v., part vi., chapter iv.,
and Scudder's note to the same in her `Introduction to Ruskin'
(Chicago, 1892), p. 249.
--
To take up his next theme, Lanier, like every true Teuton,
from Tacitus to the present, saw "something of the divine" in woman.
It was this feeling that led him so severely to condemn a vice that is said
to be growing, the marriage for convenience. I quote from `The Symphony',
and the "melting Clarionet" is speaking:
"So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime,
Men love not women as in olden time.
Ah, not in these cold merchantable days
Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays
The one red sweet of gracious ladies'-praise.
Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye --
Says, `Here, you lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy:
Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?'
Shame on such wooer's dapper-mercery!"*1*
And then follows a wooing that, to my mind, should be irresistible, and that,
at any rate, is quite as high-souled as Browning's `One Way of Love',
which I have long considered the high-water-mark of the chivalrous in love.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53