The sufferers died, they left their pain-
The pangs which tortured them remain.
What helps it now that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mocked the smart,
Through Europe to the Etolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?
What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?
Inheritors of thy distress,
Have restless hearts one throb the less?
Or are we easier to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or châlets near the Alpine snow?
Ye slumber in your silent grave!
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we -we learnt your lore too well!
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But while we wait, allow our tears!
## p. 883 (#305) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
883
A SUMMER NIGHT
IN
IN THE deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world, but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon's rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!
And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene:
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long wide sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair-
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.
And the calm moonlight seems to say:-
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,
--
Never by passion quite possessed
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway? —
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield, and be
Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
## p. 884 (#306) ############################################
884
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.
And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
Listeth will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity:
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.
Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
Clearness divine!
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;
Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,
And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil!
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain
But I will rather say that you remain
## p. 885 (#307) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
885
A world above man's head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free;
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still!
THE BETTER PART
L
ONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!
"Christ," some one says, "was human as we are;
No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;
We live no more when we have done our span. "—
"Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?
Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! »
So answerest thou; but why not rather say,
"Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see? —
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? -Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he! "
THE LAST WORD
REEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
C
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still.
They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged - and sank at last.
Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!
## p. 886 (#308) ############################################
886
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
(Eighth to Twelfth Centuries)
BY RICHARD JONES
OR nearly a thousand years, the Arthurian legends, which lie
at the basis of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' have fur-
nished unlimited literary material, not to English poets
alone, but to the poets of all Christendom. These Celtic romances,
having their birthplace in Brittany or in Wales, had been growing
and changing for some centuries, before the fanciful Historia Bri-
tonum' of Geoffrey of Monmouth flushed them with color and filled
them with new life. Through the version of the good Benedictine
they soon became a vehicle for the dissemination of Christian doc-
trine. By the year 1200 they were the common property of Europe,
influencing profoundly the literature of the Middle Ages, and becom-
ing the source of a great stream of poetry that has flowed without
interruption down to our own day.
Sixty years after the Historia Britonum' appeared, and when the
English poet Layamon wrote his 'Brut' (A. D. 1205), which was a
translation of Wace, as Wace was a translation of Geoffrey, the theme
was engrossing the imagination of Europe. It had absorbed into itself
the elements of other cycles of legend, which had grown up inde-
pendently; some of these, in fact, having been at one time of much
greater prominence. Finally, so vast and so complicated did the body
of Arthurian legend become, that summaries of the essential features
were attempted. Such a summary was made in French about 1270,
by the Italian Rustighello of Pisa; in German, about two centuries
later, by Ulrich Füterer; and in English by Sir Thomas Malory in
his 'Morte d'Arthur,' finished "the ix. yere of the reygne of kyng
Edward the Fourth," and one of the first books published in England
by Caxton, "emprynted and fynysshed in th'abbey Westmestre the last
day of July, the yere of our Lord MCCCCLXXXV. " It is of interest
to note, as an indication of the popularity of the Arthurian legends,
