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䘖The Project Gutenberg EBook A Lover's Diary, by Gilbert Parker, Entire #101 in our series by Gilbert Parker
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Title: A Lover's Diary, Complete
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6274]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on November 21, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVER'S DIARY, PARKER, ENTIRE***
This eBook was produced by David Widger >
A LOVER'S DIARY, Complete
By Gilbert Parker
CONTENTS
Volume 1.?THE VISION?ABOVE THE DIN?LOVE'S COURAGE?LOVE'S LANGUAGE?ASPIRATION?THE MEETING?THE NEST?PISGAH?LOVE IS ENOUGH?AT THE PLAY?SO CALM THE WORLD?THE WELCOME?THE SHRINE?THE TORCH?IN ARMOUR?IN THEE MY ART?DENIAL?TESTAMENT?CAPTIVITY?O MYSTIC WINGS?WAS IT THY FACE??A WOMAN'S HAND?ONE FACE I SEE?MOTHER?WHEN FIRST I SAW THEE?THE FATES LAUGH?AS ONE WHO WAITETH?THE SEALING?THE PLEDGE?LOVE'S TRIBUTARIES?THE CHOICE?RECOGNITION?THE WAY OF DREAMS?THE ACCOLADE?FALLEN IDOLS?TENNYSON?THE ANOINTED
Volume 2.?DREAMS?THE BRIDE?THE WRAITH?SURRENDER?THE CITADEL?MALFEASANCE?ANNUNCIATION?VANISHED DREAMS?INTO THY LAND?DIVIDED?WE MUST LIVE ON?YET LIFE IS SWEET?LOST FOOTSTEPS?THE CLOSED DOOR?THE CHALICE?MIO DESTINO?I HAVE BEHELD?TOO SOON AWAY?THE TREASURE?DAHIN?LOVE'S USURY?THE DECREE?'TIS MORNING NOW?SACRIFICE?SHINE ON?SO, THOU ART GONE?THE THOUSAND THINGS?ONES?THE SEA?THE CHART?REVEALING?OVERCOMING?WHITHER NOW?ARARAT?AS LIGHT LEAPS UP?THE DARKENED WAY?REUNITED?SONG WAS GONE FROM ME?GOOD WAS THE FIGHT?UNCHANGED?ABSOLVO TE?BENEDICTUS?THE MESSAGE?UNAVAILING?YOU SHALL LIVE ON?"VEX NOT THIS GHOST"?THE MEMORY?THE PASSING?ENVOY
INTRODUCTION
'A Lover's Diary' has not the same modest history as 'Embers'. As far back as 1894 it was given to the public without any apology or excuse, but I have been apologising for it ever since, in one way--without avail. I wished that at least one-fifth of it had not been published; but my apology was never heard till now as I withdraw from this edition of A Lover's Diary some twenty-five sonnets representing fully one-fifth of the original edition. As it now stands the faint thread of narrative is more distinct, and redundancy of sentiment and words is modified to some extent at any rate. Such material story as there is, apart from the spiritual history embodied in the sonnets, seems more visible now, and the reader has a clearer revelation of a young, aspiring, candid mind shadowed by stern conventions of thought, dogma, and formula, but breaking loose from the environment which smothered it. The price it pays for the revelation is a hopeless love informed by temptation, but lifted away from ruinous elements by self-renunciation, to end with the inevitable parting, poignant and permanent, a task of the soul finished and the toll of the journey of understanding paid.
The six sonnets in italics, beginning with 'The Bride', and ending with 'Annunciation', have nothing to do with the story further than to show two phases of the youth's mind before it was shaken by speculation, plunged into the sadness of doubt and apprehension, and before it had found the love which was to reveal it to itself, transform the character, and give new impulse and direction to personal force and individual sense. These were written when I was twenty and twenty-one years of age, and the sonnet sequence of 'A Lover's Diary' was begun when I was twentythree. They were continued over seven years in varying quantity.?Sometimes two or three were written in a week, and then no more would be written for several weeks or maybe months, and it is clearly to be seen from the text, from the change in style, and above all in the nature of the thought that between 'The Darkened Way', which ends one epoch, and 'Reunited', which begins another and the last epoch, were intervening years.
The sonnet which begins the book and particularly that which ends the book have been very widely quoted, and 'Envoy' has been set to music by more than one celebrated musician. Whatever the monotony of a sonnet sequence (and it is a form which I should not have chosen if I had been older and wiser) there has been a continuous, if limited, demand for the little book. As Edmund Clarence Stedman said in a review, it was a book which had to be written. It was an impulse, a vision, and a revealing, and, in his own words in a letter to me, "It was to be