Stifota, Kent ^ork FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 32801 97 Cornell University Library PR1109.M42 By divers paths; the note-book of seven w 3 1924 013 280 197 BY DIVERS PATHS BY DIVERS PATHS THE NOTE-BOOK OF SEVEN WAYFARERS Av^..e Y^^V escivv Okt let me rove a^en unspied^ Luonsome woodlands^ zunny woodlandSt Along yo%tr green-houghed hedges* zide^ As then I rambled^ zunny woodlands. William Barnes. And make ike chalice of the big round year Run o'er with gladness ; whence the Being moves In beauty through the world ; and all who see Bless him, rejoicing in his neighbourhood. William Wordsworth. The noise of the power-loom's deafening din— The spinning-wheel's song: The child-bereft mothers, the -men drunk with sin — To God all belong, Greville Mac Donald, At once desirous to search through and round The dense celestial wood, a-hloom alway. Which to mine eyes the morning sun attoned, I left the border without more delay. Over the fragrance-breathing soil, slow, slow, Along the champaign taking now my way. A. K, Sabin's Version of *' II Purgatorio,' LONDON GAY AND HANCOCK, LIMITED 1909 All Rights Reserved WILLIAM BRENDON ANt) SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH CONTENTS AUTHORS PAGE Alphabetical Syvibols .... A. M. i A Christmas Prologue ... „ 2 January — A Restingf-Place A. M. 5 The Wayside Things : A Parable . . greville mac Donald 10 Of Dancing- About to Music . . . A. M. 14 Three White Princesses . . . ,, 18 London Snowdrops .... „ 25 The Dead Housewife . . maude e. king 30 February — The Vexed Question . greville mac Donald 31 The Yellow Crocus . . . . A. M. 33 Vera Novo » 38 March Winds ,, 43 March— Mrs. Browning's Month . , . A. M. 44 Memories of Natal . Eleanor tyrrell 52 Spring Flowers A. M. 57 When the Orchard's White with Blossom . . . 61 L' Envoi : For the Rhyme of White Orchard-blooms A. M. 61 Easter ,, 62 April — A Church in the Veldt . . ELEANOR tyrrell 63 Highways and Byways in Kent c. H. herford 67 Poets and London Trees . . . A. M. 75 "After Twenty Years: To M. H." c. H. herford 84 vii viii CONTENTS AUTHORS May— PAGE The Spell is Broken .... A. M. Sir Edward Burne-Jones ... ,, Cross-grained „ A Leaf from a Country Note-book . ,, A Royal Triptych „ 85 95 100 104 June— Wild Roses A. M. In the Austrian Alps . . c. H. herford In a Balcony A. M. For the Children ,, 107 112 119 July — Birds A. M. ADayofLig-ht „ A Pilgrim Shrine in Guienne C. H. heRford A Song of the Anvil A. M. The Forbidden Land ... . ,, 127 132 136 143 144 August— Fordingbridge in August ... a. M. " Living Green " a.m. The Nechan .... maude e. king '45 149 154 160 Through a Cottage Window . . a. M. By the Garda Lake . . c. H. herford Neighbouring Gardens ... a. M. A Little Song .... may Sinclair Saint Michael's Day A. M. An Ancient Shrine „ 164 170 176 182 182 t83 CONTENTS ix AUTHORS PAGE October— The Dead Wayfarer .... A. M. 185 Country Life and Character . . . ,,189 Autumn Song . . . greville MAC Donald 198 Two Sonnets may Sinclair 199 November — In the South Before the Frost . . a. M. 201 Ghosts ,, 205 Carols „ 212 I, ,,213 December — Christmas Beads A. M. 214 The Cabinet of Darkness greville MAC DONALD 218 EpilogTje : Dawn . . . C. C. cotterill 234 O Life Everlasting A. M. 239 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ACKNOW- ^ DESIRE especially to thank the Editor of the AthencBum LEDG- for allowing me to include my verses entitled Alphabetical MENTS Symbols on the first page of this book almost immediately AND after their appearance in his columns. I am also grateful NOTE to Mr. Robert Bridges for his generosity to me at all times CON- jji regard to lavish quotations from his poems, and to Mr. CERNING -p T^ Bourdillon for allowing me to quote a long passage ' from his " Story of a Wild Rose " in Through the Gateway ; also to Messrs. Smith Elder for permission to make one or two lengthy quotations from The Ring and the Book, and to Messrs. Macmillan for lines from Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and T. E. Brown. To my friend and neighbour, Mr. Arthur Locke, who has made time in the midst of his busy life to glance at my proof-sheets, my debt is very great. To Mr. A. E. Waite, from whose magazine some of my verses are here reprinted ; and, indeed, to all the editors and publishers who have granted me a, like privilege, my thanks are due. They include the Editors of the Studio, Bookman, Guardian, Journal of Education, Commonwealth, Pall Mall Gazette, Westminster Gazette, Daily Chronicle, Speaker, Throne, and Yorkshire Post. On behalf of Professor C. H. Herford, I also wish to thank the Editor of the Manchester Guardian for per- mission to reprint his articles. If I have made any unintentional omission in these acknowledgments. I shall sincerely regret such an over- sight, and beg that it may be forgiven. For the greater number of these rambles, rhymes, and reveries — all those, indeed, which are signed with initials only — I alone am responsible, and their obvious limita- tions must in no way reflect on the rest of the volume. The names of the other contributors are given in alpha- betical order on page xiii, and — so far as concerns what they have written — each being wholly independent of the rest, can be taxed solely with what appears above ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi his, or her, own signature. Yet, though we are not all of the same faith, there is much in which we are fundamentally at one, and harmony is more than unison. I have hoped that the very recurrence of the same kejmote in so many of my own transient utterances, which at first seemed to me a sign of defect and meagreness, may neverthe- less, by emphasising this sympathy in diversity in our common chord, give to our venture somewhat of that clear individuality and organic unity without which no volume of the kind can claim a right to be born. My little book is no longer mine : it bears a prouder title — it is ours. Had it not been for my friends and betters, it might never have found any outward present- ment. That I might let them pay toll for it and give it a body, on the only terms I held to be admissible, they have, at my request, wreathed it about with their beauti- ful things ; for which purpose I have withdrawn rather more than a third of my own pages, in addition to what I had already rejected as too controversial, or elaborate, or heavy. I am encircled now by their more scholarly and piquant leaves — petals that I trust may fashion my boss of tiny