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Growth of Love - Robert Bridges · The Book of Mormon

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  Speaker 1: Section zero of the Growth of Love by Robert Bridges.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All liberyvox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by algiepug Note. In issuing
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  Speaker 1: the Growth of Love, the publisher has desired to set
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  Speaker 1: forth the high estimate recently come to be held regarding
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  Speaker 1: the poetry of mister Robert Bridges. To do this effectually,
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  Speaker 1: no more fitting introduction could have been given than the
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  Speaker 1: contribution by mister Lionel Johnson, to be found in the
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  Speaker 1: Century Guild Hobby Horse, October eighteen ninety one, and here
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  Speaker 1: reprinted entire It was and is almost as inaccessible as
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  Speaker 1: one of mister Bridge's privately printed pamphlets. It only remains
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  Speaker 1: to say that this reprint was made direct from a
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  Speaker 1: copy of the original Growth of Love, of which one
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  Speaker 1: hundred copies in Fell's old English type Phil's cap Quarto
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  Speaker 1: were put forth from the private press of Reverend H.
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  Speaker 1: Daniel Oxford eighteen ninety The punctuation, or rather the lack
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  Speaker 1: of it, has been literally followed. The half title immediately
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  Speaker 1: following the solts is that of the original title page,
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  Speaker 1: while a printer's device at the end of the book
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  Speaker 1: is also reproduced in fact simile from this unique edition.
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  Speaker 1: Only fifty copies of this large paper edition post quarto
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  Speaker 1: have been printed, ten of which are on japan vellum
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  Speaker 1: and forty on Van Gelder's handmade paper, each copy numbered
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  Speaker 1: and the type distributed Copy number five. The Growth of
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  Speaker 1: Love by Robert Bridges, printed for Thomas B. Mosher and
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  Speaker 1: published by him at thirty seven Exchange Street, Portland, Maine,
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  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four. The Poems of Mister Bridges. A Brief
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  Speaker 1: and General consideration by Lionel Johnson. The supreme duties of
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  Speaker 1: the artist toward his art, as of all students toward
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  Speaker 1: their studies, are two in number, but of one kind.
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  Speaker 1: A duty of reverence of fidelity of understanding toward the
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  Speaker 1: old great masters, and a duty of reverence of fidelity
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  Speaker 1: of understanding toward the living age and the living artists.
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  Speaker 1: But that our age lives well, and that our artists
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  Speaker 1: live well. Who shall assure us life, its energies, and
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  Speaker 1: its activities ourselves can recognize, but we require a touchstone
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  Speaker 1: and a test, some image of that perfect state which
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  Speaker 1: lieth in the heavens seen thereby Plato eternal, in the
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  Speaker 1: heavens proclaimed by Paul, before we can accept with joy
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  Speaker 1: and follow with readiness the ways of our living age,
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  Speaker 1: of our living artists. Here too we have a double duty,
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  Speaker 1: one to the past and one to the present. If
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  Speaker 1: we fulfill it, then we cannot lack the necessary test
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  Speaker 1: or standard whereby to assay ourselves and others. In the
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  Speaker 1: first place, So corus urica orbis terrarum, sure and sound
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  Speaker 1: is the whole world's judgment. In Sophocles and in Virgil,
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  Speaker 1: in Dante and in Milton, virtue and truth shine clearly.
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  Speaker 1: The general voice of men, the more authoritative voice of
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  Speaker 1: artists and of students, go together in praise of the
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  Speaker 1: old great masters. But they lived in their times we
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  Speaker 1: live now. What have we to do with them? Neither
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  Speaker 1: did the old great masters flourish together? Yet? Examine, I
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  Speaker 1: pray you, the debt of Virgil to Homer, the debt
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  Speaker 1: of Dante to Virgil, the debt of Milton to Homer,
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  Speaker 1: to Virgil and to Dante. Do you not find it
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  Speaker 1: an inestimable debt of reverence, of fidelity and of understanding?
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  Speaker 1: Or can you discover in those masters, any sign of
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  Speaker 1: a servile obedience to each other, call it rather not
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  Speaker 1: a debt due, but a grace sought and received. Be
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  Speaker 1: we artists, then, for students merely, let us judge ourselves
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  Speaker 1: and our age. Let us value ourselves and our age
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  Speaker 1: according to the mind of the great masters, and in
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  Speaker 1: their spirit. In the second place, at one with our
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  Speaker 1: test by antique excellence is the test by our proper conscience.
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  Speaker 1: There are occasions in our work when we say, with
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  Speaker 1: a confidence beyond expression, this is right against textbook and precept,
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  Speaker 1: warning and exhortation. We know our work to be true.
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  Speaker 1: And while a pedant with a mechanical reverence, in a
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  Speaker 1: blind fidelity, through a dulled understanding, quotes against us is Aristotle,
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  Speaker 1: is Betruvius, his Pope, his Reynolds. We know that we
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  Speaker 1: are their dutiful sons. Not he that what we do,
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  Speaker 1: following our conscience and our light, is in the spirit
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  Speaker 1: and in the truth of what they did following theirs?
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  Speaker 1: And your lawless profaner of art, your ignorant contemner of
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  Speaker 1: the past, will he not say as much? Well, such
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  Speaker 1: a one may lie, indeed, and let him look to
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  Speaker 1: his conscience. He will find there a witness to his
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  Speaker 1: profanity and to his ignorance. He will confess that he
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  Speaker 1: has not meditated the great past nor the fine tradition.
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  Speaker 1: That the old masters were loyalists, himself a rebel. They
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  Speaker 1: bent upon a rational development, he upon a mindless innovation.
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  Speaker 1: They true to the constitutions of Art, He careless for
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  Speaker 1: their violation. As in the spiritual or interior life, the
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  Speaker 1: Church would have a man perfect himself by the help
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  Speaker 1: of approved rules and meditations, not superseding but directing his conscience.
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  Speaker 1: So in Art, which also has its interior life, the
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  Speaker 1: general wisdom of the great Masters must help to nourish
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  Speaker 1: and to strengthen that conscience which cannot thrive wholly upon
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  Speaker 1: the desires and the intimations of its own genius. If
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  Speaker 1: we regard such men as Spencer and as Sydney in
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  Speaker 1: Elizabethan times, or as mister Whitman in our own, we
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  Speaker 1: find not their greatness nor their felicity to lie in
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  Speaker 1: the attempt to compose English verse in the ancient means
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  Speaker 1: of Greece and Rome, nor in the attempt to rob
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  Speaker 1: English verse of all metrical law. It is upon these
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  Speaker 1: principles thus briefly declared that I purpose to estimate, if
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  Speaker 1: it may be, the poems of a living poet, one
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  Speaker 1: standing in point of time, between mister Simons a mister Lange,
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  Speaker 1: or between mister Dobson and mister Goss, one standing in
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  Speaker 1: place of honor. By the judgment of mister Robinson, ellis
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  Speaker 1: second only to mister Swinburne as an Oxford poet. I
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  Speaker 1: will not consider the degree of excellence indicated by that position.
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  Speaker 1: Suffice it to say that the eminent reader in Latin
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  Speaker 1: of the University of Oxford intended to confer upon our poet,
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  Speaker 1: mister Bridges, a great measure of his approbation and of
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  Speaker 1: his praise. Were we to reckon the number of mister
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  Speaker 1: Bridges' performances by the number of works bearing his name
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  Speaker 1: in an historical or chronological list, we would do him
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  Speaker 1: a wrong. He is not one of those writers whose
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  Speaker 1: writings comprise no small part of their own libraries. Such
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  Speaker 1: a list would give the names of some seventeen volumes,
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  Speaker 1: including small pamphlets and the products of a private press.
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  Speaker 1: The earliest volume would be recorded under the year eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy three, the latest under the year eighteen ninety one.
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  Speaker 1: But of these seventeen works published during these eighteen years,
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  Speaker 1: many are so to say, the writer's anthologies or deliberate
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  Speaker 1: collections chosen from the earlier volumes together with new matter. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: the lover of excellence in English literature must often have
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  Speaker 1: felt a passing vexation, a shade of annoyance. So difficult
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  Speaker 1: has he found the search for many rare choice poems,
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  Speaker 1: either sacrificed by mister Bridge's careful conscience or hidden away
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  Speaker 1: by him. In additions hard to procure. Yet it may
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  Speaker 1: be thought that this touch of antiquity, the need for
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  Speaker 1: this exhilarating bibliomania, adds something pleasant to the study. Mister Bridges.
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  Speaker 1: We have so many popular poets and popular editions of
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  Speaker 1: their collected works, that retirement, leisure, anxiety in a living
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  Speaker 1: poet are virtues, the more estimable and distinguished. They are
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  Speaker 1: virtues no less to be emulated and respected by a critic.
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  Speaker 1: And in considering mister Bridge's poems, I shall say nothing
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  Speaker 1: about those which he has, in the full exercise of
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  Speaker 1: his judgment cast away litterar scripta manet. They are indestructible
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  Speaker 1: and cannot escape the antiquary. So far as they deserve
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  Speaker 1: to be sought out and remembered, Posterity would do well
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  Speaker 1: to annull the over rigorous sentence of mister Bridges. For
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  Speaker 1: the present. Let it stand the poems of mister Bridges
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  Speaker 1: are of the lyrical kind, of the narrative, and of
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  Speaker 1: the dramatic. And before examining each kind a part, let
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  Speaker 1: me say something applicable to the whole of them in
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  Speaker 1: greater or less degree. These poems then represent, with much
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  Speaker 1: else that is admirable, the scholarship of poetry, a certain
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  Speaker 1: erudite air of mastery over the secrets of rhythm and
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  Speaker 1: of meter, a trained skill in music and in those
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  Speaker 1: delicate devices, which gives so excellent a distinction to the
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  Speaker 1: older English poets. To whatever mister Bridges set his hand,
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  Speaker 1: he preserves discretion and propriety, the scholar's instinct no less
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  Speaker 1: than the poets, making it impossible for him to outrage
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  Speaker 1: fine taste by the fantastic freaks of some great men
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  Speaker 1: amongst us at the present time, So he tells us
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  Speaker 1: with lamentable truth, men seem to effect to have outgrown
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  Speaker 1: the rules of art. But he, at least reverencing the
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  Speaker 1: great masters, makes an attempt to work in their manner,
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  Speaker 1: not that he is a slavish follower of the great masters,
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  Speaker 1: their captain, rather than their voterist. At times he may
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  Speaker 1: have fallen somewhat into that attitude, but not for long.
