The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
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The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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Table of Contents | |
Section | Page |
Start of eBook | 1 |
INTRODUCTORY NOTE | 1 |
SONGS | 1 |
I. | 1 |
II. | 1 |
III. | 2 |
IV. | 2 |
V. | 2 |
VI. | 2 |
VII. | 2 |
I. | 3 |
II. | 3 |
III. | 3 |
IV. | 4 |
V. | 4 |
VI. | 4 |
VII. | 4 |
VIII. | 5 |
I. | 5 |
II. | 5 |
III. | 6 |
IV. | 6 |
V. | 7 |
VI. | 7 |
VII. | 7 |
VIII. | 8 |
Thomas Runciman was born in Northumberland in 1841, and died in London in 1909. He was the second son of Walter Runciman of Dunbar and Jean Finlay, his wife. In his youth he left the beautiful coast where his father was stationed to go to school and work in Newcastle. Artists of his name had been men of mark in Scotland, and as he had their strong feeling for colour he was allowed for a time to become a pupil of William Bell Scott, who was on the fringe of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Throughout his life he painted portraits and landscapes, but the latter were what he loved. His work was not widely known, for he had a nervous contempt for Exhibitions, and the first collection of his landscapes in water-colour and oil was opened to the public at a posthumous exhibition in Newcastle in 1911. He travelled from time to time, and enjoyed living on the banks of the Seine, and in other beautiful regions abroad.
His poems were never offered for publication, although critical essays of his appeared from time to time, as for instance in the “London” of Henley and Stevenson. The Songs and Sonnets were written for his own satisfaction, and were sent to a few faithful friends and to members of his own family, who have allowed me to collect and print them. The miscellaneous verses were in many instances found in letters, and others written in high spirits were rescued after his death from sketch books and scraps of paper by his daughter, Kate Runciman Sellers, and by his friend, Edward Nisbet.
W.R.
Though here fair blooms the
rose and the woodbine waves on high,
And oak and elm and bracken
frond enrich the rolling lea,
And winds as if from Arcady
breathe joy as they go by,
Yet I yearn and I pine for
my North Countrie.
I leave the drowsing south
and in dreams I northward fly,
And walk the stretching moors
that fringe the ever-calling sea;
And am gladdened as the gales
that are so bitter-sweet go by,
While grey clouds sweetly
darken o’er my North Countrie.
For there’s music in
the storms, and there’s colour in the shades,
And there’s joy e’en
in the sorrow widely brooding o’er the sea;
And larger thoughts have birth
among the moors and lowly glades
And reedy mounds and sands
of my North Countrie.
You who know what easeful
arms
Silence winds about the dead,
Or what far-swept music charms
Hearts that were earth-wearied;
You who know—if
aught be known
In that everlasting Hush
Where the life-born years
are strewn,
Where the eyeless ages rush,—
Tell me, is it conscious rest
Heals the whilom hurt of life?
Or is Nirvana undistressed
E’en by memory of strife?
Metempsychosis.
When Grief comes this way
by
With her wan lip and drooping
eye,
Bid her welcome, woo her boldly;
Soon she’ll look on
thee less coldly.
Her tears soon cease to flow.
’Tis now not Grief but
Joy we know;
From her smiling face the
roses
Tell the glad metempsychosis.
Life with the sun in it—
Shaded by gloom!
Life with the fun in it—
Shadowed by Doom!
Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate!
Life’s laughing morrows frowned over by Fate!
Young Life’s wild gladness still waylaid by Age!
All its sweet badness still mocking the sage!
What can e’er measure the joy of its strife?
What boundless leisure
Count the heaped treasure
Of woe, that’s the pleasure
And beauty of Life?
Once as the aureole
Day left the earth,
Faded, a twilight soul,
Memory, had birth:
Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth.
Dark mirrors are her eyes:
Wherein who gaze
See wan effulgencies
Flicker and blaze—
Lorn fleeting shadows of beautiful days.
Scan those deep mirrors
well
After long years:
Lo! what aforetime fell
In rain of tears,
In radiant glamour-mist now reappears.
See old wild gladness
Tamed now and coy;
Grief that was madness
Turned into joy.
Fate cannot harry them now, nor annoy.
