A place for studious minds (2)

[M]ethinks, it is enough to mortify the Proudest of us all, to remember, that, altho’ we may adorn our outward Parts with fine Cloaths, and sweeten them with costly Essences, yet our Insides are no better than common Bogs, and are composed of Materials too foul to name. […] This is a true State of the human Body; and, I fear, that upon Examination, our Minds will appear but little better; and, that the Emanations of one do not surpass in Cleanliness the Voidings of the other. If we survey the learned World, as it is called, what do its modern Productions consist in, but the Excrements of Wit, and Sham-Patriotism, Bawdy, Blasphemy, and Disputes among Players. What is thy Shop, O Jacob! but a Bog-House, fill’d with nothing but Bum-Fodder. […] Bending my Eye downwards, into this subterraneous Cavity, I said to myself, Does Man live for this? Do all his Pursuits tend only to encrease these Stenches, and swell this noisome Profundity? Alas, for nothing else! The Toils and Ambition of the Great, as well as the Labours and Fatigues of the Vulgar, are subservient to this End. For what do we live, but to eat and drink, and exonerate ourselves in these voracious Abysses? The Body of Man is but a Thorough-fare to the common Receptacles of all Things. What an infinite Variety of Creatures is here blended together? Methinks I see, and, Oh! that I could not say, I smell ten Thousand various Dishes, toss’d up together, and jumbled into a second Chaos of Matter.

 

Serious and Cleanly Meditations upon an House-of-Office. Humbly inscribed to the Gold-finders of Great-Britain. By Jeffrey Broadbottom, Esq. [1744]

A place for studious minds

Whatever apologies it might become me to make at any other time for writing to you, I shall use none now, to a man who has owned himself as splenetic as a cat in the country (*). In that circumstance, I know by experience, a letter is a very useful, as well as amusing thing; if you are too busied in state affairs to read it, yet you may find entertainment in folding it into divers figures, either doubling it into a pyramidical, or twisting it into a serpentine form (†): or, if your disposition should not be so mathematical, in taking it with you to that place where men of studious minds are apt to sit longer than ordinary; where, after an abrupt division of the paper, it may not be unpleasant to try to fit and rejoin the broken lines together. All these amusements I am no stranger to in the country, and doubt not but (by this time) you begin to relish them, in your present contemplative situation.

 Alexander Pope to Jonathan Swift, 18 June 1714 

(*) Disgusted at public life in general and the failure of his attempts to reconcile Harley and Bolinbroke in particular, Dr. Swift had left London, retiring to the country house of his friend, the Reverend Gery, at Upper Letcombe in Berkshire, at which place Pope's letter was addressed to him. 

(†) In the Dublin edition of the Pope and Swift correspondence the phrase 'to light a pipe' occurs in inverted commas after 'a serpentine form', but Pope omits it in the quarto of 1741.

Une promenade avec monsieur de Balzac

Le sans-gêne un peu rustique de Balzac, ses façons brusques, sa personne un peu massive, devaient effaroucher Latouche. Je vis clairement sur sa physionomie que son hôte commençait à lui faire peur. Balzac touchait à tout, et mettait par conséquent perpétuellement sur les épines ce pauvre Latouche, qui tremblait à chaque instant pour ses porcelaines et pour ses statuettes. Aussitôt arrivé, Balzac s'était débarrassé de son havre-sac, de son bâton, de sa ceinture; tous ces objets avaient été jetés à l'aventure sur les meubles, et leur propriétaire, enfoncé dans un canapé, ses gros souliers sur le velours, se reposait bruyamment de ses fatigues.

 

Latouche prit un air sérieux, et, à partir de ce moment, je m'aperçus qu'il commença, toutes les fois qu'il s'adressait à son hôte, à l'appeler : monsieur de Balzac.

 

Tout alla bien cependant jusqu'au dîner, qu'on ne tarda pas à servir. Après le repas, nous partîmes pour aller faire une promenade dans les environs.