things into something that will claim distant kin- ship with that small yellow-centred flower that grows by the wayside and looks toward the sun. Its aim is of the humblest. It asks only for odd moments — those chance moments that come all too seldom, when for a few seconds the rush and clamour of the road are less insistent and the wajrfarers may take an instant's rest. In such moments, when our comrades pause in their going upon the dusty highway, all we ask is to smile in greeting and nod an assurance that we agree with them in believing that the path is bordered by what is not all mere dust, and that, though the road may — wind up-hill all the way. Yes to the very eud. THE NOTE-BOOK OF SEVEN WAYFARERS — thou liest Not, linen-swathed in Joseph's garden-tomb. But walkest crowned, creation's heart and bloom. The Diary of an Old Soul. GEORGE MAC DONALD. ALPHA- "Four letters that a child may trace ! BETiCAL Yet men who read, may feel a thrill SYMBOLS „ , ^, ^ , ' . trom powers that know not t%me nor space, Vibrations of the eternal will — With body and mind and soul respond To " love " and all that lies beyond. On truth's wide sea, thought's tiny skiff Goes dancing far beyond our speech. Yet thought is but a hieroglyph Of boundless worlds it cannot reach : We label our poor idols " God," And map with logic heavens untrod. Music and beauty, life and art — Regalia of the Presence hid — Command our worship, move our heart, Write "Love" on every coffin-lid: Bui infinite — beyond, above — The hope within that one word "Love." A.M. A CHRISTMAS PROLOGUE CHRISTMAS stands at the door to embrace with love and hope the coming year. The children cling to her, and she smiles through her tears. She hears the robins singing bravely of love, in gardens where, underground, the snow- drops are awaking from their long sleep. But she looks beyond the gardens into the streets, and she sees the agony of men who must watch those dearest to them starving in the midst of plenty. How can she smile while surrounded by such misery, such despair ? She knows secrets ; secrets that she cannot tell. She wishes that she could ; but human speech has no words for them. Some- times, sometimes. When a belovdd hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafened ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd — A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, and then she looks at us, and we understand. Her eyes, her" beautiful, far-seeing eyes, that are like those of Eager Heart in the play, say that she dare not be luxurious or wasteful — no, not even of emotion— in a world where so many go hungry and so many lives are sacrificed ; but she knows of a Joy that is eternal even in this present A CHRISTMAS PROLOGUE 3 world, not only for the rich, but also for Lazarus at the gate, whose share of life's feast may in the end be a goodlier portion than can fall to the lot of those who forget him now. She smiles, with that radiant ineffable smile, not at the pain, the sin, the awful inscrutable mystery, but at the love, the heroism, the silent self-sacrifice that are everjrwhere. She smiles at the dawning divinity of a race made in the image of Him who, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor, and who embraced death for every man that He might give us more abundant life. In whirring factories and cold cellars, in palaces and prisons, in rich men's houses and in workhouses, in ships and hospitals, she sees young and beautiful lives laid down for the sake of others. She knows there is many an Iphigenia who dies, not by a father's knife and in a moment, but slowly, laboriously day by day through many days, and not to save a whole people, but to help a few kinsfolk whom she loves. And she asks — our Christmas, crowned with the glistening holly and the smooth-leaved mistletoe of our own far-away Druidical past — she asks in triumph and in tenderness whether He who made Love can be less than Love, or the Creator be less glorious than His creation ? " Moreover it was meet," as the mystic wrote, that the Divine One " should be born at Bethle- hem. For Bethlehem, being interpreted, is the 4 BY DIVERS PATHS House of Bread. And it is He who says, ' I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven.' The place, therefore, in which the Lord was born was named beforehand the House of Bread, for there of a truth it was ordained that He should be manifested in the flesh, by whom the inmost souls of His chosen are eternally satisfied and re- freshed. And He was not born in His own home, but in a shelter for wayfarers, to assure our hearts that the mortality which He took upon Himself was but a transitory dwelling for Him who in- habiteth Eternity." " There shall be no place of sorrow on the Birthday of Life," wrote St. Leo ..." there is one common cause of joy to all ; because our Lord, the destroyer of sin and death, came to give liberty to all." And they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for Love that is in the midst of the city shall feed them, and then at last we shall understand why Christmas smiled through her tears. A. M. January? A RESTING-PLACE FORDINGBRIDGE IN NEW YEAR'S WEEK EVEN to a lover of the warmth and wealth of Midland scenery the refined distinction of colour in this old-world corner of Hampshire has a peculiar attraction — an attraction far greater than in the late August days, when the hedges were white with chalky dust and the splendour of village gardens and poppy-grown fields had a gaiety more commonplace and arid. In this light gravelly soil, within fifteen miles of the sea, the lanes and ploughed fields are not aglow with the red loam of Devonshire or the rich brown of more northern furrows. Against their sombre tinting even the indigo bloom upon the plumage of an alighting crow in search of grain dropped by the sower, or the jewel-like gloss of the brilliant hips, will be noted and valued ; still more the occa- sional hoUy tree by the wayside, with its profusion of scarlet berries against the dark, shining, in- dented curves of the aggressive leaves. Hardly yet have the acres of wild Lent lilies budded in the neighbouring home-farm land. Not yet has even the boldest of the wild snowdrops lifted its head above the green sheath. It will be long before the long-tailed tits who haunt the 5 6 BY DIVERS PATHS neighbourhood begin their building of those quaint nests which, Morris tells us, are sometimes called " feather-pokes," from their soft lining of multi- tudinous feathers inside