Down from yon throbbing
blue,
Passionless, fair,
Still faces look on you,
Sunlit their hair,
With a slow smile at your pleasure and care.
Life and death murmurings
From their lips go
In vaster music-rings;
Outward they flow,
Tenderer, wilder, than songs that we know.
My love’s unchanged—though time, alas!
Turns silver-gilt the golden mass
Of flowing hair, and pales, I wis,
The rose that deepened with that kiss—
The first—before our marriage was.
And though the fields of corn and grass,
So radiant then, as summers pass
Lose something of their look of bliss,
My love’s unchanged.
Our tiny girl’s a sturdy lass;
Our boy’s shrill pipe descends to bass;
New friends appear, the old we miss;
My Love grows old ... in spite of this
My love’s unchanged.
A Gurly Breeze in Scotland.
A gurly breeze swept from
the pool
The Autumn peace so blue and
cool,
Which all day long had dreamed
thereon
Of men and things aforetime
gone,
Their vanished joy, their
ended dule:
So glooms the sea, so sounds
her brool,
As from the East at eve comes
on
A
gurly breeze.
Sense yields to Fancy ’neath
whose rule
This inland scene is quickly
full
Of ocean moods wherein I con
As in a picture; quickly gone.
To what sweet use the mind
may school
A
gurly breeze!
SONNETS
A Hamadryad Dies.
Low mourned the Oread round
the Arcadian hills;
The Naiad murmured and the
Dryad moaned;
The meadow-maiden left her
daffodils
To join the Hamadryades who
groaned
Over a sister newly fallen
dead.
That Life might perish out
of Arcady
From immemorial times was
never said;
Yet here one lay dead by her
dead oak-tree.
“Who made our Hamadryad
cold and mute?”
The others cried in sorrow
and in wonder.
“I,” answered
Death, close by in ashen suit;
“Yet fear not me for
this, nor start asunder;
Arcadian life shall keep its
ancient zest
Though I be here. My
name?—is it not Rest?”
"Et in Arcadia ego ..."
“What traveller soever
wander here
In quest of peace and what
is best of pleasure,
Let not his hope be overcast
and drear
Because I, Death, am here
to fix the measure
Of life, even in blameless
Arcady.
Bay, laurel, myrtle, ivy never
sere,
And fields flower-decorated
all the year,
And streams that carry secrets
to the sea,
And hills that hold back something
evermore
Though wild their speech with
clouds in thunder-roar,—
Yea, every sylvan sight and
peaceful tone
Are thine to give thy days
their purer zest.
Let not the legend grieve
thee on this stone.
I Death am here. What
then? My name is Rest.”
Despairless! Hopeless!
Quietly I wait
On these unpeopled tracks
the happy close
Of Day, whose advent rang
with noise elate,
Whose later stage was quick
with mirthful shows
And clasping loves, with hate
and hearty blows,
And dreams of coming gifts
withheld by Fate
From morrow unto morrow, till
her great
Dread eyes ’gan tell
of other gifts than those,
And her advancing wings gloomed
like a pall;
Her speech foretelling joy
became a dirge
As piteous as pitiless; and
all
My company had passed beyond
the verge
And lost me ere Fate raised
her blinding wings....
Hark! through the dusk a bird
“at heaven’s gate sings.”
“Despairless? Hopeless?
Join the cheerful hunt
Whose hounds are Science,
high Desires the steeds,
And Misery the quarry.
Use and Wont
No help to human anguish bring,
that bleeds
For all two thousand years
of Christian deeds.
Let Use and Wont in styes
still feed and grunt,
Or, bovine, graze knee-deep
in flowering meads.
Mount! follow! Onward
urge Life’s dragon-hunt!”
—So cries the sportsman
brisk at break of day.
“The sound of hound
and horn is well for thee,”
Thus I reply, “but I
have other prey;
And friendly is my quest as
you may see.
Though slow my pace, full
surely in the dark
I’ll chance on it at
last, though none may mark.”
Hopeless! Despairless!
like that Indian wise
Free of desire, save no desire
to know.
To gain that sweet Nirvana
each one tries,
Thinks to assuage soul-wearing
passion so.
