III. THE TRAGEDIES—;I

O Victor King, and whenThou raisest me again,For me no fame;Just white amid the whiter souls,Efface me ’mid the shining stoles,Lost in a lovely brood,And multitude:My soul even as the MaidCophetua arrayedIn samite fine;And set her by Him on His throne,O Christ, what homage can atoneFor this caprice in TheeTo worship me?

O Victor King, and whenThou raisest me again,For me no fame;Just white amid the whiter souls,Efface me ’mid the shining stoles,Lost in a lovely brood,And multitude:

My soul even as the MaidCophetua arrayedIn samite fine;And set her by Him on His throne,O Christ, what homage can atoneFor this caprice in TheeTo worship me?

QUI RENOVAT JUVENTUTEM MEAM

Make me grow young again,Grow young enough to die,That, in a joy unseared of pain,I may my Lover, loved, attain,With that fresh sighEternityGives to the young to breathe about the heart,Until their trust in youth-time shall depart.Let me be young as whenTo die was past my thought:And earth with straight, immortal men,And women deathless to my ken,Cast fear to naught!Let faith be fraught,My Bridegroom, with such gallant love, its rangeSimply surpasses every halt of change!Let me come to Thee young,When Thou dost challengeCome!With all my marvelling dreams unsung,Their promise by first passion stung,Though chary, dumb....Thou callestCome!Let me rush to Thee when I pass,Keen as a child across the grass!

Let me be young as whenTo die was past my thought:And earth with straight, immortal men,And women deathless to my ken,Cast fear to naught!Let faith be fraught,My Bridegroom, with such gallant love, its rangeSimply surpasses every halt of change!

Let me come to Thee young,When Thou dost challengeCome!With all my marvelling dreams unsung,Their promise by first passion stung,Though chary, dumb....Thou callestCome!Let me rush to Thee when I pass,Keen as a child across the grass!

Mystic Trees, the last book which Michael gave to the world, is more strictly theological than Henry’s. Always less the philosopher than her fellow, she took her conversion to Catholicism, in externals at least, more strenuously. She developed, for example, a proselytizing habit which a little tried the patience of her friends, especially those who remembered her as a joyful pagan. That her Christian zeal was as joyful, to her, as her paganism had been did not much console them, or soften the onslaught of her blithe attacks. Indeed, it occasionally led her to acts which she herself afterward repented of. Thus there is a comic touch in the spectacle of Michael, truly English as she was, urging upon Ireland, in the person of a poor old Irishwoman, every benefit but that one which the old woman craved for. For Michael went to great pains to help her, and to get her placed in a home, and she subsequently wrote to a friend, “I amso deeply regretting my part in putting an Irishwoman in a Nazareth house: their love of freedom is so great.” The little parable holds Michael’s character almost in entirety—;impulsive, eager, generous, wilful, rash; and then deeply penitent and rushing to make noble amends.

But that over-zeal had a significance for her artistic life too. She wrote in a letter to another friend, “I will pray for Orzie’s conversion:O Louie, be religious! You cannot ‘laugh deep’ unless you are.” In the phrase I have italicized Michael is surely confessing, though it may be without intent to do so, that her religion is now awaking in her the same ecstasy which had formerly been awakened by the poetic impulse. To herself it seemed that she had suffered an enormous change, and that she was no longer the old Michael. And it is true that for a time the tragic inspiration of her art was suspended. Perhaps that follows of necessity from the nature of the Christian doctrine, its hope, its humility, its vicariousness, and its consolation. Yet the moment one turns to these religious lyrics one finds the same ecstasy with which the earlier Michael had adored the beauty of the world and had sung the love of Sappho. So, too, in the first work which Michael Field had produced,Callirrhoë, thetheme is none other than the worship of the god by love and sacrifice. That, in fact, is the meaning implied in nearly all her poetry, as it was the motive force of all her life; and the only change that has occurred when we reach, withMystic Trees, the end, is that the name of the god is altered. But whichever god possessed her had the power to make Michael “laugh deep” in a rapture which, whether of delight or rage or sorrow, was always an intense spiritual joy—;which is simply to say, to evoke the poet in her. The exaltation of spirit which inCallirrhoësaid of Dionysos “He came to bring Life, more abundant life,” and declared “Wert thou lute to love, There were a new song of the heaven and earth,” is the same as that which wrote to a friend in early days, “We are with the nun in her cell as with the pagan at the Dionysos’ feast”; and which affirmed in a letter to another friend that she welcomed inspiration from whatever source, “whether the wind and fire sweep down on us from the mighty realms of the unconscious or from the nostrils of a living God, Jehovah, or Apollo, or Dionysos.”

