Notes: My Springs
For my appreciation of this tribute to the poet’s wife see ‘Introduction’, p. xxxv [Part III]. Mr. Lanier’s estimate is given in a letter of March, 1874, quoted in Mrs. Lanier’s introductory note: “Of course, since I have written it to print I cannot make it such as I desire in artistic design: for the forms of to-day require a certain trim smugness and clean-shaven propriety in the face and dress of a poem, and I must win a hearing by conforming in some degree to these tyrannies, with a view to overturning them in the future. Written so, it is not nearly so beautiful as I would have it; and I therefore have another still in my heart, which I will some day write for myself.”
Other tributes to his wife are: ‘In Absence’, ‘Acknowledgment’, ‘Laus Mariae’, ‘Special Pleading’, ‘Evening Song’, ‘Thou and I’, ‘One in Two’, and ‘Two in One’; while she is referred to in ‘The Hard Times in Elfland’ and ‘June Dreams in January’.
It will be interesting to compare ‘My Springs’ with other poems on the eyes. Among the most noteworthy* may be cited Shakespeare’s
“And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn;”
Lodge’s
“Her eyes are sapphires set in snow,
Resembling heaven by every wink;
The Gods do fear whenas they glow,
And I do tremble when I think,
Heigh ho, would she were mine!”
Jonson’s
“Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine,” etc.;
Herrick’s
“Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which starlike sparkle in their skies;”
Thomas Stanley’s
“Oh turn away those cruel eyes,
The stars of my undoing;
Or death in such a bright disguise
May tempt a second wooing;”
Byron’s
“She walks in beauty, like the night,
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies;”
H. Coleridge’s
“She is not fair to outward view,
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me.
O then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.
“But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne’er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are;”
and Wordsworth’s
“Her eyes are stars of twilight fair.”
—
* These may be found either in Gosse’s ‘English Lyrics’ (D. Appleton & Co.,
New York) or in Palgrave’s ‘Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics’
(Macmillan & Co., New York).
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49-50. See ‘Introduction’, p. xlv [Part IV].
52. There is in early English literature a most interesting play entitled ‘Mary Magdalene’: see Pollard’s ‘English Miracle Plays’ (New York), where extracts are given.
55-56. See ‘Introduction’, p. xlvi [Part IV].