Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (690 page)

 
GOD NEEDS ANTONIO

Your soul was lifted by the wings today

Hearing the master of the violin:

You praised him, praised the great Sabastian too

Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think

Of old Antonio Stradivari? -him

Who a good century and a half ago

Put his true work in that brown instrument

And by the nice adjustment of its frame

Gave it responsive life, continuous

With the master’s finger-tips and perfected

Like them by delicate rectitude of use.

That plain white-aproned man, who stood at work

Patient and accurate full fourscore years,

Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,

And since keen sense is love of perfectness

Made perfect violins, the needed paths

For inspiration and high mastery.

No simpler man than he; he never cried,

“why was I born to this monotonous task

Of making violins?” or flung them down

To suit with hurling act well-hurled curse

At labor on such perishable stuff.

Hence neighbors in Cremona held him dull,

Called him a slave, a mill-horse, a machine.

Naldo, a painter of eclectic school,

Knowing all tricks of style at thirty-one,

And weary of them, while Antonio

At sixty-nine wrought placidly his best,

Making the violin you heard today -

Naldo would tease him oft to tell his aims.

“Perhaps thou hast some pleasant vice to feed -

the love of louis d’ors in heaps of four,

Each violin a heap - I’ve naught to blame;

My vices waste such heaps. But then, why work

With painful nicety?”

Antonio then:

“I like the gold - well, yes - but not for meals.

And as my stomach, so my eye and hand,

And inward sense that works along with both,

Have hunger that can never feed on coin.

Who draws a line and satisfies his soul,

Making it crooked where it should be straight?

Antonio Stradivari has an eye

That winces at false work and loves the true.”

Then Naldo: “‘Tis a petty kind of fame

At best, that comes of making violins;

And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go

To purgatory none the less.”

But he:

“‘Twere purgatory here to make them ill;

And for my fame - when any master holds

‘Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,

He will be glad that Stradivari lived,

Made violins, and made them of the best.

The masters only know whose work is good:

They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill

I give them instruments to play upon,

God choosing me to help him.

“What! Were God

at fault for violins, thou absent?”

“Yes;

He were at fault for Stradivari’s work.”

“Why, many hold Giuseppe’s violins

As good as thine.”

“May be: they are different.

His quality declines: he spoils his hand

With over-drinking. But were his the best,

He could not work for two. My work is mine,

And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked

I should rob God - since his is fullest good -

Leaving a blank instead of violins.

I say, not God himself can make man’s best

Without best men to help him.

‘Tis God gives skill,

But not without men’s hands: he could not make

Antonio Stradivari’s violins

Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel.”

ROSE
S

You love the roses - so do I. I wish

The sky would rain down roses, as they rain

From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?

Then all the valley would be pink and white

And soft to tread on. They would fall as light

As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be

Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence; live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

Of miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,

And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds

To vaster issues.

  
So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,

Breathing a beauteous order that controls

With growing sway the growing life of man.

So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, failed and agonized

With widening retrospect that bred despair.

Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,

A vicious parent shaming still its child,

Poor, anxious penitence is quick dissolved;

Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,

Die in the large and charitable air;

And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

That watched to ease the burden of the world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better — saw rather

A worthier image for the sanctuary

And shaped it forth before the multitude,

Divinely human, raising worship so

To higher reverence more mixed with love —

That better self shall live till human Time

Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb

Unread forever.

  
This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow.

  
May I reach

That purest heaven — be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

And in diffusion ever more intense!

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world.

MOTHER AND POET.

Dead! one of them shot by the sea in the east,

And one of them shot in the west by the sea.

Dead! both my boys!
 
When you sit at the feast

  
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,

     
Let none look at me!

Yet I was a poetess only last year,

  
And good at my art for a woman, men said,

But this woman, this, who is agonized here,

  
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head

     
Forever instead.

What art can woman be good at?
 
Oh, vain!

  
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast

With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?

  
Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,

     
And I proud by that test.

What’s art for a woman?
 
To hold on her knees

  
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat

Cling, strangle a little!
 
To sew by degrees,

  
And ‘broider the long clothes and neat little coat!

     
To dream and to dote.

To teach them . . .
 
It stings there.
 
I made them indeed

  
Speak plain the word ‘country.’
 
I taught them, no doubt,

That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.

  
I prated of liberty, rights, and about

     
The tyrant turned out.

And when their eyes flashed, oh, my beautiful eyes!

  
I exulted! nay, let them go forth at the wheels

Of the guns, and denied not.
 
But then the surprise,

 
 
When one sits quite alone!
 
Then one weeps, then one kneels!

     
— God! how the house feels.

At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled

  
With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how

They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled,

 
 
In return would fan off every fly from my brow

     
With their green laurel bough.

Then was triumph at Turin.
 
‘Ancona was free!’

  
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,

With a face pale as stone to say something to me.

  
My Guido was dead!
 
I fell down at his feet

     
While they cheered in the street.

I bore it — friends soothed me: my grief looked sublime

  
As the ransom of Italy.
 
One boy remained

To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time

  
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained

     
To the height he had gained.

And letters still came — shorter, sadder, more strong,

  
Writ now but in one hand.
 
I was not to faint,

One loved me for two . . . would be with me ere long,

  
And ‘Viva Italia’ he died for, our saint,

     
Who forbids our complaint.

My Nanni would add, ‘he was safe and aware

  
Of a presence that turned off the balls . . . was imprest

It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,

  
And how ‘twas impossible, quite dispossessed,

     
To live on for the rest.’

On which, without pause, up the telegraph line,

  
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta — Shot.

Tell his mother.
 
Ah, ah! ‘his,’ ‘their’ mother: not ‘mine.’

  
No voice says ‘my mother’ again to me.
 
What!

     
You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,

  
They drop earth’s affection, conceive not of woe?

I think not.
 
Themselves were too lately forgiven

  
Through that Love and Sorrow which reconciled so

     
The Above and Below.

O Christ of the seven wounds, who look’dst through the dark

  
To the face of thy mother! consider, I pray,

How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,

  
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,

     
And no last word to say!

Both boys dead! but that’s out of nature.
 
We all

  
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

‘Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall,

  
And when Italy’s made, for what end is it done

     
If we have not a son?

Ah! ah! ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?

  
When the fair, wicked queen sits no more at her sport

Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?

  
When your guns of Cavalli, with final retort,

     
Have cut the game short —

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,

  
When your flag takes all Heaven for its white, green, and red,

When you have your country from mountain to sea,

  
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,

     
(And I have my dead)

What then?
 
Do not mock me!
 
Ah, ring your bells low!

  
And burn your lights faintly.
 
My country is there,

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow.

  
My Italy’s there — with my brave civic Pair,

     
To disfranchise despair.

Forgive me.
 
Some women bear children in strength,

  
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn,

But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length

  
Into wail such as this! and we sit on forlorn

     
When the man-child is born.

Dead! one of them shot by the sea in the west!

  
And one of them shot in the east by the sea!

Both! both my boys!
 
If, in keeping the feast,

  
You want a great song for your Italy free,

     
Let none look at me!