But, as we said, to herself she seemed a new creature; she had found a treasure and must run to share it, even as she had burned to impart the Bacchic fire thirty years before.Thence came the scheme ofMystic Trees, which, as Father Vincent McNabb suggested to me, seems to be unique in religious poetry. The book contains a cycle of poems, designed to express the mysteries of the Roman Catholic faith as they are celebrated in the seasons of the Church. The “Trees” of the title are the Cedar and the Hyssop, used as an image of the Incarnation: the great Cedar, the Son of God, becoming the little Hyssop, which, in the lovely cover-design by Mr Charles Ricketts, stands on either side of the Cross with bowed head.

The book is divided into three parts, with a small group of poems added at the end, which Michael wrote while Henry was dying. In the first part, called “Hyssop,” the story of the Redemption is unfolded in a series of poems representing the life and death of Christ. It is possible to quote only two or three of the incidents thus treated, but we may take first this one describing the presentation of the infant Christ in the Temple:

THE PRESENTATION

They say it is a KingHis Temple entering!The great veil doth not rockWith gust and earthquake shock:But all the air is stilledAs at a law fulfilled.Dreams from their graves rise up—;Melchizidek with cup;Abraham most glad of heart,A little way apart.Mary, to keep God’s word,Brings Babe and turtle-bird.Lo! Simeon draweth in,And doth his song begin!Great doom is for her Son,And Mary’s heart undone.Oh, Simeon is blest,Christ in his arms is prest!Mary’s sweet doves are slain,She takes her Babe again:And in her heart she knowsHe will be slain as those:And on her journey homeShe feels God’s kingdom come.

They say it is a KingHis Temple entering!

The great veil doth not rockWith gust and earthquake shock:

But all the air is stilledAs at a law fulfilled.

Dreams from their graves rise up—;Melchizidek with cup;

Abraham most glad of heart,A little way apart.

Mary, to keep God’s word,Brings Babe and turtle-bird.

Lo! Simeon draweth in,And doth his song begin!

Great doom is for her Son,And Mary’s heart undone.

Oh, Simeon is blest,Christ in his arms is prest!

Mary’s sweet doves are slain,She takes her Babe again:

And in her heart she knowsHe will be slain as those:

And on her journey homeShe feels God’s kingdom come.

Passing some intervening poems, we take from the same sequence these two membersof a group of imagined incidents on the evening of the Crucifixion:

SUNDOWN ON CALVARY

Where art Thou, wandering Bird?Thy sweet voice is not heardOn this wild day,When the Father mourns the Son,When the Son no Father hath,And Thou hast but chaos for Thy path.The Father keeps the Sepulchre,The Son lies quiet there.Where is thy place?Where rest in a world undone?Holy Ghost, a multitudeGuards the Cross; there hardly canst Thou brood.To the dark waters haste,Spread pinions on the waste;There breathe, there play;Forsake the Wood!There is no resting-place for TheeOn this lovely, noble, blighted Tree.

Where art Thou, wandering Bird?Thy sweet voice is not heardOn this wild day,When the Father mourns the Son,When the Son no Father hath,And Thou hast but chaos for Thy path.

The Father keeps the Sepulchre,The Son lies quiet there.Where is thy place?Where rest in a world undone?Holy Ghost, a multitudeGuards the Cross; there hardly canst Thou brood.

To the dark waters haste,Spread pinions on the waste;There breathe, there play;Forsake the Wood!There is no resting-place for TheeOn this lovely, noble, blighted Tree.

. . . . .

But lo, it is sundown;The bodies taken down,Quiet the hill:The Tree drips blood on the path:And, the jolted beams above,Croons, calls across the evening-winds, a Dove!

