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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) Milnes's Poems - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume I - Autobiography and Literary Essays
Milnes’s Poems - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume I - Autobiography and Literary Essays [1824]Edition used:The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume I - Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger, introduction by Lord Robbins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).
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Milnes’s Poems
these two volumes of poems, although the one was not designed for publication, and the other is not yet published, are not entirely unknown even to the general reader—some beautiful extracts from the earlier volume, and some just praises of both, having appeared in an article, from a pen not to be mistaken, in one of our monthly periodicals. This first draught from the well leaves it, however, still fresh and full, and we too having been admitted to it, need not fear to exercise the privilege of dispensing its waters. We regard Mr. Milnes’ poems as of singular merit in their kind, and the kind as one possessing strong claims upon the notice of a student of the age. They are representative of a whole order of thoughts and feelings; they are a voice from one corner of the mind and heart of this age, which had not found fitting poetical utterance till now; and there are many who will recognise in it the voice of their own soul, the language of their daily consciousness.
But we prefer beginning our selection by something not characteristic; and showing that the author is a poet, before we detain the reader with any remarks on the particular character of his poetry. We begin, therefore, unhesitatingly with
- THE LAY OF THE HUMBLE
-
- I have no comeliness of frame,
- No pleasant range of feature;
- I’m feeble, as when first I came
- To earth, a weeping creature;
- My voice is low whene’er I speak
- And singing faint my song;
- But though thus cast among the weak,
- I envy not the strong.
-
- The trivial part in life I play
- Can have so light a bearing
- On other men, who, night or day,
- For me are never caring;
- That, though I find not much to bless,
- Nor food for exaltation,
- I know that I am tempted less,
- And that is consolation.
-
- The beautiful! the noble blood!
- I shrink as they pass by,
- Such power for evil or for good,
- Is flashing from each eye,
- They are indeed the stewards of Heaven,
- High-headed and strong-handed:
- From those, to whom so much is given,
- How much may be demanded!
-
- ’Tis true, I am hard buffeted,
- Though few can be my foes,
- Harsh words fall heavy on my head,
- And unresisted blows;
- But then I think—“Had I been born—
- Hot spirit—sturdy frame—
- And passion prompt to follow scorn—
- I might have done the same.”
-
- To me men are for what they are,
- They wear no masks with me;
- I never sicken’d at the jar
- Of ill-tuned flattery;
- I never mourned affections lent
- In folly or in blindness;—
- The kindness that on me is spent
- Is pure, unasking kindness.
-
- And, most of all, I never felt
- The agonizing sense
- Of seeing love from passion melt
- Into indifference:
- The fearful shame that, day by day,
- Burns onward, still to burn,
- To have thrown your precious heart away,
- And met this black return.
-
- I almost fancy that the more
- I am cast out from men,
- Nature has made me of her store
- A worthier denizen:
- As if it pleased her to caress
- A plant grown up so wild,
- As if the being parentless
- Made me the more her child.
-
- Athwart my face when blushes pass
- To be so poor and weak,
- I fall unto the dewy grass,
- And cool my fevered cheek;
- And hear a music strangely made,
- That you have never heard,
- A sprite in every rustling blade,
- That sings like any bird.
-
- My dreams are dreams of pleasantness,
- But yet I always run,
- As to a father’s morning kiss,
- When rises the round sun;
- I see the flowers on stalk and stem,
- Light shrubs, and poplars tall,
- Enjoy the breeze,—I rock with them,
- We are merry brothers all.
-
- I do remember well, when first
- I saw the great blue sea,—
- It was no stranger-face, that burst
- In terror upon me;
- My heart began, from the first glance,
- His solemn pulse to follow,
- I danced with every billow’s dance,
- And shouted to their hollo.
-
- The lamb, that at its mother’s side
- Reclines, a tremulous thing,
- The robin in cold winter-tide,
- The linnet in the spring,
- All seem to be of kin to me,
- And love my slender hand,—
- For we are bound, by God’s decree,
- In one defensive band
-
- And children, who the worldly mind
- And ways have not put on,
- Are ever glad in me to find
- A blithe companion:
- And when for play they leave their homes,
- Left to their own sweet glee,
- They hear my step, and cry—“He comes,
- Our little friend—’tis he.”
-
- Have you been out some starry night,
- And found it joy to bend
- Your eyes to one particular light,
- Till it became a friend?
