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113 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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I, Aurora Leigh, was born To make my father sadder, and myself Not overjoyous, truly. Women know The way to rear up children (to be just), They know a simple, merry, tender knack Of tying sashes, fitting baby shoes, And stringing pretty words that make no sense, And kissing full sense into empty words, Which things are corals to cut life upon, Although such trifles: children learn by such, Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play And get not over-early solemnised, But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love’s Divine Which burns and hurts not,—not a single bloom— Become aware and unafraid of Love. Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well —Mine did, I know—but still with heavier brains, And wills more consciously responsible, And not as wisely, since less foolishly; So mothers have God’s license to be missed.
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Aurora Leigh, Barret Browning |
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I read a score of books on womanhood To prove, if women do not think at all, They may teach thinking (to a maiden aunt Or else the author)—books that boldly assert Their right of comprehending husband’s talk When not too deep, and even of answering With pretty “may it please you,” or “so it is”— Their rapid insight and fine aptitude, Particular worth and general missionariness, As long as they keep quiet by the fire And never say “no” when the world says “ay,” For that is fatal—their angelic reach Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn, And fatten household sinners—their, in brief, Potential faculty in everything Of abdicating power in it
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Aurora Leigh, Barret Browning |
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O life, O poetry, —Which means life in life! cognisant of life Beyond this blood-beat, passionate for truth Beyond these senses!—poetry, my life, My eagle, with both grappling feet still hot From Zeus’s thunder, who hast ravished me Away from all the shepherds, sheep, and dogs, And set me in the Olympian roar and round Of luminous faces for a cupbearer, To keep the mouths of all the godheads moist For everlasting laughters—I myself Half drunk across the beaker with their eyes! How those gods look!
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Aurora Leigh, Barret Browning |
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She said sometimes “Aurora, have you done Your task this morning? have you read that book? And are you ready for the crochet here?”— As if she said “I know there’s something wrong; I know I have not ground you down enough To flatten and bake you to a wholesome crust For household uses and proprieties, Before the rain has got into my barn And set the grains a-sprouting. What, you’re green With outdoor impudence? you almost grow?” |
Aurora Leigh, Barret Browning |
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Nay, if there’s room for poets in this world A little overgrown (I think there is), Their sole work is to represent the age, Their age, not Charlemagne’s,—this live, throbbing age, That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires, And spends more passion, more heroic heat, Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms, Than Roland with his knights at Roncesvalles.6 To flinch from modern varnish, coat or flounce, Cry out for togas and the picturesque, Is fatal—foolish too. King Arthur’s self Was commonplace to Lady Guenever; And Camelot to minstrels seemed as flat As Fleet Street to our poets. Never flinch, But still, unscrupulously epic, catch Upon the burning lava of a song The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age: That, when the next shall come, the men of that May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say “Behold—behold the paps we have all sucked! nipples This bosom seems to beat still, or at least It sets ours beating: this is living art, Which thus presents and thus records true life.”
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Aurora Leigh, Barret Browning |
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This was the woman; what now of the man? But pass him. If he comes beneath a heel, He shall be crushed until he cannot feel, Or, being callous, haply till he can. But he is nothing—nothing? Only mark The rich light striking out from her on him! Ha! What a sense it is when her eyes swim Across the man she singles, leaving dark All else! Lord God, who mad’st the thing so fair, See that I am drawn to her even now! It cannot be such harm on her cool brow To put a kiss? Yet if I meet him there! But she is mine! Ah, no! I know too well I claim a star whose light is overcast: I claim a phantom-woman in the Past. The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell!
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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The love is here; it has but changed its aim. O bitter barren woman! what’s the name? The name, the name, the new name thou hast won?
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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What soul would bargain for a cure that brings Contempt the nobler agony to kill? Rather let me bear on the bitter ill, And strike this rusty bosom with new stings! It seems there is another veering fit, Since on a gold-haired lady’s eyeballs pure, I looked with little prospect of a cure, The while her mouth’s red bow loosed shafts of wit. Just heaven! Can it be true that jealousy Has decked the woman thus? And does her head Swim somewhat for possessions forfeited?
