in Engli

Table of

s the most important act of man's life in Europe or America, and that everything depends upon it. It is quite different on this side of the world. But the simple explanation of the difference is not enough. There are many things to be explained. Why should not only the novel writers but all the poets make love the principal subject of their work? I never knew, because I never thought, how much English literature was saturated with the subject of love until I attempted to make selections of poetry and prose for class use-naturally endeavouring to select such pages or poems as related to other subjects than passion. Instead of finding a good deal of what I was looking for, I

efly novels or romances of adventure. But the exceptions are very few. At the present time there are produced almost every year in England about a thousand new novels, and all

ain if possible. The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man-that is to say, the strongest and cleverest-is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person. The weak, the feeble, the poor, and the ugly have little chance of being able to marry at all. Tens of thousands of men and women can not possibly marry. I am speaking of the upper and middle classes. The working people, the peasants, the labourers, these marr

nal differences of character. Northern love stories and Northern poetry about love are very serious; and these authors are kept within fixed limits. Certain subjects are generally forbidden. For example, the English public wants novels about love, but the love must be the love of a girl who is to become somebody's wife. The rule in the English novel is to describe the pains, fears, and struggles of the period before marriage-the contest in the world for th

. One such difference can be very briefly expressed. An English girl, an American girl, a Norwegian, a Dane, a Swede, is allowed all possible liberty before marriage. The girl is told, "You must be able to take care of yourself, and not do wrong." After marriage there is no more such liberty. After marriage in all Northern countries a woman's conduct is strictly watched. But in France, and in Southern countries, the young girl has no liberty before marriage. She is always under the guard of her brother, her father, her

than the Northern races; they have inherited the feelings of the ancient world, the old Greek and Roman world, and they think still about the relation of the sexes in very much the s

show this. The Viking, the old sea-pirate, felt very much as Tennyson or as Meredith would feel upon this subject; he thought of only one kind of love as real-that which ends in marriage, the affection between husband and wife. Anything else was to him mere folly and weakness. Christianity did not change his sentiment on this subject. The modern Englishman, Swede,

hest form of literature, the difference is much more observable. We find the Latin poets of to-day writing just as freely on the subject of love as the old Latin poets of the age of Augustus, while Northern poets observe with few exceptions gre

tion must b

deep friendship. This again is a meaning too wide for our purpose. By putting the adjective "true" before love, some definition is attempted in ordinary conversation. When an Englishman speaks of "true love," he usually means something that has no passion at all; he means a perfect friendship which grows up between man and wife and which has no

r; and the only difference in the highest for of this attraction and the lowest is this, that in the nobler nature a vast number of moral, aesthetic, and ethical sentiments are related to the passion, and that in lower natures those sentiments are absent. Therefore we may say that even in the highest forms of the sentiment there is only

the word has particular significance to the Western mind, for it refers to the time of struggle and doubt an

he most beautiful object in the world. To his ears the accents of one voice become the sweetest of all music. Reason has nothing to do with this, and reason has no power against the enchantment. Out of Nature's mystery, somehow or other, this strange magic suddenly illuminates the senses of a man; then vanishes again, as noiselessly as it came. It is a very ghostly thing, and can not be explained by any theory not of a very ghostly kind. Even Herbert Spencer has devoted his reasoning to a new theory about it. I need no

become unselfish, unselfish at least toward one human being. Not only unselfishness but self-sacrifice is a desire peculiar to the period. The young man in love is not merely willing to give

f Life, and smote on al

, that, trembling, pass

nderness-the same kind of tenderness that one feels toward a child-the love of the helpless, the desire to protect. And a third sentiment felt at such a time more strongly than

st form of one kind of beauty must be able to comprehend something of the other. I know very well that the ideal of the love-season is an illusion; in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the thousand the beauty of the woman is only imagined. But does that make any possible difference? I do not think that it does. To imagine beauty is really to see it-not objectively, perhaps, but subjectively beyond all possibility of doubt. Though you see the

s quickness in thought and exactitude in act. There is for the time being a sense of new power. Anything that makes strong appeal to the best exercise of one's faculties is beneficent and, in most cases, worthy of reverence. Indeed, it

rally justified in describing. Can they go beyond it with safety, with propriety? That depends very much upon whether they go up or down. By going up I mean keeping within the r

imagination might be constantly influenced by the sight of beauty, and that they might perhaps be able to bring more beautiful children into the world? Among the Arabs, mothers also do something of this kind, only, as they have no art of imagery, they go to Nature herself for the living image. Black luminous eyes are beautiful, and wives keep in their tents a little deer, the gazelle, which is famous for the