From the white rest, the ante-natal
bliss,
Not loth, the wondrous wondering
soul awakes;
Now drawn to that illusion,
now to this,
With gathering strength each
devious pathway takes;
Till at the noon of life his
aims decline;
Evermore earthward bend the
tiring eyes,
Evermore earthward, till with
no surprise
They see Nirvana from Earth’s
bosom shine.
The still kind mother holds
her child again
In blank desirelessness without
a stain.
He comes to me like air on
parching grass;
His eyes are wells where truth
lives, found at last;
Summer is fragrant should
he this way pass;
His calm love is a chain that
binds me fast....
Yet often melancholy will
forecast
That time when I shall have
grown old—when he—
Still rapturous in his struggle
with life’s blast—
Shall give a pitying side
glance to me,
Who skirt the fog-fringe of
eternity,
Straining mine eyes to catch
what shadowy sign
Of good or evil omen there
may be,
Yet no sure good nor evil
can divine:
Only some hints of doubtful
sound and light,
That lonelier leave the uncompanioned
night.
She scanned the record of
Beethoven’s thought,
And made the dumb chords speak
both clear and low,
And spread the dead man’s
voice till I was caught
Away, and now seemed long
and long ago.
Methought in Tellus’
bosom still I lay,
While centuries like steeds
tramped overhead,
To the wild rhythms that,
by night and day,
From nature and man’s
passions still are made.
The music of their motion
as they pranced
Lulled me to flawless ease
as of a God;
Never upon me pain or pleasure
chanced;
Unknown the dew of bliss,
or fate’s hard rod.
Thus dreamed I ... But
I know our mother Earth
Waits to give back the peace
she reft at birth.
By mead and marsh and sandhill
clad with bent,
Soothed by the wistful musings
of the wind
That in scarce listening ears
are mildly dinned,
On plods the traveller till
the day be spent,
And day-dreams end in dreamless
night at last.
He hears, beyond the grey
bent’s silken waves,
The foam-embroidered waters
ever cast
On sighing sands and into
echoing caves.
And from the west, where the
last sunset glow
Still lingers on the border
hills afar,
Come pastoral sounds, attenuate
and low,
Thence where the night shall
bring, ’neath cloud and star,
Silence to yearn o’er
folk worn with day’s strife,
Lost in blank sleep to hope,
regret, death, life.
[An alternative ending:
While from the West comes
murmuring earthly noise,
Sweet, slumberous, attenuate
and afar;
Sad sunglows in the border
mountains poise,
There where he knows to-night,
mid cloud and star,
Silence shall yearn o’er
folk worn out with strife,
Lost in blank sleep to hope,
regret, death, life.]
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
What though my voice cease
like a moan o’ the wind?
Not the less shall I
Cast on this life a kindly
eye,
Glad if through its mystery
Faint gleams of love and truth
glance o’er my mind.
What though I end like a spring
leaf shed on the wind?
Restrained by pure-eyed Sorrow’s
hand,
Lithe Joy through this wondrous
land
Leads me; nothing have I scanned
Unmixed with good. Fate’s
sharpest stroke is kind.
To me, thoughts lived of old
anew are born
From glances at the unsullied
sea,
Or breath of morning purity,
From cloud or blown grass
tossing free,
Or frail dew quivering on
leaf, rose or thorn.
What though behind me all
is mist and shade,
Yet warmth of afterglow bathes
all.
Hallowed spirits move and
call
Each to me, a willing thrall,
With kindly speech of mountain,
plain or glade.
Before me, through the veil
that covers all,
Rays of a vasty Dawn strike
high
To the zenith of the sky.
Intense, yet low as true love’s
sigh,
Prophetic voices to my spirit
call.
So, though my voice cease
like a moan o’ the wind,
Not the less shall I
Cast on life a kindly eye,
Glad if through its mystery
Stray gleams of love and truth
illume my mind.
An Afternoon Soliloquy.
How good some years of life
may be!
Ah, once it was not guessed
by me,
Past years would shine, like
some bright sea,
In golden dusks of memory.
Ere then the music of the
dawn
From me had long since surged
away;
And in the disillusioned day
Of chill mid-life I plodded
on.
Anon a fuller music thrilled
My world with meaning undertones,
That elegized our vanished
ones,
And told how Lethe’s
banks are filled
With wordless calm, and wistful
rest,
And sweet large silence, solemn
sleep,
And brooding shadows cool
and deep,
And grand oblivions, undistressed.