 

Balzac, malgré son intelligence si fine et si distinguée aimait la grosse plaisanterie; dans l'intimité, on retrouvait plus souvent en lui l'auteur des Contes drolatiques que l'observateur de la Femme de trente ans. L'aspect des champs avait sans doute ce jour-là surexcité sa verve, car il se mit à nous débiter toutes sortes de gauloiseries. Parvenus sur une éminence d'où l'on apercevait le magnifique panorama de la vallée, nous nous arrêtâmes, et, tout à coup, Balzac fit retentir les échos d'alentour d'un de ces bruits grotesques qu'on ne nomme pas, et qu'il accompagna de ses plus bruyants éclats de rire. Les lèvres de Latouche n'en restèrent que mieux fermées, et la promenade s'écoula au milieu d'un flux intarissable de paroles de Balzac et du parfait silence de son compagnon.

 

Henri Monnier, Mémoires de Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme, vol. 2, Paris, 1857

Balzac's somewhat rustic lack of embarrassment, his brusque manner, his somewhat massive physique, must have been alarming to Latouche. I could clearly see from his face that his guest was beginning to frighten him. Balzac kept touching everything, and as a result he had the poor Latouche constantly on tenterhooks, making him tremble every moment for his porcelain and his statuettes. No sooner had he arrived than Balzac disencumbered himself of his knapsack, his stick, his belt, all of them tossed at random over the furniture, as their owner sank onto a sofa, laying his big shoes on the plush, noisily at rest after his exertions. 

 

Latouche assumed a serious mien and I noticed that whenever he spoke to his guest he thenceforth addressed him as 'Mr Balzac.'

 

Nevertheless, all went well until dinner, which was soon served. After the meal, we set off for a walk in the surrounding countryside.

 

Despite his refined, discriminating intelligence, Balzaz loved a coarse joke; in private, one found in him the author of the Droll Stories more often than the observer of the Woman of Thirty. The sight of the fields had undoubtedly overstimulated his wit that day, for he fell to rattling off to us all kinds of bawdy anecdotes. On reaching the top of a rise from which we could survey the magnificent vista of the valley, we came to a stop and, all of a sudden, Balzac made the surroundings resound to the echoes of one of those grotesque noises that are not to be named, and which he accompanied with raucous peals of laughter. Latouche compressed his lips all the harder, and the walk proceeded amid the inexhaustible flow of Balzac's words and the perfect silence of his companion.

trans. Alistair Ian Blyth

 

 

cœnæsthesis (2)

[J]e me sens moi-même assailli par une foule de sensations et d'images que chacun de mes sens m'apporte, et dont l'assemblage me présente un monde d'objets distincts les uns des autres, et d'un autre objet qui seul m'est présent par des sensations d'une certaine espèce, et qui est le même que j'apprendrai dans la suite à nommer moi. Mais ce monde sensible, de quels éléments est-il composé ? Des points noirs, blancs, rouges, verts, bleus, ombrés ou clairs, combinés en mille manières, placés les uns hors des autres, rapportés à des distances plus ou moins grandes, et formant par leur contiguité une surface plus ou moins enfoncée sur laquelle mes regards s'arrêtent : c'est à quoi se réduisent toutes les images que je reçois par le sens de la vue. La nature opère devant moi sur un espace indéterminé, précisément comme le peintre opère sur une toile. 

 

Les sensations de froid, de chaleur, de résistance, que je reçois par le sens du toucher, me paraissent aussi comme dispersées çà et là dans un espace à trois dimensions, dont elles déterminent les différents points; et dans lequel, lorsque les points tangibles sont contigus, elles dessinent aussi des espèces d'images, comme la vue, mais à leur manière, et tranchées avec bien moins de netteté. [...] 

 

Quoique les sensations propres de l'ouïe et de l'odorat ne nous présentent pas à la fois (du moins d'une façon permanente) un certain nombre de points contigus qui puissent former des figures et nous donner une idée d'étendue, elles ont cependant leur place dans cet espace dont les sensations de la vue et du toucher nous déterminent les dimensions; et nous leur assignons toujours une situation, soit que nous les rapportions à une distance éloignée de nos organes, ou à ces organes mêmes.

 

Il ne faut pas omettre un autre ordre de sensations plus pénétrantes, pour ainsi dire, qui, rapportées à l'intérieur de notre corps, et en occupant même quelquefois toute l'habitude, semblent remplir les trois dimensions de l'espace, et porter immédiatement avec elles l'idée de l'étendue solide. Je ferai de ces sensations une classe particulière sous le nom de tact intérieur, ou sixième sens. J'y rangerai les douleurs qu'on ressent quelquefois dans l'intérieur des chairs, dans la capacité des intestins et dans les os même ; les nausées, le malaise qui précède l'évanouissement, la faim, la soif, l'émotion qui accompagne toutes les passions; les frissonnements, soit de douleur, soit de volupté; enfin cette multitude de sensations confuses qui ne nous abandonnent jamais, qui circonscrivent en quelque sorte notre corps, qui nous le rendent toujours présent, et que par cette raison quelques métaphysiciens ont appelé sens de la coexistence de notre corps. 

 

Turgot, Existence (article extrait de l'Encyclopédie)

Cœnæsthesis (1)

First of all, it is noteworthy that a state of consciousness at any one moment is an exceedingly complex thing. It is made up of a mass of feelings and active impulses which often combine and blend in a most inextricable way. External sensations come in groups, too, but as a rule they do not fuse in apparently simple wholes as our internal feelings often do. The very possibility of perception depends on a clear discrimination of sense-elements, for example, the several sensations of colour obtained by the stimulation of different parts of the retina. But no such clearly defined mosaic of feelings presents itself in the internal region: one element overlaps and partly loses itself in another, and subjective analysis is often an exceedingly difficult matter. Our consciousness is thus a closely woven texture in which the mental eye often fails to trace the several threads or strands. Moreover, there is the fact that many of these ingredients are exceedingly shadowy, belonging to that obscure region of sub-consciousness which it is so hard to penetrate with the light of discriminative attention. This remark applies with particular force to that mass of organic feelings which constitutes what is known as cœnæsthesis, or vital sense.

 

James Sully, Illusions: A Psychological Study, New York, 1891 

Possible worlds

Warum wandern die Tschuktschen aus ihrem schrecklichen Lande nicht aus, überall würden sie besser leben, im Vergleich zu ihrem gegenwärtigen Leben und zu ihren gegenwärtigen Wünschen. Aber sie können nicht; alles, was möglich ist, geschieht ja; möglich ist nur das, was geschieht.

 

Franz Kafka, Tagebücher, 5. Januar 1914

 

Why do the Chukchi not leave their dreadful land, anywhere else they would live a better life, in comparison with their present life and their present wants. But they cannot; all that is possible does happen, only that which happens is possible.

Télévision au XVIIe siècle : un monde rempli d'horreurs

Vn Professeur en Theologie m'a ecrit que depuis peu un gentilhomme ayant prié un Italien qui est soldat dans la garnison de Sedan de luy faire uoir quelque chose d'extraordinaire, il luy auoit faict uoir dans un miroir une femme qui est a cent lieues dela ecriuant sur sa table, ce qui l'effraya et l'obligea de se retirer. Pour iuger de ceste auanture il faudroit auoir la chose et examiner le lieu ou estoit le miroir, s'il n'y auoit rien derriere. Ie uoudrois encore qu'il y eust plusieurs personnes qui pussent rendre temoignage de ce qu'ils auroyent veu, et il seroit necessaire que ces temoins la ne fussent pas credules ny preoccupez ny timides parce que la peur nous represente les obiects autrement qu'ils ne sont. Ie croy que Dieu ne permet pas que les hommes ayent commerce auec les demons parce que le monde seroit rempli d'horreurs. que ne feroit un Ambitieux et un vindicatif s'ils pouuoient venir a bout de leurs desseins.

 

Henri Justel to G. W. Leibniz, 9 November 1677 

(Allgemeiner und Politischer Briefwechsel 1676-1679, No. 275)

 

A theology professor wrote to me that recently, when a gentleman asked an Italian who is a soldier at the Sedan garrison to show him something out of the ordinary, the Italian caused him to see in a mirror a woman writing at her table a hundred leagues away, which terrified the gentleman, forcing him to leave the room. In order to judge this episode, it would be necessary to have the mirror and to examine where it was, in case there was anything behind it. I would further like to have a number of people able to provide an account of what they saw, and it would be necessary that such witnesses not have been gullible or distracted or fainthearted, since fear represents objects to us differently than they are. I believe that God does not allow mankind to engage in commerce with demons because then the world would be filled with horrors. What would an ambitious and a vindictive man not be capable of if they were able to achieve their designs?

