Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/288

262 THE FIRST MORRIS or in a broken carol : — Ships sail through the heaven With red banners dress'd, Carrying the planets seven To see the white breast ; (Marice Virginis) or a portrait: — My lady seems of ivory, Forehead, straight nose, and cheeks that be Hollow'd a little mournfully ; or in the picture of Jehane s racked lips, aching with love, as in the record of Galahad's vigil. Perhaps a certain simple cunning in the arrangement of the book aids the painted quality of its appeal to secure this high conformity. The pieces toward the end, that is to say, are certainly the palest and weakest ; and thus the eye, when it reaches them, comes enriched with the sacramental colours it has gathered on the way, and weaves the rose-girdled moons and the wan, meek hands, and even the burning towers, into one hieratic vestment and sees them as part of a mystical heraldry. The dyes from the great wings on the opening page soak through to the last, giving each its celestial stain. And the painted memory of Guenevere's agony, similarly enduring, helps to purge the sunbright scenes that follow of their sensuousness. Here, ostensibly, in pleasances and bowers, are none but lovers fevered with desire ; yet the hungry hands and the lips parched for kisses affect us like the wrung features of ascetics, tortured for holy ends. The passion that racks Jehane seems by its very physical fierceness to burn away the sense of the body and set the spirit free : — No answer through the moonlit night ; No answer in the cold grey dawn ; No answer when the shaven lawn Grew green, and all the roses bright.