No more ’twas “Lethe
rolling doom,”
But Lethe calling, “Come
to me,
And wash away all memory
And taint of what precedes
the tomb;
And know the changeless afterthought,
Half guessed, half named from
age to age,
Wherein I quench the flame
and rage
And sorrow with which life
is fraught.”
The Love that speaks in word
and kiss,
That dyes the cheek and fires
the eye,
Through surface signs of shallow
bliss
That, quickly born, may quickly
die;
Sweet, sweet are these to
man and woman;
Who thinks them poor is less
than human.
But I do know a quavering
tone,
And I do know lack-lustre
eyes,
Behind the which, dumb and
alone,
A stronger Love his labour
plies:
He cannot sing or dance or
toy—
He works and sighs for other’s
joy.
In gloom he tends the growth
of food,
While others joy in sun and
flowers:
None knows the passion of
his mood
Save they who know what bitter
hours
Are his whose heart, alive
to beauty,
Yet dies to it and lives for
duty.
Revoke Not.
Long is it since they ceased
to look on light,
To thrill with hope in our
fond human way.
Why grudge them rest in their
sweet ancient night,
Ungrieved,
if never gay,
Eased
from Life’s sorry day?
Is it because at times when
storms subside
Through which thou oarest
Life’s ill-fitted bark,
Dreams rise, from sounds of
lapping of the tide,
To
veil the daylight stark,
Its
anguish and its cark?
What was their joy here?
Absence of great pain?
Some music in lamentings of
the wind?
The mystic whispers of the
dripping rain?
Sad
yearnings toward their kind?
Ruth
for old loves that pined?
For these would’st thou
revoke their flawless rest?
Restore hope unfulfilled which
they knew here?
Oh! well they fare, safe sheltered
in that nest
Of
silence, far from fear,
Their
memory not yet sere.
Take thou no joy in any passing
dream
Of revocation from their stainless
state!
Love them: haste on,
till thou to others seem
As
these to thee—their mate,
A
waning name, a date!
Till then, the low keen sound
of Life’s “Alas!”
Change as thou canst to themes
in every key,
That so for thee and others
time may pass
Full of presagings of content
to be
Age-long
in that far bourne,
Till
thought end, quite outworn.
"And there shall be no
night there and they
need no candle, and neither
light of the sun;
for the Lord God giveth them
Light."
Your place is Heaven, a stormless
nightless home?
Then we twain never more shall
live together
Such days of gladdest thought
as here, whilom,
We spent amid the change of
earthly weather.
No white young day like hope
smiles in yon east,
Or, westering, cleaves wild-omened
scarlet glooms;
No frosty breezes wreathe
your woods in mist;
No breaker o’er Heaven’s
glassy ocean booms.
No scents of delved dewy soil
arise;
No storm-blue pall in state
hangs hill or lea;
No nightly seas swirl in grey
agonies;
Nor old Earth’s sweet
decays dye herb or tree.
Do wan gold tints shot on
the midnight air
Herald the moon that loiters
far away?
Or moony sea-gleams peep and
beckon there
From sapphire dark or mystic
silver grey?
No, not the olden pleasure
shall be there
We knew, before the grass
sprang o’er your breast;
Yet that is yours which here
hearts cannot share—
Heaven’s summer peace
eterne and noonday rest.
Northumbria.—A Dirge.
Dirge the sorrows by time
made dim:
Seas are sullen
in rain and mist.
Regret the woes that behind
us swim:
Sullen’s
the north and grey the east.
Black boats speck the horizon’s
rim:
The north is
heavy and grey the east.
They plash to shore in unison
grim:
The breakers
roar through rain and mist.
Ah! the ravening Dane of old!
Joys are born
of time and sorrow.
He was beautiful, cruel and
bold:
Death yesterday
is life to-morrow.
The slain lie stark on bented
mounds:
Winds are calling
in rain and mist.
There’s blood and smoke
and wide red wounds,
And black boats
make to north and east.
Through murky weltering seas
they row:
Dirge the eyes
their deeds made dim.
Wives at their conning smile
and glow,
And hail them
on the horizon’s rim.