A FRIDAY NIGHT

The Questioner“Lo, you have wounds and you are speeding fast!The light is gone!Have you no cloak to screen you from the blast?It is not well!”The Answerer“Show me the way to Hell,I must pass on.”The Questioner“There is indeed hard by a little gate:But there thou shalt not go.Thou art too fair;Golden thy hair doth blow.”The Answerer“There I must go:I have an errand there for those that wait,Have waited for me long.”I showed the gate.Now is He shut within, and I am foundAlone with blood-stains on the ground.Would I could go down to that dimMurk of the shades to those that wait for Him!

The Questioner“Lo, you have wounds and you are speeding fast!The light is gone!Have you no cloak to screen you from the blast?It is not well!”

The Answerer“Show me the way to Hell,I must pass on.”

The Questioner“There is indeed hard by a little gate:But there thou shalt not go.Thou art too fair;Golden thy hair doth blow.”

The Answerer“There I must go:I have an errand there for those that wait,Have waited for me long.”

I showed the gate.

Now is He shut within, and I am foundAlone with blood-stains on the ground.Would I could go down to that dimMurk of the shades to those that wait for Him!

We may take from the second part of the book, called “Cedar” and dedicated to the Virgin, two short pieces which help to illustrate the sweetness of this poetry, its tenderness, itsintimacy of approach to divine things, and its innocence.

CALLED EARLY

It is a morning very bright;Through all the hours of the long starry nightMary hath not been sleeping: for delightShe hath kept watch through the starry night.Joseph comes to her quietly:“A journey I must take with thee,Mary, my wife, from Galilee.”He saw that she had wept,And all her secret kept.

It is a morning very bright;Through all the hours of the long starry nightMary hath not been sleeping: for delightShe hath kept watch through the starry night.

Joseph comes to her quietly:“A journey I must take with thee,Mary, my wife, from Galilee.”He saw that she had wept,And all her secret kept.

UNDER THE STAR

Mary is weary and heavy-ladenAs a travailing woman may be.She calleth to Joseph wearily,“At the inn there is no room for me,Oh, seek me a little room!”Joseph returns. “In a cattle-shedHard by, I will make for thee thy bed—;Dost fear to go?O Mary, look, that star overhead!”And Mary smiled—;“Where the cattle lowMy Son shall be loosed from the womb.”

Mary is weary and heavy-ladenAs a travailing woman may be.She calleth to Joseph wearily,“At the inn there is no room for me,Oh, seek me a little room!”

Joseph returns. “In a cattle-shedHard by, I will make for thee thy bed—;Dost fear to go?O Mary, look, that star overhead!”And Mary smiled—;“Where the cattle lowMy Son shall be loosed from the womb.”

From the third part, which is called “Sward” and therefore is obviously dedicated to ordinaryfolk, we need take only the little poem which follows. But we ought to remember the occasion of it, that Michael had been compelled to go alone to Mass because Henry was too ill to accompany her.

Lovingly I turn me downFrom this church, St Philip’s crown,To the leafy street where dwellThe good folk of Arundel.Lovingly I look betweenRoof and roof, to meadows green,To the cattle by the wall,To the place where sea-birds call,Where the sky more closely dips,And, perchance, there may be ships:God have pity on us all!

Lovingly I turn me downFrom this church, St Philip’s crown,To the leafy street where dwellThe good folk of Arundel.

Lovingly I look betweenRoof and roof, to meadows green,To the cattle by the wall,To the place where sea-birds call,

Where the sky more closely dips,And, perchance, there may be ships:God have pity on us all!