- And then, so loved that glistening spot,
- That, whether it were far,
- Or more or less, it mattered not,—
- It still was your own star
-
- Thus, and thus only, can you know,
- How I, even scorned I,
- Can live in love, tho’ set so low,
- And my ladie-love so high;
- Thus learn, that on this varied ball,
- Whate’er can breathe and move,
- The meanest, lornest thing of all
- Still owns its right to love.
-
- With no fair round of household cares
- Will my lone hearth be blest,
- Nor can the snow of my old hairs
- Fall on a loving breast;
- No darling pledge of spousal faith
- Shall I be found possessing,
- To whom a blessing with my breath
- Would be a double blessing;
-
- But yet my love with sweets is rife,
- With happiness it teems;
- It beautifies my waking life,
- And waits upon my dreams;
- A shape that floats upon the night,
- Like foam upon the sea,—
- A voice of seraphim,—a light
- Of present Deity!
-
- I hide me in the dark arcade,
- When she walks forth alone,—
- I feast upon her hair’s rich braid,—
- Her half-unclasped zone;
- I watch the flittings of her dress,
- The bending boughs between,—
- I trace her footstep’s faery press
- On the scarcely ruffled green.
-
- Oh deep delight! the frail guitar
- Trembles beneath her hand;
- She sings a song she brought from far,
- I cannot understand;
- Her voice is always as from heaven,
- But yet I seem to hear
- Its music best, when thus ’tis given
- All music to my ear
-
- She has turned her tender eyes around,
- And seen me crouching there,
- And smiles, just as that last full sound
- Is fainting on the air;
- And now, I can go forth so proud,
- And raise my head so tall,—
- My heart within me beats so loud,
- And musical withal—
-
- And there is summer all the while,
- Mid-winter tho’ it be,—
- How should the universe not smile,
- When she has smiled on me?
- For tho’ that smile can nothing more
- Than merest pity prove,
- Yet pity, it was sung of yore,
- Is not so far from love.
-
- From what a crowd of lover’s woes
- My weakness is exempt!
- How far more fortunate than those
- Who mark me for contempt!
- No fear of rival happiness
- My fervent glory smothers,
- The zephyr fans me none the less
- That it is bland to others
-
- Thus without share in coin or land,
- But well content to hold
- The wealth of nature in my hand,
- One flail of virgin gold,—
- My love above me like a sun—
- My own bright thoughts my wings,
- Thro’ life I trust to flutter on,
- As gay as aught that sings.
-
- One hour I own I dread,—to die
- Alone and unbefriended.—
- No soothing voice, no tearful eye,
- But that must soon be ended,
- And then I shall receive my part
- Of everlasting treasure,
- In that just world where each man’s heart
- Will be his only measure.
This poem requires no commentator; it goes straight to the common heart of humanity; and we shall be surprised if it do not become widely known, and find its way into collections. The man who can thus write, is entitled to write in verse; a privilege which we would confine to a very small proportion indeed of those who usurp it. Let such a man speak from the fulness of his own heart—give him thoughts and feelings to express which are deeply interesting to him—and it will be a little your own fault if he does not make them interesting to you. Now these poems, as a whole, if there be faith in internal evidence, do come from the heart of the writer; what they express, he feels, or has felt; they are the deepest and most earnest part of himself, thrown into melodious language; there is as much sincerity in them as there can be in words; for, properly speaking, it is only a man’s whole life which is sincere—that alone is the utterance of the whole man, contemplative and active taken together.
Of Mr. Milnes, personally, we know little or nothing, save that he is a young and active member of the House of Commons, who generally votes with the Tories; but if he be like his poems—and the man who could write them cannot be altogether unlike them—he is one of the representatives of a school which has grown up within a few years, is spreading rapidly among the refined and cultivated youth, and deserves to be much honoured, and, above all, to be understood. This school is one of the products of what may be termed the Coleridgian reaction. In politics, its aim is, to save the Church and the Aristocracy, by making them really what they pretend to be. With Conservatives of this description, however we may doubt the practicability of their objects, we feel, and have always professed, the most entire sympathy; and no one can more heartily rejoice at any accession to their numbers or influence. Mr. Milnes’ poems, however, do not show them in their character as politicians, but as men; and as such they are in some measure a class apart.
