FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134  
135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   >>   >|  
German Boehme, with his affinities for the abstract, never cared for plants until, one day, he noticed they could speak; that the daisy colloquized with the cowslip on SUCH themes! themes found extant in Jacob's prose. But when life's summer passes while reading prose in that tough book he wrote, getting some sense or other out of it, who helps, then, to repair our loss? Another Boehme, say you, with a tougher book and subtler abstract meanings of what roses say? Or some stout Mage like John of Halberstadt, who MADE THINGS Boehme WROTE THOUGHTS about? Ah, John's the man for us! who instead of giving us the wise talk of roses, scatters all around us the roses themselves, pouring heaven into this shut house of life. So come, the harp back to your heart again, instead of speaking dry words across its strings. Your own boy-face bent over the finer chords, and following the cherub at the top that points to God with his paired half-moon wings, is a far better poem than your poem with all its naked thoughts. Apparent Failure. The poet, it appears, speaks here in his own person. Sauntering about Paris, he comes upon the Doric little Morgue, the dead-house, where they show their drowned. He enters, and sees through the screen of glass, the bodies of three men who committed suicide, the day before, by drowning themselves in the Seine. In the last stanza, he gives expression to his hopeful philosophy, which recognizes "some soul of goodness, in things evil"; * which sees in human nature, "potentiality of final deliverance from the evil in it, given only time enough for the work". In this age of professed and often, no doubt, affected, agnosticism and pessimism, Browning is the foremost apostle of Hope. He, more than any other great author of the age, whether philosopher, or poet, or divine, has been inspired with the faith that "a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best, can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." -- * `Henry V.', IV. 1. 4. -- Compare with this, the following stanzas from Tennyson's `In Memoriam', Section 54:-- "Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. That nothing walks with
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134  
135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Boehme

 

nature

 

themes

 
abstract
 

Browning

 
foremost
 

apostle

 
pessimism
 

agnosticism

 

affected


pierce

 

inspired

 

philosopher

 

divine

 
author
 
philosophy
 
hopeful
 

noticed

 

recognizes

 

expression


drowning
 

stanza

 

goodness

 
things
 

thickest

 

plants

 

potentiality

 

deliverance

 
professed
 
Section

Memoriam
 

Tennyson

 
Compare
 

stanzas

 
taints
 

Defects

 

Though

 

compass

 

returns

 

stretched


affinities

 

German

 

fetched

 

blessed

 

accurst

 

pouring

 

heaven

 
scatters
 

summer

 

passes