Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below, and the saints above, for love is heaven, and heaven is love.
The streets of New York are full of the most delightful
persons. I have noticed them on all sides. The trouble is that you have
been looking on them with a bilious eye."
"But I thought you told me to be stark and poignant, Mr. Beamish."
"Nothing of the kind. You must have misunderstood me. Starkness is
quite out of place in poetry. A poem should be a thing of beauty and
charm and sentiment, and have as its theme the sweetest and divinest
of all human emotions--Love. Only Love can inspire the genuine bard.
Love, Garroway, is a fire that glows and enlarges, until it warms
and beams upon multitudes, upon the universal heart of all, and so
lights up the whole world and all Nature with its generous flames.
Shakespeare speaks of the ecstasy of love, and Shakespeare knew what he
was talking about. Ah, better to live in the lowliest cot, Garroway,
than pine in a palace alone. In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed:
in war he mounts the warrior's steed. In halls, in gay attire is seen;
in hamlets, dances on the green. Love rules the court, the camp, the
grove, and men below and saints above; for love is heaven and heaven is
love. Get these simple facts into your silly fat head, Garroway, and
you may turn out a poem worth reading. If, however, you are going to
take this absurd attitude about festering streets and scabrous dogs and
the rest of it, you are simply wasting your time and would be better
employed writing sub-titles for the motion-pictures."
Officer Garroway was not a man of forceful character. He bowed his head
meekly before the storm.
"I see what you mean, Mr. Beamish."
"I should hope you did. I have put it plainly enough. I dislike
intensely this modern tendency on the part of young writers to
concentrate on corpses and sewers and despair. They should be writing
about Love. I tell thee Love is nature's second sun, Garroway, causing
a spring of virtues where he shines. All love is sweet, given or
returned. Common as light is love, and its familiar voice wearies not
ever. True love's the gift which God has given to man alone beneath the
heaven. It is not--mark this, Garroway--it is not fantasy's hot fire,
whose wishes soon as granted die.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.
“In brief, my lord, we both descried
(For then I stood by Henry’s side)
The Palmer mount, and outwards ride,
Upon the earl’s own favourite steed:
All sheathed he was in armour bright,
And much resembled that same knight,
Subdued by you in Cotswold fight:
Lord Angus wished him speed.”
The instant that Fitz-Eustace spoke,
A sudden light on Marmion broke:
“Ah! dastard fool, to reason lost!”
He muttered; “’Twas nor fay nor ghost
I met upon the moonlight wold,
But living man of earthly mould.
O dotage blind and gross!
Had I but fought as wont, one thrust
Had laid De Wilton in the dust,
My path no more to cross.
How stand we now?—he told his tale
To Douglas; and with some avail;
’Twas therefore gloomed his ruggéd brow.
Will Surrey dare to entertain,
’Gainst Marmion, charge disproved and vain?
Small risk of that, I trow.
Yet Clare’s sharp questions must I shun;
Must separate Constance from the nun—
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
A Palmer too!—no wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye:
I might have known there was but one
Whose look could quell Lord Marmion.”
XVIII.
Stung with these thoughts, he urged to speed
His troop, and reached, at eve, the Tweed,
Where Lennel’s convent closed their march;
(There now is left but one frail arch,
Yet mourn thou not its cells:
Our time a fair exchange has made;
Hard by, in hospitable shade,
A reverend pilgrim dwells,
Well worth the whole Bernardine brood
That e’er wore sandal, frock, or hood.)
Yet did Saint Bernard’s Abbot there
Give Marmion entertainment fair,
And lodging for his train and Clare.
Next morn the baron climbed the tower,
To view afar the Scottish power,
Encamped on Flodden edge:
The white pavilions made a show,
Like remnants of the winter snow,
Along the dusky ridge.
Long Marmion looked: at length his eye
Unusual movement might descry
Amid the shifting lines:
The Scottish host drawn out appears,
For, flashing on the edge of spears
The eastern sunbeam shines.
I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decencys sake.