They are, in general, earnest men, with a deep sense of duty towards God and man, and of responsibility to an Eternal Judge. With this they seem not unusually to combine a degree of distrust of their own spiritual strength, very becoming in most persons, but which certainly is not usually found in those destined to accomplish great things, even in the cause of religion; for, however innocent of any vain-glorious trust in his own unassisted power or goodness, the Christian hero has generally a sure faith that upon certain simple conditions, which in his healthier moods he feels confident that he can and will fulfil, strength will be lent him from God, to perform all that God requires of him. But these men (at least in one stage of their growth) seem as though weighed down by the immensity of God’s requirements. To be a spiritual being, and to have an account to render as such, of the employment of powers and opportunities, appears to them not only an awful, but almost a fearful destiny; its dangers alarm them much more than its privileges excite; and the period of infancy, when they were alike strangers to both, is looked back to, with manly endurance no doubt, but with the fondest regret. It is astonishing how large a portion of Mr. Milnes’ poems are impregnated with this feeling; it can scarcely be more finely expressed than in the following lines:
-
- Youth, that pursuest with such eager pace
- Thy even way,
- Thou pantest on to win a mournful race;
- Then stay! oh, stay!
-
- Pause and luxuriate in thy sunny plain;
- Loiter,—enjoy:
- Once past, Thou never wilt come back again
- A second Boy.
-
- The hills of Manhood wear a noble face,
- When seen from far;
- The mist of light from which they take their grace
- Hides what they are.
-
- The dark and weary path those cliffs between
- Thou canst not know,
- And how it leads to regions never green,
- Dead fields of snow.
-
- Pause, while thou may’st, nor deem that fate thy gain,
- Which, all too fast,
- Will drive thee forth from this delicious plain,
- A Man at last.
And again in the following, to a child five years old:
-
- Delighted soul! that in thy new abode
- Dwellest contentedly, and knowest not
- What men can mean who faint beneath the load
- Of mortal life, and mourn an earthly lot
-
- Who would believe thou wert so far from home?
- Who could suppose thee exiled or astray?
- This world of twilight whither thou art come
- Seems just as welcome as thy native day
-
- That comely form, wherein thy thoughts are pent,
- Hiding its rebel nature, serves thee still,
- A pliable and pleasant instrument,
- Harmonious to thy impulses and will.
-
- Thou hast not spent as yet thy little store
- Of happy instincts:—Thou canst still beguile
- Painful reflection and ungrateful lore
- With many a placid dream and causeless smile
-
- And when the awful stranger Evil bends
- His eye upon thee, Thou wilt first essay
- To turn him from his dark pursuits and ends
- By gracious dalliance and familiar play.
-
- As well might kindly words arrest the roll
- Of billows raging o’er a wintry sea.
- O Providence! remit to this one soul
- Its destined years, and take it back to Thee.
Such feelings as these occur as moods, in the life probably of every person who has a conscience; but wherever they fill a large place, they point to something unhealthful either in the individual mind or in the times.
Whether as cause or consequence, these feelings are not unnaturally connected with a rather melancholy view of life. For the duty of a good man is not to these minds the simple thing it was to the religious minds of former ages. Their morality does not say only, Thou shalt abstain,—thou shalt keep thy thoughts and actions pure; it says, Thou shalt do; not to thee alone, O pastor, or to thee O missionary, but even to thee O meanest of mankind, is the boundless mass of evil which surrounds thee on every side, delivered as thy task; of which mass unless thou remove all that thou canst, the whole shall be imputed to thee.
- We have come out upon the field of Life
- To war with Evil—
says Mr. Milnes; and if the Boy, resolute and confiding in his resolve, dares hope for victory, Mr. Milnes tells him—
- Poor youthful Heart! poor noble Self-deceit!
- Weak-winged Aspirant!—Step with me aside,
- Tis for a moment,—mount this little hill,—
- Tell me, and tell thyself, what see’st Thou now.
- Look East and West, and mark how far extends
- This vainly mockt, this haughtily defied,
- This Might so easily to be laid low!
- There is no eminence on this wide space,
- So high that thou from it canst e’er behold
- A clear horizon, dark is all the space,
- Black with the masses of thine Enemy;
- There is no point where Light can penetrate
- Those densely-banded Legions,—the green plain
- Shines through no interval. Brave though thou art,
- My Boy, where is thy trust in Victory now?