the dainty interweaving of gossamer-like fibres with cocoons of spiders' eggs and chrysalides of moths and abundant moss, to say nothing of lichen and wool — nests where the one couple will rear a family of from ten to twelve from the tiny, fairy-like eggs. The swallow does not come here till near the end of March, and the swift is very punctual to the 26th of April. But the water-wagtail may be seen any morning stepping daintily across the lawn, and sometimes a solitary heron moves in stately voyage over- head. The starlings and plovers fly in multitudes ; and full of charm is the grace of their winged pro- cession, circling and wheeling across the blue-grey sky with its dappling of white clouds. A little squirrel was seen this morning, in gay, distracting contrast to the indolent-looking, but singularly snowy, ducks and geese which saunter round the grassy pools. Some of the Hampshire ponies seem to have changed their summer coats for a kind of black and brown fur which looks almost as warm as sealskin, and they have a dreamy, untroubled air of " out to grass " which well suits the tran- quil landscape. Only the brown streams are merry, and the well-worn pebbles laugh through the clear water. A RESTING-PLACE 7 There seems to be a solemn tenderness of colour everywhere. The very landscape has a look of leisure and reverie, yet a certain look, also, of garnered memories and gallant possibilities. It seems to enfold its past history as a fitting home for that Lady Alice Lisle whose beautiful old dwelling has still the restful hospitable air which tragedy so often paradoxically claims, the tragedy which overshadowed the close of her own story. Here, too, linger quaint forms of speech, and only a day or two ago a labourer was heard to say that he did not know where some missing person was — not hidden, but " hod " ; and a cer- tain kind of poplar, on which, by the way, the mistletoe grows plentifully here, is named in rustic speech the " arbeUe," no doubt that " ar- bele " with which Mrs. Browning's early poems abound. In this moist climate the stems and branches of the trees gather moss wherever that is possible, and the tints vary from brilliant emerald to pale sea-green. The exquisite grey-green of the lichen, the soft brown of the upturned earth, the dull verdure of the lingering bramble with its almost white downiness when the back of the leaf is ruffled by the breeze, the dead gold of the fallen oak leaves, and the black stippling of the elm branches against the pale sky, constantly give a subdued and visionary harmony to the foreground, where 8 BY DIVERS PATHS a fairy tale might at any hour be enacted on the very edge of the New Forest, with its classic trees and now long-faded heather. But there is a sense of human presence and comfort in the neatly thatched cottages which peer out upon the roadways near the peace- ful greystone churches, the comfortable air of the well-to-do cattle and of the well-fed sheep in their neatly wattled cotes, and the powerful farm- horses, with their wagons or timber carriages, that gaze so intelligently and companionably into the face of those they meet on the high road or along the lanes ; while the sunlight intensifies the delicate yet vivid orange of the roof lichen on the tiles of those more im- portant buildings which disdain a thatch. The brimming mill-stream is fuUer than in sum- mer. Two roses were gathered out of doors yester- day, and Russian violets are blooming with delicate sweetness in the garden within a stone's-throw of the mill-stream itself. The laurustinus blossoms are in full bud, almost showing colour ; and the hazel trees have their first catkins ; and, more wonderful still, the elm trees at the end of the drive betray reddening promise of the bloom that is not due yet for weeks to come. On the top- most bough of a weeping beech a white pigeon has chosen to perch, and it is difficult to imagine any- thing much lovelier than this snow-white dove A RESTING-PLACE 9 pluming itself peacefully against the soft, un- clouded blue of the midday sky. Despite the days of rain and storm so lately passed, there is just now a beauty abroad which can only be described by the word " spiritual." Even at noon there is a certain mingling of aus- terity and sunshine, of bare boughs and coming blossom, of cool gales and diamond raindrops, and the penetrating fragrance of fir tree, arbor vitse, and burning peat ; and at evening, before the stars come out, it almost seems sometimes as though the pearly gates on the horizon were about to open and unfold their secrets. From the upper windows of the house the calmly flowing river has the air of a miniature lagoon, a multiform curving mirror, where the lines of the gravel bank, and of its own bendings and doublings, do but emphasise the placid beauty of the frequent sunset glories reflected on its wide bosom under the guardianship of those ubiquitous elms and that more lonely poplar. A rose-colour, too delicate and evanescent to have any fellowship with crimson, goes blushing through the water as the sky looks down ; and just beyond it is a widening pool of enchanting colour, hardly green, yet more green than blue, and edged with saffron, that is ready to melt into gold as the rose colour fades, and the green space grows fainter, and the diaphanous clouds veil the 10 BY DIVERS PATHS distance, and the sun is gone. Surely in sunsetting, as in all Nature's mysterious processes, there is one glory of the summer and another of the winter. Is it that January is more wistful, more pensive and restrained in its colouring, than the glowing magnificence of July and August with their crim- son fires and molten gold ? A. M. THE WAYSIDE THINGS : A PARABLE Two spirits once set out to discover the Great Unknown Sea, whence they both believed they were come and to which they must return after the possibility had gone from them of under- standing anything. That they might see and acquire the necessary facts, materialisation of their own forms was essential ; and each of the two chose the body in which he would pursue his search. One chose to become a great geographer, that he might learn the source of the great river of truth that fed the sea of the Infinite. He made maps of great and careful excellence. He found the rivulets that fed the rivers, the brooks that babbled into silent pools, the lakes that slept, and the estuaries that merged into the seas ; and he wrote a great book filled with the rivers' courses and statistics of the great