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  Speaker 1: It is not characteristic of him. It is his characteristic
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  Speaker 1: virtue that he molds his thought, guards his imagination into
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  Speaker 1: fresh and living forms, with the scholarly knowledge of what
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  Speaker 1: has been done before him, in like manner, though not
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  Speaker 1: in the same. Thus, some among his poems are noticeable
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  Speaker 1: for their boldness of metrical experiment and invention. But we
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  Speaker 1: can trust him who wrote those two good treatises on
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  Speaker 1: the Prosody of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, and on
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  Speaker 1: the elements of Milton's blank verse in Paradise Lost. The
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  Speaker 1: invention may displease us, the experiment prove unhappy. Yet we
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  Speaker 1: recognize a justifiable enterprise, a scholar's venture, not the frantic
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  Speaker 1: impertinence of one writing in despair of nature and in
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  Speaker 1: contempt of art. And it learned. Competence, so abundant in
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  Speaker 1: his form, is naturally abundant in his matter. For matter
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  Speaker 1: and form, to repeat a simple and neglected truth are inseparable.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Bridges is not enamored of a new thing for
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  Speaker 1: its novelty. His thoughts are his own thoughts, but his
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  Speaker 1: expression of them is in harmony with the matured wisdom
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  Speaker 1: of many ages, meditating the common human things with gravity
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  Speaker 1: or in gladness that his horruce we say, or Catullus,
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  Speaker 1: there is theognes, or meliadure, and here is Marvel, Herevorn,
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  Speaker 1: here Herrick. And this brings land Or to mind, land
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  Speaker 1: Or or Collins or Wordsworth, and now Shakespeare, now Terence,
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  Speaker 1: now Fletcher, comes across us with elder Athenian spirits. Yet
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  Speaker 1: the final outcome is no mere freshened memory of old
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  Speaker 1: great greatness and delights, but a recognition of the true
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  Speaker 1: and living poet in mister Bridges, who thus delicately preserves
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  Speaker 1: for modernness an antique charm, delicately in a generous appreciation
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  Speaker 1: of ancient excellences, and with a full sense of all
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  Speaker 1: that they can do to help him also on the
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  Speaker 1: hard way to an honorable perfection. So the passion of
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  Speaker 1: his verse is an ardent and an austere passion, filled
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  Speaker 1: with the ardors and the austerities of a mind that
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  Speaker 1: enjoys with reverence, almost with fear and trembling, the joys
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  Speaker 1: of art and nature, the true savor of them, their
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  Speaker 1: decent comeliness and admired grace. I love all beauteous things.
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  Speaker 1: I seek and adore them. God hath no better praise,
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  Speaker 1: and man, in his hasty days, is honored for them.
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  Speaker 1: I too will something make and joy in the making,
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  Speaker 1: Although tomorrow it seems like the empty words of a
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  Speaker 1: dream remembered on waking. Mister Bridges published his first book
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  Speaker 1: of poems in eighteen seventy three, a pamphlet of verse
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy nine, and another in eighteen eighty. A
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  Speaker 1: fourth volume issued in eighteen eighty four from the private
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  Speaker 1: press of mister Daniel, Fellow and burser of Worcester College, Oxford,
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  Speaker 1: reprinting some of the earlier poems. In eighteen ninety appeared
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  Speaker 1: The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges, of which the first
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  Speaker 1: three parts are mainly reprints from the former collections, whilst
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  Speaker 1: the last part is wholly new. In eighteen ninety also
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  Speaker 1: came from mister Daniel's excellent press, a book of sonnets,
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  Speaker 1: The Growth of Love. Some of these had already been
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  Speaker 1: published apart from the lyrical portions of his dramatic poems.
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  Speaker 1: This is the sum of mister Bridge's lyrics, and for
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  Speaker 1: our present purpose we need consider but the shorter and
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  Speaker 1: the growth of love. The shorter poems. The ripe harvest
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  Speaker 1: of mister Bridges's labors are seventy eight in number. To
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  Speaker 1: state a general truth, we may determine the spirit and
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  Speaker 1: beauty of them to be meditative in two fashions. Either
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  Speaker 1: these lyrics show forth the powerful charm of life in
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  Speaker 1: its natural air, upon its natural ground, the stir and
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  Speaker 1: the silence, the change and the endurance of this natural
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  Speaker 1: world working upon the contemplate of mind, or they express
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  Speaker 1: the contemplative mind, dwelling upon its proper works and business
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  Speaker 1: of reason and of art, of thought and of aspiration,
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  Speaker 1: in the light of nature and of man's place in nature.
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  Speaker 1: The two aspects are harmonious, and much extravagance of life
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  Speaker 1: and of thought has come of ignoring their harmony. Have
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  Speaker 1: we not wearied ourselves many a time over the reproaches
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  Speaker 1: and the sorrows of those who, as it were, go
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  Speaker 1: up into the mountain alone, but rather to weep than
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  Speaker 1: to pray, or to keep silence and there are those
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  Speaker 1: who weary us with the ceaseless agitation of their active
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  Speaker 1: life and thoughts. Crowds are round about them. Noise is
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  Speaker 1: their music. They quote us, their terrants, horm orsom, as
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  Speaker 1: though Terence would have them turn the universe into a
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  Speaker 1: committee room for universal talk. The posture of mister Bridge's
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  Speaker 1: mind displayed in these poems is rather that of those
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  Speaker 1: earlier poets Elizabethans and Jacobeans, to whom the world looked
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  Speaker 1: half a court of grave observances and half a cloister
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  Speaker 1: of delights, and their service in either kind a service
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  Speaker 1: of solemnity and of elegance. Together. Only by some such
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  Speaker 1: phrase can I express that dainty and cheerful spirit of
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  Speaker 1: pleasure which makes the sacred verse of Arvel, or of Herrick,
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  Speaker 1: of ben Jonson, or of Crowshaw sound like the strain
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  Speaker 1: of rich music at a feast where all is gracious
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  Speaker 1: and entirely to be relished. It is an excellent view
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  Speaker 1: of life which looks upon the world as a chamber
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  Speaker 1: of God, where what is secular is eternal, what is
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  Speaker 1: spiritual is ideal, and all good, fine things are the
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  Speaker 1: ornaments and garniture of an eternal spirit. Imminent. There I
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  Speaker 1: find something of this view in all great poetry. Lucretius
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  Speaker 1: cannot obscure it. Tibi Suawe is dead. La Tellus submitted
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  Speaker 1: Flores tibi in ecuada, ponti placuitum que nitet difuso lumine
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  Speaker 1: coelum in pope or in gray. An exquisite refinement of
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  Speaker 1: taste and workmanship declares their love of a pleasing order
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  Speaker 1: among things. Keats, once clear from the ouregalities of youth,
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  Speaker 1: is great in virtue of it. Wordsworth is magnificent in
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  Speaker 1: praise of it. For what does he ascribe to duty
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  Speaker 1: for an office and a grace? Flowers laughed before thee
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  Speaker 1: on their beds, and fragrance in thy footing treads. Thou
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  Speaker 1: dost preserve the stars from wrong, and the most ancient
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  Speaker 1: heavens through thee are fresh and strong arnold. By dwelling
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  Speaker 1: with such serenity of mind upon the great things thought
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  Speaker 1: and done in the world, and with such gladness of
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  Speaker 1: heart upon the seemliness and the strength of nature, helped
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  Speaker 1: us to an appreciation of this view. Newman, in all
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  Speaker 1: his perfect expression of life's real unity and concord, in
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  Speaker 1: all his lamentation so like to Milton's over the breaking
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  Speaker 1: of that fair music and divine consent taught us the
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  Speaker 1: same enduring truth. Mister Peter, realizing with so singular a
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  Speaker 1: delight of intellect the qualities of all admirable things and natures,
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  Speaker 1: loves to call them hieratic, or precise or comely. He
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  Speaker 1: follows a ritual order of human life and of human thought. Nay,
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  Speaker 1: come to the greatest things. What is the theology of
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  Speaker 1: the Church Catholic but the patient and adoring science of God,
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  Speaker 1: guarded from wild dreams, grounded upon divine sanctions. But in
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  Speaker 1: our day men love to think of themselves as lost
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  Speaker 1: in the world, homeless in the universe. Each wandering fancy
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  Speaker 1: is fashioned into a lyrical cry. Without meditation, without reverence,
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  Speaker 1: without patience, They utter and would have us hear their
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  Speaker 1: disconnected and uncertain thoughts. They have no habitual, no constant
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  Speaker 1: principles of thought, no test, no standard of judgment. Loose
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  Speaker 1: sentiment and lawless imagination are the signs to them of
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  Speaker 1: free and fearless genius. So the form of poetry being
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  Speaker 1: inseparable from its matter, this random and unconsidered matter is
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  Speaker 1: expressed in forms devoidable scholarship, and all proportion poetry is
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  Speaker 1: degraded to a mechanical trick of recording immediate impressions or
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  Speaker 1: vagrant fancies. It is one main source of our pleasure
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  Speaker 1: in reading these shorter poems, that not the slightest of
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  Speaker 1: them is thus trivial and mean modern. They are of
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  Speaker 1: our own day, but their romance of tone is classical.