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we play the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game: HIDING THE SKELETON, shall be its name. Such play as this, the devils might appal! But here’s the greater wonder; in that we Enamoured of an acting nought can tire, Ech other, like true hypocrites admire; Warm-lighted looks, Love’s emphemerioe, Shoot gaily o’er the dishes and the wine. We waken envy of our happy lot. Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot. Dear guests, you now have seen Love’s corpse-light shine.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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You like not that French novel? Tell me why. You think it quite unnatural. Let us see. The actors are, it seems, the usual three: Husband, and wife, and lover. She—but fie! In England we’ll not hear of it.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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Distraction is the panacea, Sir! I hear my oracle of Medicine say. Doctor! that same specific yesterday I tried, and the result will not deter A second trial. Is the devil’s line Of golden hair, or raven black, composed? And does a cheek, like any seashell rosed, Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine? No matter, so I taste forgetfulness. And if the devil snare me, body and mind, Here gratefully I score—he seemëd kind, When not a soul would comfort my distress! O sweet new world, in which I rise new made! O Lady, once I gave love: now I take! Lady, I must be flattered. Shouldst thou wake The passion of a demon, be not afraid.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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I must be flattered. The imperious Desire speaks out. Lady, I am content To play with you the game of Sentiment, And with you enter on paths perilous; But if across your beauty I throw light, To make it threefold, it must be all mine. First secret; then avowed. For I must shine Envied—I, lessened in my proper sight! Be watchful of your beauty, Lady dear! How much hangs on that lamp you cannot tell. Most earnestly I pray you, tend it well: And men shall see me as a burning sphere; And men shall mark you eyeing me, and groan To be the God of such a grand sunflower! I feel the promptings of Satanic power, While you do homage unto me alone.
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Meredith, Modern Love |
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Am I failing? For no longer can I cast A glory round about this head of gold. Glory she wears, but springing from the mould Not like the consecration of the Past! Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth I cry for still: I cannot be at peace In having Love upon a mortal lease. I cannot take the woman at her worth! Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed Our human nakedness, and could endow With spiritual splendour a white brow That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed? A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will! we’ll sit contentedly, And eat our pot of honey on the grave.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text, Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is warm. Intelligence and instinct now are one. But nature says: “My children most they seem When they least know me: therefore I decree That they shall suffer.” Swift doth young Love flee, And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream. Then if we study Nature we are wise. Thus do the few who live but with the day: The scientific animals are they.— Lady, this is my sonnet to your eyes.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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She yields: my Lady in her noblest mood Has yielded: she, my golden-crownëd rose! The bride of every sense! more sweet than those Who breathe the violet breath of maidenhood. O visage of still music in the sky! Soft moon! I feel thy song, my fairest friend! True harmony within can apprehend Dumb harmony without. And hark! ’tis nigh! Belief has struck the note of sound: a gleam 10 Of living silver shows me where she shook Her long white fingers down the shadowy brook, That sings her song, half waking, half in dream. What two come here to mar this heavenly tune? A man is one: the woman bears my name, And honour. Their hands touch! Am I still tame? God, what a dancing spectre seems the moon!
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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’Tis morning: but no morning can restore What we have forfeited. I see no sin: The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot,° knows No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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He found her by the ocean’s moaning verge, Nor any wicked change in her discerned; And she believed his old love had returned, Which was her exultation, and her scourge. She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry. She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh, And tell her loudly she no longer dreamed. She dared not say, “This is my breast: look in.” But there’s a strength to help the desperate weak. That night he learned how silence best can speak The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin. About the middle of the night her call Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed. “Now kiss me, dear! it may be, now!” she said. Lethe had passed those lips, and he knew all.
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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Then each applied to each that fatal knife, Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life!—
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Modern Love, Meredith |
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He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as much alike as goslings: —a lad with light brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows—a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character of boyhood.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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“O how brave you are, Tom! I think you’re like Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you’d fight him - wouldn’t you, Tom?” “How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There’s no lions, only in shows.” “No; but if we were in the lion countries - I mean in Africa, where it’s very hot - the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book where I read it.” ...“But the lion isn’t coming. What’s the use of talking?” “But I like to fancy how it would be,” said Maggie, following him. “Just think what you would do, Tom.” “O don’t bother, Maggie! you’re such a silly - I shall go and see my rabbits.”