Michael said, in a letter to a friend, “Mystic Treesis for the young”; and one perceives the truth of that. But I do not think that her word ‘young’ means only ‘youthful,’ although children would probably understand the poems readily, and a certain kind of child would delight in them. Nor do I think that they were written with any special audience in mind. But the poet, in reading them afterward, recognized their childlike qualities of simplicity and directness, and their young faith and enthusiasm. Did she realize, one asks oneself, how she hadin them recaptured her own youth and its lyrical fervour? She was nearly seventy years old when she wrote them, which is a wonder comparable to Mr Hardy’s spring-songs in winter. And though we may accept, if we like, the dubious dictum of the psycho-analyst that every poet is a case of arrested development, that does not make any less the marvel that in old age, after the lyric fire had subsided and the sufferings of her fellow had destroyed the joy of her life, she should have written such poems. For here it is certainly relevant to remember that at this time Henry was dying, and that Michael herself was suffering, silently, the torture of cancer. “Michael has a secret woe of her own,” was all that she permitted herself to reveal, in a letter to her closest woman friend. But so stoical was her courage, and so composed her manner, that the hint was not taken, and no one guessed that she too was ravaged by the disease. Before her intimates, as before the world, she kept a cheerful face, in terror lest her fellow should come to know of her state. Her doctor knew, of course, and Father Vincent McNabb. But they were under a bond to spare Henry the added anguish of knowing the truth, and the bond was faithfully kept. Not until her fellow was dead, when Michael had, in fact, laid her in her coffin, didshe break silence to the friend who was with her in that ordeal. Two days later a hæmorrhage made it impossible to conceal her condition any longer. “God kept her secret,” said Father McNabb, “until the moment when it was no longer necessary”; and without disloyalty to the godhead of the heroic human spirit, we may accept that word from one who brought consolation and devoted friendship to the poets’ last sad days.

It was, then, during the closing weeks of Henry’s life, and while Michael was suffering that sorrow and great bodily pain, that she wroteMystic Trees. Yet the poems manifestly bear within them a deep creative joy, and breathe sometimes a holy gaiety of spirit; and it is only at the end of the book, in a tiny section containing four short poems, that the poet allows her anguish of body and mind the relief of expression. For that brief space, so rightly named “A Little While,” the inspiration to “laugh deep” failed, and stark tragedy overwhelmed her.

BELOVED, MY GLORY

Beloved, my glory in thee is not ceased,Whereas, as thou art waning, forests wane:Unmoved, as by the victim is the priest,I pass the world’s great altitudes of pain.But when the stars are gathered for a feast,Or shadows threaten on a radiant plain,Or many golden cornfields wave amain,Oh then, as one from a filled shuttle weaves,My spirit grieves.

SHE IS SINGING TO THEE,DOMINE!

She is singing to Thee,Domine!Dost hear her now?She is singing to Thee from a burning throat,And melancholy as the owl’s love-note;She is singing to Thee from the utmost boughOf the tree of Golgotha where it is bare,And the fruit torn from it that fruited there;She is singing.... Canst Thou stop the strain,The homage of such pain?Domine, stoop down to her again!

CAPUT TUUM UT CARMELUS

I watch the arch of her head,As she turns away from me....I would I were with the dead,Drowned with the dead at sea,All the waves rocking over me!As St Peter turned and fledFrom the Lord, because of sin,I look on that lovely head;And its majesty doth winGrief in my heart as for sin.Oh, what can Death have to doWith a curve that is drawn so fine,With a curve that is drawn as trueAs the mountain’s crescent line?...Let me be hid where the dust falls fine!

I watch the arch of her head,As she turns away from me....I would I were with the dead,Drowned with the dead at sea,All the waves rocking over me!

As St Peter turned and fledFrom the Lord, because of sin,I look on that lovely head;And its majesty doth winGrief in my heart as for sin.

Oh, what can Death have to doWith a curve that is drawn so fine,With a curve that is drawn as trueAs the mountain’s crescent line?...Let me be hid where the dust falls fine!

THE important fact concerning Michael Field is, of course, that she is atragicpoet. The truth may seem too obvious to need stating, when we glance down the list of her works and observe that of the twenty-seven complete plays created within thirty years every one has a tragic theme. But the attributes of a tragic poet are not necessarily revealed in the externals of his art: more than another he is difficult to recognize by his theme, form, and manner. If he could be confidently measured by a rule and appraised on a formula, many anomalies might be drawn to our net, including the urbane and essentially comic spirit of the author ofCato, and (not using too fine a mesh in the net) the mere dramaturgic facility of the author ofHerod. With such as these, behind the formula of tragedy nothing remains—;no tragic vision, no sense of inimical and warring forces, no terror at their subtle and formidable power, no pity for human creatures doomed to live. But surely it is in these imponderable things that the tragic poet is made manifest, whether they take the garment of tragedy or, as often with Thomas Hardy, gleam sombrely in a lyric. It is in possessing them, and possessing them intensely, with a fierce dramatic impulse drivingthem, that the greatness of Michael Field consists.