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  Speaker 1: Their meditative quality is immemorial. As with states, so it
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  Speaker 1: is with thoughts. The poet, too, who would deal with
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  Speaker 1: the fresh moods and influences of his day, must cast
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  Speaker 1: the kingdoms old into another mold mark the word, not
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  Speaker 1: cast them into original chaos, the land of dullness and
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  Speaker 1: of the duncers, but into a new mold, a fresh
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  Speaker 1: form and feature no less precise of design than were
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  Speaker 1: the former. For an example, compare mister Bridge's spring invitation
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  Speaker 1: to the country and his spring reply with Randolph's owed
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  Speaker 1: to Master Anthony Stafford, with Cotton's retirement storms irreglieus to
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  Speaker 1: mister Isaac Walton. Or go farther back into a greater
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  Speaker 1: antiquity read again, Marshal add Leucini arnum de ispanie lochis
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  Speaker 1: or Horace ad Virgilium, and see how this living poet
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  Speaker 1: can once more play upon the old theme of life's
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  Speaker 1: aspect and of life's virtue in town and country, in
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  Speaker 1: winter and in spring. Or make another comparison, read Campion's
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  Speaker 1: rich and moving verses. When thou must home to shades
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  Speaker 1: of underground, and there arrive a new admired guest. The
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  Speaker 1: beauteous spirits do engirt thee round white iope, blithe helen,
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  Speaker 1: and the rest to hear stories of thy finished love
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  Speaker 1: from that smooth tongue whose music hell can move. Then
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  Speaker 1: wilt thou speak of banqueting delights of masks and revels
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  Speaker 1: which sweet youth did make, of tourneys and great challenges
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  Speaker 1: of knights, and all those triumphs for thy beauty's sake,
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  Speaker 1: When thou hast told these honors done to thee, Then
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  Speaker 1: tell O, tell how thou didst murder me. The classic
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  Speaker 1: romantic splendor and beauty of that so full a propersioned
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  Speaker 1: fire and Spensrian solemnity cannot escape you. Now read mister
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  Speaker 1: Bridges's elegy on a lady whom grief for the death
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  Speaker 1: of her betrothed kill'd. I must mutilate it by quotation.
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  Speaker 1: It thus concludes. But now, for many days the dewy
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  Speaker 1: grass has shown no markings of his feet. At morn
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and watching, she has seen no shadow pass the moonlit walk,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and heard no music borne upon her ear. Forlorn in
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: vain has she looked out to greet him. He has
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: not come. He will not come alas. So let us
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: bear her out to where she must meet him. Now
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to the river bank. The priests are come, the bark
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: is ready to receive its freight. Let some prepare her
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: place therein, and some embark the litter with its slender weight.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: The rest stand by in state and sing her a
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: safe passage over while she has awed across to her
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: new home, into the arms of her expectant lover. And Thou,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: o lover, that art on the watch, where on the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: banks of the forgetful streams, the pale, indifferent ghosts wander
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and snatch the sweeter moments of their broken dreams. Thou,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: when the torch light gleams, when thou shalt see the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: slow procession, and when thine ears the fitful music, catch, rejoice,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: for thou art near to thy possession. Arnold, we find
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: is not the only poet of our day who, without
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: a specious resemblance, can use the ancient symbols and imageries
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: for the stately expression of a sorrow. But this power
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: of true assimilation is rare enough, and not to be
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: had but by patient's study, educating a native sense for
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the distinctions of art. A thorough consideration of mister Bridge's
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: poetry would ponder along his skill in music and in meter,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: For in these hears something of the master's touch, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: beyond the dexterity of a novice. But so full of
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: minute and of technical scholarship is he that a tree
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: beat us were required for the exhibition of his theoretic
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: science and actual practice. But I will say that if
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: he err at all, it is in a certain concision
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and compactness, coming of too many strong monosyllables, too little
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: tempered and relieved by words of a more prolonged melody.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: It is an effect something between briskness and sprightliness, common
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: in the less deft and versatile of Elizabethan lyrists, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: unequal to occasions of great and moving beauty. Such verses
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: are indeed of a pleasant tone and of a just economy.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Their structure is neat and clean. They are without waste
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and profusion of words. But coming from mister Bridges, they
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: come rather as copies of verses done in the scholar's
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: humor for the leisurely exercis's sake, than as the best
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: product of his imagination. When he chooses to sing or
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: to chant with more of the various melody and concerted music,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: we regret not without some ingratitude is less delicate or
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: lofty strain in certain measures devise with a great subtlety
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: of accents, equal in number upon each line, but in
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: each line prevailing over various reaches, or disposed at various intervals.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Mister Bridges has not yet attained a perfect ease, but
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: he contrives many pleasurable effects. Witness some of the lines
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: on a dead child, perfect little body without fault or stain,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: on thee, with promise of strength and manhood, full and fair,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: though cold and stark and bare, the bloom and charm
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: of life doth the while remain on thee. And again
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: so quiet doth the change content thee death. Whither hath
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: he taken THEE to a world? Do I think that
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: writes the disaster of this the vision of which I miss,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: who weep for the body, and wish but to warm
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: thee and awaken thee Ah. Little at best can all
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: our hopes avail us to lift this sorrow or cheer
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: us when in the dark, unwilling alone we embark, and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the things we have seen, and have known and have
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: heard of fail us. But those who wish to study
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the metrical achievements of mister Bridges in various kinds, had
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: best reat his comedy The Feast of Bacchus, written in
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: English six stressed verse, his Eden and oratorio set to
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: music by mister Villius Stanford, the coral parts of his
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: play Achilles in Scyros. To name but these, besides the
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: shorter poems, the volume of seventy nine sonnets entitled The
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Growth of Love is of noticeable beauty, it may be thought,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: in point of mental and imaginative strength, his finest work.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Unlike most sonnets of our time, these sonnets are weighty,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: with close thought, and rich with images in the Shakespearian
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: and in Milton's ways, yet not obscure nor luxuriant in
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the less happy manner of Rosetti, and as substance is
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: congruous with the form. Each grave or exalting thought finds
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: within the limits of the fourteen lines an exact place
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: for it to fill. So Petrarch conceived the Sonnet, and
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: so Sydney I present one at random. The dark and
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: serious angel, who so long vexed his immortal strength in
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: charge of me, Hath smiled for joy and fled in
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: liberty to take his pastime with a peerless throng oft
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: had I done his noble keeping wrong, wounding his heart
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: to wonder what might be God's purpose in a soul
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: of such degree? And there he had left me but
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: for mandate strong, but seeing THEE with me now his
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: task at close, he knoweth, and wherefore he was bid
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: to stay and work confusion of so many foes. The
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: thanks he looks to have from me I pay yet
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: some great heavenly envy as he goes unto what great
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: reward I cannot say. The narrative poem Eros and Psyche,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: published in eighteen eighty five, is one of those versions
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: in which Apulaus has been simply followed. It is written
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: in graceful stanzas of seven lines, and is dedicated in
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: significant terms to the celestial spirit of Henry. Purcell by
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: an unworthy lover. This poem is in no sense a translation. Indeed,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: mister Bridget has a note in which he speaks of
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the substance sitution of Hellenism for Latin vulgarity, somewhat to
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the consternation of the present writer, who is equally surprised
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: at reading of the dull furniture of Apulaeus. The poem
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: is a felicitous piece of fancy, embellished with many devices,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: but the lover of Apulaus will prefer the miraculous rendering
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: by mister Peter. Nowhere in mister Bridges's poem is as
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: so perfect a phrase as that of the craftsman divine
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: or half divine, who by the subtlety of his art,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: had breathed so wild a soul into the silver. Qui
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: magne artis subtile darte dantum epherra wit argentum. Mister Bridges's
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: poem has the same degree of excellence that has mister
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Lang's Helen of Troy, but it can hardly claim an
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: higher place for all its ready invention and its grace
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: of scholarship. Prometheus the Firegiver, a spectacle in the Greek
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: manner was first printed in the year A in eighty
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: three by mister Daniel, and at a public press in
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four Nero The Feast of Bacchus Polissio, Return
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of Ulysses, the Christian Captives Achilles in Scyros have followed Prometheus.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: It is here that I can best dwell upon another
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: distinction of mister Bridges as a poetical craftsman. That he
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: is no contemner of the past has been said, But
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: he is, also, as appears from his works, a very
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: careful searcher into the literary fashions, tastes, habits, adventures of
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: the old craftsmen, men of letters and poets, above all
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: are in these days contend to know little about such matters.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: To have a general view of Sophocles and of Shakespeare,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: but to be extremely ignorant of Calderon and of Alfieri.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: To know much of Milton, but nothing of mont Dell,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: much of Lessing, but nothing of Opits. To read Spencer
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and Chaucer, and Dryden, but not Brown, nor Gower nor Cowley.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And who shall say that to know the great masters
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: is not the first necessity of an artist. Yet we
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: might think that a true amount of letters, would eagerly
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: explore all tracts and byways of literature, all tentative methods
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and forsaken aims of his predecessors in the other arts.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: This apathy less prevails. We have with us still those
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: who are willing to study the old Italian tractates, to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: explore old music rooms, to pursue the obscure traces of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: all past excellence. Mister Bridges, whilst displaying throughout his work
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: a loving familiarity with both old and foreign literature, seems
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: if I may make the conjecture to have studied with
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: especial care the spectacular and the musical history of the stage,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: to know wherein precisely consists the virtue of any dramatic
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: form at a given period. Thus, in his Feast of Bacchus,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: he has done in English what no one else has done.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: He has given us the very soul and body of Terence,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: with a ghost of the lost and shadowy menander. Such
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: a study is he sings a winter tide's employment, Then
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: oft I turn the page in which our country's name,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: spoiling the Greek of fame, shall sound in every age
