Many years ago, when I was going for my summer holiday, he wrote me a reproachful poem, from which I quote a part, because it is the best index to his own character and the most lucid exposition of his own attitude to life which I can recall:
The roar of the streets at their loudest Rises and falls like a tune; Midday in the heart of London, Midway in the month of June.
And blue at the end of a valley I see the ocean gleam, And a voice like falling water Speaks to me thro' a dream.
It calls, and it bids me follow; Ah, how the worn nerves thrill At the vision of those green pastures And waters running still!
But I dare not move nor follow, For out of the quivering heat Another vision arises And darkens at my feet--
White faces worn with the fever That crouches evermore In the court and alley, and seizes The poor man at his door,
Float up in my dream and call me, And cry, If Christ were here He had not left us to perish In the fever-heat of the year!
God knows how I yearn for the mountains And the river that runs between! Ah, well, I can wait--and the pastures Of heaven are always green.
No one will question the nobility of sentiment in these simple lines, and they are the genuine expression of the man. In his case, however slight may be his claim to be called a poet, that hardest test of the poet is fulfilled:--
The gods exact for song To become what we sing.
It will be imagined that a man of this order would view my retreat from London with disfavour. He thought me guilty of a kind of social perfidy. No doubt the Earnest Good People, for whom I have the greatest reverence, will agree in the same verdict. A letter received during the last few days from my friend puts the case with such force, and yet with such good-feeling, that I will transcribe a part of it.
'I confess,' he writes, 'that the pleasures of life among the mountains leaves me cold. It is not that I am incapable of the same kind of pleasure, but, as you know, I have other ideas concerning the uses of life. I cannot enjoy sunsets while men and women are starving. The thought of all the misery of life for multitudes would, as Rossetti puts it, "make a goblin of the sun." You used to be very eloquent against good men who lived only for their own pleasure; are not you yourself living in the same way? I have heard you declaim against the gross selfishness of Goethe's aim in life--"to build the pyramid of his own intellectual culture"; are not you, in your own way, pursuing the same ideal? I have heard you say that nothing so belittled Goethe in your judgment as the fact that he was destitute of patriotism; he dwelt at ease among his books, while his country perished and felt no pang; and you live your joyous life among the hills, and have forgotten the Golgothas on which the poor of London endure their unpitied martyrdom. You are doing good to yourself, no doubt; but is it not a better thing to be doing good to others? I marvel that you can sleep at peace amid the wailing of the world. I cannot, and I thank God I cannot.