The Flower of the Mind

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Flower of the Mind This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Flower of the Mind Author : Alice Meynell Release date : February 1, 2000 [eBook #2080] Most recently updated: June 28, 2015 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2080 Credits : Transcribed from the 1898 Grant Richards edition by David Price *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLOWER OF THE MIND *** Transcribed from the 1898 Grant Richards edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org Of this reissue only 250 copies will be bound up . THE FLOWER OF THE MIND A Choice among the best Poems MADE BY ALICE MEYNELL LONDON GRANT RICHARDS 9 HENRIETTA STREET 1898 Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable , Printers to Her Majesty INTRODUCTION Partial collections of English poems, decided by a common subject or bounded by narrow dates and periods of literary history, are made at very short intervals, and the makers are safe from the reproach of proposing their own personal taste as a guide for the reading of others.  But a general Anthology gathered from the whole of English literature—the whole from Chaucer to Wordsworth—by a gatherer intent upon nothing except the quality of poetry, is a more rare enterprise.  It is hardly to be made without tempting the suspicion—nay, hardly without seeming to hazard the confession—of some measure of self-confidence.  Nor can even the desire to enter upon that labour be a frequent one—the desire of the heart of one for whom poetry is veritably ‘the complementary life’ to set up a pale for inclusion and exclusion, to add honours, to multiply homage, to cherish, to restore, to protest, to proclaim, to depose; and to gain the consent of a multitude of readers to all those acts.  Many years, then—some part of a century—may easily pass between the publication of one general anthology and the making of another. The enterprise would be a sorry one if it were really arbitrary, and if an anthologist should give effect to passionate preferences without authority.  An anthology that shall have any value must be made on the responsibility of one but on the authority of many.  There is no caprice; the mind of the maker has been formed for decision by the wisdom of many instructors.  It is the very study of criticism, and the grateful and profitable study, that gives the justification to work done upon the strongest personal impulse, and done, finally, in the mental solitude that cannot be escaped at the last.  In another order, moral education would be best crowned if it proved to have quick and profound control over the first impulses; its finished work would be to set the soul in a state of law, delivered from the delays of self-distrust; not action only, but the desires would be in an old security, and a wish would come to light already justified.  This would be the second—if it were not the only—liberty.  Even so an intellectual education might assuredly confer freedom upon first and solitary thoughts, and confidence and composure upon the sallies of impetuous courage.  In a word, it should make a studious anthologist quite sure about genius.  And all who have bestowed, or helped in bestowing, the liberating education have given their student the authority to be free.  Personal and singular the choice in such a book must be, not without right. Claiming and disclaiming so much, the gatherers may follow one another to harvest, and glean in the same fields in different seasons, for the repetition of the work can never be altogether a repetition.  The general consent of criticism does not stand still; and moreover, a mere accident has until now left a poet of genius of the past here and there to neglect or obscurity.  This is not very likely to befall again; the time has come when there is little or nothing left to discover or rediscover in the sixteenth century or the seventeenth; we know that there does not lurk another Crashaw contemned, or another Henry Vaughan disregarded, or another George Herbert misplaced.  There is now something like finality of knowledge at least; and therefore not a little error in the past is ready to be repaired.  This is the result of time.  Of the slow actions and reactions of critical taste there might be something to say, but nothing important.  No loyal anthologist perhaps will consent to acknowledge these tides; he will hardly do his work well unless he believe it to be stable and perfect; nor, by the way, will he judge worthily in the name of others unless he be resolved to judge intrepidly for himself. Inasmuch as even the best of all poems are the best upon innumerable degrees, the size of most anthologies has gone far to decide what degrees are to be gathered in and what left without.  The best might make a very small volume, and be indeed the best, or a very large volume, and be still indeed the best.  But my labour has been to do somewhat differently—to gather nothing that did not overpass a certain boundary-line of genius.  Gray’s Elegy , for instance, would rightly be placed at the head of everything below that mark.  It is, in fact, so near to the work of genius as to be most directly, closely, and immediately rebuked by genius; it meets genius at close quarters and almost deserves that Shakespeare himself should defeat it.  Mediocrity said its own true word in the Elegy : ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’ But greatness had said its own word also in a sonnet: ‘The summer flower is to the summer sweet Though to itself it only live and die.’ The reproof here is too sure; not always does it touch so quick, but it is not seldom manifest, and it makes exclusion a simple task.  Inclusion, on the other hand, cannot be so completely fulfilled.  The impossibility of taking in poems of great length, however purely lyrical, is a mechanical barrier, even on the plan of the present volume; in the case of Spenser’s Prothalamion , the unmanageably autobiographical and local passage makes it inappropriate; some exquisite things of Landor’s are lyrics in blank verse, and the necessary rule against blank verse shuts them out.  No extracts have been made from any poem, but in a very few instances a stanza or a passage has been dropped out.  No poem has been put in for the sake of a single perfectly fine passage; it would be too much to say that no poem has been put in for the sake of two splendid passages or so.  The Scottish ballad poetry is represented by examples that are to my mind finer than anything left out; still, it is but represented; and as the song of this multitude of unknown poets overflows by its quantity a collection of lyrics of genius, so does severally the song of Wordsworth, Crashaw, and Shelley.  It has been necessary, in considering traditional songs of evidently mingled authorship, to reject some one invaluable stanza or burden—the original and ancient surviving matter of a spoilt song—because it was necessary to reject the sequel that has cumbered it since some sentimentalist took it for his own.  An example, which makes the heart ache, is that burden of keen and remote poetry: ‘O the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom, The broom of Cowdenknowes!’ Perhaps some hand will gather all such precious fragments as these together one day, freed from what is alien in the work of the restorer.  It is inexplicable that a generation resolved to forbid the restoration of ancient buildings should approve the eighteenth century restoration of ancient poems; nay, the architectural ‘restorer’ is immeasurably the more respectful.  In order to give us again the ancient fragments, it is happily not necessary to break up the composite songs which, since the time of Burns, have gained a national love.  Let them be, but let the old verses be also; and let them have, for those who desire it, the solitariness of their state of ruin.  Even in the cases—and they are not few—where Burns is proved to have given beauty and music to the ancient fragment itself, his work upon the old stanza is immeasurably finer than his work in his own new stanzas following, and it would be less than impiety to part the two. I have obeyed a profound conviction which I have reason to hope will be more commended in the future than perhaps it can be now, in leaving aside a multitude of composite songs—anachronisms, and worse than mere anachronisms, as I think them to be, for they patch wild feeling with sentiment of the sentimentalist.  There are some exceptions.  The one fine stanza of a song which both Sir Walter Scott and Burns restored is given with the restorations of both, those restorations being severally beautiful; and the burden, ‘Hame, hame, hame,’ is printed with the Jacobite song that carries it; this song seems so mingled and various in date and origin that no apology is needed for placing it amongst the bundle of Scottish ballads of days before the Jacobites. Sir Patrick Spens is treated here as an ancient song.  It is to be noted that the modern, or comparatively modern, additions to old songs full of quantitative metre—‘Hame, hame, hame,’ is one of these—full of long notes, rests, and interlinear pauses, are almost always written in anapæsts.  The later writer has slipped away from the fine, various, and subtle metre of the older.  Assuredly the popularity of the metre which, for want of a term suiting the English rules of verse, must be called anapæstic, has done more than any other thing to vulgarise the national sense of rhythm and to silence the finer rhythms.  Anapæsts came quite suddenly into English poetry and brought coarseness, glibness, volubility, dapper and fatuous effects.  A master may use it well, but as a popular measure it has been disastrous.  I would be bound to find the modern stanzas in an old song by this very habit of anapæsts and this very misunderstanding of the long words and interlinear pauses of the older stanzas.  This, for instance, is the old metre: ‘Hame, hame, hame!  O hame fain wad I be!’ and this the lamentable anapæstic line (from the same song): ‘Yet the sun through the mirk seems to promise to me—.’ It has been difficult to refuse myself the delight of including A Divine Love of Carew, but it seemed too bold to leave out four stanzas of a poem of seven, and the last four are of the poorest argument.  This passage at least shall speak for the first three: ‘Thou didst appear A glorious mystery, so dark, so clear, As Nature did intend All should confess, but none might comprehend.’ From Christ’s Victory in Heaven of Giles Fletcher (out of reach for its length) it is a happiness to extract here at least the passage upon ‘Justice,’ who looks ‘as the eagle that hath so oft compared Her eye with heaven’s’; from Marlowe’s poem, also unmanageable, that in which Love ran to the priestess ‘And laid his childish head upon her breast’; with that which tells how Night, ‘deep-drenched in misty Acheron, Heaved up her head, and half the world upon Breathed darkness forth’; from Robert Greene two lines of a lovely passage: ‘Cupid abroad was lated in the night, His wings were wet with ranging in the rain’; from Ben Jonson’s Hue and Cry (not throughout fine) the stanza: ‘Beauties, have ye seen a toy, Called Love, a little boy, Almost naked, wanton, blind; Cruel now, and then as kind? If he be amongst ye, say; He is Venus’ run-away’; from Francis Davison: ‘Her angry eyes are great with tears’; from George Wither: ‘I can go rest On her sweet breast That is the pride of Cynthia’s train’; from Cowley: ‘Return, return, gay planet of mine east’! The poems in which these are cannot make part of the volume, but the citation of the fragments is a relieving act of love. At the very beginning, Skelton’s song to ‘Mistress Margery Wentworth’ had almost taken a place; but its charm is hardly fine enough.  If it is necessary to answer the inevitable question in regard to Byron, let me say that in another Anthology, a secondary Anthology, the one in which Gray’s Elegy would have an honourable place, some more of Byron’s lyrics would certainly be found; and except this there is no apology.  If the last stanza of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ passage, or the last stanza on the cascade rainbow at Terni, ‘Love watching madness with unalterable mien,’ had been separate poems instead of parts of Childe Harold , they would have been amongst the poems that are here collected in no spirit of arrogance, or of caprice, of diffidence or doubt. The volume closes some time before the middle of the century and the death of Wordsworth. A. M CONTENTS PAGE ANONYMOUS. THE FIRST CAROL 1 SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1552–1618). VERSES BEFORE DEATH 1 EDMUND SPENSER (1553–1599). EASTER 2 FRESH SPRING 2 LIKE AS A SHIP 3 EPITHALAMION 3 JOHN LYLY (1554?–1606). THE SPRING 17 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554–1586). TRUE LOVE 18 THE MOON 18 KISS 19 SWEET JUDGE 19 SLEEP 20 WAT’RED WAS MY WINE 20 THOMAS LODGE (1556–1625). ROSALYND’S MADRIGAL 21 ROSALINE 22 THE SOLITARY SHEPHERD’S SONG 24 ANONYMOUS. I SAW MY LADY WEEP 24 GEORGE PEELE (1558?–1597). FAREWELL TO ARMS 25 ROBERT GREENE (1560?–1592). FAWNIA 26 SEPHESTIA’S SONG TO HER CHILD 27 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1562–1593). THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE 28 SAMUEL DANIEL (1562–1619). SLEEP 29 MY SPOTLESS LOVE 30 MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563–1631). SINCE THERE’S NO HELP 30 JOSHUA SYLVESTER (1563–1618). WERE I AS BASE 31 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616). POOR SOUL, THE CENTRE OF MY SINFUL EARTH 32 O ME! WHAT EYES HATH LOVE PUT IN MY HEAD 32 SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY? 33 WHEN IN THE CHRONICLE OF WASTED TIME 33 THAT TIME OF YEAR THOU MAY’ST IN ME BEHOLD 34 HOW LIKE A WINTER HATH MY ABSENCE BEEN 34 BEING YOUR SLAVE, WHAT SHOULD I DO BUT TEND 35 WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES 35 THEY THAT HAVE POWER TO HURT, AND WILL DO 36 FAREWELL! THOU ART TOO DEAR FOR MY POSSESSING 37 WHEN TO THE SESSIONS OF SWEET SILENT THOUGHT 37 DID NOT THE HEAVENLY RHETORIC OF THINE EYE 38 THE FORWARD VIOLET THUS DID I CHIDE 38 O LEST THE WORLD SHOULD TASK YOU TO RECITE 39 LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS 39 HOW OFT, WHEN THOU, MY MUSIC, MUSIC PLAY’ST 40 FULL MANY A GLORIOUS MORNING HAVE I SEEN 40 THE EXPENSE OF SPIRIT IN A WASTE OF SHAME 41 FANCY 41 FAIRIES 42 COME AWAY 43 FULL FATHOM FIVE 43 DIRGE 44 SONG 44 SONG 45 ANONYMOUS. TOM O’ BEDLAM 45 THOMAS CAMPION ( circa 1567–1620). KIND ARE HER ANSWERS 46 LAURA 47 HER SACRED BOWER 48 FOLLOW 49 WHEN THOU MUST HOME 50 WESTERN WIND 50 FOLLOW YOUR SAINT 51 CHERRY-RIPE 52 THOMAS NASH (1567–1601?). SPRING 53 JOHN DONNE (1573–1631). THIS HAPPY DREAM 53 DEATH 54 HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER 55 THE FUNERAL 56 RICHARD BARNEFIELD (1574?—?). THE NIGHTINGALE 57 BEN JONSON (1574–1637). CHARIS’ TRIUMPH 58 JEALOUSY 59 EPITAPH ON ELIZABETH L. H. 59 HYMN TO DIANA 60 ON MY FIRST DAUGHTER 60 ECHO’S LAMENT FOR NARCISSUS 61 AN EPITAPH ON SALATHIEL PAVY, A CHILD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CHAPEL 61 JOHN FLETCHER (1579–1625). INVOCATION TO SLEEP, FROM VALENTINIAN 62 TO BACCHUS 63 JOHN WEBSTER (—?–1625). SONG FROM THE DUCHESS OF MALFI 63 SONG FROM THE DEVIL’S LAW-CASE 64 IN EARTH, DIRGE FROM VITTORIA COROMBONA 64 WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN (1585–1649). SONG 65 SLEEP, SILENCE’ CHILD 66 TO THE NIGHTINGALE 67 MADRIGAL I 67 MADRIGAL II 68 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER (1586–1616)—(1579–1625). I DIED TRUE 68 FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1586–1616). ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 69 SIR FRANCIS KYNASTON (1587–1642). TO CYNTHIA, ON CONCEALMENT OF HER BEAUTY 69 NATHANIEL FIELD (1587–1638). MATIN SONG 71 GEORGE WITHER (1588–1667). SLEEP, BABY, SLEEP! 71 THOMAS CAREW (1589–1639). SONG 74 TO MY INCONSTANT MISTRESS 75 AN HYMENEAL DIALOGUE 75 INGRATEFUL BEAUTY THREATENED 76 THOMAS DEKKER (—1638?). LULLABY 77 SWEET CONTENT 77 THOMAS HEYWOOD (—1649?). GOOD-MORROW 78 ROBERT HERRICK (1591–1674?). TO DIANEME 79 TO MEADOWS 79 TO BLOSSOMS 80 TO DAFFODILS 81 TO VIOLETS 82 TO PRIMROSES 82 TO DAISIES, NOT TO SHUT SO SOON 83 TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME 84 DRESS 84 IN SILKS 85 CORINNA’S GOING A-MAYING 85 GRACE FOR A CHILD 86 BEN JONSON 88 GEORGE HERBERT (1593–1632). HOLY BAPTISM 89 VIRTUE 89 UNKINDNESS 90 LOVE 91 THE PULLEY 91 THE COLLAR 92 LIFE 93 MISERY 94 JAMES SHIRLEY (1596–1666). EQUALITY 97 ANONYMOUS ( circa 1603). LULLABY 98 SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT (1605–1668). MORNING 99 EDMUND WALLER (1605–1687). THE ROSE 99 THOMAS RANDOLPH (1606–1634?). HIS MISTRESS 100 CHARLES BEST (—?). A SONNET OF THE MOON 101 JOHN MILTON (1608–1674). HYMN ON CHRIST’S NATIVITY 101 L’ALLEGRO 109 IL PENSEROSO 113 LYCIDAS 119 ON HIS BLINDNESS 125 ON HIS DECEASED WIFE 126 ON SHAKESPEARE 126 SONG ON MAY MORNING 127 INVOCATION TO SABRINA, FROM COMUS 127 INVOCATION TO ECHO, FROM COMUS 128 THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, FROM COMUS 129 JAMES GRAHAM, Marquis of Montrose (1612–1650). THE VIGIL OF DEATH 130 RICHARD CRASHAW (1615?