Yet, once assured of the nature of our poet’s genius, the mere data of manner become significant. All the plays are tragedies, some of them in Elizabethan form, of five-act length. The very titles are eloquent. Michael Field took thought for the naming of her plays; and although she was often content to adopt simply the name of the protagonist, that is always resonant. ThusAttila,Borgia,Mariamne,Deirdre,Tristan,Fair Rosamundare words with solemn echoes; but, more than that, they indicate the vast issues to which this mind was drawn, and suggest the range of which it was capable. Sometimes a phrase was chosen for a title, asThe Tragic Mary. This was lifted, with acknowledgments, from Walter Pater; and no apology is needed on that score, for surely it is no minor part of a poet’s equipment to know how “to take his own wherever he finds it.” In that senseThe Race of Leavesmay be said to have been lifted too—;from Homer and Marcus Aurelius;The World at Auctionpossibly from Gibbon or some much earlier historian, andIn the Name of Timecertainly from Shakespeare.

A complete list of the plays, with their dates, will be found in the Bibliography at the endof this book. There are, as I said, twenty-seven of them; and they were wrought between the years 1881 and 1911. The last four were not published until after the poet’s death; but of theseIn the Name of Time, which did not appear until 1919, was being written so long before as 1890; andA Question of Memorywas first printed for the actors when the play was performed at the Independent Theatre in October 1893.

Besides complete plays, however, there is a masque calledNoontide Branches(printed at Oxford by the Daniel Press in 1899), which has charming associations with the late Provost of Worcester and Mrs Daniel. And there is a trialogue calledStephaniawhich was published in 1892. Indeed, the bibliographical interest of this poet’s work is very great, and would touch the history of several private printing-presses during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. ThusFair Rosamundand the poet’s Roman trilogy (The Race of Leaves,The World at Auction, andJulia Domna) were issued from the Vale Press of Mr Charles Ricketts, and nobly decorated by him. His border forFair Rosamundis more than a lovely symbol; it expresses with the last fine touch of perception the wild-rose exquisiteness of the spirit of the play.The Tragic Marywas printed atthe Chiswick Press in 1890: its binding was designed by Professor Selwyn Image, as also was the frontispiece ofStephania.Whym Chow, the rarest of the Michael Field books and the most curious in content, can hardly be said to have been published at all. It was printed in 1914 at the Eragny Press of Mr and Mrs Lucien Pissarro. Only twenty-seven copies were printed, and of these perhaps not more than half a dozen were given to intimate friends who might be trusted, if not to understand the poems (for they are extravagant and obscure), at least to sympathize with the occasion of them.

For all of their books, with one exception, the poets took pains to secure a comely form and adequate binding, often of white vellum. Even the group which appeared anonymously and in temporary covers between 1905 and 1911 (Borgia,A Question of Memory,The Tragedy of Pardon,Diane,The Accuser,A Messiah,Tristan) were printed with distinction on good paper. That the poets had sufficient means and leisure to indulge their taste may rejoice the bibliophile; but there is no doubt that the cost of books so produced was too high to gain them a large public. At one time they themselves suspected this, and experimented with a cheaper form. Hence the one exception (Brutus Ultor) to their practice. This work was published in1886 as a small paper-covered booklet at the price of ninepence. Michael wanted, in her own phrase, “to reach the Demos”; and it is possible that she did so. But the Demos did not respond sufficiently to cause her to break her rule a second time.

Here, then, is a very large body of poetic drama, engaged upon subjects drawn from the literature and the history of many countries and many epochs. How to arrive at the significance of a total so extensive and various? A coherent impression of it would be difficult in any case; and within these narrow limits it may well be impossible. There is, however, one helpful fact, for the tragedies divide themselves almost automatically into three groups. The division is, indeed, so simple as almost to be suspect, and so definite as almost to be mechanical. It corresponds, too, in the most approved manner, with the early, middle, and later periods of the poet’s life. Thus there are, in progressive order from the beginning of her career, her English, Latin, and Eastern periods. The first deals with themes from Scottish chronicles and English history, and extends from 1881 to about 1890. In the second group, published from 1892 to 1903, the subjects are mainly drawn from Roman history; and the third, published from 1905 until the end, hasfor its outstanding features two plays of a projected trilogy from Josephus, another calledA Messiah, and one which handles an Abyssinian love-tragedy.

