Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets. Lafcadio Hearn

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       Little brother!"

       (O Mother, Mary Mother, Hour blessed and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven!) "Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago." "One morn for pride, and three days for woe. Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!) "Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed." "What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, Little brother?" (O Mother, Mary Mother, What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?)

      You must remember that the word "strains" is, nearly always used in the sense of musical tones, and that "wedding-strains" means the joyful music played at a wedding. Thus the ferocity of Helen's mockery becomes apparent, for it was upon the bridal night that the bridegroom was first bewitched; and from the moment of his marriage, therefore, he has been screaming in agony.

      The climax of hatred is in the next stanza. After that the tone begins to reverse, and gradually passes away in the melancholy of eternal despair.

      "She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,

       Sister Helen—

       She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon."

       "Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune,

       Little brother!"

       (O Mother, Mary Mother, Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)

      To "gasp" means to open the mouth in the effort to get breath, as one does in a fit of hysterics, or in time of great agony. "Gasps on the moon" means that she gasps with her face turned up toward the moon. In the last line we have the words "blithe tune" used in the same tone of terrible irony as that with which the word "wedding-strain" was used in the preceding stanza. "Blithe" means "merry." Helen is angry because the other woman has fainted; having fainted, she has become for the moment physically incapable of suffering. But Helen thinks that her soul must be conscious and suffering as much as ever; therefore she wishes that she could hear the suffering of the soul, since she cannot longer hear the outcries of the body.

      "They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow,

       Sister Helen,

       And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow."

       "Let it turn whiter than winter-snow,

       Little brother!"

       (O Mother, Mary Mother, Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)

      The allusion is to the physiological fact that intense moral pain, or terrible fear, sometimes turns the hair of a young person suddenly white.

      "O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,

       Sister Helen!

       More loud than the vesper-chime it fell."

       "No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,

       Little brother!"

       (O Mother, Mary Mother, His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!) "Alas, but I fear the heavy sound, Sister Helen; Is it in the sky or in the ground?" "Say, have they turned their horses round, Little brother?" (O Mother, Mary Mother, What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?) "They have raised the old man from his knee, Sister Helen, And they ride in silence hastily." "More fast the naked soul doth flee, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!) "Flank to flank are the three steeds gone, Sister Helen, But the lady's dark steed goes alone." "And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!) "Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill, Sister Helen, And weary sad they look by the hill." "But he and I are sadder still, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!) "See, see, the wax has dropped from its place, Sister Helen, And the flames are winning up apace!" "Yet here they burn but for a space, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!) "Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd, Sister Helen? Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?" "A soul that's lost as mine is lost, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

      Notice how the action naturally dies off into despair. From the beginning until very nearly the close, we had an uninterrupted crescendo, as we should say in music—that is, a gradual intensification of the passion expressed. With the stroke of the death-bell the passion subsides. The revenge is satisfied, the irreparable wrong is done to avenge a wrong, and with the entrance of the ghost the whole consequence of the act begins to appear within the soul of the actor. I know of nothing more terrible in literature than this poem, as expressing certain phases of human feeling, and nothing more intensely true. The probability or improbability of the incidents is of no more consequence than is the unreality of the witch-belief. It is enough that such beliefs once existed to make us know that the rest is not only possible but certain. For a time we are really subjected to the spell of a mediæval nightmare.

      As we have seen, the above poem is mainly a subjective study. As an objective study, "The White Ship" shows us an equal degree of power, appealing to the visual faculty. We cannot read it all, nor is this necessary. A few examples will be sufficient. This ballad is in distichs, and has a striking refrain. The story is founded upon historical fact. The son and heir of the English king Henry I, together with his sister and many knights and ladies, was drowned on a voyage from France to England, and it is said that the king was never again seen to smile after he had heard the news. Rossetti imagines the story told by a survivor—a butcher employed on the ship, the lowest menial on board. Such a man would naturally feel very differently toward the prince from others of the train, and would criticise him honestly from the standpoint of simple morality.

      Eighteen years till then he had seen,

       And the devil's dues in him were eighteen.

      The peasant thus estimates the ruler who breaks the common laws of God and man. Nevertheless he is just in his own way, and can appreciate unselfishness even in a man whom he hates.

      He was a Prince of lust and pride;

       He showed no grace till the hour he died.

      … . …

       God only knows where his soul did wake,

       But I saw him die for his sister's sake.

      It is a simple mind of this sort that can best tell a tragical story; and the butcher's story is about the most perfect thing imaginable of its kind. Here also we have one admirable bit of subjective work, the narration of the butcher's experience in the moment of drowning. I suppose you all know that when one is just about to die, or in danger of sudden death, the memory becomes extraordinarily vivid, and things long forgotten flash into the mind as if painted by lightning, together with voices of the past.

      I Berold was down in the sea;

       Passing strange though the thing may be,

       Of dreams then known I remember me.

      Not dreams in the sense of visions of sleep, but images of memory.

      Blithe is the shout on Harfleur's strand

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