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: or some Terrentian play, renew whose excellent adjusted folds betray
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: how once Menanda went. In all his plays he exhibits
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: a just conception of his subject and of its treatment.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: He knows when to catch the spirit of the Italian
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Renaissance or of the Spanish school, when to plan his
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: chorus in the austere manner of Milton, or with something
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: of Shelley's brilliance, when the Sophoclean tone is in season,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and when that of Euripides. What degree of license is
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: permissible in handling classic matters after the Elizabethan way? In
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: all that he is never at a loss. His plays
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: are quick witted, ingenious, facile, although his dexterous craftsmanship rarely
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: enables him to make the dramatic form embody the high
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: dramatic spirit. All that he writes in dramatic form we enjoy.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It is infinitely skillful and attractive. But for a power
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: essentially pre eminently dramatic, we look to the one English
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: dramatist of greatness now living, to Michael Field. Mister Bridges
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: gives us the humor of the drama, its various attendant
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: charms and graces, not without a real and an original force.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: But in his lyrics. He is perfectly fine. Briefly and generally,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I have touched upon the characteristic virtues as I see
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: them of this excellent poet, rather indicating than a tempting
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: to expound his peculiar charm. It is a limited charm.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Not that it is one liable to decay with time,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: or to pass with the reader's passing moods. But it
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: is limited in the sense that this poetry, in all
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: its simplicity, in all its skill, is too dainty a
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: thing for common use. Unlike the poems of Arnold, or
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: of Wordsworth, of Virgil, or of Keats, of Milton, or
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: of Girt, they cannot be read daily, and in all places.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: That is test of great poetry, its abiding an unfailing
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: power upon us, because of its indifference to time and place.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: A line of Virgil, written by the Bay of Naples,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: in some most private hour of meditation, all those long
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: years ago, comes home to us as though it were
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: our own thought. Upon each repetition, experience has made it
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: more true and touching. Or take some verse of Arnold,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: written at Oxford or in London some few years past.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: He comes home to us as though a thousand years
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: had pondered it and found it true and in beauty,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: in power of music and of phrase. The great poets
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: are all contemporaries. An eternal beauty is upon the great
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: works of art, as though they were from everlasting poets
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: of exquisite charm, true to their art, true to its traditions,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: full of its inner spirit, may still miss that final
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: grace and grandeur. And of these, mister Bridges, is, in
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: my poor judgment, the most admirable in recent times. Had
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: a friend been reading Herrick to me or Catullus, Were
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I lying in the gardens of New College in Oxford
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: or in Winchester Meads, did someone play to me a
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: fugue of bach? I might at this hour rate the
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: shorter poems of Robert Bridges, far higher than my conscience,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: unperverted by delights, will suffer me. For they are poems
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: unaffected and simple, yet with an air of dainty luxury
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: about them, free from all trivial show and glitter, did
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: not command the in compelling us by their intrinsic greatness.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Read England's Helicon or mister Palgrave's Anthology of English Lyrics.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Neither book contains one page of absolutely bad work, and
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: either contains a vast deal that is very good. We might,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: with reason grow enthusiastic over these delightful pages. But then,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: with what a sudden revulsion of feeling we read an
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: ode of Milton, a lyric of Shakespeare. You meaner beauties
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: of the night that poorly satisfy our eyes, more by
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: your number than your light, You common people of the skies,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: What are you when the sun shall rise? But in
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: our zeal for the sun, let us not shut our
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: eyes to the stars. For in the heavens of poetry,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: where now few stars, perchance not a full plead are shining,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: none shines more purely nor more serenely than the star
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: of our consideration. Lionel Johnson, end of section zero, Section
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: one of the Growth of Love by Robert Bridges. This
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Sonnets one to
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: fifteen one. They that in play can do the thing
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: they would, having an instinct throned in reason's place. And
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: every action hath the grace of indolence or thoughtless hardihood.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: These are the best. It be their workmen good who
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: lose in earnestness, control of face, or reckon means and
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: rapt in effort base reach to their ends by steps
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: well understood me, whom thou sowest of late strive with
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the pains of one who spends his strength to rule
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: his nerve, even as a painter breathlessly whose strains his
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve. Behold me, now,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: free from the care that stains, and master of the art,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I choose to serve. Two, for thou art mine. And
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: now I am ashamed to have used means to win
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: so pure a quist and of my trembling fear that
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: might have missed through very care, the gold at which
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I aim'd, and am as happy but to hear THEE named,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: as are those gentle souls by angels kiss'd in pictures,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: seen leaving their marble cyst to go before for the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: throne of grace. Unblamed, nor surer am I water hath
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the skill to quench my thirst, or that my strength
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: is freed in measure, grace and motion as I will,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: than that to be myself is all I need for
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: THEE to be most mine. So I stand still and
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: save to taste my joy no more take heed. Three.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: The whole world now is but the minister of Thee.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: To me, I see no other scheme but universal love
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: from timeless dream waking to thee his joy's interpreter. I
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: walk around and in the fields confer of love at large,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: with tree and flower and stream and list. The lark
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: is scant upon thy theme, Heaven's musical accepted, worshiper thy,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: smile out faithth ill, And that old feud TwixT things
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and me is quashed in our new death truce and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: nature now dearly with thee endued no more in shame
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: ponders her old excuse, but quite forgets her frowns and
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: antics rude. So kindly hath she grown to her new use.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Four The very names of things we love are dear,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: and sounds will gather beauty from their sense, as many
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: a face, through love's long residence, groweth to fair instead
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: of plain and sere. But when I say thy name,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: it hath no peer. And I suppose fortune determined thence
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: her dower, that such beauty's excellence should have a perfect
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: title for the ear. For I must think the adopting
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: muses chose their sons by name, knowing none would be
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: heard or writ so oft in all the world. As
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: those Dan Chaucer, mighty Shakespeare. Then for third the classic
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Milton and to us arose Shelley with liquid music in
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the word. Five. The poets were good teachers, for they
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: taught earth had this joy, but that twould ever be
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: that fortune should be perfected in me. My heart of
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: hope dared not engage the thought. So I stood low
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: and now, but to be caught by any self styled
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: lords of the age with thee vexes my modesty, lest
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: they should see, I hold them owls and peacocks, things
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: of nought. And when we sit alone, and as I please,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I taste thy love's full smile, and can instate the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: pleasure of my kingly heart At ease my thoughts swims
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: like a ship that, with the weight of her rich burdened,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: slips on the infinite seas, becalmed, and cannot stir her
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: golden freight. Six. While yet we wait for spring, and
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: from the dry and blackening east that so embitters march
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: will hows must watch gray fields and meadows, parch and
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: driven dust, and withering snowflake fly lready in glimpses of
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the tarnish'd sky. The sun is warm and beckons to
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the larch, and where the cover'd hazels inter arch their
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: tassel'd twigs. Fair beds of primrose lie beneath the crisp
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: and wintry carpet hid a million buds. But stay their
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: blossoming and trustful birds have built their nests amid the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing till one soft
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: shower from the south shall bid and hither tempt the
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: pilgrim's steps of spring. Seven in thee my spring of
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: life hath bid the while arose and fold beyond the
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: summer's best, the mystery of joy made manifest in love
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: self answering an awakening smile, whereby the lips in silence,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: reconcile desire with peace, and pleading in a rest of passion,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: show the beauty left unguessed of Greece to adorn at
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: last the Tuscan style. When first the wonder conquering faith
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: and ken'd fancy portrayed above the strength of oath, revealed
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: of God, or light of poem, pend the countenance of
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: ancient plighted troth TwixT heaven and Earth, that in one
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: moment blend the hope of one and happiness of both. Eight.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: For beauty, being the best of all we know, sums
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: up the unsearchable and secret aims of nature, and on
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: joys whose heavenly names were never told, can form and
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: sense bestow. And man hath sped his instinct to outgo
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: nature in sound and shape and daily frames much for
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: himself to countervail his shames, building a tower above the
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: head of woe. And never was their work. For beauty
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: found fairer than this, that she should make to cease
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the jarring woes that in the world abound. Nay with
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: his sorrow, may his smiles increase, if from man's greater
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: need beauty redoun'd and claim his tears for homage of
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: his peace. Nine. Thus to thy beauty, doth my fond
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: heart look that late dismay'd her faithless faith forbore and
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: WinCE again her love lost in the law of schools
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: and script of many a learned book. For thou, what
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: ruthless death untimely took, Shalt now, in better brotherhood, restore
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: and save my battered ship, that far from shore, high
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: on the dismal deep in tempest, shook so in despite
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: of sorrow, lately learn'd I still hold true to truth,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: since thou art true, nor wail the woe which thou
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: to joy hast turn'd, nor come the heavenly sun and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: bathing blue to my life's need. More splendid and unearned
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: than hath. Thy gift outmatch'd desire and dee ten. Winter
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: was not unkind, because uncouth his prisoned time made me
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: a closer guest, and gave thy graciousness a warmer zest,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: biting all else with keen and angry tooth and bravelier.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: The triumphant blood of youth, mantling thy cheek, its happy home,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: possess'd and sterner sport by day put strength to test,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and custom's feast at night gave tongue to truth. Or say,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: hath flaunting summer a device to match our midnight revelry
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: that rang with steel and flame along the snowgirt ice,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Or when we hark'd to nightingales that sang on dewy
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: eves in spring? Did they entice to gentler love than Winter's?