Yet these categories are not quite so clear-cut, after all. One soon finds plays which do not correspond to the order to which they are supposed to belong, and discovers, on investigation, that they were not written in that order. But one makes at the same time the much more satisfying discovery that there are, within each group, affinities which hold the plays by a stronger bond than the arbitrary likeness of theme. Thus in the English period, the stage of the poet’s grave and strenuous youth, ideas are a motive force. This body of drama, if too dynamic to be ‘high-brow,’ may be justly defined as ‘intellectual,’ with a strange pouring of the new wine of modern thought into the old bottles of Elizabethan form. But with the approach of the Latin period the centre of power shifts from ideas to art. Form is now as important as, or more so than matter; and the two cannot be separated. The value of the work now is in its unity of beauty and truth. But when the last phase has come, and tragic vision has ranged far enough among the elements of its universe to make a final synthesis, it wheels back to close the cycle uponthe idea of destiny. Vast passions are now the poet’s theme. Destiny, consisting in some overmastering elemental force, is now her inspiration. But it is no external, supernatural, or superhuman force. It subsists in nature, and resides within humanity: it belongs inalienably to the stuff of which man is made: it is the tragic shadow of life itself.

Coming at once to the English group, it is amusing to find that this starts off with a Greek play! That is to say, the earliest work published by the poets as Michael Field,Callirrhoë, has a Greek theme. It is a fact which at first glance threatens to embarrass our nice clear categories; but we remember in time that there is something almost absurdly native in the familiar spectacle of a Greek subject in the hands of a young English poet. Of course! What else, what other, could one expect?—;at least down to the epoch of yesterday to which our poet belonged. Was not this dependence upon the classics largely responsible for the revolt of contemporary poets—;as witness Anna Wickham:

We are outwearied with Persephone,Rather than her, we’ll sing Reality.

The story of Callirrhoë comes from Pausanias; but our poet has modified the originalby basing the motive of the plot upon the origin of the worship of Dionysos, which, as she admits, must have been much earlier. The anachronism is deliberate, however, and does not vitiate the theme, which is already un-Greek in its preoccupation with romantic passion. For Callirrhoë, a maiden of Calydon, is beloved to distraction by the Dionysiac priest Coresus. She loves him in return (or at least our poet makes us suspect so), but will not marry him because she cannot worship the new god. He thereupon calls down a curse upon her city, and the people begin to sicken and die of the plague. They send to consult the oracle at Dodona, and it is decreed that Callirrhoë must be sacrificed to Dionysos unless some one else will die in her stead. No one offers, however, and she goes to the altar prepared to die. Coresus makes ready to slay her, but when the moment comes to strike he kills himself instead of her. His sacrifice convinces Callirrhoë of the truth of his religion. Now that he is dead she realizes that she had loved him, and she kills herself as an offering to his god.

The play is a living work despite its ancient theme, its rather cumbrous machinery, and its mixed elements. But apart from certain passages of great imaginative beauty, its chief interest lies in the fact that its motives—;love, self-sacrifice, enthusiasm—;were the ruling motives of the poets’ lives and a frequent theme of their art. Therein, of course, lies the significance of their modification of the old story. Love they always saw as the greatest good of life, self-sacrifice as the dearest end of life, and enthusiasm (here enters Dionysos) as the means to life’s noblest expression. In this last element the work remains Greek, though Englished in so much else. Michael was, in that sense, a Thracian born, and she had compelled a peace with Apollo. She infused the play with the spirit of Dionysiac worship because that spirit was her own. And when one remembers the spiritual truth that was implicit in the cult of Dionysos, its contribution to the world’s growing belief in immortality, and its connexion with the origins of tragedy, there is peculiar appropriateness in such a subject for Michael Field’s first essay in drama. Thus the key-pieces to the poet’s meaning are found where Coresus is pleading with Callirrhoë for his love and his religion. He has begged her to join the Maenads’ revel, and so set her spirit free; and he declares of his god:

He came to bringLife, more abundant life, into a worldThat doled its joys as a starved city dolesIts miserable scraps of mummying bread.He came to gladden and exalt, all suchMust suffer....Callirrhoë.... Of old the godsGave culture by the harp, the helm, the plough,Not by the ivy-wand.Coresus.Seems it so strangeThat Semele’s sublime audacityShould be the origin of life urbane?We must be fools; all art is ecstasy,All literature expression of intenseEnthusiasm: be beside yourself.If a god violate your shrinking soul,Suffer sublimely.Callirrhoë.Yet I hold it true,Divinity oft comes with quiet foot.Coresus.To give a moment’s counsel or to guardFrom instant peril. When a god forsakesOlympus to infuse divinityIn man’s mean soul, he must confound, incite,O’erwhelm, intoxicate, break up fresh pathsTo unremembered sympathies. Nay, more,Accompany me further in my thought—;Callirrhoë, I tell you there are hoursWhen the Hereafter comes and touches meO’ the cheek.

. . . . .

Callirrhoë.I tremble at your god, for terribleIn wrath I fear him; though you speak him fair.

. . . . .

Coresus.Turn not away, Callirrhoë; by goadsThe ox-souled must be driven; yield responseTo Heaven’s desire of thee; love humanly.Love is the frenzy that unfolds ourselves;Before it seize us we are ignorantOf our own power as reed-bed of the pipe.The rushes sang not; from Pan’s burning lipsSyrinx sucked music. Wert thou lute to love,There were a new song of the heaven and earth.Callirrhoë.... I will not yield my loveTo Bacchic priest....Coresus.... As unseasoned woodThat smokes and will not kindle is flung byFor any refuse purpose, while the trainOf torchlight sinuous winds among the hills,A starry serpent, so art thou cast out,An apathetic slave of commonplace,Sluggish and irreceptive of true life,From all high company of heavenly things.Go to your home.Callirrhoë.O, Heaven shelter it!Act I, Scene 3

Callirrhoë.O, Heaven shelter it!Act I, Scene 3

There is much that one would like to quote from this play, including the faun scenes (written by Henry) that have already been adopted into certain anthologies. Machaon, too, sceptic and humorist, might be used to confound the dullards who said that Michael Field had no humour. There is salt enough in him to give the whole tragedy another flavour, and he breaks at least one of the precious unities. His rationalism is away in a much colder region (he usually speaks in prose); andhis conversion to the cult at the end is out of character. But though one may not linger on him, one must stop for a moment at Henry’s faun song. For here, very delicately and quietly, a greater theme is stated. And if we seek in this first work for an early glimpse of the larger vision which the poets attained at last, seeing the tragic element of life as life’s inescapable shadow, it will be found, quite unself-conscious, in this playful song.

I dance and dance! Another faun,A black one, dances on the lawn.He moves with me, and when I liftMy heels, his feet directly shift.I can’t out-dance him, though I try;He dances nimbler than I.I toss my head, and so does he;What tricks he dares to play on me!I touch the ivy in my hair;Ivy he has and finger there.The spiteful thing to mock me so!I will out-dance him! Ho! Ho! Ho!Act III, Scene 6

Fair Rosamund, which appeared in the same volume withCallirrhoë, possesses equal dramatic power with greater control and a clearer sense of direction. The play is built with more economy; the movement is quicker, and the lyrical passages really belong to the setting andare not simply interludes to provide relief. Of the works of the first group,Fair Rosamundis perhaps the most perfect artistically, which may have been the reason why the poets chose it for reproduction in the Vale Press. But just because it is so balanced, and entirely free from afterthought, it is not fully typical of this group. We pass it, therefore, with two short quotations, and in addition only this fragment from Rosamund’s farewell to the King, to illustrate how our poet will sometimes gather infinity into a gem-like phrase:

Dear, my lord,There are some thoughtsThat through this stormy weather of my soulCannot now travel toward you.Act II, Scene 5

In Act I, Scene 3, spies have just informed Queen Elinor of the King’s love for Rosamund, and of the place where he has hidden her:

Q. Elinor.Thank God for boys!To have reared a treasonous brood from his own blood,To have it at my call!

[To the King, who has entered.