On Obscurity

 

§ 672 Cicero (De finibus, 2,15) goes so far as to allow two unblameworthy modes of discourse whose aim is not to be understood. One is when you are deliberately obscure, as Heraclitus was when he discoursed on nature with the utmost obscurity, the other when it is the obscurity of the subject matter in itself rather than the language that makes the discourse obscure, as is the case in Plato’s Timaeus. Here, then, you have two obscure thinkers who are unblameworthy. If you take ‘deliberately obscure’ to mean intentional obscurity κατ᾽αἴσθησιν [i.e., in how he is perceived] lest in his scientific and esoteric considerations he fall into obscurity κατὰ νόησιν [i.e., in how he is understood], and if you hold him to have discoursed thus in his writings on nature, then Heraclitus is unblameworthy: assuredly, he did not discourse in such a way as not to be understood, but rather in such a way as not to be understood by readers who almost entirely bring to bear an analogue of reason in their reading, while declining to exert the power of actual reason.

 

§ 673 If you construe him to be deliberately obscure when, rather than making sure he accommodates an audience that is not yawning but giving him the requisite attention, he pours forth darkness and peddles smoke with a mind set on doing so, and if at least in places he succumbed to this due to his melancholy and his contempt towards his fellow citizens, then Heraclitus is blameworthy. If you interpret obscurity of subject matter as that weakness on the part of most people whereby their minds are unable to comprehend a given thing that is by its nature remote from their sense perceptions, even though not only are others perfectly able to understand the same thing thanks to a more diligent exercise of their mental acuity but also Plato himself clearly and distinctly grasps the matter to be discussed, and if in the Timaeus you therefore deem him to speak of matters utterly dark, then for these reasons he is actually unblameworthy in his obscurity, since he does not discourse in such a way as not to be understood, but in such a way as not to be understood except by those who likewise take pleasure in the mental stimulation of contemplating, now seriously, now in a more relaxed and pleasant way, matters that are by their very nature remote from the senses.

 

§ 674 If you interpret obscurity of subject matter as either the absolute obscurity proper solely to chimaeras, objective dreams, utopian fictions (*) and interpretations thereof, or that of things which from the contemplation of the human race 'the god coneals in murky night' (†) so that we cannot fathom anything of them even by a probable cause from aesthetics, meaning that nobody who would discuss them will either understand them or ever even mentally perceive them in a lucid way, and if you concede that at least in places in the Timaeus Plato sets out to depict things of this kind, or that by some other path he falls into such avoidable obscurity of subject matter, then for this reason he is not unblameworthy in his obscurity, it being baseless to plead obscurity of subject matter as an excuse. For worst of all are ἀδιανόητα, i.e., words that are plain but have a hidden meaning (Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae, 8, 2, 20). 

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetics, vol. 2 (1758), 

trans. Alistair Ian Blyth

 

 

§ 672 L. de fin. II. 15. eo usque procedit, ut concedat duobus modis sine reprehensione fieri, si quis ita loquatur, ut non intelligatur. Si aut de industria facias, ut Heraclitus, qui de natura nimis obscure memorauit, aut quum rerum obscuritas, non verborum, facit, ut non intelligatur oratio, qualis est in Timaeo Platonis. Habes duos dogmaticos obscuros sine reprehensione. Si de industria obscurum interpreteris obscurum κατ᾽αἴσθησιν  deliberato consilio, ne per meditationes scientificas et acroamaticas in obscuritatem κατὰ νόησιν incidat: si talem in scriptis suis physicis fuisse Heraclitum statuas: est ille quidem sine reprehensione, verum tunc non ita loquutus est, ut non intelligatur, sed ita, ut non intelligatur a lectoribus solum paene rationis analogon ad lectionem afferentibus, rationis autem nervos intendere recusantibus. 

