The Angel in the House. Coventry Patmore. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Coventry Patmore
Издательство: Bookwire
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Жанр произведения: Языкознание
Год издания: 0
isbn: 4057664155528
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time,

       I reach’d the Dean’s, with heart and brain

       That trembled to the trembling chime.

      2

      ’Twas half my home, six years ago.

       The six years had not alter’d it:

       Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,

       With dormers and with oriels lit.

       Geranium, lychnis, rose array’d

       The windows, all wide open thrown;

       And some one in the Study play’d

       The Wedding-March of Mendelssohn.

       And there it was I last took leave:

       ’Twas Christmas: I remember’d now

       The cruel girls, who feign’d to grieve,

       Took down the evergreens; and how

       The holly into blazes woke

       The fire, lighting the large, low room,

       A dim, rich lustre of old oak

       And crimson velvet’s glowing gloom.

       No change had touch’d Dean Churchill: kind,

       By widowhood more than winters bent,

       And settled in a cheerful mind,

       As still forecasting heaven’s content.

       Well might his thoughts be fix’d on high,

       Now she was there! Within her face

       Humility and dignity

       Were met in a most sweet embrace.

       She seem’d expressly sent below

       To teach our erring minds to see

       The rhythmic change of time’s swift flow

       As part of still eternity.

       Her life, all honour, observed, with awe

       Which cross experience could not mar,

       The fiction of the Christian law

       That all men honourable are;

       And so her smile at once conferr’d

       High flattery and benign reproof;

       And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr’d,

       Grew courtly in my own behoof.

       The years, so far from doing her wrong,

       Anointed her with gracious balm,

       And made her brows more and more young

       With wreaths of amaranth and palm.

      4

      Was this her eldest, Honor; prude,

       Who would not let me pull the swing;

       Who, kiss’d at Christmas, call’d me rude,

       And, sobbing low, refused to sing?

       How changed! In shape no slender Grace,

       But Venus; milder than the dove;

       Her mother’s air; her Norman face;

       Her large sweet eyes, clear lakes of love.

       Mary I knew. In former time

       Ailing and pale, she thought that bliss

       Was only for a better clime,

       And, heavenly overmuch, scorn’d this.

       I, rash with theories of the right,

       Which stretch’d the tether of my Creed,

       But did not break it, held delight

       Half discipline. We disagreed.

       She told the Dean I wanted grace.

       Now she was kindest of the three,

       And soft wild roses deck’d her face.

       And, what, was this my Mildred, she

       To herself and all a sweet surprise?

       My Pet, who romp’d and roll’d a hoop?

       I wonder’d where those daisy eyes

       Had found their touching curve and droop.

      5

      Unmannerly times! But now we sat

       Stranger than strangers; till I caught

       And answer’d Mildred’s smile; and that

       Spread to the rest, and freedom brought.

       The Dean talk’d little, looking on,

       Of three such daughters justly vain.

       What letters they had had from Bonn,

       Said Mildred, and what plums from Spain!

       By Honor I was kindly task’d

       To excuse my never coming down

       From Cambridge; Mary smiled and ask’d

       Were Kant and Goethe yet outgrown?

       And, pleased, we talk’d the old days o’er;

       And, parting, I for pleasure sigh’d.

       To be there as a friend, (since more),

       Seem’d then, seems still, excuse for pride;

       For something that abode endued

       With temple-like repose, an air

       Of life’s kind purposes pursued

       With order’d freedom sweet and fair.

       A tent pitch’d in a world not right

       It seem’d, whose inmates, every one,

       On tranquil faces bore the light

       Of duties beautifully done,

       And humbly, though they had few peers,

       Kept their own laws, which seem’d to be

       The fair sum of six thousand years’

       Traditions of civility.

       Mary And Mildred.

       Table of Contents

      PRELUDES.

      I.

       The Paragon.

      When I behold the skies aloft

       Passing the pageantry of dreams,

       The cloud whose bosom, cygnet-soft,

       A couch for nuptial Juno seems,

       The ocean broad, the mountains bright,

       The shadowy vales with feeding herds,

       I from my lyre the music smite,

       Nor want for justly matching words.

       All forces of the sea and air,

       All interests of hill and plain,

       I so can sing, in seasons fair,

       That who hath felt may feel again.

       Elated oft by such free songs,

       I think with utterance free to raise

       That hymn for which the whole world longs,

       A worthy hymn in woman’s praise;

       A hymn bright-noted like a bird’s,

       Arousing these song-sleepy times

       With rhapsodies of perfect words,