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I see eleven as many a would be poet at
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: this hour, rhymes of a love and truth he never wooed,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and o'er his lamp lit desk in solitude, deems that
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: he sitteth in the muser's bower. And while such thuless kind,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: the fat de our and ever grow the leaner for
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: their food. Men look askance upon an art pursued by
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: clerks that lack the pulse and smile of power. So
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: none of all our company I boast, But now would
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: mock my writing? Could they see how down the right
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: it maps a jagged coast, Seeing they hold the manlier
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: praise to be strong hand and will and the heart
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: best when most tis sober, simple, true, and fancy free. Twelve,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: How could I quarrel or blame you, most dear, who
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: all thy virtues gavest and kept back none kindness and gentleness,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: truth without peer, and beauty that my fancy fed upon.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Now not my life's contrition, for my fault can blot
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: that day, nor work me recompense, though I might worthily
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: thy worth exalt, making THEE long amends for short offense.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: For surely nowhere love, if not in THEE, are grace
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: and truth and beauty to be found. And all my
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: praise of these can only be a praise of THEE.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Howe'er by THEE disown'd, while still thou must be mine.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Thoy far remov'd, and I, for one offense no more beloved.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Thirteen now since to me, although by THEE refused, the
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: world is left I shall find pleasure Still the art
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: I have ever lov'd, but little used, will yield a
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: world of fancies at my will. And though where're thou goest,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: it is from me ay where I go THEE in
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: my heart must bear. And what thou wert that wilt
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: thou ever be my choice, my best, my loved, and
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: only fair farewell? Ye'd think not such farewell, a change
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: from tenderness. Thou once to meet or part, but on
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: short absence so could sense derange. The tears have graced
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the greeting of my heart. There were proud drops, and
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: had my leave to fall, not on thy pity for
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: my pain to call. Fourteen When sometimes in an ancient house,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: where state from noble ancestry is handed on, we see
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: but desolation through the gate, and richest heirlooms all to
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: ruin gone, because may be some fancied shame or fear,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: bread of disease or melancholy fate hath driven the owner
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: from his rightful sphere to wander nameless, save to pity
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: or hate. What is the wreck of all he hath
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: in fief? When he that hath is wrecking, Nought is
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: fine unto the sick. Nor doth it bird and grief
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: that the house perish, when the soul doth pine. Thus,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I my states despise slain by a sting, so slight
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: twould not have hurt a meaner thing. Fifteen who builds
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: a ship must first lay down the keel of health,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: whereto the ribs of mirth are wed and knit with
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: beams and knees of strength, a bed for decks of purity,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: her floor and seal upon her masts adventure, pride, and
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: zeal to fortune's winds, the sails of purpose spread, and
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: at the prow make figured maiden head. Or ride the
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: seas and answer to the wheel, and let him deep
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: in memory's halt, have stored water of helicon, and let
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: him fit the needle that doth true with heaven accord.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Then bid her crew love diligence, and wit, with justice, courage, temperance,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: come abroad, and at her helm the master reason sit
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: end of Section one, Section two of the growth of
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Love by Robert Bridges this LibriVox recording as in the
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: public domain Sonnets sixteen to thirty sixteen. This world is,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: unto God, a work of art of which the unaccomplished
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: heavenly plan lives in his masterpiece and grows with man
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: unto perfection and success. In part the ultimate creation stayed
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: to start from the last creature, for whom all began,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: who child in what he is and what he can hath.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Yet God's judgment and desire at heart knowledge denied him,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and his little skill, cumbered by laws he never can annul.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Baffled by qualities, adverse and ill, with feeble hands, few
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: years and senses dull, his art is Nature's nature, and
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: love still makes his abode with the most beautiful seventeen.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Say who be these light bearded, sunburned faces, in negligent
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and travel stained array, that in the city of Dante
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: come to day haughtily visiting her holy places? Oh, these
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: be noble men that hide their graces true England's blood,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: her ancient glory's stay by tales of fame, diverted on
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: their way home from the rule of Oriental races, life,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: trifling lions, These of gentle eyes and motion, delicate, but
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: swift to fire for honor, passionate where duty lies most
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: loved and loving. And they quickly tire of Florence, that
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: she one more day denies the embrace of wife and
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: son of sister or sire. Eighteen Where sun Minato's convent
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: from the sun at forenoon overlooked the city of flowers.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I sat, and, gazing on her domes and towers, called
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: up her famous children, one by one and three, who
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: all the rest had far outdone. Mild Giotto first, who
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: stole the morning hours I saw, and God like wan
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Orotti's powers, and Dante gravest poet her much wrong'd son?
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Is all this glory? I said, another's praise? Are these
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: heroic triumphs things of old and do dead upon the
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: living gaze? Or rather, doth the mind that can behold
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: the wondrous beauty of the works and days create the
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: image that her thoughts enfold. Nineteen. Rejoice, ye dead, where'er
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: your spirits dwell. Rejoice that yet on earth your fame
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: is bright, and that your names remember'd day and night
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: live on the lips of those that love you. Well. Rejoice,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: ye living, ye that now excel and guard in nameless homes.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: The sacred Light rejoice though prosperous folly in her spite,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: banish all them that from her rule rebel for the
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: world's exile. Hath a richer meed than a king's favorite.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: He shall arrive with the like triumph and return to Creed,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: to him who ne'er revisited alive his home, but sang
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: doubt not I shall succeed. For all the hindrance they
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: within contrive twenty who praiseth If the poet have not
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: known his work is beautiful, none can persuade, nor doth
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: our time that so wrongs handle shade contrive his condemnation
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: but its own. The commentary on Shakespeare hath not shown
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: the perfect judgment that alive he laid on his own work,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: which taketh since twas made grace nor disgrace save but
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: of love alone, and love in loving. Nothing that is
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: vile knows not the error of the mind, nor fears
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: to set his seal in secret with a smile. But
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: o could one, as Purcell w the tears of love
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: such praise were more than to beguile. The learned fancies
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: of a thousand years twenty one. The world still goeth
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: about to show and hide, befooled of all opinion, fond
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: of fame. But he that can do well taketh no pride,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and seeth his error undisturb'd by shame. So poors the best.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Our longest days can do the most. So little, diligently done,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: So mighty is the beauty that doth woo so vast.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: The joy that love from love hath won. God's love
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: to win is easy, for he loveth desires fear, attitude,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: nor strictly weighs the broken thing. But all alike a proveth,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: which love hath aim'd at him. That is Heaven's praise.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: And if we look for any praise on earth, tis
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: in Man's love. All else is nothing worth. Twenty two.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: O Flesh and blood comrade to tragic pain and clownish merriment,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: whose sense could wake sermons in stones and count death,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: but an ache all things as vanity, Yet nothing vain.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: The world set in thy heart, Thy passionate strain revealed anew.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: But thou, for man didst make nature twice natural, only
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: to shake her kingdom with the creatures of thy brain.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Lo Shakespeare, since thy time nature is loth to yield
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: to art her fair supremacy in conquering one, thou hast
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: so enrichard both. What shall I say for God, whose
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: wise decree confirmeth all he did, by all he doth
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: doubled his whole creation, making thee. Twenty three I would
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: be a bird, and straight on wings. I arise and
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: carry purpose up to the ends of the air, in
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: calm and storm my sails thy feather, and where by
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: freezing clips the unransomed wreckage lies, or strutting on hot
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: meridian banks, surprise the silence over plains in the moonlight bare.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: I chase my shadow and perch where no bird adare,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in treetops torn by fiercest winds of the skies, poor
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: simple birds, foolish birds. Then I cry, ye, pretty pictures
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: of delight, unstirred by the only joy of knowing that
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: she fly He are not what he are, but rather
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: summed dinner word, the alphabet of a god's idea, and
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I who master it, I am the only bird. Twenty four, Oh,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: weary pilgrims, chanting of your woe, that turn your eyes
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: to all the peaks that shine, hailing in each the
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: citadel divine, the which he thought to have entered a
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: long ago, until at length your feeble steps and slow
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: falter upon the threshold of the shrine, and your hearts
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: overburdened doubt in fine, whether it be Jerusalem or no
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: disheartened pilgrims, I am one of you, for having worshiped
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: many a barren face. I scarce now greet the goal
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: I journeyed to. I stand a pagan in the heavenly place,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: beneath the lamp of truth. I am found untrue and
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: question with the glory I embrace twenty five spring hath
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: her own bright days of calm and peace, her melting air.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: At every breath we draw floods heart with love to
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: praise God's gracious law. But suddenly so short is pleasure's lease.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: The cold returns the buds from growing cease, and nature's
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: conquered face is full of awe. As now the traitorous north,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: with icy floor, freezes the dew upon the sick lamb's fleece,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: andneath the mock sun searching everywhere, rattles the crisped leaves
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: with shivering din so that the birds are silent with despair.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: In the thickets, nor their arm thin will, gaudy flies,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: adventure in the air, nor any lizard's sun his spotted skin.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Twenty six. Nothing is joy without THEE. I can find
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: no rapture in the first relays of spring, in songs
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: of birds, in young Bud's opening, nothing in spiriting, and
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: nothing kind for lack of THEE, who once went thrown
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: behind all beauty like a strength where graces cling the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: jewel and heart of light, which everything wrestled in rivalry
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: to hold enshrined ah since thout fled, and I in
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: each fierce sight the sweet occasion of my joy deplore,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Where shall I seek THEE best or whom invite within
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: thy sacred temples, and adore who shall feel thought and
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: truth with old delight, and lead my soul in life
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: as heretofore. Twenty seven. The work is done, and from
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: the fingers fall the blood warm tools that brought the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: labor through the tasking eye that overrunneth all rests and
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: affirms there is no more to do now. The third
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: joy of making that sweet flower of blessed work bloometh
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: in god like spirit, and whoso plucketh holdeth for an
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: hour the shriveling vanity of mortal merit, And thou my
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: perfect work thout of to day to morrow, A poor
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and alien thing wilt be true only should the swift
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: life standeth. Stay therefore farewell, nor look to bide with me.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Go find thy friends, if there be one to love thee.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Casting thee forth, my child, I rise above thee. Twenty eight.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: The fabled sea snake old lethethan or else grisly beast
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: of scaly chine, that champ'd the ocean, rack and swash'd
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: the brine before the new and milder days of man,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: had never rib nor bray, nor swinging fan like his
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: iron swimmer of the Clyde or Tyne, late born of
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: golden seed, to breed a line of offspring, swifter and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: more huge of plan. Straight is her going for upon
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: the sun, when once she hath look'd her path and
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: place are plain. With tireless speed, she smiteth one by
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: one the shuddering seas and foams along the main, and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: her ease at breath when her wild races run roars
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: through her nostrils like a hurricane. Twenty nine. A thousand
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: times hath in my heart's behoof my tongue been set
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: his passion to impart A thousand times, hath my too
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: cower'd heart, my mouth reclos'd and fixed it to the roof.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Then with such cunning hath it held aloof a thousand times,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: kept silence, with such art that words could do no more.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Yet on thy part, hath silence given a thousand times reproof.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: I should be bolder, seeing I commend love that my
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: dilatory purpose primes, but fear lest with my fears my
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: hope should end. Nay, I would truth deny, and burn
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: my rhymes, renew my sorrows, rather than offend A thousand times,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: and yet a thousand times thirty. I travel to thee
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: with the sun's first rays that lift the dark west
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: and unwrap the night. I dwell beside thee when he
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: walks the height, and fondly toward thee at his setting gaze.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: I wait upon thy coming, but always dancing to meet
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: my thoughts. If they invite, thou hast outrun their longing
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: with delight, and in my solitude dost mock my praise,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I well might say, twere better not to have been
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: than such I am to be. For such as thou,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: and couldst thou love me more? My heart, I'd ween
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: and win a claim that none could disallow. But since
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: that cannot be I love, I lean upon thy strength,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: and ne'er on strong till now. End of section two,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Section three of the Growth of Love by Robert Bridges.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: This libriyvox recording as in the public domain Sonnets thirty
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: one to forty five thirty one. My lady pleases me,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: and I please her. This know we both, and I
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: besides know well wherefore I her and I love to
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: tell my love as all my loving songs aver. But
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: what on her part could the passion stir? Though tis
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: more difficult for love to spell. Yet can I dare
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: divine how this befell? Nor will her lips deny it?