cities THE WAYSIDE THINGS ii they watered. He told of the mighty electric currents their power generated, and of mills that ground hopes into dust and dust into gold; of the oceans fed by the rivers ; of the world's com- merce that leaped over the great waters. The geographer's textbook, indeed, taught all facts that it was possible to teach. Yet it failed, for the great ocean was still labelled on all its charts " The Great Unknown." It failed because, with the absorption of its readers in the wonderful facts presented to them, they ceased to take interest in the very point which the geographer had set out to investigate. Yet how and why had he failed ? He had passed on one side each little rivulet as soon as he had noted down its course upon his map instead of letting the wonder of it lead him whither it would : he had disregarded the teach- ing of wayside facts. He did not even see that his fciilure was exactly proportioned to the per- fection of his book, and that the evidence of its futility was loudly proclaimed by his own belief in its success. And the other spirit, who started life in no less intent a desire to acquire knowledge that might bring him some understanding of the Unknown Sea, he also began a scientific pursuit of his subject. He had no ambition to make either a chart of the waters or a book of dry things ; he desired the Truth, that he might possess it and 12 BY DIVERS PATHS thus understand it, rather than label it in terms of scientific nomenclature and commercial infor- mation. " If I too must be materialised," said he, "I will live the life of the river that feeds the Great Unknown. I will study and acquire facts ; yet will I follow. For I think to follow one small stream whither it shall lead me, into shallows or deeps, may tell more of the meaning of the river than guide-books and statistics and the mathe- matical equivalents of natural law. I will take such form as may live the life of the living water." He conversed with the heart of a wayside truth, and his soul took the ways of the water. He sprang from the womb of the mountain, and ran down the grassy slope. He was lost for a space in the greedy grass and ministered to the thirsty sheep. He gathered himself together again and fell into the brook exultant. He spread himself over the arid plain and vanished in the heat of the sun. Still, though he slept, the life of the water could never die. The sun went down ; and the North Wind arose and condensed him into a small white cloud and set him sailing away to high mountain peaks. There he grew heavy with desire for work once more. The North Wind blew, and he crystallised into tiny six-rayed crystals that, gathering together with interlocked arms, made weight and fell softly upon the glacier ice. Abiding his time, and moved by forces that were THE WAYSIDE THINGS 13 not of himself, he crept to the valley, and was there awakened by the sun from his cold sleep, and ran away to, the torrents that tumble in rivers. Thus he worked his way onwards, and lived the life of the water. The flooded river nourished the crops, and the crops were eaten by man and beast, and the water proclaimed the power and strength and victory over the dead energy of matter. And in this material manifesta- tion the spirit learned much of the life that in- spires. He lingered on his road to that ocean he had sought to find ; and he learned to be content in this lingering, so long as he could carry the means of freeing the seeds of life from the grip of the husk. At last, weary with his own holding of the water about his spirit for its manifestation, he knew that his rest from labour was nigh ; for it was the law that none should hold their privilege of material manifestation, and of work through its means, for more than an appointed span. So he drifted out into wider rivers, out into the great estuaries that lead to the sea, out from the sea and the sight of land to the great unf athomed deeps. He had lived in search of the truth ; and when he found it, and knew that himself lived and had lived only because of the power of the Eternal within him, he knew that the Great Unknown was not unspoken, but was the very virtue of life in himself. He knew that the only knowable 14 BY DIVERS PATHS thing in all his days had been the power of the Unknown which had given him life to understand. He knew he was whence he had come, and that his knowledge of the truth had been ever reveal- ing itself to him in wayside fact, in mountain- spring, in glacier's terror, in white-foamed torrent, in apple and corn, in the sorrow of men's failures, in the joy of their victories. He knew of that which he had hoped for at the outset of his jour- ney : that truth dwelt in the just rulings of the Law, in the beauty of man's work, in hard hand- labour, in righteous thought, in givings and in martyrdoms. He saw how each thing that he knew to be right was right solely because its work was a revelation of eternal truth. He knew that if he would find the truth, it would be found in the small things of God on the wayside ; and that unless it were revealed in small rivulets, no searchings of the ocean of the Great Unknown could bring revelation, greville mac Donald. OF DANCING ABOUT TO MUSIC I HAD thought that the time of the singing of birds had not yet come. They do make melody sometimes even now, and with rare sweetness, but seldom in chorus or symphony. I was about to write that there was little audible music in our OF DANCING ABOUT TO MUSIC 15 southern pine-country in early January, except the hsping and laughing of a stream here and there, or the wild, plaintive note of the wind among the trees ; but suddenly, when the sun had gone down and it was the hour of deepening twilight and delicious odours of the moist earth's breathing, a jubilant solo broke forth from some full-throated hidden bird — ^perhaps a robin, though robins do not always sing with such a loud, mellow decisive- ness, such a suggestion of the nightingale's quality and the thrush's rapture. Already the new year's tiny buds and catkins are showing on the bare trees, but we are as yet in the depth of the winter solstice, with the long evenings, and the flaming of the pine logs on the hearth, and the music and dancing in which youth and love still meet. I never picture to myself an old country dance now, or indeed a dance of any kind, without thinking of a certain immortal poem by Arthur Hugh Clough, and its quaintly obvious S5mibolism concerning that dance of life, with its