is based upon a very simple animal impulse. That does not make the least difference in the value of the highest results of that passion. We might say the very same thing about any human emotion; every emotion can be evolutionally traced back to simple and selfish impulses shared by man with the lower animals. But, because an apple tree or a pear tree happens to have its roots in the ground, does that mean that its fruits are not beautiful and wholesome? Most assure

s ecstasy. I do not think that any artist could do that to-day; this is not an age of religious ecstasy. But upwards there is no other way to go. Downwards the artist may travel until he finds himself in hell. Between the zone of idealism and the brutality of realism there are no doubt many gradations. I am only indicating what I think to be an absolute truth, that in treating of lov

xamples of the ideal sentiment in passion. One is a concluding verse in the beautiful song that occurs in th

ing, my ow

ver so ai

uld hear he

rth in an

uld hear h

for a cen

nd tremble un

m in purpl

; we know that love can fancy such things quite naturally, not in one country only but everywhere. An Arabian poem written long before the time of Mohammed contains exactly the same thought in simpler words; and I think that there are some old Japanese songs containing something similar. All that the state

art of the same composition-the little song of exa

he soli

beneath

y life h

have found

come what

ter if I

have had

weet heav

and dark

am quite,

e is one

come what

that has b

have had

moral shame or loss of honour, Of course the poet is supposed to consider the emotion only in generous natures. But the subject of this splendid indifference has been more wonderfully treated by Victor Hugo than by Tennyson-as we shall see later on, when considering another phase of the emotion. Befo

killed. Some say that the man was allowed to run first, and that the girl followed with a spear in her hand and killed him when she overtook him. There are different accounts of the contest. Many suitors lost the race and were killed. But finally young man called Hippomenes obtained from the Goddess of Love three golden apples, and he was told that if he dropped these apples while running, the girl would stop to pick them up, and that in this way he might be able to win the race. So he ran, and when he found hi

rows old, and

South with

e, in green,

sk aisles on

a kiss and

sweet as r

cannot wi

end, I know

lly I bar

ith the tro

hrough eve

ur of Hi

love! we a

se through gro

t, when at l

r death, o

stants were stripped. They were also anointed with oil, partly to protect the skin against sun and temperature and partly to make the body more supple. The poet

ll run to-day as in times gone by; youth is the season, and

person, and suffer much for that person's sake; yet in that period we do not care whether we suffer or die, and in after life, when we look back at those hours of youth,

you saw or heard something that you knew all about very long ago. I remember once travelling with a Japanese boy into a charming little country town in Shikoku-and scarcely had we entered the main street, than he cried out: "Oh, I have seen this place before!" Of course he had not seen it before; he was from Osaka and had never left the great city until then. But the pleasure of his new experience had given him this feeling of familiarity with the unfamiliar. I do not pre

een here

r how I ca

grass beyon

et keen

nd, the lights

been mine

ago I may

n at that sw

eck tu

fall,-I knew i

been th

thus time's

ur lives our

th's d

ht yield one de

e period was haunted even more than Rossetti by this idea-Arthur O'Shaughnessy. Like Rossetti he was a great lover, and very unfortunate in his love; and he wrote his poems

garden way

the flow

se told me o

ose of yo

of your b

weed of

its loveli

re mor

to the wo

the wild

u were; they

l'd the sel

bird, linnet,

den did

began ag

re mor

went down

it murmu

n ancient

e of me

a thousan

and you w

ould not s

ack to y

a is much more fully expressed. By "greater memory" you must understand the memory beyond this life into past stages of existence

there lay bur

y of passio

ven that t

or that tore

s love's sl

for the love

rs pass'd we

re and changed

from its in

d and ruin'd

with a glor

that comes f

the stone

which the h

row had mou

e from the lo

e, that was

that lay bu

ever the st

that was e

me in each l

love's h

am of the e

k to the de

edge of all

ght, in the

which the lip

or recover

e than was

art got back

n that los

at died whe

at was look

hat seemed l

ound in the

t the heart

ass away. So after many generations the pure love which this man had for a bad woman was born again in the heart of another man-the same, yet not the same. And the spirit of the woman that long ago had done the wrong, also found incarnation again; and the two meeting, are drawn to each other by what people call love, but what is really Greater Memory, the recollection of past lives. But now all is happiness for them, because the weaker and worse part of each has really died and has been left hu

treat the recollection of past life. When we consider the past imaginatively, we have some ground to stand on. The past has been-there is no doubt about that. The fact that we are at this moment alive makes it seem sufficiently true that we were alive thousands or millions of years ago. But when we turn to the future for poetical inspiration, the case is very different. There we mus

