Thomas Woolner — My Beautiful Lady Introduction

In some there lies a sorrow too profound To find a voice or to reveal itself Throughout the strain of daily toil, or thought, Or during converse born of souls allied, As aught men understand. And though mayhap Their cheeks will thin or droop; and wane their eyes’ Frank lustre; hair may lose its hue, or fall; And health may slacken low in force; and they Are older than the warrant of their years; Yet they to others seem to gild their lives With cheerfulness, and every duty tend, As if their aspects told the truth within. But they are not as others: not for them The bounding pulse, and ardour of desire, p. 16The rapture and the wonder in things new; The hope that palpitating enters where Perfection smiles on universal life; Nor do they with elastic enterprise Forecast delight in compassing results; Nor, having won their ends, fall godlike back And taste the calm completion of content. But in a sober chilled grey atmosphere Work out their lives; more various though they are Than creatures in the unknown ocean depths, Yet each in whom this vital grief has root Is dull to what makes everything of worth. And though, may be, a shallow bodily joy Oft tingles through them at the breathing spring, Or first-heard exultation of the lark; Still that deep weight draws ever steadily Their thoughts and passions back to secret woe. Though, if endowed with light, heroic deeds May be achieved; and if benignly bent They may be treasured blessings through their lives; p. 17Yet power and goodness are to them as dreams, And they heed vaguely, if their waking sight Be met with slanting storm against the pane, Or sunshine glittering on the leaves that play In purest blue of breezy summer morns. Whence springs this well of mournfulness profound, Unfathomable to plummet cast by man? Alas; for who can tell! Whence comes the wind Heaving the ocean into maddened arms That clutch and dash huge vessels on the rocks, And scatter them, as if compacted slight As little eggs boys star against a tree In wanton mischief? Whence, detestable, To man, who suffers from the monster-jaws, The power that in the logging crocodiles’ Outrageous bulk puts evil fire of life? That spouts from mountain-pyramids a flood Of lava, overwhelming works and men p. 18In burning, fetid ruin?—The power that stings A city with a pestilence: or turns The pretty babe, who in his mother’s lap Babbles her back the lavished kiss and laugh, Through lusts and vassalage to obdurate sin, Into a knife-armed midnight murderer? Our lives are mysteries, and rarely scanned As we read stories writ by mortal pen. We can perchance but catch a straying weft And trace the hinted texture here or there, Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates. Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed With one bright child, a wonder in his years, For loveliness and genius versatile: Some common ill destroys him; parents, both, Until their death, are left but living tombs That hold the one dead image of their joy. A man, the flower of honour, who has found His well-beloved young daughter fled from home, Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing p. 19Tainting his blood. A youth who throws the strength Of his whole being into love for one Answering him honeyed smiles, and leaves his land For some far country, seeking wealth he hopes Will grace her daintily with choice delights, And on returning sees the honeyed smiles Are sweetening other lips. A husband who Has found that household curse, a faithless wife. A thinker whose far-piercing care perceives His nation goes the road that ends in shame. A gracious woman whose reserve denies The power to utter what consumes her heart. Such instances (and some a loss to know, Which steadfast reticence will shield from those, Debased or garrulous, whose hearts corrupt, But learn the gloomy secrets of their kind To poison-tip their wit, or grope and grin With pharisaic laughter at disgrace)— Such instances as these demand no guide p. 20To thrid the dismal issues from their source! But others are there, lying fast concealed, Dark, hopeless, and unutterably sad, Which have not been, and never may be known. Then we may well call happy one whose grief, Mixed up with sacred memories of the past, Can tell to others how the tempest rose, That struck and left him lonely in the world; And who, narrating, feels his sorrow soothed, By that respect which love and sorrow claim. It much behoves us all, but chiefly those Whom fate has favoured with an easy trust, To keep a bridle upon restless speech And thought: and not in flagrant haste prejudge The first presentment as the rounded truth. For true it is, that rapid thoughts, and freak Of skimming word, and glance, more frequently Than either malice, settled hate, or scorn, Support confusion, and pervert the right; p. 21Set up the weakling in the strong man’s place; And yoke the great one’s strength to idleness; Pour gold into the squanderer’s purse, and suck The wealth, which is a power, from their control Who would have turned it unto noble use. And oftentimes a man will strike his friend, By random verbiage, with sharper pain Than could a foe, yet scarcely mean him wrong; For none can strip this complex masquerade And know who languishes with secret wounds. They whom the brunt of war has maimed in limb, Who lean on crutches to sustain their weight, Are manifest to all; and reverence For their misfortunes kindly gains them place: But wounds, sometimes more deep and dangerous, We may in careless jostle through the crowd, Gall and oppress, because to us unknown. Then, howsoever by our needs impelled, Let us resolve to move in gentleness; Judge mildly when we doubt; and pause awhile Before injustice palpably proclaimed p. 22Ere we let fall the judgment stroke: against Their ignominious craft, who ever wait To filch another’s right, we will maintain Majestic peace in silence; knowing well Their craft takes something richer from themselves. It is but seemly to respect the great; But never let us fail toward lowly ones; Respecting more, in that they lack the force To claim it of the world. For souls there are Of poor capacities, whose purpose holds, Throughout their unregarded lives, a worth, And earnest law of fixed integrity, That were an honour even unto those Whose genius marks the boundaries of our race. p. 23PART THE FIRST. p. 25LOVE. Love comes divinely, gladdening mortal life, As sunrise dawns upon the gaze of one Bewildered in some outland waste, and lost: Who, lonely faint and shuddering, through the night Heard savage creatures nigh; and far-off moan Of tempests on the wind. Auroral joy Flushes the brow of childhood, warms his cheek To rosier redness at the name of Love; And earlier thoughts awake in darkness strive; As unfledged nestlings move their sightless heads At sound, toward a fair world to them unknown. Young Hope scales azure mountain heights to gaze, In Love’s first golden and delicious dream. He sees the earth a maze of tempting paths, p. 26For blissful sauntering mid the crowded flowers And music of the rills. No ambushed wrongs, Or thwarting storms there baffle and surprise; But lingering, man treads long an odorous way; And at the close, with Love clasped hand in hand, Sets in proud glory: thence to rise anon With Love beyond the stars and rest in heaven. Man, nerved by Love, can steadily endure Clash of opposing interests; perplexed web Of crosses that distracting clog advance: In thickest storm of contest waxes stronger At momentary thought of home, of her, His gracious wife, and bright-faced joys. To him The wrinkled patriarch, who sits and suns His shrunken form beneath the boughs he climbed A lissom boy, whence comes that brooding smile, Whose secret lifts his cheeks, and overflows His sight with tender dew? What through his frame p. 27Melts languor sweeter than approaching sleep To one made weary by a hard day’s toil? It is the memory of primal love, Whose visionary splendour steeped his life In hues of heaven; and which grown open day, Revealing perilous falls, his steps confined Within the pathways to the noblest end. Now following this dimmed glory, tired, his soul Haunts ever the mysterious gates of Death; And waits in patient reverence till his doom Unfolding them fulfils immortal Love. As from some height, on a wild day of cloud, A wanderer, chilled and worn, perchance beholds Move toward him through the landscape soaked in gloom A golden beam of light; creating lakes, And verdant pasture, farms, and villages; And touching spires atop to flickering flame; Disclosing herds of sober feeding kine; And brightening on its way the woods to song; p. 28As he, that wanderer, brightens when the shaft Suddenly falls on him. A moment warmed, He scarcely feels its loveliness before The light departing leaves his saddened soul More cold than ere it came. Thus love once shone And blessed my life: so vanished into gloom.