Coventry Patmore - The Angel in the House

‘Mine is no horse with wings, to gain
The region of the spheral chime;
He does but drag a rumbling wain,
Cheer’d by the coupled bells of rhyme;
And if at Fame’s bewitching note
My homely Pegasus pricks an ear,
The world’s cart-collar hugs his throat,
And he’s too wise to prance or rear.’

Thus ever answer’d Vaughan his Wife,
Who, more than he, desired his fame;
But, in his heart, his thoughts were rife
How for her sake to earn a name.
With bays poetic three times crown’d,
And other college honours won,
He, if he chose, might be renown’d,
He had but little doubt, she none;
And in a loftier phrase he talk’d
With her, upon their Wedding-Day,
(The eighth), while through the fields they walk’d,
Their children shouting by the way.

‘Not careless of the gift of song,
Nor out of love with noble fame,
I, meditating much and long
What I should sing, how win a name,
Considering well what theme unsung,
What reason worth the cost of rhyme,
Remains to loose the poet’s tongue
In these last days, the dregs of time,
Learn that to me, though born so late,
There does, beyond desert, befall
(May my great fortune make me great!)
The first of themes, sung last of all.
In green and undiscover’d ground,
Yet near where many others sing,
I have the very well-head found
Whence gushes the Pierian Spring.’

Then she: ‘What is it, Dear? The Life
Of Arthur, or Jerusalem’s Fall?’
‘Neither: your gentle self, my Wife,
And love, that grows from one to all.
And if I faithfully proclaim
Of these the exceeding worthiness,
Surely the sweetest wreath of Fame
Shall, to your hope, my brows caress;
And if, by virtue of my choice
Of this, the most heart-touching theme
That ever tuned a poet’s voice,
I live, as I am bold to dream,
To be delight to many days,
And into silence only cease
When those are still, who shared their bays
With Laura and with Beatrice,
Imagine, Love, how learned men
Will deep-conceiv’d devices find,
Beyond my purpose and my ken,
An ancient bard of simple mind.
You, Sweet, his Mistress, Wife, and Muse,
Were you for mortal woman meant?
Your praises give a hundred clues
To mythological intent!
And, severing thus the truth from trope,
In you the Commentators see
Outlines occult of abstract scope,
A future for philosophy!
Your arm’s on mine! these are the meads
In which we pass our living days;
There Avon runs, now hid with reeds,
Now brightly brimming pebbly bays;
Those are our children’s songs that come
With bells and bleatings of the sheep;
And there, in yonder English home,
We thrive on mortal food and sleep!’
She laugh’d. How proud she always was
To feel how proud he was of her!
But he had grown distraught, because
The Muse’s mood began to stir.

His purpose with performance crown’d,
He to his well-pleased Wife rehears’d,
When next their Wedding-Day came round,
His leisure’s labour, ‘Book the First.’

Lo, love’s obey’d by all. ’Tis right
That all should know what they obey,
Lest erring conscience damp delight,
And folly laugh our joys away.
Thou Primal Love, who grantest wings
And voices to the woodland birds,
Grant me the power of saying things
Too simple and too sweet for words!

I walk, I trust, with open eyes;
I’ve travell’d half my worldly course;
And in the way behind me lies
Much vanity and some remorse;
I’ve lived to feel how pride may part
Spirits, tho’ match’d like hand and glove;
I’ve blush’d for love’s abode, the heart;
But have not disbelieved in love;
Nor unto love, sole mortal thing
Of worth immortal, done the wrong
To count it, with the rest that sing,
Unworthy of a serious song;
And love is my reward; for now,
When most of dead’ning time complain,
The myrtle blooms upon my brow,
Its odour quickens all my brain.

The richest realm of all the earth
Is counted still a heathen land:
Lo, I, like Joshua, now go forth
To give it into Israel’s hand.
I will not hearken blame or praise;
For so should I dishonour do
To that sweet Power by which these Lays
Alone are lovely, good, and true;
Nor credence to the world’s cries give,
Which ever preach and still prevent
Pure passion’s high prerogative
To make, not follow, precedent.
From love’s abysmal ether rare
If I to men have here made known
New truths, they, like new stars, were there
Before, though not yet written down.
Moving but as the feelings move,
I run, or loiter with delight,
Or pause to mark where gentle Love
Persuades the soul from height to height.
Yet, know ye, though my words are gay
As David’s dance, which Michal scorn’d.
If kindly you receive the Lay,
You shall be sweetly help’d and warn’d.

Once more I came to Sarum Close,
With joy half memory, half desire,
And breathed the sunny wind that rose
And blew the shadows o’er the Spire,
And toss’d the lilac’s scented plumes,
And sway’d the chestnut’s thousand cones,
And fill’d my nostrils with perfumes,
And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones,
And wafted down the serious strain
Of Sarum bells, when, true to time,
I reach’d the Dean’s, with heart and brain
That trembled to the trembling chime.

’Twas half my home, six years ago.
The six years had not alter’d it:
Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,
With dormers and with oriels lit.
Geranium, lychnis, rose array’d
The windows, all wide open thrown;
And some one in the Study play’d
The Wedding-March of Mendelssohn.
And there it was I last took leave:
’Twas Christmas: I remember’d now
The cruel girls, who feign’d to grieve,
Took down the evergreens; and how
The holly into blazes woke
The fire, lighting the large, low room,
A dim, rich lustre of old oak
And crimson velvet’s glowing gloom.
No change had touch’d Dean Churchill: kind,
By widowhood more than winters bent,
And settled in a cheerful mind,
As still forecasting heaven’s content.
Well might his thoughts be fix’d on high,
Now she was there! Within her face
Humility and dignity
Were met in a most sweet embrace.
She seem’d expressly sent below
To teach our erring minds to see
The rhythmic change of time’s swift flow
As part of still eternity.
Her life, all honour, observed, with awe
Which cross experience could not mar,
The fiction of the Christian law
That all men honourable are;
And so her smile at once conferr’d
High flattery and benign reproof;
And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr’d,
Grew courtly in my own behoof.
The years, so far from doing her wrong,
Anointed her with gracious balm,
And made her brows more and more young
With wreaths of amaranth and palm.