Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) (1819–1880)

Extracts from The Legend of Jubal: The Effect of Music

THEN Jubal poured his triumph in a song—

The rapturous word that rapturous notes prolong

As radiance streams from smallest things that burn,

Or thought of loving into love doth turn.

And still his lyre gave companionship

In sense-taught concert as of lip with lip.

Alone amid the hills at first he tried

His wingèd song; then with adoring pride

And bridegroom’s joy at leading forth his bride,

He said, “This wonder which my soul hath found,

This heart of music in the might of sound,

Shall forthwith be the share of all our race

And like the morning gladden common space:

The song shall spread and swell as rivers do,

And I will teach our youth with skill to woo

This living lyre, to know its secret will,

Its fine division of the good and ill.

So shall men call me sire of harmony,

And where great Song is, there my life shall be.”

Thus glorying as a god beneficent,

Forth from his solitary joy he went

To bless mankind. It was at evening,

When shadows lengthen from each westward thing,

When imminence of change makes sense more fine

And light seems holier in its grand decline.

The fruit-trees wore their studded coronal,

Earth and her children were at festival,

Glowing as with one heart and one consent—

Thought, love, trees, rocks, in sweet warm radiance blent.

The tribe of Cain was resting on the ground,

The various ages wreathed in one broad round.

Here lay, while children peeped o’er his huge thighs,

The sinewy man embrowned by centuries:

Here the broad-bosomed mother of the strong

Looked, like Demeter, placid o’er the throng

Of young lithe forms whose rest was movement too—

Tricks, prattle, nods, and laughs that lightly flew,

And swayings as of flower-beds where Love blew.

For all had feasted well upon the flesh

Of juicy fruits, on nuts, and honey fresh,

And now their wine was health-bred merriment,

Which through the generations circling went,

Leaving none sad, for even father Cain

Smiled as a Titan might, despising pain.

Jubal sat climbed on by a playful ring

Of children, lambs and whelps, whose gambolling,

With tiny hoofs, paws, hands, and dimpled feet,

Made barks, bleats, laughs, in pretty hubbub meet.

But Tubal’s hammer rang from far away,

Tubal alone would keep no holiday,

His furnace must not slack for any feast,

For of all hardship work he counted least;

He scorned all rest but sleep, where every dream

Made his repose more potent action seem.

Yet with health’s nectar some strange thirst was blent,

The fateful growth, the unnamed discontent,

The inward shaping toward some unborn power,

Some deeper-breathing act, the being’s flower.

After all gestures, words, and speech of eyes,

The soul had more to tell, and broke in sighs.

Then from the east, with glory on his head

Such as low-slanting beams on corn-waves spread,

Came Jubal with his lyre: there ’mid the throng,

Where the blank space was, poured a solemn song,

Touching his lyre to full harmonic throb

And measured pulse, with cadences that sob,

Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep

Where the dark sources of new passion sleep.

Joy took the air, and took each breathing soul,

Embracing them in one entrancèd whole,

Yet thrilled each varying frame to various ends,

As Spring new-waking through the creature sends

Or rage or tenderness; more plenteous life

Here breeding dread, and there a fiercer strife.

He who had lived through twice three centuries,

Whose months monotonous, like trees on trees

In hoary forests, stretched a backward maze,

Dreamed himself dimly through the travelled days

Till in clear light he paused, and felt the sun

That warmed him when he was a little one;

Felt that true heaven, the recovered past,

The dear small Known amid the Unknown vast,

And in that heaven wept. But younger limbs

Thrilled toward the future, that bright land which swims

In western glory, isles and streams and bays,

Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze.

And in all these the rhythmic influence,

Sweetly o’ercharging the delighted sense,

Flowed out in movements, little waves that spread

Enlarging, till in tidal union led

The youths and maidens both alike long-tressed,

By grace-inspiring melody possessed,

Rose in slow dance, with beauteous floating swerve

Of limbs and hair, and many a melting curve

Of ringèd feet swayed by each close-linked palm:

Then Jubal poured more rapture in his psalm,

The dance fired music, music fired the dance,

The glow diffusive lit each countenance,

Till all the gazing elders rose and stood

With glad yet awful shock of that mysterious good.