illusions and complications and responsibilities, in which we are all kept moving perpetually and sometimes unwillingly, though every movement of ours, and every pause, affects those around us as truly as ourselves. Claptrap and sentimental- ism may call the tune and the wrong partner be taken, and then how difficult to stop, even if we suspect that this is not the true music, but i6 BY DIVERS PATHS only a vulgar make-believe, or a poor second best! The word " immortal " is used advisedly, though the lyric is probably not widely known. It is among the fine things that, when buried for a time, are certain to rise again, having a certain verve and vitality of primal truth that mere fashions of thought and whims of literary cliques can neither dispel nor vanquish. Well may Clough call it "The Music of the Worid and of the Soul " :— Why should I say I see the things I see not ? Why be and be not ? Show love for that I love not, and fear for what I fear not ? And dance about to music that I hear not ? Who standeth still i' the street Shall be hustled and jostled about ; And he that stops i' the dance shall be spurned by the dancers' feet — Shall be shoved and be twisted by all he shall meet ; And shall raise up an outcry and rout ; And the partner, too — What's the partner to do ? While all the while 'tis but, perchance, a humming in mine ear, That yet anon shall hear, And, aye, anon, the music in my soul. Those were the lines that came back to me lately — to me, who think dancing a divinely beautiful art — as our youthful d6butantes were putting on bridal white, pure white with a OF DANCING ABOUT TO MUSIC 17 fragrant posy to nestle in the bodice, for their first ball, and I thought of the mating of the birds and the more mysterious mating of human hearts, and the true inwardness of Coleridge's assurance that All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. For, indeed, there are as many kinds of so-called " love " as there are many kinds of music, and Clough understood very well how often the one word is innocently desecrated as well as the other, and how often desecration spells tragedy. Hear him again, with a note less simple than that of Coleridge : — Are there not, then, two musics unto men ? — One loud and bold and coarse. And overpowering still perforce All tone and tune beside ; Yet in despite its pride Only of fumes of foolish fancy bred. And sounding solely in the sounding head : The other, soft and low. Stealing whence we not know, Painfully heard, and easily forgot. With pauses oft and many a silence strange (And silent oft it seems, when silent it is not). And then follows the admonition to listen for that true music, even if the waiting mean patience of c i8 BY DIVERS PATHS self-restraint ; for is it not the music of heart to heart and soul to soul, and of all those divine forces that heal and guide and uplift ? But the immortality of the poem lies in its closing lines, which are of a joy and peace that transcend ordinary words and uplift the soul into a region where love itself is but one divine element in the perfectness of the beatific vision : — Yea, and as thought of some departed friend, By death or distance parted, will descend. Severing, in crowded rooms ablaze with light. As by a magic screen, the seer from the sight — Though drums do roll, and pipes and cymbals ring ; So the bare conscience of the better thing Unfelt, unseen, unimaged, all unknown. May fix the entranced soul 'mid multitudes alone. A. M. THREE WHITE PRINCESSES Most of us, in the course of our mortal lives, have met innumerable kittens and cats of all sorts and sizes — a whole procession of feline fellow- wayfarers — though only a few of them have so emerged from " the general " as to impinge upon our own private circle and leave a vivid impress on attentive memory. But any gossip concerning individual friendship, be it with cats or with kings, must ever necessitate that use of THREE WHITE PRINCESSES 19 an egoistic pronoun so carefully abjured by the abstract code of accurate journalism, since, with- out the flavour of personal verification and in- dividual experience, an authentic record might be regarded as some poor invention of the moment, instead of being, as the children have it, "a true story." In the bygone days of high chairs and toys and picture books, my earliest recollection of a black kitten — a dazzling demoniacal creature that stole from all the neighbours' larders and was here, there, and everywhere at once when she was not wanted, and never anjrwhere when it was necessary to find her — ^left me with a shy fear or two of cats of that colour. But, though my views of black cats were formed early in life, it was not until I grew old that I made acquaintance with that heroine of all legendary lore, the soul of the imprisoned Princess, the white-garbed, dainty, disdainful, hypersensitive creature — so stately in her shy haughtiness, so tenacious in her reticent self-will — the visionary personage called by mortals " The White Cat." By sheer coincidence I have met three or four of them in rapid succession, and, though not a worshipper of the feline divinity, have been im- pressed with something like amazement by the family resemblance they betray to one another in their distinctive peculiarities. 20 BY DIVERS PATHS Recovering from severe illness in a country cottage — an old place buried in ivy, the scene of a murder some hundred years ago — I was intro- duced to the White Princess — first lady — by the kind cottager who took care of me : a remarkable woman, the wife of a coal-cart man, who, when not washing her spotless tiled floor or baking her husband's dinner, or waiting on me, or looking after her various live-stock, was an eager devourer of books, and told me her favourite novel was " Wildfell HaU," written by a certain " Ann Bront," though she was very " quick in the uptake " when she observed that I called the author Ann Bronte. The White Cat in that cottage was pleased to have the freedom of my sitting-room, with its old French window opening on to the garden, and, by hanging on to the knob in a peculiar way, she could unlatch the window door and let herself in whenever the key had not been turned. But when this garden entrance was locked she would tap with her paw upon the door in such a human manner that more than once I rose to open it, not knowing who my visitor might be. Early in our acquaintance I offended Her Majesty. I forget what was the particular re- mark of a wounding nature that I had