There’s peace on low
mounds and shallow dells,
Yellow rag-wort
and sea-reed grey,
And thrumming and booming
of village bells:
Dirge the lives
of that faded day.
Merely Suburban.
Dry light reverberates, colour
withdrawing
Into a sky so white, sight
cannot follow it.
While in the shadows cast,
rich hues, intenser
Far than in light spaces,
offer me gladness.
Sun reigns triumphantly, thinning
all vapour
Into translucency, through
which the foliage
Bears out in sparkles of full
golden greenery.
O’er this, short dashes
of keen grey-green masses lie;
Even the cooler tints, pitched
in this higher key—
Purpling and greening greys—are
fierce as fires.
All the vast universe lives
in one beautiful
Summer—made lambent
light, offering gladness.
Who can accept of it?
Hearts where no echo rings
Wildly recalling deeds done
by old Destiny—
Deeds of finality, darkening
the spirit—
Rousing the echoes of thought
to reverberate
Ever and ever “Alas!”
evermore.
Once in a burning day’s
brightness like this,
Sad I awaited the quenching
forever of
Light that had mantled and
flickered and ebbed out
Unto some twilight of hope
and of reason.
Out of his own unto future
time’s darkness
Wistfully gazed he, as one
who unhelped floats,
Swept by a current past land
out to sea.
He started alertly with laughter
and mockery,
Loud at its height with the
rapture of contest.
For him the light focusses
now to one vision,
Shot through its beautiful
heart with black terror,
Terror from weakness, remorse
and leave-taking.
To his scared eye the day’s
bitter brightness
Circles about the dark doorway
set open
Awaiting his entrance ere
shut to for ever.
Ever he harkens to voices
behind him
Dolefully hinting defect and
omission;
Cruelly shouting: “This,
this was the true path;
Here greatness lay, by humility
guarded,
She whom thou soughtest through
mountains of pride!
What avails tenderness now
so belated?
What gaining love with no
deed as its child?”
Whitening intenselier ever
to setting
Down sank the last sun save
one he should gaze on.
In the next dawning, with
dull apprehensiveness,
Groped he mid recent and older
remembrance,
Mingled with mad vain desires
for a helping hand;
Then off reeled his soul from
my speechless adieus.
Once more the whole blaze
triumphed through the welkin,
Bitter in brightness in memory
for ever.
Whistler versus Ruskin Trial.
Critic John cam here to view
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Lindsay’s picture shop bran new,
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
John, he cast his head fu’ high,
Looked asklent and unco’ skeigh,
Vowed he’d gar James stand abeigh:
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
John he nayther ramps nor roars,
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Soft gans hame and writes in “Fors”—
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Writes, and wi’ ae critic-puff
Blaws James oot, like can’le snuff:
Sweers in Art he’s just a muff!
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Englan’ heurs and rubs her
ee,
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
“Just as I had guessed,” quo’
she:
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
No so James. He to the Judge
Cries, “John he ca’s my noketurns
‘fudge’:
That’s a lee—spoke in a grudge.”
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Ca’ up Michael! Ca’
up Moore!
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Bring up Wills—he’s kenned before!
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Midmay Michael’s ta’en his stan’,
Moore and Wills say Whistler’ gran’,
Nae better work done in this lan’:
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Now bring Jones—let’s
hear his min’:
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Out spake he: “Jim’s work’s
rale fine,”
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
“An’ were’t like Titian’s
here or mine,
A’ this or that, I’d no decline
To say they’re rather like muneshine.”
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Run in Frith. Says he:
“Dear me!”
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
“For my pairt here’s nowt like me:”
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
“Nothing is like nature here.
Where’s the detail roun’ an’
clear,
Such as in my work appear?”
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
How it cam let lawyers tell:
Ha, ha, the provin’ o’t!
Jury bodies luik fu’ swell:
Ha, ha, the provin’ o’t!
“John’s no right, yet Jim’s
no wrang!
Art’s made of nocht but peut an’ slang!
Half a bawbee! Hame let’s gang!”
Ha, ha, the provin’ o’t!
ONE HUNDRED & FIFTY COPIES OF THIS
BOOK HAVE BEEN PRINTED BY HAND
FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WALTER RUNCIMAN AT
THE TEMPLE SHEEN
PRESS MARCH
MCMXXII