mber sweet with f

et with flowers

love-bound, loi

r the birds a

eapers talk am

kept watch fr

ul kept watch

, I thought, rem

came the step

k the old fa

spirit seemed

then first

golden; and

ory, and my

r he will really be sorry to hear that she is dead. Outside the room of death the birds are singing; in the fields beyond the windows peasants are working, and talking as they work. But the ghost does not listen to these sounds. The ghost remains in the room only for love's sake; she can not go away until the lover comes. At last she hears him coming. She knows the sound of t

rate explanation-I mean the sentence about the sands of time running gold

of Time, and turn'd i

ly shaken, ran itse

e lower. In other words, fine sand "runs" just like water. To say that the sands of time run golden, or become changed into gold, is only a poetical way of stating that the time becomes more

poems. I am going to give three examples only, but each of a different kind. The first poet that I am going to mention is Coventry Patmore. He wrote two curious books of poetry, respectively called "The Angel in the House" and "The Unknown Eros." In the first of these books he wrote the whole history of his courtship and marriage-a very dangerous thing fo

the dim

er sacr

he Daugh

oth-lik

ask-rose and

other, anxiou

"Good

ies; they have wings of scarlet and purple and brown and gold. So the comparison, though peculiarly English, is very fine. Also there is a suggestion of the soundlessness of the moth's flight. Now "showy as damask rose" is a striking simile only because the damask-rose is a wonderfully splendid flower-richest in colour of all roses in English gardens. "Shy as musk" is rather a daring simile. "Musk" is a perfume used by English as well as Japanese ladies, but there is no perfume wh

reated-the desire when you are very happy or when you are looking at anything attractive to share the pleasure of the moment with the beloved. But it seldom happens tha

time and

ved one al

-how soft

what magi

he loved o

t loved one's

is narrow, the

de, rain and

ve ear, if I

e eye at my f

hat marks each

ppen to be perfect, the woman is absent. So the poet finding himself in some very beautiful place, and remembering this, remembers also the last time that he met the woman beloved. It was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was rain and storm; and the sounds

s the memory of a betrothal day, and the poet is Frederick Tennyson. I suppose you know that there

en morning o

e, and hers is

ft in that ol

begins

ment quivers

musk-rose lean

mber, like a

it swim

she replied Lives, like et

rmured, Oh! w

my life,

er us, after t

welcome shad

sighing, and

amid t

happy song, tha

the woods, t

my heart, thoug

ther sight

eace beneath th

learly is th

aised, or Death

not her

all those years the man still recollects the appearance of the room, the sunshine entering and the crimson rose looking into the room from the garden, with bees humming round it. Then after the question had been asked and happily answered, neither could speak for joy; and because of the silence all the sounds of nature outside became almost painfully distinct. Now he remembers how he he

life unhappy. Sometimes the result of such disappointment may be to change all a man's ideas about the world, about life, about religion; and everything remains darkened for him. Many a young person disappointed in love begins to lose religious feeling from that moment, for it seems to him, simply because he happens to be unfortunate, that the universe is all wrong. On the other hand the successful lover thinks that the universe is all right; he utters his thanks to the god

ling arm

r thoughts

conques

the vast

our hearts

made sp

walked an

en and eart

s were s

looked o

through v

rs were

the ast

he soft s

to th

st: "O Go

the Bl

dest th

tars whis

of Space,

f Ete

, all Lov

ve's Light

adest

strates one truth very forcibly-namely, that when we are perfectly happy all the universe appears to be divine and divinely beautiful; in other words, we a

ordinary emotion is what would be called national feeling, the feeling of your own relation to the whole nation or the whole race. But there is higher emotion even than that. When you think of yourself emotionally not only in relation to your own country, your own nation, but in relation to all humanity, then you have a cosmic emotion of the third or second order. I say "third or second," because whether the emotion be second or third rate depends very much upon your conception of humanity as One. But if you think of yourself in relation not to this world only but to the whole universe of hundreds of millions of stars and planets-in relation to the whole mystery of exis

ats, written not long before his death. Only a very young man could have written this, b

ld I were steadf

lendour hung a

, with etern

patient, sle

ers at their p

on round earth

n new soft-

the mountains

teadfast, stil

y fair love's r

er its soft f

ver in a s

hear her tende

ver-or else s

song was taken from old French and English love songs of the peasants-popular ballads. But in this beautiful sonnet of Keats, where the lover wishes to be endowed with the immortality and likeness of a

y Star? Would that

ad eyes, ever to

nking of the stars watching forever the rising and the falling of the sea tides, thinking of the sea tides themselves as continually purifying the world,

ly puzzled where to choose. I should again suggest to you to observe the value of the theme of illusion, especially as illustrated in our examples. There are indeed multitudes of Western love poems that would probably appear to you very strange, perhaps very foolish. But you will certainly acknowledge that there are some varieties of English lo