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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What could she do but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves and broken friendships, but it was not less bitter to Maggie—perhaps it was even more bitter—than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. |
Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr Stelling that he set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances which distinguish the actionsn of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching of nature. Mr Broderip’s amiable beaver… It was ‘Binny’s’ function to build: the absence of water or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was ont accountable. With the same enerring instinct Mr Stelling set to work at his natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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These mysterious sentences snatched from an unknown context, —like strange horns of beasts and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some far-off region, gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their own, which she could learn to interpret it was really very interesting.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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The pride and obstinacy of millers and other insignificant people, who you pass unnoticingly on the road every day, have their tragedy too, but it is of that unwept, hidden sort, that goes on from generation to generation and leaves no record.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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Why do you come then… talking and interfering with us and scolding us, if you don’t mean to do anything to help my poor mother—your own sister—if you’ve no feeling for her when she’s in trouble, and won’t part with anything, though you would never miss it, to save her from pain. Keep away from us then, and don’t come to find fault with my father—he was better than any of you—he was kind—he would have helped you, if you had been in trouble.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the Rhône, oppress me with the feeling that human life—very much of it—is a narrow, ugly, groveling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel, that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth. She wished she could have been like Bob, with his easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had something to do on which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose and disregard everything else.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faëry ball-rooms; rides off its ennui on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best houses,–how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis?
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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He could give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not the slightest promise of love toward him in her manner; it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no woman ever could love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he should at least have the happiness of seeing her, of feeling some nearness to her. And he clutched passionately the possibility that she might love him; perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to associate him with that watchful tenderness which her nature would be so keenly alive to. If any woman could love him, surely Maggie was that woman; there was such wealth of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then, the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He would be her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear anything, for her sake–except not seeing her.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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Had he fallen in love with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight? Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire beauty and enjoy looking at it,–at least under such circumstances as the present. And there was really something very interesting about this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in social intercourse.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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Had anything remarkable happened? Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass voice,–but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as would have left a critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious of having been looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner, from beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a glance that seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory influence of the voice. Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind, who had had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined society. But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. |
Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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Miss Tulliver had undeniably acted in a blamable manner, even Dr. Kenn did not deny that; how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put that favorable interpretation on everything she had done? Even on the supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief,–namely, that none of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true,–still, since they had been said about her, they had cast an odor round her which must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her own reputation–and of Society.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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“Well,” said Tom, with cold scorn, “if your feelings are so much better than mine, let me see you show them in some other way than by conduct that’s likely to disgrace us all - than by ridiculous flights first into one extreme and then into another. Pray, how have you shown your love, that you talk of, either to me or my father? By disobeying and deceiving us. I have a different way of showing my affection.” “Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in the world.” “Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can.”
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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For one instant Stephen could not conceal his astonishment at the sight of this tall dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Maggie felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a person towards whom she herself was conscious of timidity.
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Mill on the Floss, Eliot |
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“...But help me, Heaven, for surely I repent! For what is true repentance but in thought - Not even in inmost thought to think again The sins that made the past so pleasant to us? And I have sworn never to see him more, To see him more.”
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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Her memory from old habit of the mind Went slipping back upon the golden days In which she saw him first, when Lancelot came, Reputed the best knight and goodliest man, Ambassador…
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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But when the Queen immersed in such a trance, And moving thro’ the past unconsciously, Came to that point where first she saw the King Ride toward her from the city, sigh’d to find Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold, High, self-contain’d, and passionless, not like him, “Not like my Lancelot,”...
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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“Liest thou here so low, the child of one I honor’d, happy, dead before thy shame? Well is it thatno child is born of thee. The children born of thee are sword and fire, Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws.
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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But I was first of all the kings who drew The knighthood-errant of this realm and all The realms together under me, their Head, In that fair Order of my Table Round, A glorious company, the flower of men, To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time. I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honor his own word as if his God’s, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot; Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt; Then others, following these my mightiest knights, And drawing foul ensample from fair names, Sinn’d also, till the loathsome opposite Of all my heart had destined did obtain, And all thro’ thee!
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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For think not, tho’ thou wouldst not love thy lord, Thy lord has wholly lost his love for thee. I am not made of so slight elements. Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy shame. I hold that man the worst of public foes Who either for his own or children’s sake, To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife Whom he knows false abide and rule the house: For being thro’ his cowardice allow’d Her station, taken everywhere for pure, She like a new disease, unknown to men, Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd, Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse With devil’s leaps, and poisons half the young.