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: If I err she loves me first because I love her,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: then loves me for knowing why she should be loved,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: and that I love to praise her loves again. So
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: from her beauty, both our loves are moved, and by
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: her beauty are sustained. Nor when the earth falls from
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: the sun, is this disproved? Thirty two? In all things beautiful,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I cannot see her sit or stand. But love is
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: stirred anew tis joy to watch the folds fall as
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: they do, and all it comes is past expectancy. If
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: she be silent, silence, let it be he who would
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: bid her speak, might sit and soothe the deep browed
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: fidian jove to be untrue to his two thousand years solemnity.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Ah but her launched passion when she sings, winds on
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: the hearing like a sheepen prow borne by the mastery
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: of its urgent wings. Or if she deign her wisdom,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: she doth show she hath the intelligence of heavenly things,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: unsullied by man's mortal overthrow. Thirty three. Thus to be
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: humbled tis that ranging pride, no refuge, hath that in
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: his castle, strong, brave reason sits beleagued, who so long
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: kept field, but now must starve where he doth hide.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: That industry, who once the foe defied, lies slaughtered in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: the trenches, that the throng of idle fancies pipe their
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: foolish song where late the poissant captain fought and died.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Thus to be humbled tis to be undone. A forest felled,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a city rais'd to ground, a cloak unsown unwoven and
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: unspun till not a thread remains that can be wound.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: And yet, O Lover thee the ruin'd one love, who
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: hath humbled, thus hath also crown'd. Thirty four. I care
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: not if I live, though life and breath have never
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: been to me so dear and sweet. I care not
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: if I die, for I could meet being so happy
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: happily my death. I care not if I love to
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: day she saith she loveth and love's history is complete.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Nor care I if she love me At her feet
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: my spirit bows entranced and worshipeth. I have no care
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: for what was most my care. But all around me
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: see fresh beauty born, and common sights grown lovelier than
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: they were. I dream of love, and in the light
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: of morn tremble beholding all things very fair and strong,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: with strength that puts my strength to scorn. Thirty five. O,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: my Goddess Divine, sometimes I say, now let this word
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: for ever and all suffice. Thou art insatiable, And yet
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: not twice can even thy lover give his soul away
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and for my acts that at thy feet I lay
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: for never any other by device of wisdom, love or
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: beauty could entice my homage to the measure of this day.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: I have no more to give thee lo I have
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: sold my life, have emptied out my heart and spent
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: whate'er I had till, Like a beggar bold with nought
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: to lose, I laugh and am content. A beggar kisses
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: thee Nay, love behold, I fear not thou too art
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: in Begarment thirty six. All earthly beauty hath one cause
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: and proof to lead the pilgrim's soul to beauty above
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Yet lieth the greater bliss so far aloof that few
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: there be are weened from earthly love Joy's ladder. It
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: is reaching from home to home, the best of all
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: the work, that all was good, whereof twas writ the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Angel's eye, up clomb down, sped, and at the top
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the Lord God stood. But I my time abuse, my
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: eyes by day, centerd on thee, by night, my heart
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: on fire, letting my numbered moments run away, nor en
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: TwixT night and day to heaven. As so true it
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: is that what the eye seeth not but slow is loved,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: and loved is soon forgot. Thirty seven. Already far have
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: we sailed out to sea. Enough have prov'd our bark,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: and hear the roar of tempest urbanigh that more and
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: more rages and lightens on the white and lee. See
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: how with naked masts the tall ships flee like frighted
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: phantoms from the dangerous shore, and not a boat contrives
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: with sail or oar to stem the foundering waves. How then,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: shall we now time it is to make for port
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: and haste in safety, with the joy our perils urn.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: But let us bow that first the shrine be graced
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: of him who moves and draws all souls that yearn
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: with fair memorials of devotion, placed for venturous voyage and
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: for safe return. Thirty eight. The bliss that Adam lost
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: eating in haste, he lost not all for what he
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: had he had, And still his sons are born as
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: pure and glad as he, when first by God in
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Eden placed but what he took for them, daring to taste,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: he one outright, whether for good or bad, And in
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: his footsteps almost issue sad out of their garden, exiled
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: and disgraced. And therefore knowledge hath two hands, with one
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: pressed to her prisoned heart that mourns and yearns she
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: guards her first born joy and shares with none, but
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: with her busy right. She moves and turns all tangible things,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: or gazing on the sun shades her adventurous eye, and
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: ever learns thirty nine O, my life's mischief once my
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: love's delight, the drewest a mortgage on my heart's estate,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: whose baneful clause is never out of date. Nor can
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: avenging time restore my right whom first to lose sound
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: of that note of spite, where two my doleful days
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: were tun'd by fate, that art the well lov'd cause
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: of all thy hate, the sun whose wandering makes my
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: hopeless knight, Thou being in all my lacking, all I lack.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: It is thy goodness turns my grace to crime, thy
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: fleetness from my goal, which holds me back. Wherefore my
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: feet go out of step with time. My very grasp
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: of life is old and slack, and even my passion
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: falters in my rhyme forty at times, with hurried hoofs
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: and scattering dust, I race thy field or highway, and
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: my horse spare not but urg'd erect in headlong course
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: unto some fair four hill that again I must but
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: nearer arrived the vision soon mistrust rain in, and stand
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: as one who sees the source of strong illusion, shaming
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: thought to force from off his mind the soil of
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: passion's gust. My brow I bear then, and with slackened speed,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: can view the country pleasant on all sides, and too
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: kind salutation give good heed. I ride as one before
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: his pleasure rides, and stroke the neck of my delighted steed,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: and seek what cheer the village inn provides forty one
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: an idle June day on the sunny Thames, floating or
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: rowing as our fancy led now listening to sweet things
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: the young birds said, and choosing now a nosegay from
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: the gems, the star, the embroidery of the bank that
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: hems the current that our skiff from Henley sped to
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: where the clift and woods or maiden head bar its
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: still surface with their mirrored stems. I would have life,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: thou saidst All, as this day simple enjoyment, calm in
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: its success, with not a grief to cloud, and not
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: a ray of passion over hot may peace to oppress,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: with no ambition to reproach, delay, nor rapture to disturb
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: its happiness forty two. Whether it be happiness to have
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: enough and fear no want, while most are poorly fed,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: to bring untied limbs to an easy bed, while any
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: workman's couch is cold and rough, And whether honor be
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: of such dull stuff as like the peace for which
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: a brother, bled and virtue, yet untried in comfort bread
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: can know her name and feel no self rebuff, Or
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: if to yield themselves to worse and worse were truly
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: solace for the hearts that chafe, since their nobility would
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: choose the curse rather to be than once to ride
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: the waif or hear the laugh. Oh, blame not my
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: poor verse, that it is sad, while comfort still is safe.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Forty three. A man that sees by chance his picture
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: made as once a child he was handling some toy,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: will gaze to find his spirit within the boy. It
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: hath no secret with the soul portrayed. He cannot think
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: the simple thought which played upon those features. Then so
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: frank and coy tis his it, Oh not his, and
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: a'er the joy his fatherly pity bends in tears, dismayed,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: proud of his prime, may be he stand at best
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: and lightly where his strength or aim it high most master,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: now of all he e'er possess'd. Yet in the pictured
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: face a charm doth lie the one thing lost more
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: worth than all the rest, which seeing he fears to say,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: this child was I forty four tears of love, tears
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: of joy, and tears of care, comforting tears that fell uncomforted,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: tears o'er the new born, tears beside the dead, tears
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: of hope, pride and pity, trust and prayer, tears of contrition,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: all tears whatsoe'er of tenderness or kindness had she shed?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Who here his picture ed eir upon her head, the
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: fine gold might be turn'd to silver. There the smile
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: that charm'd the father hath given place unto the furrowed
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: care wrought by the sun. But virtue hath transformed, or
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: change to grace, so that I praised the artist who
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: hath done a portrait for my worship of the face
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: one by the heart, my father's heart that won forty five.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: If I could but forget and not recall so well
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: my time of pleasure and a play, when ancient nature
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: was all new and gay light is the fashion that
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: doth last in thrall Ah, mighty nature. When my heart
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: was small, nor dream'd what fearful searchings underlay the flowers
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: and leafy ecstasy of may, the breathing summer sleuth the
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: scenter'd fall. Could I forget? Then? Were the fight not
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: hard pressed in the melay of accursed things? Having such
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: help in love and such reward? But that tis I
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: who once tis this, that stings, once dwelt within the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: gate that angels guard were ye, yet i'd be had
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: I but heavenly wings. End of section three, section four
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: of the Growth of Love by Robert Bridges. This LibriVox
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Sonnets forty six to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: sixty forty six. When I see childhood on the threshold,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: seize the prize of life from age and likelihood, I
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: mourn times change that will not be withstood, thinking our
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Christ said, be like one of these. For in the forest,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: among many trees, scarce one in all is found that
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: hath made good the virgin pattern of its slender wood.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: Though courtesied in joy to every breeze, but scathed, but
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: not at trunks that raise on high their arms in
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: stiff contortion, strained and belt his crowns in patriarchal sorrow sigh.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: So little children, ye nay nay, ye ne'er from me
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: shall learn how sure the change and nigh when ye
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: shall share our strength and mourn to share. Forty seven.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: When parched with thirst astray on sultry sands, the travel
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: of faints upon his closing ear steals a fantastic music.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: He may hear the babbling fountain of his native land
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: before his eyes. The vision seems to stand where at
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: its terraced brink the maids appear, who fill their deep
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: burns at its waters clear, and not refuse the help
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: of lover's hand. Oh, cruel jest, he cries as someone
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: flings the sparkling drops in sport, or show of ire
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: as shameless, a contempt of holy things, but never of
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: their wanton play. They tire as not athirst. They sit
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: beside the springs, while he must quench in death his
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: lost desire. Forty eight. The image of Thy love rising
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: on dark and desperate days above my sullen sea, wakens
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: again fresh hope and peace in me, gleaming above upon
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: my groaning bark, What e'er my sorrow be? I then
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: may hark a loving voice. What e'er my terror be
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: this heavenly comfort? Still I win from thee to shine
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: my lord star, that wort once my mark prodigal nature
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: makes us but to taste one perfect joy, which given
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: she nigard, grows unlest her precious gift should run to waste,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: adds to its loss. A thousand lesser woes. So to
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: the memory of the gift that graced her hand, her
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: graceless hand, more grace bestows forty nine. I will not
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: marry thee sweet hope, I said, for all thy beauty,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: nor thy promise. Sworn though thou the day spring pledge
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: and rosy morn, already captive in thy train, hast led
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: no clouded terror, or the sun is spread, no noonday
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: darkness like of love outworn, the cold star on his
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: shining orbit, born with all his valleys dry, his verdure dead.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: Nor hast thou any power to thrust aside Fate's cruel hand,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: nor any refuge shown were comfortless my widow's shame could
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: hide for me in my cold sepulcher. I'd grown hearing
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: men say, see hope, so late Love's bride, whom now
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: this vain ambition has made his own fifty in this neglected,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: ruined edifice of works, unperfected and broken schemes. Where is
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the promise of my early dreams, the smile of beauty
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: and the pearl of price. No charm is left now
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: that could once entice wind, wavering fortune from her golden streams,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and full in flight decrepit purpose seems trailing the banner
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: of his old device. Within the house, a fraw and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: numbing air has chill'd endeavor. Sickly memories reign in every room,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: and ghosts are on the stair, and hope behind the
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: dusty window pane watches the days go by, and half aware,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: forecast her last reproach and mortal stain. Fifty one. Once
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: I would say, before thy vision came, my joy, my life,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: my love, And with some kind of knowledge speak and
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: think I knew my mind of heaven and hope, And
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: each word hit its aim. What e're their sounds be?
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Now all mean the same, denoting each the fair I
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: cannot find, or if I say them, tis as one
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: long blind forgets what sights they were he used to name. Now,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: if men speak of love, tis not my love, nor
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: are their hopes nor joy's mind, nor the life they
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: choose for praise the life I reckon of nay, though
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: they turn from house and child, and wife and self,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: and in the thought of Heaven above hold as do
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: I all mortal things at strife. Fifty two, Since then
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: tis only pity looking back, fear looking forward, and the
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: busy mind will, in one woeful moment more upwind than
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: life long years unroll of bitter or black. What is
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: man's privilege is hoarding knack of memory with foreboding, so combined,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: whereby he comes to dream hath of kind, the perpetuity
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: which all things lack, which but to hope is doubtful
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: joy to have, being a continuance of what alas we
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: mourn and scarcely bear with to the grave, or something
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: so unknown that it'll pass the thought of comfort and
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: the sense that gave cannot consider it through any glass.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: Fifty three. Come, gentle sleep, I woo THEE. Come and
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: take not now the child into thine arms from fright
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: composed by drowsy tune and shaded light. Whom ignorant of THEE,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: thou didst nurse and make Nor now the boy who
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: scorned THEE for the sake of growing knowledge or mysterious knight.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: Though with fatigue thou didst his limbs, invite and heavily
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: weigh the eyes he strove to wake. No nor the
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: man severe, who, from his best failing alert it fled
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: to thee that his breath, blood, force, and fire should
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: come at morn redrest. But me, from whom thy comfort tarrieth,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: for all my wakeful prayer, send without rest to THEE
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: a show and shadow of my death. Fifty four. Let
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: man lament his lot, and then lament that he must
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: so lament, and then complain that all his lamentations are
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: in vain, his tears betray his true affections. Bent for
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: leefest love first falls to discontent, as they who best
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: no health will rage at pain, and pined beyond their
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: sickness to regain their treasure, treasured most when lost or spent,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: which being in them a dollar, none the less inspires
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: the cries of prime. The truly sad are dumb, and
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: they but on a happiness who hanker after joys, that
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: once they had or surfeited of sweets, turn and confess
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: their pleasure is to be no longer glad. Fifty five
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: the spirit's eager sense for sad or gay filleth with
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: what he will our vessel full be joy is bent.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: He waiteth not Joy's day, but like a child at
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: any toy, will pull. If sorrow, he will mourn for
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: fancy's sake, and spoil Heaven's plenty with forbidden care. What
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: fortune most denies we slave to take. Nor can fate
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: loadus more than we can bear. And since in having
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: pleasure disappereth, he who hath least in hand hath most
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: at heart, while he can hope, as he who always
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: feareth a grief that never comes hath still the smart
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: and worse than true. Is such unreal distress, For when
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: God sendeth sorrow, it doth bless. Fifty six the world
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: comes not to an end. Her city hives swarm with
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: the tokens of a changeless trade, with rolling wheel, driver
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: and flagging jade. Rich men and beggars, children, priests and wives.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: New homes on old are set as lives on lives invention,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: with invention overlaid, but still or tool or toy or
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: book or blade shaped for the hand that holds and
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: toils and strives. The men I meet work as their fathers,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: wrought with little bettered means. For works depend on works,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: and overlap, and thought on thought, and through all change,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: the smiles of hope amend the weariest face, the same
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: love changed in nought. In this thing too, the world
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: comes not to an end. Fifty seven. Since in the
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: love of Christ, my enterprise to do THEE honor groweth
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: day by day day, and with the growth of love,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: the words I say are daily worthier of THEE. And
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: more wise, like a rich jew, I book my merchandise
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: in fairest hand, and hoard my gains away, counting the hours.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Ere I shall quite repay more than the full account
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: against me lies, but not the joy alas I in
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: my grave shall be, and thou in thine ere this
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: befall tis but a memory. My verse can save of
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: this my wealth too. If I give THEE all sorrow
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: for pleasure, pay aye, and I crave alone of time
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: that flies beyond recall. Fifty eight, O, MANE cared for songs,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: what are ye worth that? In my secret book, with
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: so much care, I write you this one here and
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: that one there, marking the time and order of your birth.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: Now with the fancy so unkind to mirth a sense
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: so hard, a style so worn and bare. Look ye
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: for any welcome anywhere from any shelf or heart home
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: on the earth. Should others ask you this? So then
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: I yearned to right you, such as once when I
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: was young, finding I should have loved, and thereto turned
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: twas something yet to live again among the gentle youth beloved,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: and where I learned my art, be there remembered for
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: my song fifty nine, who takes the census of the
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: living dead? Ere the day come when memory shall o'ercrowd
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: the kingdom of their fame, And for that proud and
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: airy people find no room or stead ereharding time, but
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: ever thrust us back the fairest treasures of his ancient store,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: better with best confound, so he may pack his greedy
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: gatherings closer more and more. Let the true Muse rewrite
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: her sullied page and purgu her story of the men
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: of hate, that they go dirdless down to Satan's rage,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: with all else fowl deform'd and miscreate. She hath full
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: toil to keep the names we love honored on earth
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: as they are bright. Above sixty I heard great hector
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: sounding war's alarms were through the listless ghosts chiding. He
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: strode as though the Greeks besieg'd his last abode, and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: he his choice hoped still her king at arms. But
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: on those gentle meds were nothing harms and purpose perishes.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: His passion glow'd like the cold night worm's candle, nor
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: scarce show'd the heart death kills not quite nor leathy charms.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: Twas plain to read even by those shadows quaint, how
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: rude catastrophe had dimm'd his day and blighted all his
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: cheer with stern complaint to arms, to arms. What more
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: the voice would say, was swallowed in the valleys and
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: grew faint upon the thin air as he passed away.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: End of section four, section five of the Growth of
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: Love by Robert Bridges. This liberyvox recording is in a
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: public domain Sonnets sixty one to seventy nine sixty one.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Since peace came down to me, I well know whence
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: op perfected and happy spirit twas sped, and he who
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: did lead me whither ours are lead drawn by sweet
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: airs and plaintive innocence, so lost when thou didst seem departing.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Hence I too enrolled myself among the dead, and left
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: my home of homes unveit, visited, exiled from memory for
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: my woe's defense. But see the doors fast shut by
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: grief and pride reopen'd, see kind peace return'd in spite
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: of this sad heart, which THEE so long denied. For
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: Thou my joy, whate'er or day or night, I think
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: or do again, art by my side my lost and won,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: my treasure and life's delight. Sixty two. Sweet sleep, dear
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: unadorned bride of toil, whom in the dusk of night
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: men's bodies low lie to receive, and thy lov'd coming
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: no closing the cloudy gate on day's turmoil. Thou, through
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: the soft ways entest to despoil the ready spirit, and
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: on worn flesh bestow such comfort as through trembling souls
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: will flow. When God's well done, doth all their sins
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: a soil thought looseth at thy touch her troubled hold
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: hand aye and ear fail, and the world's fair show
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: is blotted clean. Or then thou may'st unfold brightening the
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: hours of sure renewal, slow, thy careless pageantries pictures untold
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: joy's which the tasking sun melteth like snow sixty three,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: Since not the enamor'd sun with glance more fond kisses
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: the foliage to his sacred tree than doth my waking
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: thought arise on thee, loving none near thee like thee,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: nor beyond. Nay, since I am sworn thy slave, and
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: in the bond is writ my promise of eternity. Since
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: to such high hope thou'st encouragest me that if thou
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: look but from me, I despond since thout my all
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: in all, Oh, think of this, Think of the dedication
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: of my youth. Think of my loyalty, my joy, my bliss.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Think of my sorrow, my despair, and ruth, my sheer annihilation.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: If I miss, think if thou shouldst be false, think
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: of thy truth. Sixty four. These meager rhymes, which are
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: returning mood sometimes all rateth, eyes oft despise, and knowing
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: them ill natured, stiff and rude, see them as others
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: with contemptuous eyes. Nay, and I wonder less at God's
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: respect for man a minim jot in time and space
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: than at the soaring faith of his elect that gift
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: of gifts the comfort of his grace. Oh work unsearchable, O,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: heavenly love, most infinitely tender, so to much the work
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: that we can meanly reckon of. Surely I say we
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: are favored over much. But of this wonder. What doth
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: most amaze is that we know our love is held
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: for praise. Sixty five Beauty sat with me all the
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: summer day, awaiting the sure triumph of her eye. Nor
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: mark'd I till we parted, how hard by love in
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: her train stood ready for his prey. She is too
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: proud to join herself the pray, trusting too much to
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: her divine ally. When she saw victory tarry chid him,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: why dost thou not at one stroke this rebel sleigh?
