A MEDIEVAL TROUBADOUR. 195 'Whitmanism' is not only another sort of thing' but an absolutely destructive-capable of swallowing up all that, as light swallows darkness. When once the world has got well hold of it-incorporated that teaching into its life-both the Poetry and the Philosophy of despair, disgust, satiety, ennui, and scepticism will dissolve into unreality, like evil dreams at dawn :-do not you think so? I fancy too, you would find in all women, whatever their bent of mind, a sort of averseness or at any rate an absence of enthusiasm towards literature that transports itself into the Past in that absolute way, quite disconnecting it from the present; owing to the subtle but deep and real sense they have of the starved and barren heritage in life of woman in that old world; excepting for the fleeting year or two when they were man's delight. "To-day is but the dawning time for them, I am persuaded-hints of a future of undreamed of beauty and greatness just beginning to disclose themselves, by and by to unfold into a Life Poem that will beggar all words. "The similarity between Swinburne and Landor I judge to be deep." Her friend replies on the first of May::-" My dear Mrs. Gilchrist: I agree with you that when the world has incorporated Whitman's teaching into its life, the poetry and philosophy of despair, &c., will dissolve into unreality.' Only I would substitute if for when. "I am afraid human nature, as concreted into human society, is a very tough affair, and that neither Whitman nor anyone will fully permeate it, or wrench it aside. from itself. I believe Whitman will exercise a very real and a very valuable influence; but, as long as there are men and women who prefer to do what they choose' at the moment to doing what the highest intuitions or the most universal interests would dictate, I am afraid there always will be wronged, aggrieved, disappointed, discontented, and misled people in ample number for keeping up the philosophy of ennui. Prometheus will have to wait a longish while before he is unbound. . . . IN CHAPTER XVII. "JENNY." 1870-1871. AGE 42-43. N the spring of 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published his first volume of Poems. He presented a copy to Anne Gilchrist. After acknowledging its safe arrival, she writes a second time to the poet, and alludes to the poem, fenny: at My dear Mr. Rossetti: Now I have read all, the wish is very strong in me to write to you again. And please, do not make up your mind beforehand that my letter is burdensomely long, because these Poems have stirred me so deeply, will remain to me so precious, that I think you cannot help caring a little to hear the way in which this is so. I could linger long content, absorbed, over such noble Poems as the 'Dante Verona,' The Last Confession,' Sea 'Sea Limits ' (grand!). But I should not tell true if I did not own to you that I believe the glory, the imperishable life of the book is in the Poems which treat of Love; including among these that dear first Poem, The Blessed Damozel, and one or two others, as well as the Songs and Sonnets. So it may well be. What material, gathered by the intellect from afar, can be wrought into life and beauty like that which grows up out of a man's own Soul, with roots in his heart that are nourished by his life blood? The very outward form of the verse takes in these a subtler beauty, so that one thinks of the lines, Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought, the words seeming to flow bodily into the mind and the outward ear to catch the very pulse and breathings of the Soul. They make me sigh with happiness to realize that the earth did bear on its bosom such sweet life for two human creatures. Then, Such Pity-such pity, it strains the heart too tightly, whelms it. I wish I could convey to you a sense of the vividness and strength of my conviction of the imperishableness of all Realities. Only a little pause, in that blended life! Only one of the two hidden for a few yards by a bend of the road, my friend! How could God spare the sight of such happiness out of His Universe? "There is another poem-other indeed!-which moves me even to anguish: one which comes upon a woman with appalling force after she has been standing gazing into the very Sanctuary of Love where womanhood sits divinely enthroned. For she knows that if, looking up joyfully, the brightness shining on her also, she may say, ' my sister,' she must also, though shame should rise up and cover her, look down and say 'O my sister, THE EDGE OF AN ABYSS. 'If but a woman's heart might see For once! But that can never be.' 199 No, that cannot be. But looking into her own, and there seeing what that poor heart once was, she may find a little light for this dark question that men could not, no, not even Poets. I think of how Jenny stood that fatal day innocent, ignorant, (how innocent, how ignorant of harm I do not think any but a woman rightly understands) heedless, rash, too, and near the edge of an abyss the very existence of which was only a far-off ugly dream to her-only an unmeaning word perhaps and in one swift blind bewildered moment was drawn by a strong ruthlessly vehement hand over the edge- her cheerful day changed into one long black night-he that might have led so high hurling her so low-teaching her to take the very characters with which she might have spelled in heavenly radiance a word whose meaning would unfold in unutterable beauty throughout her life, and, with them, dipped in smoke and lurid fire from below, to write one that blasts her with shame and ruin. “Then it seems to me that as God's eyes look on at this, they grow dim with such a mist of the tears of pity that it veils her guilt (if indeed the blind folly of yielding herself a passive victim ought to be called guilt, just because the consequences are so terrible) even from Him; nay I will dare to say, blots it out. Afterwards with no human hand to help her up again, perhaps pushed down from above by sisters-grasped from below by ever more and more brutalized men, her poor |