let fall in her presence, but I fancy I had suspected her of somejack of manners with regard to the food, a THREE WHITE PRINCESSES 21 matter in which she was extremely scrupulous, and, like all White Cats, demanded human cour- tesy. Be that as it may, all my overtures after- wards were in vain. I admired her grace and beauty, her extraordinary agility and skill, but my friendly advances were refused, and when I addressed her the Princess haughtily walked away. Yet there came a day when, sitting solitary, I buried my head in my hands with what the White Princess regarded as an air of dejection. Sud- denly I felt the soft white head against my own. The erstwhile haughty creature was on my shoul- der, against my cheek, and in another moment in my arms. " My soul, too, is imprisoned in a body," she seemed to say. " The troubles of this mortal life are well understood by White Prin- cesses." No imprisoned and transmigratory being could have been gentler or more strangely, wist- fully caressing. And from that day onward we were friends. By a very odd chance, within a year of leaving the ivy cottage and its inmates for a humbler dwelling with a less literary labouring couple, I met another snow-white cat, who became most embarrassingly aitentive and would follow me about like a dog, though she belonged not to me nor my cottagers, but to their half-gipsy kindred, who farmed a fruit and flower garden next door ; and two years afterwards, when, having moved 22 BY DIVERS PATHS to a more healthy part of our small hamlet, and, I fear, almost forgotten this second lady's exist- ence, I ran in one day to buy some garden stuff, the same distinguished being, white-furred and dignified, came running out to greet me, rubbing up against me delightedly, just as in the days when she used to gallop across the garden to meet me if she saw me coming down the lane. Her white daughter, in whom her own emotional and jealous character was, if possible, intensified, had meanwhile become a member of my own house- hold. Her rivalry with the dog was amusing, and she would watch at a given hour of the day to secure the first greeting before I could approach his kennel. She, the third lady, was quite as jealous of my work as of my friends. As is usual with white cats, she would not enter my room without being sure of my welcome, and after an ejection at inconvenient moments when her ag- gressive caresses would have been a hindrance, she would be very " huffy " as to her return, and would — I will not say " sulk," for that sounds too plebeian — but gracefully decline recognition and refuse to come when called. After one of these " differences," when she thought it was time to make it up, I have seen her stand on the mat just outside my study door, asking whether she might come in, withdrawing instantly if I told her to go away, but, if encouraged, making a royal progress. THREE WHITE PRINCESSES 23 a few inches at a time, at each further advance making a mewing request for further attention. Nor was she ever quite satisfied till one chair and cushion in the room had been appropriated to her royal enthronement. From this chair of state she would descend, to my great annoyance, when I was deep in my writing, and, leaping on to my knee, insist on having her small paw in my literary pie. If she might not hold the pen, she laid hands upon the paper. Her devotion to her first kittens was unceasing, and she evidently regarded with suspicion the frequency with which my fellow-cottagers took the small fluffy things out of her box for inspec- tion. I appeared to rise in her esteem and con- fidence from the fact that I severely let them alone, and it is in this way that I explain her later conduct. Without harrowing my feelings on the subject, her owners (for she did not belong to me) decided that she would be better off with one kitten than with two, and therefore one of them, before I knew anything about it, quietly went the way of the majority. The mother evidently had her own theories on the subject, for shortly afterwards the second mysteriously disappeared, and she acted the " higher carelessness " with such excessive zeal that we all became convinced she knew the secret of her kitten's evanishment, and was herself 24 BY DIVERS PATHS the only culprit in the affair. If we inquired after the latter, she would immediately make excited play with leaves or sticks, run off to the next garden as if to look for her lost child, or, at the very least, majestically turn her back upon us with a studied air of unconcern. We were in the act of flitting, and one room in the new cottage was still in confusion, cushions and rugs being heaped beside a pile of books. Of course, official search was made everywhere, and in that room especially, because whenever my fellow-cottagers, her owners, were out of doors, as soon as their backs were turned the White Princess — third lady — would run up to me with a long, agitated story in her cat language, and then rush to and fro between me and the door of that closed chamber. " She's eaten that there kitten, miss," said my couple. " They does at times. If they gets a fright with one, they eats the other — they thinks it's safe then." This I gradually came to believe. But about three days later, on an afternoon when I was absent in London, the lumber-room was attacked. Confusion could not last for ever — and there, beyond all hope, hidden with the most exquisite skill, perfectly safe and clean and well fed, resting on a cushion and concealed by a rug, in a kind of book- walled niche, lay the little white kitten. LONDON SNOWDROPS 25 How the mother had first conveyed her there, and then managed to feed her and perform her daily toilet, without the knowledge of the human part of the household, remains a mystery. When her offspring was returned to her, and we all bowed the knee and promised to disturb her family no more, she was rapturously happy ; but she did not attain final satisfaction tiU she had introduced her little one not only to my study, but also to her own royal throne in that room, which, from the day when she had herself placed her there in my momentary absence, she de- liberately abdicated in her favour. But there is not time to tell of this fourth Princess, and, besides, she was not pure white, having two little black patches on her royal ermine. A. M. LONDON SNOWDROPS Many people, who think and say that they hate poetry, are at heart poets, themselves. They feel the glamour of London like a mighty spell. They