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Guinevere, Tennyson |
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“Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie, Whatever may have happened through these years, God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie.”
“Seemed cold and shallow without any cloud. Behold my judges, then the cloths were brought: While I was dizzied thus, old thoughts would crowd, “Belonging to the time ere° I was bought before By Arthur’s great name and his little love; Must I give up for ever then, I thought, “That which I deemed would ever round me move Glorifying all things; for a little word, Scarce ever meant at all, must I now prove “Stone-cold for ever? Pray you, does the Lord Will that all folks should be quite happy and good? I love God now a little, if this cord
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Defence of Guenevere, Morris |
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“With faintest half-heard breathing sound—why there I lose my head e’en now in doing this; But shortly listen—In that garden fair “Came Launcelot walking; this is true, the kiss Wherewith we kissed in meeting that spring day, I scarce dare talk of the remember’d bliss, “When both our mouths went wandering in one way, And aching sorely, met among the leaves; Our hands being left behind strained far away. “Never within a yard of my bright sleeves Had Launcelot come before—and now, so nigh! After that day why is it Guenevere grieves?
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Defence of Guenevere, Morris |
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“With all this wickedness; say no rash word Against me, being so beautiful; my eyes, Wept all away to grey, may bring some sword “To drown you in your blood; see my breast rise, Like waves of purple sea, as here I stand; And how my arms are moved in wonderful wise, “Yea also at my full heart’s strong command, See through my long throat how the words go up |
Defence of Guenevere, Morris |
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A wicked smile Wrinkled her face, her lips grew thin, A long way out she thrust her chin: “You know that I should strangle you While you were sleeping; or bite through Your throat, by God’s help—ah!” she said, “Lord Jesus, pity your poor maid! For in such wise they hem me in, I cannot choose but sin and sin,
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Haystack in the Floods, Morris |
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No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes, Only the young girl’s hazed and golden dreams That veil the future from her. So long since: And now it seems a jest to talk of me As if I could be one with her, of me Who am … me.
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A Castaway, Webster |
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And whom do I hurt more than they? as much? The wives? Poor fools, what do I take from them Worth crying for or keeping? If they knew What their fine husbands look like seen by eyes That may perceive there are more men than one! But, if they can, let them just take the pains To keep them: ’tis not such a mighty task
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A Castaway, Webster |
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Oh! those shrill carping virtues, safely housed From reach of even a smile that should put red On a decorous cheek, who rail at us With such a spiteful scorn and rancorousness, (Which maybe is half envy at the heart) And boast themselves so measurelessly good And us so measurelessly unlike them, What is their wondrous merit that they stay In comfortable homes whence not a soul Has ever thought of tempting them, and wear No kisses but a husband’s upon lips There is no other man desires to kiss— Refrain in fact from sin impossible?
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A Castaway, Webster |
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Oh yes, I thought, Still new in my insipid treadmill life, (My father so late dead), and hopeful still, There might be something pleasant somewhere in it, Some sudden fairy come, no doubt, to turn My pumpkin to a chariot,
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A Castaway, Webster |
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Oh God, do I not know it? I the thing Of shame and rottenness, the animal That feeds men’s lusts and preys on them, I, I, Who should not dare to take the name of wife On my polluted lips, who in the word Hear but my own reviling, I know that.
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A Castaway, Webster |
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But I went forth With my fine scorn, and whither did it lead? Money’s the root of evil do they say? Money is virtue, strength: money to me Would then have been repentance: could I live Upon my idiot’s pride?
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A Castaway, Webster |
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Someone at last, thank goodness. There’s a voice, And that’s a pleasure. Whose though? Ah, I know. Why did she come alone, the cackling goose? Why not have brought her sister? She tells more And titters less. No matter; half a loaf Is better than no bread. Oh, is it you? Most welcome, dear: one gets so moped alone.
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A Castaway, Webster |
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Lazy laughing languid Jenny, Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea, Whose head upon my knee to-night Rests for a while, as if grown light With all our dances and the sound To which the wild tunes spun you round:
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Jenny, D.G. Rossetti |
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All golden in the lamplight’s gleam, You know not what a book you seem, Half-read by lightning in a dream! How should you know, my Jenny? Nay, And I should be ashamed to say— Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss! But while my thought runs on like this With wasteful whims more than enough, I wonder what you’re thinking of.
