THE FLOWER OF THE MIND
A Choice among the best Poems
MADE BY
ALICE MEYNELL
LONDON GRANT RICHARDS 9 HENRIETTA STREET 1898
p. ivEdinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
p. vINTRODUCTION
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 p. vivalue 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 p. viihas 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 p. viiialmost 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 p. ixseverally 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.
p. xI 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 p. xiwould 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’;
p. xiiwith 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 p. xiiiquestion 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
p. xvCONTENTS
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
p. xviROBERT 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
p. xviiFULL 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
p. xviiiJOHN 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
p. xixTHOMAS 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
p. xxEDMUND 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
p. xxiLUCASTA
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
p. xxiiALEXANDER 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
p. xxiiiTHE 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
p. xxivTHE 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
p. 1ANONYMOUS 13TH CENTURY
THE FIRST CAROL
Summer is y-comen in! Loud sing cuckoo! Groweth seed and bloweth mead, And springeth the wood new. Sing cuckoo! cuckoo!
Ewe bleateth after lamb, Loweth cow after calf; Bullock starteth, buck verteth; Merry sing cuckoo! Cuckoo! cuckoo! Nor cease thou ever now. Sing cuckoo now! Sing cuckoo!
SIR WALTER RALEIGH 1552–1618
VERSES BEFORE DEATH
The sample stops here
This is as far as the free sample of The Flower of the Mind goes
You have read 5 of 79 chapters. Start your trial to keep reading all 79 chapters, tap any word for an instant translation, hear the audio narration, and save your progress across devices.