Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/313

287 THE FIRST MORRIS 287 further, turning the painted lips into real ones and the graven image into still more mortal flesh — practis- ing anthropomorphism twice over : — ' ' O Christ, that I may clasp your knees and pray I know not what ; at any rate come now From one of many places where you are, Either in Heaven amid thick angel wings Or sitting on the altar strange with gems Or high up in the dustiness of the apse. . . . So I may keep you there, your solemn face And long hair even-flowing on each side Until you love me well enough to speak. And give me comfort; yea, till o'er your chin And cloven red heard the great tears roll doion ..." — the addition of the bodily elements, it may be noted once more, actually dissolving the sense of reality it was meant to secure, hurrying us into the circle of hallucination. VII And always, oddly aiding this process, there was his callous indifference to mere words. This illiteracy helped him doubly. For one thing, it enabled him to plunge clean through the paper and seize the actual object described. When you or I or any other reader or writer sees such a scrap of essential poetry as this : — A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, All garlanded with carven imageries. Of fruits and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings ; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings —