The Flower of the Mind(脑之花)

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THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

THE FLOWER OF THE

MIND

Alice Meynell

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

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

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

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

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

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

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

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 anapaests. 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 anapaestic, has done more than any other thing to vulgarise the

national sense of rhythm and to silence the finer rhythms. Anapaests 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 anapaests 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 anapaestic line (from the same song):

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

"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

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

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.

[As there would be considerable overlap between the poems in this

book and those already released by Project Gutenberg the text of the

poems is not included in this eText. The poems that Alice selected are

shown below and are followed by her comments on them.- -DP]

Anonymous. The first carol Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) Verses

before death Edmund Spenser (1553-1599) Easter Fresh spring Like as a

ship Epithalamion John Lyly (1554?-1606) The Spring Sir Philip Sidney

(1554-1586) True love The moon Kiss Sweet judge Sleep Wat'red was my

wine Thomas Lodge (1556-1625) Rosalynd's madrigal Rosaline The

solitary shepherd's song Anonymous I saw my lady weep George Peele

(1558?-1597) Farewell to arms Robert Greene (1560?-1592) Fawnia

Sephestia's song to her child Christopher Marlowe (1562-1593) The

passionate shepherd to his love Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) Sleep My

spotless love Michael Drayton (1563-1631) Since there's no help Joshua

Sylvester (1563-1618) Were I as base William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth O me! What eyes hath love put in

my head Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? When in the chronicle of

wasted time That time of year thou may'st in me behold How like a winter

hath my absence been Being your slave, what should I do but tend When

in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes They that have power to hurt, and

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

will do Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing When to the sessions

of sweet silent thought Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye The

forward violet thus did I chide O lest the world should task you to recite

Let me not to the marriage of true minds How oft, when thou, my music,

music play'st Full many a glorious morning have I seen The expense of

spirit in a waste of shame Fancy Fairies Come away Full fathom five

Dirge (Fear no more the heat o' the sun) Song (Take, O take those lips

away) Song (How should I your true love know) Anonymous Tom o'

Bedlam Thomas Campion (circa 1567-1620) Kind are her answers Laura

Her sacred bower Follow When thou must home Western wind Follow

your saint Cherry-ripe Thomas Nash (1567-1601?) Spring John Donne

(1573-1631) This happy dream Death Hymn to God the father The funeral

Richard Barnefield (1574?-?) The nightingale Ben Jonson (1574-1637)

Charis' triumph Jealousy Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H. Hymn to Diana On

my first daughter Echo's lament for Narcissus An epitaph on Salathiel

Pavy, a child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel John Fletcher (1579-1625)

Invocation to sleep, from Valentinian To Bacchus John Webster (-?1625)

Song from the Duchess of Malfi Song from the Devil's Law-case In Earth,

dirge from Vittoria Corombona William Drummond of Hawthornden

(1585-1649) Song (Phoebus, arise!) Sleep, Silence' child To the

nightingale Madrigal I Madrigal II Beaumont and Fletcher (1586-1616)-

(1579-1625) I died true Francis Beaumont (1586-1616) On the tombs in

Westminster Abbey Sir Francis Kynaston (1587-1642) To Cynthia, on

concealment of her beauty Nathaniel Field (1587-1638) Matin song

George Wither (1588-1667) Sleep, baby, sleep! Thomas Carew (1589-

1639) Song (Ask me no more where Jove bestows) To my inconstant

mistress An hymeneal dialogue Ingrateful beauty threatened Thomas

Dekker (-1638?) Lullaby Sweet content Thomas Heywood (-1649?) Good-

morrow Robert Herrick (1591-1674?) To Dianeme To meadows To

blossoms To daffodils To violets To primroses To daisies, not to shut so

soon To the virgins, to make much of time Dress In silks Corinna's going

a-maying Grace for a child Ben Jonson George Herbert (1593-1632) Holy

baptism Virtue Unkindness Love The pulley The collar Life Misery James

Shirley (1596-1666) Equality Anonymous (circa 1603) Lullaby (Weep you

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

no more, sad fountains) Sir William Davenant (1605-1668) Morning

Edmund Waller (1605-1687) The rose Thomas Randolph (1606-1634?)