watch the swooping restless wings of the seagulls above the river, and feel toward each Careless vagabond of the sea, whom Bret Harte described as Sauntering hither on listless wings, 26 BY DIVERS PATHS something of the strange, dreamy attraction that haunts his words. When they awake some morn- ing to see all the huddled, grimy buildings of the town clothed in immaculate and dazzling white- ness, with that strange effect of silence that always accompanies the muffling of the world in snow, they are for a moment thrilled and uplifted. They are touched by the magic of that smooth, unsullied garmenting of the earth quite as truly as if they, and not Tennyson, had described the mysterious arm that drew Excalibur down under the wintry lake, as " clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," though not if their lives depended on it could they have written that line. The winter sunset, bathing the sky above London, behind the great towers and spires, burn- ing deeply in the south-western distance, with faint, lovely lines of reflected light away to the north, and opalescent glories in the slow, winding river that wends beneath its three bridges toward the crowded east, to them is far more than a mere pageant. As they watch, they feel inarticulately what Wordsworth had felt when he wrote of . . . that blessed mood In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened — LONDON SNOWDROPS 27 ... we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul : While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy. We see into the life of things. To such souls as these — there is a vast procession of them through the centuries, a multitude, more than can be numbered — there are flowers, common and hardy and friendly to cities, which awake Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. The exquisite exotics that bloom in hothouses have their own splendour and perfume and faery beauty ; but in winter, to those of us born under a Northern star, with all our passion for the lilies and roses of the South — their sunrise hues, their ineffably delicate grace, and, above all, their per- fume — they are, after all, exotics and cannot move us so deeply as a brave little snowdrop, pushing up through the black, hard mould of a London " dooryard " or an old, broken but cherished, pot on some poor child's window-sill. Looking back through the mists of more than half a century, I can dimly remember seeing bunches of wild snowdrops brought into Nottingham from the little village of Papplewick, where they had doubtless dwelt among the lush low-lying reeds and grass, watered by those mean- dering streams of mint and watercress, where I afterwards learned the childish joy of fishing for 28 BY DIVERS PATHS stickleback in the bare palm — a kind of minia- ture trout-tickling very enchanting to adventurous five-year-old Crusoes. These wild snowdrops were tall, dancing creatures with wide-open sepals, the inner corolla lavishly pencilled with green, and the leaves coarser and more abundant than the cultivated variety. They were brought by the tall, apple-cheeked, white-capped peasant woman, herself " clean as a snowdrop " — the very image of Lisbeth Bede as described in George Eliot's immortal novel — the only English peasant woman I have ever seen who, in the stately simplicity of her manners, and the coarse-textured, spotless simplicity of her distinctively peasant garb, ful- filled, as completely as if she came out of a fairy tale, the ideal of what such a woman should be and look like. But all this dreaming of the past, mingled as it is with memories of those meadows by the Trent, where, under the shadow of Nottingham Castle, the wild purple crocus grew in such thousands that the poor children from all the back streets came out, and filled their hands and their pina- fores, and unwittingly trod many a bud underfoot in their eagerness — all this multifarious backward dreaming arose out of the thought that those wild snowdrops of the country were less touching in their beauty than the smaller and more chary variety found in London squares and gardens. It LONDON SNOWDROPS 29 is these last that best deserve their most popular name ; they are veritable " Snowdrops," each one a poem, not to be spoiled by any platitudes. With their calyx of living green, and the tiny heavenward-pointing blade from which the snow drops earthward, their dazzling purity is only to be compared to that of the stainless clouds that sometimes float across a June heaven, or to that white passion of purity that dwells within the highest, lowliest love. And, seeing it — silent, perfect, unsoiled, amid all the city's sordid grime and noise — many a town dweller mutely feels what William Watson has so finely written : — Me the Spring, Me also dimly with new life hath touch'd, And with regenerate hope, the salt of life. A. M. ^^^ This Utile room whose body is all books HOUSE. ^^'^ ^°^^ "^^^ music, every chair a friend, WIFE You called the ' ' heart-of-hearts of home, ' ' and brought Your rare and hard-earned leisure here to spend. Here by the fire you sat and broidered me The rose Love keeps a-bloom through wintry hours ; There by the lattice watched the waves of spring Break on our orchard in a foam of flowers. There's the poor plant you loved so well, that I Scarce cared for then, beside the humming hive : — / care not now how all my roses fare So might I win that one small thing to thrive. And here you passed the threshold, coming home, So many times, and I not there to greet ; There up and down the stairs — Ah, up and down In such untiring service, gentle feet ! But dear to me, far dearest is to me The tiny kitchen, where your daily care Outwitted still the wolf, and planned the peace Wherein I worked, unfettered, unaware. For the dear sake of hands that made it home, For the dear sake of feet that trod the floor. This little house of mine will be a shrine, A little blessed house for evermore. And there upon the hill, a grassy grave Holds all that was so kind, so bright to see ; And everywhere my happy, haunted heart Lacks not an angel for its company, jif^ ude £■_ king. 30 THE VEXED QUESTION ONCE upon a time there was a farmer who invented a cart with wheels. He caught a wild colt, broke its will, and roped it to the cart. Thus he went blithely to market and prospered. But as every advance in civilisation brings with it an evil genius, there appeared among the peasantry a strange creature having neither body nor soul, being merely a thing