that Caxton printed the Morte d'Arthur' eight years before he
printed any portion of the English Bible, and fifty-three years before
the complete English Bible was in print. He printed the 'Morte
d'Arthur' in response to a general "demaund"; for "many noble
and dyvers gentylmen of thys royame of England camen and de-
maunded me many and oftymes wherefore that I have not do make
and enprynte the noble hystorye of the saynt greal, and of the moost
## p. 887 (#309) ############################################
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
887
renomed crysten kyng, fyrst and chyef of the thre best crysten and
worthy, kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge
us Englysshe men tofore al other crysten kynges. "
Nor did poetic treatment of the theme then cease. Dante, in the
'Divine Comedy,' speaks by name of Arthur, Guinevere, Tristan, and
Launcelot. In that touching interview in the second cycle of the
Inferno between the poet and Francesca da Rimini, which Carlyle
has called "a thing woven out of rainbows on a ground of eternal
black," Francesca replies to Dante, who was bent to know the primal
root whence her love for Paolo gat being:—
"One day
For our delight, we read of Launcelot,
How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Oft-times by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our altered cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed. The book and writer both
Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day
We read no more. "
This poetic material was appropriated also by the countrymen of
Dante, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, by Hans Sachs in Germany, by
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton in England. As Sir Walter Scott
has sung:-
"The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorned not such legends to prolong. "
Roger Ascham, it is true, has, in his 'Scholemaster' (1570 A. D. ),
broken a lance against this body of fiction. "In our forefathers'
tyme," wrote he. "whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and
ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng
certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure,
which, as some say, were made in Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or
wanton Chanons; as one for example, Morte Arthure': the whole
pleasure of which booke standeth in two special poyntes, in open
mans slaughter. and bold bawdrye in which booke those be counted
the noblest Knights, that do kill most men without any quarrell,
and commit foulest aduoulteries by sutlest shiftes. "
But Roger's characterization of "the whole pleasure of which
booke" was not just, nor did it destroy interest in the theme. "The
generall end of all the booke. " said Spenser of the 'Faerie Queene,'
## p. 888 (#310) ############################################
888
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
"is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle
discipline;" and for this purpose he therefore "chose the historye of
King Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being
made famous by many men's former workes, and also furthest from
the daunger of envie, and suspition of present tyme. "
The plots for Shakespeare's 'King Lear' and 'Cymbeline' came
from Geoffrey's 'Historia Britonum,' as did also the story of 'Gorbo-
duc,' the first tragedy in the English language. Milton intended at
one time that the subject of the great poem for which he was "plum-
ing his wings" should be King Arthur, as may be seen, in his 'Man-
sus' and 'Epitaphium Damonis. ' Indeed, he did touch the lyre upon
this theme,-lightly, it is true, but firmly enough to justify Swin-
burne's lines:-
"Yet Milton's sacred feet have lingered there,
His lips have made august the fabulous air,
His hands have touched and left the wild weeds fair. »
But his duties as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth diverted him
from poetry for many years, and when the Restoration gave him
leisure once more to court the Muse, he had come to doubt the exist-
ence of the Celtic hero-king; for in 'Paradise Lost' (Book i. , line
579) he refers to
"what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son;"
and in his 'History of Britain' (1670 A. D. ) he says explicitly:- "For
who Arthur was, and whether ever any such reign'd in Britan, hath
bin doubted heertofore, and may again with good reason. "
Dryden, who composed the words of an opera on King Arthur,
meditated, according to Sir Walter Scott, a larger treatment of the
theme:-
:-
"And Dryden in immortal strain
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald King and Court
Bade him toil on to make them sport. »
Sir Walter himself edited the old metrical romance of 'Sir Tristram,·
and where the manuscript was defective, composed a portion after
the manner of the original, the portion in which occur the lines,
"Mi schip do thou take,
With godes that bethe new;
Two seyles do thou make,
Beth different in hewe:
## p. 889 (#311) ############################################
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
889
«Ysoude of Britanye,
With the white honde,
The schip she can se,
Seyling to londe;
The white seyl tho marked sche.