- Now gaze below, gaze on that waving crowd,
- The marshalled army of Humanity,
- From which thou art come out,—Loyal thou art,
- My Boy; but what avails thy feeble Truth,
- When, as thou seest, of the huge multitude,
- The still succeeding myriads there arrayed
- For fight, how few, how miserably few,
- Not only do not fervently work out
- Their Soldier-duty, but whose craven souls
- Do not pass over to the very Foe,
- And, mingling with his numbers numberless,
- Against their brethren turn unnatural arms—
- Or else of honest wills at first, like thine,
- After the faint resistance of an hour,
- Yield themselves up half-willing prisoners,
- Soon to be won by golden-guileful tongues,
- To do blithe service in the cause of Sin!
- * * * * *
- Yet there are some to whom a strength is given,
- A will, a self-constraining energy,
- A Faith which feeds upon no earthly hope,
- Which never thinks of Victory, but content
- In its own consummation, combatting
- Because it ought to combat (even as Love
- Is its own cause, and cannot have another),
- And conscious that to find in martyrdom
- The stamp and signet of most perfect life
- Is all the science that mankind can reach,
- Rejoicing fights, and still rejoicing falls.
- It may be that to Spirits high-toned as these
- A revelation of the end of Time
- Is also granted; that they feel a sense
- Giving them firm assurance that the foe
- By which they must be crusht (in Death well-won
- Alone to find their freedom) in his turn
- Will be subdued, though not by such as They.
This is nobly expressed, and the views of life such as are natural to a clear-headed and pure-minded Conservative. Of all persons living, such a man has the fewest illusions left as to the amount of evil in the world. When times are quiet, and men’s minds settled, the unbroken respect for rules and ordinances (seldom questioned even when transgressed), and the reverence still ostensibly maintained towards those superiors, who are the representatives (however unfaithful) of all that is most venerable to man, keep the worst parts of human nature under a veil; mankind in such times seem better than they are, and are somewhat better than their genuine dispositions would prompt. In proportion as this respect wears off, and the actions of mankind become the expression of their real feelings, the veil is gone, and they appear as they are: to a Conservative, worse than they are; for to him the sham which they have discarded is still a holy truth. He has not the consolation of thinking that the old Formulas are gone because the time has come for something better; no hope and faith in a greater good beyond, tempers to him the sense of present evil.
For a good man to live healthy and happy in a world which presents to him so dreary a prospect, he requires to have a clear view at least of his own path in it; but few of the men whom we speak of seem yet to have attained this; they believe, doubtless, that they are in the right road, but we question whether most of them feel quite sure of it—as indeed in these days it is not easy that any open-minded Conservative should. In proportion as they shall arrive at full unclouded certainty respecting the course which duty marks out for themselves, a vigorous and healthful development of their active faculties will correct what may now be unduly preponderant in the merely passive part of their moral sensibility; and, whether they are destined to aid in infusing another spirit into old beliefs and institutions, or in calmly substituting others, we shall be disappointed if some of them do not play a noble part in that “combat of life” which one of them has so feelingly described. We cannot better close these remarks than by extracting a poem, in which Mr. Milnes has painted with great truth the feelings of a deeply religious mind—not lamenting to itself its own insufficiency, and the vastness of what it has to do—but, while it feels all this, still pressing on to do what it can, with that strong and living faith in its own impulses, the almost necessary condition of high and heroic deeds.
- THE DEPARTURE OF ST. PATRICK FROM SCOTLAND (From his own “Confessions”)
-
- Twice to your son already has the hand of God been shown,
- Restoring him from alien bonds to be once more your own,
- And now it is the self-same hand, dear kinsmen, that to-day
- Shall take me for the third time from all I love away
-
- While I look into your eyes, while I hold your hands in mine,
- What force could tear me from you, if it were not all divine!
- Has my love ever faltered? Have I ever doubted yours?
- And think you I could yield me now to any earthly lures?
-
- I go not to some balmier land in pleasant ease to rest,—
- I go not to content the pride that swells a mortal breast,
- I go about a work my God has chosen me to do;
- Surely the soul which is his child must be his servant too.
-
- I seek not the great city where our sacred father dwells,—
- I seek not the blest eremites within their sandy cells,—
- I seek not our Redeemer’s grave in distant Palestine,—
- Another, shorter pilgrimage, a lonelier path is mine.
-
- When sunset clears and opens out the breadth of western sky,
- To those who in yon mountain isles protect their flocks on high
- Loom the dark outlines of a land, whose nature and whose name
- Some have by harsh experience learnt, and all by evil fame.