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Jenny, D.G. Rossetti |
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Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud! Suppose I were to think aloud— What if to her all this were said? Why, as a volume seldom read Being opened halfway shuts again, So might the pages of her brain Be parted at such words, and thence Close back upon the dusty sense. For is there hue or shape defined In Jenny’s desecrated mind, Where all contagious currents meet, A Lethe of the middle street?
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Jenny, D.G. Rossetti |
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So pure—so fallen! How dare to think Of the first common kindred link? Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn It seems that all things take their turn; And who shall say but this fair tree May need, in changes that may be, Your children’s children’s charity? Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorned! Shall no man hold his pride forewarned Till in the end, the Day of Days, At Judgment, one of his own race, As frail and lost as you, shall rise— His daughter, with his mother’s eyes?
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Jenny, D.G. Rossetti |
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He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not wan with waiting, nor with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
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In an Artist's Studio, Christina Rossetti |
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Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes; but, for the most part a great peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand.
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The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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...splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron… |
The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. Alas! If read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. ...ugly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone, a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children.
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The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men - broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished - sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is - we should think before there might be some loss in it also.
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The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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It can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.
1) Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which Invention has no share. 2) Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. 3) Never encourage imitation of copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving records of great works.
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The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the production of which Invention has no share. For instance, Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed first by drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods of fuse the fragments, have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so long been endeavouring to put down.
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The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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...the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This is for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. If human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom - a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full blook - is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its loves, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.
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The Nature of Gothic, Ruskin |
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I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk! What, ‘tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley’s end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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Yes, I’m the painter, since you style me so. What, brother Lippo’s doings, up and down, You know them and they take you? like enough! I saw the proper twinkle in your eye - ‘Tell you, I liked your looks at very first. Let’s sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now! I was a baby when my mother died And father died and left me in the street. I starved there, God knows how, a year or two On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks, Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day, My stomach being empty as your hat, The wind doubled me up and down I went. Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand, (Its fellow was a stinger as I knew) And so along the wall, over the bridge, By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there, While I stood munching my first bread that month: "So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection-time,— "To quit this very miserable world? Will you renounce" . . . "the mouthful of bread?" thought I; By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me; I did renounce the world, its pride and greed, Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house, Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike, He learns the look of things, and none the less For admonition from the hunger pinch. |
Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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The monks closed in a circle and praised loud Till checked, taught what to see and not to see, Being simple bodies,—"That's the very man! Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog! That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes To care about his asthma: it's the life!'' But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked; Their betters took their turn to see and say: The Prior and the learned pulled a face And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here? Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all! Faces, arms, legs, and bodies like the true As much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game! Your business is not to catch men with show, With homage to the perishable clay, But lift them over it, ignore it all, Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn, Left foot and right foot, go a double step, Make his flesh liker and his soul more like, Both in their order? Take the prettiest face, The Prior's niece . . . patron-saint
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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Or say there's beauty with no soul at all— (I never saw it—put the case the same—) If you get simple beauty and nought else, You get about the best thing God invents: That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed, Within yourself, when you return him thanks.
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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These are the frame to? What's it all about? To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say. But why not do as well as say,—paint these Just as they are, careless what comes of it? And so they are better, painted—better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now, Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk, And trust me but you should, though! How much more, If I drew higher things with the same truth! That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place, Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh, It makes me mad to see what men shall do And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
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Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning |
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There burns a true light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world. My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
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Andrea del Sarto, Browning |
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Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! |
Andrea del Sarto, Browning |
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Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me To cover—the three first without a wife While I have mine! So—still they overcome Because there’s still Lucrezia—as I choose. Again the cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love.
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Andrea del Sarto, Browning |
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That “the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole;” that, therefore, the object “towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on which especially those who design to influence their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and development;” that for this there are two requisites, “freedom, and a variety of situations;” and that from the union of these arise “individual vigour and manifold diversity,” which combine themselves in “originality.’
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On Liberty, Mill |
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Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
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On Liberty, Mill |
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Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature?
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On Liberty, Mill |
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It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation.
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On Liberty, Mill |
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No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they always have done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed One or Few.
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On Liberty, Mill |
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What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe from this lot? What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable;
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On Liberty, Mill |
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It is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language no sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is essentially the exercise of this very quality; it obeys an instinct prompting it to try to know the best that is known and thought in the world, irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other considerations whatever.
