I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

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This is number 43 from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portugese. They were written in her happiest years - married to Robert Browning, with whom she had eloped in her late 30s, and living in Italy where her poor health improved and she had her first and only son, Pen. The first line of this sonnet has been bandied about somewhat, but the rest is probably unknown and quite breathlessly beautiful. 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

John Cleary, 1917 - 2010

Australian author of nearly 60 novels John Cleary died on Monday aged 92.  I confess to having read none of his novels, but I enjoyed reading his obituary, which you can read  here.   I was struck by this quote:

“I did not have the intellectual depth to be the writer I would like to be, so I determined to be as good a craftsman as I might be.”

Very good advice for aspiring writers. Being conscious of one's limitations can be a great barrier, but perhaps it can be, as it was for Cleary, a spur. A craftsman is not the same thing as an artist, but craft is probably the best diversion from the absence of genius.  Deft and steady craftsmanship will often produce a better result than dazzling but fitful brilliance. One of the most dispiriting criticisms for an author I think would be that she had overreached.

My secret's mine, and I won't tell

Since Autumn is now behind us and Winter is upon is (-2 on the way to work this morning!) here's a gorgeous poem from Christina Rossetti: “Winter My Secret.” See if you can make head or tail of it.

Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

The moral of the story

I’ve just read Little Women, Good Wives, and What Katy Did, and I’m halfway through What Katy Did at School.  I hadn’t revisited these American classics for some time, and in spite of a grating moralising sentimentality, I’ve found them as engaging and nourishing as I did when I first read them. The lessons I learned from them still guide me.

Even as a child I think I enjoyed a book more if it gave me something besides entertainment; some nugget of truth or instruction that I could carry with me. Of course the moral is no good without the story, but the best stories have morality (either affirmation or subversion) at their core. That’s why authors like Austen, Dickens and Henry James are so enduring. Couched in hugely entertaining prose, they always feature violations and restorations of morality, in varying degrees of subtlety, that manage to transcend cultural and historical conditions. Avant-garde stories with absent or amorphous moralities might intrigue, but they rarely captivate us in the same way that tragic moral desecrations or comic moral restitutions so lastingly do.