I tell you to your face, that boy of ours,Crowned Henry, has my love, because he hasMy bridegroom’s eyes; but for the rest, my lord,You’re old to think of love: when you were youngYou thought not of it.K. Henry.I embraced your lands,Not you.Q. Elinor.Plantagenet, you wronged yourselfAs you had made the day and night your foe,And rousedThe violated seasons to conferEach his peculiar catastropheOf death or pestilence.—;Embraced my lands!I’ll shatter youAs Nature shatters—;you as impotentAs the uprooted tree to lash the earth....Embraced my lands.—;Ah, I forget myself,The loveless are insensate to presage;’Tis in calamity’s harsh stubble-fieldThey learn to suffer. I’ll be harvester,And sickle your ripe joys.

K. Henry.I embraced your lands,Not you.

Q. Elinor.Plantagenet, you wronged yourselfAs you had made the day and night your foe,And rousedThe violated seasons to conferEach his peculiar catastropheOf death or pestilence.—;Embraced my lands!I’ll shatter youAs Nature shatters—;you as impotentAs the uprooted tree to lash the earth....Embraced my lands.—;Ah, I forget myself,The loveless are insensate to presage;’Tis in calamity’s harsh stubble-fieldThey learn to suffer. I’ll be harvester,And sickle your ripe joys.

The last scene is in Rosamund’s room at Woodstock. It is night, and she is waiting for the King. But Queen Elinor has found the clue to the labyrinth, and is at this moment approaching the secret bower, intent upon killing her rival:

Rosamund.White moon, art thou the only visitant?Thou lookst like death!Dost glisten through the treesMy Henry bows his plumes to in the gloom?He comes to-night; for good Sir Topaz said,“My lady, put you on the crimson gownThe King had wrought for you, and ask no more,But trust an old man’s word.And be you ready.” It’s a silver night;I’ll put me out apparel. How blood redBurn the dark folds! I cannot put it on;And yet I will. My lute; what is’t I want—;God, or the King?

[Sings.

Love doth never knowWhy it is beloved,And to ask were treason;Let the wonder grow!Were its hopes removed,Were itself disprovedBy cold reason,In its happy season,Love would be beloved.

No; it hurts sharper. I must just sit downOn the edge of the bed, and comb my hair and wait—;

. . . . .

I cannot think at all. How beautifulThis gold made silver in the moonlight! What!Would Heaven age me for my Love? Let’s lookIn the mirror. Rosamund, you’re worshipful.[Starting back.] ’Tis thus,Even thus, he swore that he should come to me.His very words! The prophecy’s fulfilled,—;I’ll comb my hair down to my very feet.A step!—;my heart, some patience. Henry, speak;Bid it take courage! [Enter Elinor.] God! the Queen!Q. Elinor.The Queen, who’ll give you access to your God;The wife, who’ll doom the leman.Act II, Scene 8

Q. Elinor.The Queen, who’ll give you access to your God;The wife, who’ll doom the leman.Act II, Scene 8

But coming now to the plays which are completely representative of the poets in this period, we may glance atThe Father’s Tragedy,William Rufus,Canute the Great,The Cup of Water, andThe Tragic Mary. These, with three others, appeared within the dates 1885 and 1890—;not a poor record of five years’ work, and one which reminds us that our poets laboured at their art as only the genuine artist does. They drew the themes of these plays mainly from English history and Scottish chronicles; and they selected them, all except that ofThe Tragic Mary, ultimately for an idea that lay behind them. Obviously, therefore, this work is not entirely disinterested art: it anticipates, to that extent, the problem-play, the intellectual drama, and even (so far as concerns his influence in this country) Ibsen. Indeed, a remarkable aspect of the group is the way in which, despite its romantic tone and its Elizabethan form, it yet foreshadows the movement that English drama was about to make toward a ‘realistic’ presentment of life. There may be a piquancyin thinking of Michael Field the romantic as the forerunner of Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr John Galsworthy: and it is not certain which would be the less pleased at the comparison, ancestress or descendants. The latter, following a poetic age with inevitable comedy—;inevitable if only from reaction—;were compelled to decline upon prose as their medium; and the great merit of Michael Field is that, belonging to the poetic age and possessed of the poet’s ardour and imagination, she yet kept near enough to the actual world to see the evils that existed there. Happily removed from them by circumstance and temperament, she yet kept her eyes clear and her sympathies alert. Her prologue toThe Father’s Tragedyis apt to this point, for there she warns

Back to Index Next