possessed by a spirit. It was, in fact, neither more nor less than a Vexed Question, a thing that can be put to good or evil use, notwithstanding its uncomfort- ably protean shape and inconstancy of weight. But these peasants took it amiss, and sought to destroy it. They made for it coffins of various shape and size. And although they were con- stantly packing it into one or other of these irra- tional hindrances to Nature's method of dealing with her leavings and burying the thing with much ceremony and appearance of finality, its spirit was not laid. For certain wise busybodies among the peasants needed food for the molars of their stupidity to work upon ; they perennially exhumed the body and revivified the spirit of the Vexed Question, finding a ghoul-like satisfaction in a substance made more equivocal by frequent burying, 31 32 BY DIVERS PATHS And the Vexed Question was this : given the fact of a horse harnessed to a cart, to determine whether progression is effected by the horse pull- ing the cart, or by the cart pushing the horse. The arguments on each side were so unanswer- able that the peasants divided themselves into two factions, and even hoped that a free fight would settle their dispute. They even consulted the priest, whose privilege, if not his wisdom, should have helped them in their need. But neither bell, benison, nor anathema prevailed ; and the warfare of words persisted. Some said it was clear that the cart made the horse go because if the wheels were fixed the horse could not move ; whereas, on the other hand, if the wheels were forced round by laying hold of the spokes, the beast was compelled to go, willy-nilly. Again, if the horse were supposed to do the work, how was it that he sometimes jibbed and always pre- ferred returning to his stable to going to market ? To such as argued that no cart could ever travel without a horse in the shafts this answer was made : " And why should it do so obviously ridiculous a thing, seeing that, unless it took the horse there, it would have itself all the labour of bringing back the marketings, not to mention the difficulty of finding the way home with its master fast asleep ? " Then great ex- periments were made to settle the question. They THE YELLOW CROCUS 33 harnessed the cart in front of the horse, and when no progress was made they were not even then convinced, because the arrangement, they averred, was contrary to Nature. They next put the horse inside the cart, and asked how, if the horse was the greater power, could the less contain it ? And so on. Although neither argument nor experiment could ever settle the question, the peasants still vexed it sorely, some relying upon what they were pleased to consider common sense, but which their opponents called pig-headedness, and some contenting themselves in feeding the horse well and keeping the wheels of the cart well greased. Yet throughout all the disputing the question had never become a cause of disagreement if but both parties had seen that, without the farmer to drive the horse, the market would never be reached ; that without his skill in inventing wheels the horse's burden had never been lightened. GREVILLE MAC DONALD. THE YELLOW CROCUS If, year by year, the flowers mark the clock of time, they bring with them also a link and a promise of the beauty and the splendour of the Eternal. Through the dull days of early spring. 34 BY DIVERS PATHS when folk who knew not what ailed them were hungering for sunshine, a sudden glory of colour flashed across the parks and the churchyards where the yellow crocus laughed and flamed ; the eyes of the wayfaring man grew brighter, and the little children caught a glimpse of their rightful heritage. Such a bold gaiety it vaunts, this deli- cate golden upstart that has broken through the dark clouds and now dallies with the winds. Less beloved than the little blue scylla that is like a bit of the azure sky in the brown earth, it is yet the very sjntnbol of unflinching cheerfulness and heavenly hardihood, though lack of that fra- grance, which is as the soul of beauty, gives it a certain coldness in the recollection, despite the fiery hue which sometimes, though not always, distinguishes its colouring from the cooler tints of the aconite. Holinshed has a quaint passage about the crocus in which he tells us that, " The crokers, or saffron-men, do use an observation a little before the coming up of the floure, and some time in the taking up at Midsummer-tide, by opening the heads to judge of plentie and scarcitie of the commodite to come." But it needs no vivisection of spring's harbinger to make this bit of light incarnate, this flaring brilliance of the golden crocus, touch the cob- w§l»fee4 S9ul§ 9f Qur great citks with a momentary THE YELLOW CROCUS 35 laughter of joy, coming they know not whence, but breaking through the drab hardness of their daily lives with celestial augury of good. Well is it for us that He, of whom it has been jvritten that He is " the perfect poet," is no mere ^^MUding worlds without colour or music, and clothinr-tix^^i^Qf ^j^^ f^^^^ ^ unvarying greyness. "^^ ~. The writer of "Letters to 5itar«oIi has a charming paragraph in which he suggests that possibly the smaller growth of the yellow croois, as compared with the purple and the white, is due to the fact that it absorbs more of that " actinic " ray which is at the same time, he thinks, the cause of its splendour ; and perhaps in more complex lives than that of the crocus so flamboyant a brilliance may necessitate some compensating limitation. No lover would choose a crocus as a gift to his sweetheart. Roses for joy and passion, violets for sweet tenderness, and heartsease itself for remembrance. But in so wide and various a world mere self-forgetting brightness is surely among the cardinal virtues. Love, rapture, pain, the deep and tender tragedy of man's mortal probation — ^to these such a type of buoyant good humour has nothing to say. But, in a dingy city, on a day when there is no sun to transmute the smoke to those opalescent rainbows with which London queens it in May 36 BY DIVERS PATHS weather, who is there that has not felt a thrill of shame and gratitude when, through his dark mood of east-windish melancholy and frosted crossness, there has gleamed the vision of some human face resolute in radiant, unvanquished gladness, or there has vibrated a vojc^^^''-''''''''""^ faultless in its resonant>i-r"''^^' ^^^^^^S to take the vexed^— ^ 'P^i^tive quality of the commoji -cr