WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP, ELIZABETH A. SHARP [bill gates best books .txt] 📗
- Author: ELIZABETH A. SHARP
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dream, as its author described it; and in a note to one of the verses
he wrote: “I hold to the rest of the poem, for there _are_ spirits
everywhere. We are never alone, though we are rarely conscious of other
presences.”
The poem is too long and too immature to quote from. It was one of a
series, never of course published, that he wrote about this time; all
very serious, for his mind was absorbed in psychic and metaphysical
speculation.
And the reason why he chose such serious types of poems to dedicate
to the girl to whom he was engaged was that she was the first friend
he had found who to some extent understood him, understood the inner
hidden side of his nature, sympathised with and believed in his
visions, dreams, and aims.
Immediately on my return to London he sent me three long poems written
in 1873 under the influence of Shelley—then to him the poet of poets.
Very faulty in their handling, they are to me significant, inasmuch as
they strike the keynote of all his subsequent intimate writings. “To
the Pine Belt” begins with these lines:
To-day amid the pines I went
In a wonderment,
For the ceaseless song
Of lichened branches long
In measures free
Said to me
Strange things of another life
Than woodland strife.
In _The Blue Peaks_ he sings of the Quest of the beckoning dim blue
hills, of which he wrote again many years later in _The Divine
Adventure_. And the third, “The River το καλυγ,” is an ecstatic chant
to Beauty:
O Spirit fair
Who dwelleth where
The heart of Beauty is enshrined.
Wherewith he invokes “Nature, or Beauty, or God” to help him to realise
the poignant dream of beauty, which haunted him in diverse ways
throughout his life. When he sent them to me he realised how youthful
and faulty was the presentment, and he wrote: “If I had not promised to
send these poems I should certainly not do so now. They are very poor
every way, and the only interest they may have for you is to show you
the former current of my thoughts—I did indeed put Beauty in the place
of God, and Nature in that of his Laws. Now that I see more clearly
(and that is not saying much), these appear trash. Still there is some
good here and there. I am glad I have written them, for they helped me
to arrive at clearer convictions. The verse and rhythm are purposely
uneven and irregular—it admitted of easier composition to write so.”
While at the University he had made an eager study of comparative
religions, their ethics and metaphysics, being then in active revolt
against the religious teachings in which he had been brought up.
This mental conflict, this weighing of metaphysical problems, found
expression in the first Book of a projected Epic on Man, to be called
_Upland, Woodland, Cloudland_. “Amid the Uplands” only was finished,
and consists of two thousand lines in blank verse; the leading idea is
fairly suggested in these lines from the Proem:
“And I have written in the love of God
And in a sense of man’s proud destiny.
* * * * *
And I have striven to point out harmony,
An inner harmony in all things fair,
Flow’rs, tree, and cloudlet, wind, and ocean wave,
Wold, hill, and forest, with the heart of man,
And with the firmament and universe,
And thence with God. All things are part of Him.”
Scattered through the many pages of philosophic exhortation and
speculation, of descriptions of nature, of psychical visions, are lines
that are suggestive of later development, of later trend of thought,
and from them the following are selected:
“There is in everything an undertone ...
Those clear in soul are also clear in sight,
And recognise in a white cascade’s flash,
The roar of mountain torrents, and the wail
Of multitudinous waves on barren sands,
The song of skylark at the flush of dawn,
A mayfield all ablaze with king-cups gold,
The clamour musical of culver wings
Beating the soft air of a dewy dusk,
The crescent moon far voyaging thro’ dark skies,
And Sirius throbbing in the distant south,
A something deeper than mere audible
And visible sensations; for they see
Not only pulsings of the Master’s breath,
The workings of inevitable Law,
But also the influences subordinate
And spirit actors in life’s unseen side.
One glint of nature may unlock a soul.”
* * * * *
“Our Evil is too finite to disturb
The infinite of good.”
* * * * *
“We all are wind-harps casemented on Earth,
And every breath of God that falls may fetch
Some dimmest echo of a faint refrain
From even the worst strung of all of us.”
* * * * *
“Oh, I have lain upon a river’s brink
And drank deep, deep of all the glory near,
Until my soul in unison did beat
With all things round me: I was at the root,
The common root of life from which all flow,
And when thus far could enter unto all;
I look’d upon a rose and seemed to grow
A bud into a bloom, I watched a tree
And was the life that quicken’d the green leaves,
I saw the waters swirling and became
The law of their wild course, and in the clouds
I felt my spirit wand’ring over heaven.
I did identify myself with aught
That rose before me, and communion held.
* * * * *
Death is not only change, or sleep; it is
God’s seal to sanctify the soul’s advance.”
* * * * *
In the beginning of 1875 he made various experiments in rhymed metre,
all equally serious in subject and stiff in handling; but in the latter
part of the year he wrote several little songs in a lighter vein and
happier manner.
The following year brought a fresh change in his circumstances, and
placed him face to face with the serious questions of practical means
of living. His father had been in bad health for some months, and he
himself developed disquieting symptoms of chest trouble. I had been in
Italy during the three spring months, and was overjoyed on my return to
hear that we and my uncle’s family were to spend August at Dunoon in
neighbouring houses. On arriving there we found my uncle in an alarming
condition and his son looking extremely delicate. Nevertheless there
were many happy days spent there—and rambling over the hills, boating
and sailing on the lochs, in talking over our very vague prospects, in
reading and discussing his poems. Of these he had several more to show
me, chief among them being an idyll “Beatrice,” dedicated to me, and
a lyrical drama “Ariadne in Naxos” which excited in me the greatest
admiration and pride. Toward the middle of the month my uncle’s
condition grew hopeless, and on the 20th he died. His death was a great
shock to his son, whose health gave way: consumption was feared (as
it proved, causelessly) and in the autumn he was ordered a voyage to
Australia.
In September I was taken by my mother to Aberdeenshire, and thus I had
no opportunity of seeing William again, and the last thing I heard
of him, when he had left Scotland in a sailing ship, was a gloomy
prediction made by an old relative to my mother: “Ah, that poor nephew
of yours, Willie Sharp, he’ll never live to reach Australia.”
To quote his own words:
“So to Australia I went by sailing ship, relinquishing my idea of
becoming a formidable rival to Swinburne (whose _Atalanta in Calydon_
had inspired me to a lyrical drama named _Ariadne in Naxos_), to
Tennyson (whose example I had deigned to accept for an idyll called
‘Beatrice’), and to the author of _Festus_, whose example was
responsible for a meditative epic named ‘Amid the Uplands.’ Alas!
‘subsequent events’ make it unlikely that these masterpieces will ever
see the light.
“In Australia I had friends with whom I stayed, and from them I joined
an eminent colonist whose tragic end cast a cloud over a notable
career as an explorer. With him I saw much of the then wild country in
Gippsland, beyond the Buffalo and Bogong Mountains, across the Murray
River into the desert region of lower New South Wales.”
So to Australia he sailed, not only in search of health but to look
about and see if he would care to settle there, supposing that he
should find work that he could do, as it was now imperative he should
provide for his future. In _The Sport of Chance_, and in an article
“Through Bush and Fern,” he has given graphic descriptions of the
memorable ride which afforded the newcomer a unique opportunity of
seeing something of the interior of the colony; and from these the
following selections are taken:
“It was the full tide of summer when my friend and I started one
morning in continuance of our ride south through the ranges that rise
and swell and slope away in mighty hollows, sweeping like immense green
waves around the bases of those lofty Australian Alps, of which Mounts
Hotham, Kosciusko, and Feathertop are the chief glories. Although
early, the heat of the sun was already very powerful; but its effect
was more bracing than enervating, owing to the clearness and dryness of
the atmosphere.... Across the rugged mountains we rode, by difficult
passes over desolate plains, along sweeping watercourses marked by
the long funeral procession of lofty blue-gums, and mournful, stringy
bark. Day by day we saw the sun rise above the hills. We slept, while
our horses stood by panting with heat, under what shade we could get,
and arose when the sky had lost its look of molten copper and had
taken on once more its intense ultramarine. At night as we rode across
the plains we heard the howling of the wild dogs as they scoured
afar off, or sent flying in all directions startled kangaroos, which
leaped across the moonlit wastes like ghosts of strange creatures in
pre-Adamite times.... At last we had come to Albury to join a friend
who promised us some swan shooting, and it thus came about that early
one morning, about an hour before dawn, we found ourselves crouching
under the shelter of some wattles growing close to the Murray lagoons.
Not a sound was to be heard save the monotonous swish of the river as
it swept slowly onward, except when at rare intervals some restless
parrot or cockatoo made a transient disturbance somewhere in the
forest. The stillness, the semi-darkness, the sound of the rushing
water, our expectancy, all rendered the hour one of mingled solemnity
and excited tension; and it was with difficulty that at least one
of our small party repressed some sound when within a few feet a
venomous-looking snake wriggled away with a faint hiss from a bunch of
knotted grass.”
At this juncture, unfortunately the writer was carried away by his
interest in snakes ... in rare water birds and “Murray-cod,” and quite
forgot to finish his account of the swan shooting. It is obviously
unnecessary to explain that shooting, as a sport, had no attraction
for him; whereas observing birds and bats, fish, etc., was always a
preoccupying interest.
“What a day of intense heat followed that morning! When at last we
reached our previous night’s shelter, a shepherd station known as
Bidgee Bend, we were nearly exhausted.
“While resting on a rough shake-down and lazily smoking, my eye
happened to glance at my saddle, which was lying close at hand, and
right in the midst thereof I saw a large scorpion with its tail raised
in that way which is known to signify a vicious state of mind. Hearing
my exclamation, the stockman looked round, and without a word reached
for a long-lashed whip, and with a blow of the shaft put an end to the
possibly dangerous intentions of our unwelcome visitor. Of an extremely
laconic nature, our shepherd friend never uttered a word he felt to
be unnecessary, and when, after having asked him if he saw scorpions
frequently hereabouts, and received a monosyllabic reply in the
affirmative, I added, ‘Any other kind of vermin?’ he muttered sleepily,
with his pipe in his mouth, ‘Bull-dog ants, hairy spiders, centipedes,
bugs.’”
On his return to Melbourne the traveller realised that there was no
immediate prospect of finding work. He had made inquiries in every
available direction, but he did not make any great effort. He realised
that life in the New World, under such conditions as would be open
to him, would be very distasteful; and greatly as he had enjoyed
the few months’ sojourn in Australia,
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