Yet to the wondrous St. Peter's, and yet to the solemn Rotunda, Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls, Yet may we go, and recline, while a whole mighty world seems above us, Gathered and fixed to all time into one roofing supreme;Yet may we, thinking on these things, exclude what is meaner around us;Yet, at the worst of the worst, books and a chamber remain;Yet may we think, and forget, and possess our souls in resistance.--Ah, but away from the stir, shouting, and gossip of war, Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle, Where, amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind, Where, under mulberry-branches, the diligent rivulet sparkles, Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply, Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated, Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,--Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city, Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!
I. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,--on the way to Florence.
Why doesn't Mr. Claude come with us? you ask.--We don't know, You should know better than we. He talked of the Vatican marbles;But I can't wholly believe that this was the actual reason,--He was so ready before, when we asked him to come and escort us.
Certainly he is odd, my dear Miss Roper. To change so Suddenly, just for a whim, was not quite fair to the party,--Not quite right. I declare, I really almost am offended:
I, his great friend, as you say, have doubtless a title to be so.
Not that I greatly regret it, for dear Georgina distinctly Wishes for nothing so much as to show her adroitness. But, oh, my Pen will not write any more;--let us say nothing further about it.
********
Yes, my dear Miss Roper, I certainly called him repulsive;So I think him, but cannot be sure I have used the expression Quite as your pupil should; yet he does most truly repel me.
Was it to you I made use of the word? or who was it told you?
Yes, repulsive; observe, it is but when he talks of ideas That he is quite unaffected, and free, and expansive, and easy;I could pronounce him simply a cold intellectual being.--When does he make advances?--He thinks that women should woo him;Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted.
She that should love him must look for small love in return,--like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but a rigid and niggard support, and E'en to get that must go searching all round with her humble embraces.
II. Claude to Eustace,--from Rome.
Tell me, my friend, do you think that the grain would sprout in the furrow, Did it not truly accept as its summum and ultimum bonum That mere common and may-be indifferent soil it is set in?
Would it have force to develop and open its young cotyledons, Could it compare, and reflect, and examine one thing with another?
Would it endure to accomplish the round of its natural functions Were it endowed with a sense of the general scheme of existence?
While from Marseilles in the steamer we voyage to Civita Vecchia, Vexed in the squally seas as we lay by Capraja and Elba, Standing, uplifted, alone on the heaving poop of the vessel, Looking around on the waste of the rushing incurious billows, 'This is Nature,' I said: 'we are born as it were from her waters;Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for, Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge, Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed.'
This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the poop of the steamer;And as unthinking I sat in the hall of the famed Ariadne, Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble.
It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer.
Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.
III. Claude to Eustace.
Farewell, Politics, utterly! What can I do? I cannot Fight, you know; and to talk I am wholly ashamed. And although IGnash my teeth when I look in your French or your English papers, What is the good of that? Will swearing, I wonder, mend matters?
Cursing and scolding repel the assailants? No, it is idle;No, whatever befalls, I will hide, will ignore or forget it.
Let the tail shift for itself; I will bury my head. And what's the Roman Republic to me, or I to the Roman Republic?
Why not fight?--In the first place, I haven't so much as a musket;In the next, if I had, I shouldn't know how I should use it;In the third, just at present I'm studying ancient marbles;In the fourth, I consider I owe my life to my country;In the fifth--I forget, but four good reasons are ample.
Meantime, pray let 'em fight, and be killed. I delight in devotion.
So that I 'list not, hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!
Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiae; though it would seem this Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind:
Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere!
Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother!
IV. Claude to Eustace.
Not, as we read in the words of the olden-time inspiration, Are there two several trees in the place we are set to abide in;But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden, Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever, Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,--Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless unfruitful blossom.
Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine, Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaus Rose sympathetic in grief to his love-lorn Laodamia, Evermore growing, and when in their growth to the prospect attaining, Over the low sea-banks, of the fatal Ilian city, Withering still at the sight which still they upgrow to encounter.
