Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets. Lafcadio Hearn

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СКАЧАТЬ the cards used are dealt—that is, given to the players—by a beautiful woman, usually a woman not of the virtuous kind. The poet, entering such a place, watches the game for a time in silence, and utters his artistic admiration of the beauty of the card-dealer, merely as he would admire a costly picture or a statue of gold. Then suddenly comes to him the thought that this woman, and the silent players, and the game, are but symbols of eternal fact. The game is no longer to his eyes a mere game of cards; it is the terrible game of Life, the struggle for wealth and vain pleasures. The woman is no longer a woman, but Fate; she plays the game of Death against Life, and those who play with her must lose. However, the allusions in this poem would require for easy understanding considerable familiarity with the terms of card-play and the names of the cards. If you know these, I think you will find this poem a very solemn and beautiful composition.

      Much more modern is "Jenny," a poem which greatly startled the public when it was first published. People were inclined for the moment to be shocked; then they studied and admired; finally they praised unlimitedly, and the poem deserved all praise. But the subject was a very daring one to put before a public so prudish as the English. For Jenny is a prostitute. Nevertheless the prudish public gladly accepted this wonderful psychological study, which no other poet of the nineteenth century, except perhaps Browning, could have attempted.

      The plan of the poem is as follows: A young man, perhaps the poet himself, finds at some public place of pleasure a woman of the town, who pleases him, and he accompanies her to her residence. Although the young man is perhaps imprudent in seeking the company of such a person, he is only doing what tens of thousands of young men are apt to do without thinking. He represents, we might say, youth in general. But there is a difference between him and the average youth in one respect—he thinks. On reaching the girl's room, he is already in a thoughtful mood; and when she falls asleep upon his knees, tired with the dancing and banqueting of the evening, he does not think of awakening her. He begins to meditate. He looks about the room and notices the various objects in it, simple enough in themselves, but strangely significant by their relation to such a time and place—a vase of flowers, a little clock ticking, a bird in a cage. The flowers make him think of the symbolism of flowers—lilies they are, but faded. Lilies, the symbol of purity, in Jenny's room! But once she herself was a lily—now also morally faded. Then the clock, ticking out its minutes, hours—what strange hours it has ticked out! He looks at the sleeping girl again, but with infinite pity. She dreams; what is she dreaming of? To wake her would be cruel, for in the interval of sleep she forgets all the sorrows of the world. He thinks:

      For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,

       You're thankful for a little rest—

       Glad from the crush to rest within,

       From the heart-sickness and the din

       Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch

       Mocks you because your gown is rich;

       And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,

       Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look

       Proclaims the strength that keeps her weak.

      … . …

       Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—

       But most from the hatefulness of man,

       Who spares not to end what he began,

       Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,

       Who, having used you at his will,

       Thrusts you aside, as when I dine

       I serve the dishes and the wine.

      Then he begins to think of the terrible life of the prostitute, what it means, the hideous and cruel part of it, and the end of it. Here let me say that the condition of such a woman in England is infinitely worse than it is in many other countries; in no place is she treated with such merciless cruelty by society. He asks himself why this should be so—how can men find pleasure in cruelty to so beautiful and simple-hearted a creature? Then, suddenly looking at her asleep, he is struck by a terrible resemblance which she bears to the sweetest woman that he knows, the girl perhaps that he would marry. Seen asleep, the two girls look exactly the same. Each is young, graceful, and beautiful; yet one is a girl adored by society for all that makes a woman lovable, and the other is—what? These lines best explain the thought:

      Just as another woman sleeps!

       Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps

       Of doubt and horror—what to say

       Or think—this awful secret sway,

       The potter's power over the clay!

       Of the same lump (it has been said)

       For honour and dishonour made,

       Two sister vessels. Here is one.

       My cousin Nell is fond of fun,

       And fond of dress, and change, and praise,

       So mere a woman in her ways:

       And if her sweet eyes rich in youth

       Are like her lips that tell the truth,

       My cousin Nell is fond of love.

       And she's the girl I'm proudest of.

       Who does not prize her, guard her well?

       The love of change, in cousin Nell,

       Shall find the best and hold it dear:

       The unconquered mirth turn quieter

       Not through her own, through others' woe:

       The conscious pride of beauty glow

       Beside another's pride in her.

      … …

       Of the same lump (as it is said),

       For honour and dishonour made,

       Two sister vessels. Here is one.

       It makes a goblin of the sun!

      For, judging by the two faces, the two characters were originally the same. Yet how terrible the difference now. This woman likes what all women like; his cousin, the girl he most loves in the world, has the very same love of nice dresses, pleasures, praise. There is nothing wrong in liking these things. But in the case of the prostitute all pleasure must turn for her to ashes and bitterness. The pure girl will have in this world all the pretty dresses and pleasures and love that she can wish for; and will never have reason to feel unhappy except when she hears of the unhappiness of somebody else. And it seems a monstrous thing under heaven that such a different destiny should be portioned out to beings at first so much alike as those two women. Even to think of his cousin looking like her, gives him a shudder of pain—not because he cruelly despises the sleeping girl, but because he thinks of what might have happened to his own dearest, under other chances of life.

      Yet again, who knows what may be in the future, any more than what has been in the past? All this world is change. The fortunate of to-day may be unfortunate in their descendants; the fortunate of long ago were perhaps the ancestors of the miserable of to-day. And everything may in the eternal order of change have to rise and sink alternately. СКАЧАТЬ