His mistress Charles Best (-?) A sonnet of the moon John Milton (1608-

1674) Hymn on Christ's nativity L'allegro Il penseroso Lycidas On his

blindness On his deceased wife On Shakespeare Song on May morning

Invocation to Sabrina, from Comus Invocation to Echo, from Comus The

attendant spirit, from Comus James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1612-

1650) The vigil of death Richard Crashaw (1615?-1652) On a prayer-book

sent to Mrs. M. R. To the morning Love's horoscope On Mr. G. Herbert's

book Wishes to his supposed mistress Quem Vidistis Pastores etc. Music's

duel The flaming heart Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) On the death of Mr.

Crashaw Hymn to the light Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) To Lucasta on

going to the wars To Amarantha Lucasta To Althea, from prison A guiltless

lady imprisoned: after penanced The rose Andrew Marvell (1620-1678) A

Horatian ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland The picture of T. C. in a

prospect of flowers The nymph complaining of death of her fawn The

definition of love The garden Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) The dawning

Childhood Corruption The night The eclipse The retreat The world of light

Scottish Ballads Helen of Kirconnell The wife of Usher's well The dowie

dens of Yarrow Sweet William and May Margaret Sir Patrick Spens Hame,

hame, hame Border Ballad A lyke-wake dirge John Dryden (1631-1700)

Ode (Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies) Aphre Behn (1640-1689)

Song, from Abdelazar Joseph Addison (1672-1719) Hymn (The spacious

firmament on high) Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Elegy William Cowper

(1731-1800) Lines on receiving his mother's picture Anna Laetitia

Barbauld (1743-1825) Life William Blake (1757-1828) The land of

dreams The piper Holy Thursday The tiger To the muses Love's secret

Robert Burns (1759-1796) To a mouse The farewell William Wordsworth

(1770-1850) Why art thou silent? Thoughts of a Briton on the subjugation

of Switzerland It is a beauteous evening, calm and free On the extinction

of the Venetian Republic O friend! I know not Surprised by joy To

Toussaint L'ouverture With ships the sea was sprinkled The world Upon

Westminster bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 When I have borne in memory Three

years she grew The daffodils The solitary reaper Elegiac stanzas To H. C.

THE FLOWER OF THE MIND

'Tis said that some have died for love The pet lamb Stepping westward

The childless father Ode on intimations of immortality Sir Walter Scott

(1771-1832) Proud Maisie A weary lot is thine The Maid of Neidpath

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Kubla Khan Youth and age The

rime of the ancient mariner Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) Rose

Aylmer Epitaph Child of a day Thomas Campbell (1767-1844)

Hohenlinden Earl March Charles Lamb (1775-1835) Hester Allan

Cunningham (1784-1842) A wet sheet and a flowing sea George Noel

Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1823) The Isles of Greece Percy Bysshe

Shelley (1792-1822) Hellas Wild with weeping To the night To a skylark

To the moon The question The waning moon Ode to the west wind Rarely,

rarely comest thou The invitation, to Jane The recollection Ode to heaven

Life of life Autumn Stanzas written in dejection near Naples Dirge for the

year A widow bird The two spirits John Keats (1795-1821) La Belle Dame

sans merci On first looking into Chapman's Homer To sleep The gentle

south Last sonnet Ode to a nightingale Ode on a Grecian urn Ode to

Autumn Ode to Psyche Ode to Melancholy Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849)

She is not fair

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THEFLOWEROFTHEMIND1THEFLOWEROFTHEMINDAliceMeynellTHEFLOWEROFTHEMIND2INTRODUCTIONPartialcollectionsofEnglishpoems,decidedbyacommonsubjectorboundedbynarrowdatesandperiodsofliteraryhistory,aremadeatveryshortintervals,andthemakersaresafefromthereproachofproposingtheirownpersonaltasteasaguideforthereadin...

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