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: Then generous Love, who holds my heart in fee, told
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: of our ancient truce. So from the fight we straight
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: withdrew our forces. All the three baffled, but not this heartened.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: She took flight, Scheming new tactics. Love came home with
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: me and prompts my measured verses as I write sixty
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: six in autumn moonlight, when the white ear wan is
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: fragrant in the wake of summer, Hence tis sweet to
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: sit entranced and muse thereon in melancholy and god like indolence.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: When the proud spirit, lulled by mortal prime to fond
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: pretense of immortality, vieweth all moments from the birth of time,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: all things whate'er have been or yet shall be. And
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: like the garden where the year is spent, the ruin
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: of old life is full of yearning, mingling, poetic rapture,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: of lament, with flowers and sunshine of springs, surey turning
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: only in visions of the white ear wan by godlike
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: fancies seized and dwelt upon sixty seven when first I
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: saw thee dearest, if I say the spells that conjure
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: back the hour and place, and evermore I look upon
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: thy face as in the spring of years long past away.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: No fading of thy beauty's rich array, No detriment of
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: age on thee I trace, but times defeat written in
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: spoils of grace, robb'd from the rivals. Thou didst pity
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: and slay. So hath thy growth been. Thus thy faith
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: is true, unchanged in change still to my growing sense
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: to life's desire, the same and nothing new. But as
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: thou wert in dream and prescience loves arising Now Thou
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: stand'st to view in the broad noon of his magnificence.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: Sixty eight Twas on the very day wintertook leave of
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: those fair fields I love, when the skies the fragrant
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: earth was smiling in surprise at that her heaven descended
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: quick reprieve. I wandered forth my sorrow to relieve it,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: walked amid sweet pleasure, in such wise as Adam went
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: alone in paradise before God of his pity fashioned eve,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: and out of June, with all the joy around, I
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: laid me down beneath a flowering tree, and all my
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: senses crept asleep, profound, in which it seemed that Thou
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: wert given to me, rending my body, where with hurried sound,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: I feel my heart beat when I think of thee
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: sixty nine love that I know love. I am wise
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: in love, my strength, my pride, my grace, my skill untaught,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: my faith here upon earth, my hope above, my contemplation
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: and perpetual thought, the pleasure of my fancy, my heart's fire,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: my joy, my peace, my praise, my happy theme, the
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: aim of all my doing, my desire of being my
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: life by day by night, my dream love, my sweet melancholy,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: my distress, my pain, my doubt, my trouble, my despair,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: my only folly and unhappiness, And in my careless moments
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: still my care O love, sweet love, earthly love, love divine,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: sayest thou to day, O love that thou art mine?
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: Seventy the dark and serious angel whoso long vex'd his
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: immortal strength in charge of me, hath smil'd for joy,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: and fled in liberty to take his pastime with the
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: peerless throng oft had I done his noble keeping wrong,
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: wounding his heart to wonder what might be God's purpose
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: in a soul of such degree? And there he had
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: left me but for mandates strong, But seeing THEE with
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: me now his task at close, he knoweth, and wherefore
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: he was bid to stay and work confusion of so
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: many foes. The thanks he looks to have from me
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: I pay, yet fear some heavenly envy as he goes
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: unto what great reward? I cannot say seventy one. Though
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: others love THEE, less, I will stand true. Nor can
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: it be that I should ever leave THEE. Thou knowest
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: my heart, And if it could deceive thee, it would
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: not wrong thee. Thus, as others do, I spend the
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: day telling my vows anew, and hold my carriage ready,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: lest I grieve THEE and count my words lest chance offense.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: Bereave thee of one poor sheep out of thy flock
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: so few, and call on THEE my lord, my strength,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: my stay, that if I faint or fall, thou wilt
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: restore me and feed me with fresh comfort day by day. Nay,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: though it be thy terrors or pass o'er me lo,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: I will fear no evil, for I say, surely thy
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: grace will be sufficient for me seventy two. I will
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: be what God made me. Nor protest against the bent
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: of genius in my time that science of my friends
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: robs all the best. While I love beauty and was
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: borne to rhyme. Be they our mighty men, and let
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: me dwell in shadow among the mighty shades of old,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: with love's forsaken pallace for mysel. Whence I look forth
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: and all all the world behold, and say, these better days,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: in best things worse, this vastardy of time's magnificence will
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: mend in fashion and throw off the curse to crown
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: new love with high excellence. Curse though I be to
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: live my life alone, my toil is for man's joy,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: his joy my own. Seventy three. I live on hope,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: and that I think do all who come into this world.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: And since I see myself in swim with such good company,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: I take my comfort whatsoe'er befall, I bide and abide.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: And if more stout and tall my spirit would grow.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: By waiting like a tree, and clear of other's toil,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: it pleaseth me in dreams their quick ambition to forestall.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: And if through careless eagerness I slide some accomplishment, I
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: give my voice still to desire, and in desire abide.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: I have no stake abroad. If I rejoice in what
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: is done or doing, I confide neither to friend nor
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: foe my secret choice. Seventy four He blessed saints that
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: now in heaven enjoy the purchase of those tears the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: world's disdain. Doth love still with his war your peace
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: annoy or hath death freed you from his ancient pain?
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: Have ye no springtide and no burst of may in
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: flowers and leafy trees When solemn night pants with love music,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: and the Holy day breaks on the ear with songs
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: of heavenly light. What make ye and what strive for?
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: Keep ye thought of us? Or in your excellence divine
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: is old? Forgot? Or do ye count for nought what
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: the Greek did and what the Florentine? We keep your
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: memories well, are in your store? Live not our best?
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: Joy's treasured evermore. Seventy five, Ah, heavenly joy. But who
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: hath ever heard, who hath seen joy? Or who shall
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: ever find Joy's language? There is neither speech nor word
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: nought but itself to teach it to mankind scarce in
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: our twenty thousand painful days. We may touch something, but
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: there lives beyond the best of art or nature's kindest phase.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: The hope whereof our spirit is faine and fond, the
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: cause of beauty given to man's desires, written, the expectancy
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: of starry skies, the faith which gloweth in our fleeting fires,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: the aim of all the excellence we prize, which but
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: to love, pursue and pray for well maketh earth heaven,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: and to forget it hell. Seventy six My wearied heart, whenever,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: after all its loves and yearnings shall be told complete,
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: when gentle death shall bid it cease to beat, and
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: from all dear allusions descend thrall. However, then thou shalt
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: appear to call my fearful heart, since down at other's
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: feet it bade me kneel so oft. I'll not retreat
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: from THEE, nor fear before thy feet to fall. And
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: I shall say, receive this loving heart, which erred in
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: sorrow only, and in sin took no delight, but being
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: forced apart from THEE without THEE, hoping THEE to win,
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: most prized, but most thou madest, as thou art on earth,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: till heaven were open to enter. In seventy seven Dreary
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: was winter, wet with changeful sting of clinging snowfall and
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: fast flying frost and bitter north winds. Then withheld the
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: spring that delly with her promise till twas lost. A
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: sunless and half hearted summer drowned the flowers in needful
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: and unwelcomed rain, and autumn, with a sad smile, fled
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: uncrowned from fruitless orchards and unripened grain. But could the
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: skies of this most desolate year in its last month,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: learn with our love to glow men, yet should rank
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: its cloudless atmosphere above the sunsets of five years ago.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: Of my great praise, too, part should be its own,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: now reckon peerless, for thy love alone seventy eight away.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: Now lovely, muse, roam and be free. Our commerce ends
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: for aye. Thoy task is done. Though to win THEE
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: I left all else unwon. Thou, whom I most have won,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: art not for me my first desire Thou too foregone,
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: must be Thou too o much lamented. Now though none
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: will turn to pity thy forsaken son, nor the divine
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: sisters will weep for THEE, none will weep for THEE.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: Thou return amused to thy sicilian fields. I once have
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: been on thy loved hills, and where thou first didst
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: use thy sweetly balanced rhyme. Unthankful queen, have pluck'd and
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: wreathed thy flowers. But do thou choose some happier brow
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: to where thy garlands green? Seventy nine. Eternal Father, who
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: didst all create in whom we live, and to whose
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: bosom move to all men? Be thy name known, which
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: is love till its loud praises sound at Heaven's high gate,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: perfect thy kingdom, in our passing state, that here on earth,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: thou mayst as well approve our service as thou ownest
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: theirs above whose joy we echo, and in pain await
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: grant body and soul each day their daily bread, and should,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: in spite of grace, fresh woe begin, even as our
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: anger soon is past, and dead be thy remembrance mortal
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: of our sin by thee. In paths of peace, thy
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: sheep be lead, and in the vale of terror comforted.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: End of section five. End of the Growth of Love
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: by Robert Bridges. Recording by Algae pug