–1652). ON A PRAYER-BOOK SENT TO MRS. M. R. 131 TO THE MORNING 135 LOVE’S HOROSCOPE 137 ON MR. G. HERBERT’S BOOK 138 WISHES TO HIS SUPPOSED MISTRESS 139 QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES, ETC. 144 MUSIC’S DUEL 149 THE FLAMING HEART 154 ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618–1667). ON THE DEATH OF MR. CRASHAW 157 HYMN TO THE LIGHT 159 RICHARD LOVELACE (1618–1658). TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS 163 TO AMARANTHA 164 LUCASTA 165 TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON 166 A GUILTLESS LADY IMPRISONED: AFTER PENANCED 167 THE ROSE 168 ANDREW MARVELL (1620–1678). A HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL’S RETURN FROM IRELAND 169 THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT OF FLOWERS 173 THE NYMPH COMPLAINING OF DEATH OF HER FAWN 174 THE DEFINITION OF LOVE 178 THE GARDEN 179 HENRY VAUGHAN (1621–1695). THE DAWNING 182 CHILDHOOD 183 CORRUPTION 185 THE NIGHT 186 THE ECLIPSE 188 THE RETREAT 188 THE WORLD OF LIGHT 189 SCOTTISH BALLADS. HELEN OF KIRCONNELL 191 THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL 192 THE DOWIE DENS OF YARROW 194 SWEET WILLIAM AND MAY MARGARET 197 SIR PATRICK SPENS 199 HAME, HAME, HAME 203 BORDER BALLAD. A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE 204 JOHN DRYDEN (1631–1700). ODE 205 APHRA BEHN (1640–1689). SONG, FROM ABDELAZAR 209 JOSEPH ADDISON (1672–1719). HYMN 209 ALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744). ELEGY 210 WILLIAM COWPER (1731–1800). LINES ON RECEIVING HIS MOTHER’S PICTURE 213 ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD (1743–1825). LIFE 217 WILLIAM BLAKE (1757–1828). THE LAND OF DREAMS 217 THE PIPER 218 HOLY THURSDAY 219 THE TIGER 220 TO THE MUSES 221 LOVE’S SECRET 221 ROBERT BURNS (1759–1796). TO A MOUSE 222 THE FAREWELL 224 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850). WHY ART THOU SILENT? 225 THOUGHTS OF A BRITON ON THE SUBJUGATION OF SWITZERLAND 226 IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND FREE 226 ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC 227 O FRIEND! I KNOW NOT 227 SURPRISED BY JOY 228 TO TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE 228 WITH SHIPS THE SEA WAS SPRINKLED 229 THE WORLD 229 UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPT. 3, 1802 230 WHEN I HAVE BORNE IN MEMORY 230 THREE YEARS SHE GREW 231 THE DAFFODILS 232 THE SOLITARY REAPER 233 ELEGIAC STANZAS 234 TO H. C. 237 ’TIS SAID THAT SOME HAVE DIED FOR LOVE 238 THE PET LAMB 240 STEPPING WESTWARD 243 THE CHILDLESS FATHER 244 ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 245 SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771–1832). PROUD MAISEE 252 A WEARY LOT IS THINE 252 THE MAID OF NEIDPATH 253 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772–1834). KUBLA KHAN 254 YOUTH AND AGE 256 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 258 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775–1864). ROSE AYLMER 281 EPITAPH 282 CHILD OF A DAY 282 THOMAS CAMPBELL (1767–1844). HOHENLINDEN 282 EARL MARCH 283 CHARLES LAMB (1775–1835). HESTER 284 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM (1784–1842). A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA 285 GEORGE NOEL GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788–1823). THE ISLES OF GREECE 286 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792–1822). HELLAS 290 WILD WITH WEEPING 291 TO THE NIGHT 291 TO A SKYLARK 293 TO THE MOON 297 THE QUESTION 297 THE WANING MOON 298 ODE TO THE WEST WIND 299 RARELY, RARELY COMEST THOU 301 THE INVITATION, TO JANE 303 THE RECOLLECTION 305 ODE TO HEAVEN 308 LIFE OF LIFE 310 AUTUMN 311 STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES 312 DIRGE FOR THE YEAR 313 A WIDOW BIRD 314 THE TWO SPIRITS 314 JOHN KEATS (1795–1821). LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 316 ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER 318 TO SLEEP 319 THE GENTLE SOUTH 319 LAST SONNET 320 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 320 ODE ON A GRECIAN URN 323 ODE TO AUTUMN 325 ODE TO PSYCHE 326 ODE TO MELANCHOLY 328 HARTLEY COLERIDGE (1796–1849). SHE IS NOT FAIR 329 NOTES 331

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