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The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, Arnold |
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Then, too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate material progress, it seems to me indisputable that this progress is likely, though not certain, to lead in the end to an apparition of intellectual life; and that man, after he has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what to do with himself next, may begin to remember that he has a mind, and that the mind may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the privilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to our railways, our business, and our fortune-making; but we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith is not in the end the true prophet.
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The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, Arnold |
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The rule may be summed up in one word—disinterestedness/ And how is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from what is called “the practical view of things”; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches.
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The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, Arnold |
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And so on through all the various fractions, political and religious, of our society; every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure of a free disinterested play of mind meets with no favour. Directly this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel the chain.
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The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, Arnold |
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There is profit for the spirit in such contrasts as this; criticism serves the cause of perfection by establishing them. By eluding sterile conflict, by refusing to remain in the sphere where alone narrow and relative conceptions have any worth and validity, criticism may diminish its momentary importance, but only in this way has it a chance of gaining admittance for those wider and more perfect conceptions to which all its duty is really owed.
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The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, Arnold |
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And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.
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The Origin of Species, Darwin |
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Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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The Origin of Species, Darwin |
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...and I saw the flaring atom-streams And torrents of her myriad universe, Ruining along the illimitable inane, Fly on to clash together again, and make Another and another frame of things For ever…
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Lucretius, Tennyson |
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These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable, Abominable, strangers at my hearth Not welcome, harpies mirring every dish, The phantom husks of something foully done, And fleeting thro’ the boundless universe, And blasting the long quiet of my breat With animal heat and dire insanity?
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Lucretius, Tennyson |
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But now it seems some unseen monster lays His vast and filthy hands upon my will, Wrenching it backward into his;... |
Lucretius, Tennyson |
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“...Thy duty? What is duty? Fare thee well.”
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Lucretius, Tennyson |
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“To see the object as in itself it really is,” has been justly said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one’s object as it really is, is to know one’s own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realize it distinctly.
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The Renaissance, Pater |
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The whole scope observation is dwarfed to the narrow chamber of the individual mind. Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world.
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The Renaissance, Pater |
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We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean. Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past: Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been.
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The Triumph of Time, Swinburne |
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Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the pæan, the breast of the nymphs in the brake; Breasts more soft than a dove’s that tremble with tenderer breath; And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death; All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre, Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire. More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things? Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
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Hymn to Proserpine, Swinburne |
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A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may? For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day. And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears: Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years? Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
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Hymn to Proserpine, Swinburne |
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Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast! Ah that my mouth for Muses’ milk were fed On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled! That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist! That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet Thy body were abolished and consumed,
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Anactoria, Swinburne |
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But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. "I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way." In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
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Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson |
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Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this, as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other.
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Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson |
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He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment."
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Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson |
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Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures.
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Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson |
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Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. |
Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson |
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Take up the White Man’s Burden— Have done with childish days— The lightly proffered laurel, The easy ungruged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!
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The White Man's Burden, Kipling |
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For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls no Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish word— They mercy on They people, Lord!
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Recessional, Kipling |
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The Native States have a wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. Native States were created by providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers and tal-writing. they are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the railway and the telegraph on one side, and on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid.
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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When I left the train I did business with diverse kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with princes and politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug, as my servant. It was all in a day’s work.
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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“The country isn’t half worked out because they that governs it won’t let you touch it. They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can’t lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the government saying - ‘Leave it alone or let us govern.’
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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And that’s all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find — ‘D’ you want to vanquish your foes?’ and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty.
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and we’ll be the thirty-third. It’s a mountainous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful.” “But that is provided against in the Contrack,” said Carnehan. “Neither Women nor Liquor, Daniel.”
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. ‘That’s just the beginning,’ says Dravot. ‘They think we’re gods.’ He and Carnehan picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one village, and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village there, and Carnehan says, — ‘Send ’em to the old valley to plant,’ and takes ’em there and gives ’em some land that wasn’t took before.
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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‘Who’s talking o’ women?’ says Dravot. ‘I said wife — a Queen to breed a King’s son for the King. A Queen out of the strongest tribe, that’ll make them your blood-brothers, and that’ll lie by your side and tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. That’s what I want.’
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
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He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table — the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples.
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The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling |
