The Story of My Heart | Page 8

was
forced to do this, my mind was yonder. Weariness, exhaustion,
nerve-illness often ensued. The insults which are showered on poverty,
long struggle of labour, the heavy pressure of circumstances, the
unhappiness, only stayed the expression of the feeling. It was always
there. Often in the streets of London, as the red sunset flamed over the
houses, the old thought, the old prayer, came.
Not only in grassy fields with green leaf and running brook did this
constant desire find renewal. More deeply still with living human
beauty; the perfection of form, the simple fact of form, ravished and
always willravish me away. In this lies the outcome and end of all the

loveliness of sunshine and green leaf, of flowers, pure water, and sweet
air. This is embodiment and highest ex-pression; the scattered,
uncertain, and designless loveliness of tree and sunlight brought to
shape. Through this beauty Iprayed deepest and longest, and down to
this hour. The shape--the divine idea of that shape--the swelling muscle
or the dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite or
Hercules, it is the same. That I may have the soul-life, the soul-nature,
let divine beauty bring to me divine soul. Swart Nubian, white Greek,
delicate Italian, massive Scandinavian, in all the exquisite pleasure the
form gave, and gives, to me immediately becomes intense prayer.
If I could have been in physical shape like these, how despicable in
comparison I am; to be shapely of form is so infinitely beyond wealth,
power, fame, all that ambition can give, that these are dust before it.
Unless of the human form, no pictures hold me; the rest are flat
surfaces. So, too, with the other arts, they are dead; the potters, the
architects, meaningless, stony, and some repellent, like the cold touch
of porcelain. No prayer with these. Only the human form in art could
raise it, and most in statuary. I have seen so little good statuary, it is a
regret to me; still, that I have is beyond all other art. Fragments here, a
bust yonder, the broken pieces brought from Greece, copies, plaster
casts, a memory of an Aphrodite, of a Persephone, of an Apollo, that is
all; but even drawings of statuary will raise the prayer. These statues
were like myself full of a thought, for ever about to burst forth as a bud,
yet silent in the same attitude. Give me to live the soul-life they express.
The smallest fragment of marble carved in the shape of the human arm
will wake the desire I felt in my hill-prayer.
Time went on; good fortune and success never for an instant deceived
me that they were in themselves to be sought; only my soul-thought
was worthy. Further years bringing much suffering, grinding the very
life out; new troubles, renewed insults, loss of what hard labour had
earned, the bitter question: Is it not better to leap into the sea? These,
too, have made no impression; constant still to the former prayer my
mind endures. It was my chief regret that I had not endeavoured to
write these things, to give expression to this passion. I am now trying,
but I see that I shall only in part succeed.

The same prayer comes to me at this very hour. It is now less solely
associated with the sun and sea, hills, woods, or beauteous human
shape. It is always within. It requires no waking; no renewal; it is
always with me. I am it; the fact of my existence expresses it.After a
long interval I came to the hills again, this time by the coast. I found a
deep hollow on the side of a great hill, a green concave opening to the
sea, where I could rest and think in perfect quiet. Behind me were furze
bushes dried by the heat; immediately in front dropped the steep
descent of the bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me
the faint sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of
sea, the palest green under the continued sunshine, as though the heat
had evaporated the colour from it; there was no distinct horizon, a
heat-mist inclosed it and looked farther away than the horizon would
have done. Silence and sunshine, sea and hill gradually brought my
mind into the condition of intense prayer. Day after day, forhours at a
time, I came there, my soul-desire always the same. Presently I began
to consider how I could put a part of that prayer into form, giving it an
object. Could I bring it into such a shape as would admit of actually
working upon the lines it indicated for any good ?
One evening, when the bright white star in Lyra was shining almost at
the zenith over me, and the