"Fairer ladye ere
Did Britannye never spye,
Swiche murning chere,
Making on heighe;
On Tristremes bere,
Doun con she lye;
Rise ogayn did sche nere,
But thare con sche dye
For woe:
Swiche lovers als thei
Never schal be moe. "
Of the poets of the present generation, Tennyson has treated the
Arthurian poetic heritage as a whole. Phases of the Arthurian
theme have been presented also by his contemporaries and suc-
cessors at home and abroad,- by William Wordsworth, Lord Lytton,
Robert Stephen Hawker, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Algernon
Charles Swinburne, in England; Edgar Quinet in France; Wilhelm
Hertz, L. Schneegans, F. Roeber, in Germany; Richard Hovey in
America. There have been many other approved variations on
Arthurian themes, such as James Russell Lowell's 'Vision of Sir
Launfal,' and Richard Wagner's operas, Lohengrin,' Tristan and
Isolde,' and 'Parsifal. ' Of still later versions, we may mention the
'King Arthur' of J. Comyns Carr, which has been presented on the
stage by Sir Henry Irving; and Under King Constantine,' by Katrina
Trask, whose hero is the king whom tradition names as the successor
of the heroic Arthur, "Imperator, Dux Bellorum. "
This poetic material is manifestly a living force in the literature
of the present day. And we may well remind ourselves of the rule
which should govern our verdict in regard to the new treatments
of the theme as they appear. This century-old Dichterstoff,' this
poetic treasure-store through which speaks the voice of the race, this
great body of accumulated poetic material, is a heritage; and it is
evident that whoever attempts any phase of this theme may not
treat such subject-matter capriciously, nor otherwise than in har-
mony with its inherent nature and spirit. It is recognized that the
stuff whereof great poetry is made is not the arbitrary creation of
the poet, and cannot be manufactured to order. "Genuine poetic
material," it has been said, "is handed down in the imagination of
man from generation to generation, changing its spirit according to
## p. 890 (#312) ############################################
890
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
the spirit of each age, and reaching its full development only when
in the course of time the favorable conditions coincide. " Inasmuch
as the subject-matter of the Arthurian legends is not the creation of
a single poet, nor even of many poets, but is in fact the creation of
the people. -indeed, of many peoples widely separated in time and
space, and is thus in a sense the voice of the race, it resembles
in this respect the Faust legends, which are the basis of Goethe's
world-poem; or the medieval visions of a future state, which found
their supreme and final expression in Dante's 'Divina Commedia,'
which sums up within itself the art, the religion, the politics, the
philosophy, and the view of life of the Middle Ages.
Whether the Arthurian legends as a whole have found their final
and adequate expression in Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' or
whether it was alread, too late, when the Laureate wrote, to create
from primitive ideas so simple a poem of the first rank, is not
within the province of this essay to discuss. But manifestly, any
final judgment in regard to the treatment of this theme as a whole,
or any phase of the theme, is inadequate which leaves out of con-
sideration the history of the subject-matter, and its treatment by
other poets; which, in short, ignores its possibilities and its signifi-
cance. With respect to the origin and the early history of the
Arthurian legend, much remains to be established. Whether its
original home was in Wales, or among the neighboring Celts across
the sea in Brittany, whither many of the Celts of Britain fled after
the Anglo-Saxon invasion of their island home, no one knows. But
to some extent, at least, the legend was common to both sides of
the Channel when Geoffrey wrote his book, about 1145. As a matter
of course, this King Arthur, the ideal hero of later ages, was a less
commanding personage in the early forms of the legend than when
it had acquired its splendid distinction by borrowing and assimilating
other mythical tales.
It appears that five great cycles of legend, —(1) the Arthur, Gui-
nevere, and Merlin cycle, (2) the Round Table cycle, (3) the Holy
Grail cycle, (4) the Launcelot cycle, (5) the Tristan cycle, - which at
first developed independently, were, in the latter half of the twelfth
century, merged together into a body of legend whose bond of unity
was the idealized Celtic hero, King Arthur.
This blameless knight, whose transfigured memory has been thus
transmitted to us, was probably a leader of the Celtic tribes of
England in their struggles with the Saxon invaders. His victory at
Mount Badon, described by Sir Launcelot to the household at
Astolat,
"Dull days were those, till our good Arthur broke
The pagan yet once more on Badon Hill,» —
## p. 891 (#313) ############################################
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
891
this victory is mentioned by Gildas, who wrote in the sixth century.
Gildas, however, though he mentions the occasion, does not give the
name of the leader. But Nennius, who wrote in the latter part of the
eighth century, or early in the ninth, makes Arthur the chieftain,
and adds an account of his great personal prowess. Thus the Arthur
legend has already begun to grow. For the desperate struggle with
the Saxons was vain. As the highly gifted, imaginative Celt saw
his people overwhelmed by the kinsmen of the conquerors of Rome,
he found solace in song for the hard facts of life. In the fields of
imagination he won the victories denied him on the field of battle,
and he clustered these triumphs against the enemies of his race
about the name and the person of the magnanimous Arthur. When
the descendants of the Saxons were in their turn overcome by Nor-
man conquerors, the heart of the Celtic world was profoundly stirred.
Ancient memories awoke, and, yearning for the restoration of British
greatness, men rehearsed the deeds of him who had been king, and
of whom it was prophesied that he should be king hereafter.
this moment of newly awakened hope, Geoffrey's Historia' appeared.
His book was not in reality a history. Possibly it was not even
very largely founded on existing legends. But in any case the
chronicle of Geoffrey was a work of genius and of imagination.
"The figure of Arthur," says Ten Brink, "now stood forth in brill-
iant light, a chivalrous king and hero, endowed and guarded by
supernatural powers, surrounded by brave warriors and a splendid
court, a man of marvelous life and a tragic death. "
At
Geoffrey's book was immediately translated into French by Robert
Wace, who incorporated with the legend of Arthur the Round Table
legend. In his 'Brut,' the English poet-priest Layamon reproduced
this feature of the legend with additional details. His chronicle is
largely a free translation of the 'Brut d'Engleterre' of Wace, earlier
known as 'Geste des Bretons. ' Thus as Wace had reproduced Geof-
frey with additions and modifications, Layamon reproduced Wace. So
the story grew.
In the mean time, other poets in other lands had
taken up the theme, connecting with it other cycles of legend already
in existence. In 1205, when Layamon wrote his 'Brut,' unnumbered
versions of the history of King Arthur, with which had been woven
the legend of the Holy Grail, had already appeared among the
principal nations of Europe. Of the early Arthurian poets, two of
the more illustrious and important are Chrestien de Troyes, in France,
of highest poetic repute, who opened the way for Tennyson, and
Wolfram von Eschenbach, in Germany, with his 'Parzival,' later the
theme of Wagner's greatest opera. The names of Robert de Borron
in France, Walter Map in England, and Heinrich von dem Türlin in
Germany, may also be mentioned.
## p. 892 (#314) ############################################
892
THE ARTHURIAN LEGENDS
In divers lands, innumerable poets with diverse tastes set them-
selves to make new versions of the legend. Characteristics of the
Arthurian tale were grafted upon an entirely different stock, as was
done by Boiardo in Italy, making confusion worse confounded to the
modern Arthurian scholar. Boiardo expressly says in the 'Orlando
Innamorato' that his intention is to graft the characteristics of the
Arthurian cycle upon the Carlovingian French national epic stock.
He wished to please the courts, whose ideal was not the paladins,
but Arthur's knights. The "peers" of the Charlemagne legend are
thus transformed into knights-errant, who fight for ladies and for
honor. The result of this interpenetration of the two cycles is a
splendid world of love and cortesia, whose constituent elements it
defies the Arthurian scholar to trace. Truly, as Dr. Sommer has
said in his erudite edition of Malory's 'La Morte d'Arthur,' "The
origin and relationship to one another of these branches of romance,
whether in prose or in verse, are involved in great obscurity. " He
adds that it would almost seem as though several generations of
scholars were required for the gigantic task of finding a sure path-
way through this intricate maze. And M. Gaston Paris, one of the
foremost of living Arthurian scholars, has written in his 'Romania':
"Some time ago I undertook a methodical exploration in the grand
poetical domain which is called the cycle of the Round Table, the
cycle of Arthur, or the Breton cycle. I advance, groping along, and
very often retracing my steps twenty times over, I become aware
that I am lost in a pathless maze. »
There is a question, moreover, whether Geoffrey's book is based
mainly upon inherited poetical material, or is largely the product of
Geoffrey's individual imagination. The elder Paris, M. Paulin Paris
inclined to the view that Nennius, with hints from local tales, sup-
plied all the bases that Geoffrey had. But his son, Professor Gaston
Paris, in his 'Littérature Française au Moyen Age,' emphasizes the
importance of the "Celtic" contribution, as does also Mr. Alfred
Nutt in his 'Studies in the Arthurian Legend. ' The former view
emphasizes the individual importance of Geoffrey; the latter view
places the emphasis on the legendary heritage. Referring to this
so-called national poetry, Ten Brink says:—
"But herein lies the essential difference between that age and our own:
the result of poetical activity was not the property and not the production of
a single person, but of the community. .