A man may, in
some circumstances, disguise the truth for fair and honest purpose; for
were it to be always spoken, and upon all occasions, this were no world
to live in.”
“You have a courtly conscience, Master Varney,” said the Countess, “and
your veracity will not, I think, interrupt your preferment in the world,
such as it is. But touching Tressilian--I must do him justice, for
I have done him wrong, as none knows better than thou. Tressilian's
conscience is of other mould--the world thou speakest of has not that
which could bribe him from the way of truth and honour; and for living
in it with a soiled fame, the ermine would as soon seek to lodge in the
den of the foul polecat. For this my father loved him; for this I would
have loved him--if I could. And yet in this case he had what seemed
to him, unknowing alike of my marriage and to whom I was united, such
powerful reasons to withdraw me from this place, that I well trust he
exaggerated much of my father's indisposition, and that thy better news
may be the truer.”
“Believe me they are, madam,” answered Varney. “I pretend not to be a
champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance.
I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for
decency's sake. But you must think lower of my head and heart than is
due to one whom my noble lord deigns to call his friend, if you suppose
I could wilfully and unnecessarily palm upon your ladyship a falsehood,
so soon to be detected, in a matter which concerns your happiness.”
“Master Varney,” said the Countess, “I know that my lord esteems you,
and holds you a faithful and a good pilot in those seas in which he has
spread so high and so venturous a sail. Do not suppose, therefore, I
meant hardly by you, when I spoke the truth in Tressilian's vindication.
I am as you well know, country-bred, and like plain rustic truth better
than courtly compliment; but I must change my fashions with my sphere, I
presume.”
“True, madam,” said Varney, smiling; “and though you speak now in
jest, it will not be amiss that in earnest your present speech had some
connection with your real purpose. A court-dame--take the most noble,
the most virtuous, the most unimpeachable that stands around our Queen's
throne--would, for example, have shunned to speak the truth, or what she
thought such, in praise of a discarded suitor, before the dependant and
confidant of her noble husband.
My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.
Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives! Fight on; death is better than defeat! Fight on brave knights! for bright eyes behold your deeds!
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.
And please return it. You may think this a strange request, but I find that although my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all of them good bookkeepers.
Perhaps the perusal of such works may, without injustice, be compared with the use of opiates, baneful, when habitually and constantly resorted to, but of most blessed power in those moments of pain and of langour, when the whole head is sore, and the whole heart sick. If those who rail indiscriminately at this species of composition, were to consider the quantity of actual pleasure it produces, and the much greater proportion of real sorrow and distress which it alleviates, their philanthropy ought to moderate their critical pride, or religious intolerance.
Colonel Talbot? he is a very disagreeable person, to be sure. He looks as if he thought no Scottish woman worth the trouble of handing her a cup of tea.
I did not myself set a high estimation on wealth, and had the affectation of most young men of lively imagination, who suppose that they can better dispense with the possession of money, than resign their time and faculties to the labour necessary to acquire it.
I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!
…having once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks I could know him again among a thousand warriors. He rushes into the fray as if he were summoned to a banquet. There is more than mere strength—there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to every blow which he deals upon his enemies. God assoilzie him of the sin of bloodshed! It is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold how the arm and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.
Everything is possible for him who possesses courage and activity, she said, with a look resembling one of those heroines of the age of chivalry, whose encouragement was wont to give champions double valour at the hour of need; ``and to the timid and hesitating, everything is impossible, because it seems so.
…having once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks I could know him again among a thousand warriors. He rushes into the fray as if he were summoned to a banquet. There is more than mere strength--there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to every blow which he deals upon his enemies. God assoilzie him of the sin of bloodshed! It is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold how the arm and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.
so wondrous wild, the whole might seemthe scenery of a fairy dream
I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?
One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum
Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.
Thou hast had thty day, old dame, but thy sun has long been set. Thou art now the very emblem of an old warhorse turned out on the barren heath; thou hast had thy paces in thy time, but now a broken amble is the best of them.