-
- Oh, they are wild and wanton men, such as the best will be,
- Who know no other gifts of God but to be bold and free,
- Who never saw how states are bound in golden bonds of law,
- Who never knew how strongest hearts are bent by holy awe.
-
- When first into their pirate hands I fell, a very boy,
- Skirting the shore from rock to rock in unsuspecting joy,
- I had been taught to pray, and thus those slavish days were few,
- A wondrous hazard brought me back to liberty and you.
-
- But when again they met me on the open ocean field,
- And might of numbers prest me round and forced my arm to yield,
- I had become a man like them, a selfish man of pride,
- I could have curst the will of God, for shame I had not died
-
- And still this torment haunted me three weary years, until
- That summer night,—among the sheep,—upon the seaward hill,
- When God of his miraculous grace, of his own saving thought,
- Came down upon my lonely heart and rested unbesought!
-
- That night of light! I cared not that the day-star glimmered soon,
- For in my new-begotten soul it was already noon;
- I knew before what Christ had done, but never felt till then
- A shadow of the love for him that he had felt for men!
-
- Strong faith was in me—on the shore there lay a stranded boat,
- I hasted down, I thrust it out, I felt it rock afloat;
- With nervous arm and sturdy oar I sped my watery way,
- The wind and tide were trusty guides,—one God had I and they
-
- As one from out the dead I stood among you free and whole,
- My body Christ could well redeem, when he had saved my soul,
- And perfect peace embraced the life that had been only pain,
- For Love was shed upon my head from everything, like rain.
-
- Then on so sweetly flowed the time, I almost thought to sail
- Even to the shores of Paradise in that unwavering gale,
- When something rose and nightly stood between me and my rest,
- Most like some one, besides myself, reflecting in my breast.
-
- I cannot put it into words, I only know it came,
- A sense of self-abasing weight, intolerable shame,
- “That I should be so vile that not one tittle could be paid
- Of that enormous debt which Christ upon my soul had laid!”
-
- This yielded to another mood, strange objects gathered near,
- Phantoms that entered not by eye, and voices not by ear,
- The land of my injurious thrall a gracious aspect wore,
- I yearned the most toward the forms I hated most before
-
- I seemed again upon that hill, as on that blissful night,
- Encompast with celestial air and deep retiring light,
- But sight and thought were fettered down, where glimmering lay below
- A plain of gasping, struggling, men in every shape of woe
-
- Faint solemn whispers gathered round, “Christ suffered to redeem,
- Not you alone, but such as these, from this their savage dream,—
- Lo, here are souls enough for you to bring to him, and say,
- These are the earnest of the debt I am too poor to pay.”
-
- A cloud of children freshly born, innumerable bands,
- Past by me with imploring eyes and little lifted hands,
- And all the Nature, I believed so blank and waste and dumb,
- Became instinct with life and love, and echoed clearly “Come!”
-
- “Amen!” said I; with eager steps a rude descent I tried,
- And all the glory followed me like an on-coming tide,
- With trails of light about my feet, I crost the darkling wild,
- And as I toucht each sufferer’s hand, he rose and gently smiled.
-
- Thus night on night the vision came, and left me not alone,
- Until I swore that in that land should Christ be preacht and known,
- And then at once strange coolness past on my long fevered brow,
- As from the flutter of light wings; I feel, I feel it now!
-
- And from that moment unto this, this last and proving one,
- I have been calm and light at heart as if the deed were done,
- I never thought how hard it was our earthly loves to lay
- Upon the altar of the Lord, and watch them melt away!
-
- Speak, friends! speak what you will—but change those asking looks forlorn,
- Sustain me with reproachful words—uphold me with your scorn;
- I know God’s heart is in me, but my human bosom fears
- Those drops that pierce it as they fall, those full and silent tears.
-
- These comrades of my earliest youth have pledged their pious care
- To bear me to the fronting coast, and gently leave me there;
- It may be I shall fall at once, with little toil or need,—
- Heaven often takes the simple will for the most perfect deed.
-
- Or, it may be that from that hour beneath my hand may spring
- A line of glories unachieved by hero, sage, or king,—
- That Christ may glorify himself in this ignoble name.
- And shadow forth my endless life in my enduring fame.
-
- All as He wills! now bless me, mother,—your cheek is almost dry —
- Farewell, kind brothers!—only pray ye may be blest as I;
- Smile on me, sisters,—when death comes near each of you, still smile,
- And we shall meet again somewhere, within a little while!
MILNES’S POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE
1840
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