 

§ 673 Si de industria obscurum interpreteris eum, qui spectatoribus, quales praesertim attendere tenetur, non oscitantibus et merito requisitam attentionem offerentibus, tamen tenebras offundere, fumumque vendere fixum animo habet et propositum: si Heraclitus aliquando saltim, ex atra bile, contemtuque civium, eo lapsus est; non est sine reprehensione. Si rerum obscuritatem interpreteris eam plerorumque hominum infirmitatem, qua datam rem a sensibus suis natura remotiorem ne mente quidem assequuntur, licet eandem tum alii mentis aciem diligentius exercentes pulcre possint intelligere: tum ipse rem eandem tractaturus clare dilucideque perspiciat; si Platonem in Timaeo de rebus hac ratione subobscuris loqui senseris: hanc ob caussam obscurus est ille quidem sine reprehensione, verum nec ita loquutus est, ut non intelligatur, sed ita, ut non intelligatur, nisi ab iis, quibus volupe est aeque mentem acuere, rerum a sensibus per ipsam naturam remotarum contemplatione, nunc severiori, nunc remissa magis atque iucundiore. 

 

§ 674 Si rerum obscuritatem interpreteris vel eam absolutam solis chimaeris, somniis obiectivis, figmentis utopicis ac eorum interpretamentis propriam, vel istarum rerum, quas intuitu generis humani adeo

 

    Caliginosa nocte premit deus,

 

ut earum quicquam ne probabili quidem aestheticis ratione possimus hariolari, ut eas ne tractaturus quidem de iisdem vel intellexerit, vel dilucide saltim animo perceperit unquam: si Platonem in Timaeo, saltim aliquando, res eiusmodi pictum ire concesseris, vel alia via vitabilem rerum obscuritatem incurrere, hanc ob caussam obscurus non est sine reprehensione, nequicquam obscuritate rerum excusatus. Nam pessima sunt ἀδιανόητα, h. e. quae verbis aperta occulto sensu sunt. Quint. VIII. 2.

 

Alexand. Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aestheticorum Pars Altera, 

Frankfurt: Kleyb, 1758

 

 

(*) Baumgarten defines as 'utopian' those primordial mythological fictions that are not grounded in metaphysical truth (veritas metaphysica).

(†) Horace, Carmina, 3, 29, 30.

Une certaine espèce de petits vers

In 1666, Le Journal des Sçavans published a letter from Amsterdam that described ships returning from the East Indies whose hulls were infested with a destructive 'worm', no doubt the Teredo navalis which was to inflict such devastation on the North Sea dykes sixty-five years later:

 

Quoy que vous ayez souvent visité nostre port, je ne sçay si vous avez remarqué le mauvais estat où se trouvent les vaisseaux qui reviennent des Indes. Il y a dans ces mers une certaine espece de petits vers, qui s'attachent aux œuvres vives des vaisseaux, & les percent de sorte qu'ils prennent eau de tous costez, ou s'ils ne les traversent pas entierement, ils affoiblissent tellement le bois, qu'il est presque impossible de les racommoder.

 

Extrait d'une Lettre escrite d'Amsterdam, Le Journal des Sçavans. Du Lundy 15. Fevrier, M.DC.LXVI

 

This Extract is borrowed from the French journal des Scavans of Febr. 15. 1666. and is here inserted, to excite Inventive heads here, to overtake the Proposer in Holland. The letter runs thus:
    Although you have visited our Port (Amsterdam) I know not whether you have noted the ill condition, our ships are in, that return from the Indies. There is in those Seas a kind of small worms, that fasten themselves to the Timber of the ships, and so pierce them, that they take water every where; or if they do not altogether pierce them thorow, they so weaken the wood, that it is almost impossible to repair them.

An Extract Of a Letter, Written from Holland, about Preserving of Ships from being Worm-eaten, Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 1 (1665-1666)

Parasitic worlds within worlds (2)

Jan Ruyter, Three pieces of wood from the piles on the sea-dikes showing how they were eaten through by the worms, 1731. Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam

 

Quodsi porro in immensum animalculorum, quæ Teredinem inhabitant, numerum contemplationem nostram dirigamus, novum ecce detegimus illius finem, licet omnes imaginationis nostræ limites transcendentem. Ordo, locusque, concinna quam maxime ratione, singulis velut assignati animalculis Teredinem nobis marinam repræsentant, ceu mundum, illis particulariter creatum, in quo domicilium, vitæque sustentationem inveniant: neque hoc solum; sed, velut Teredine, ad parandum sibi cibum, opus habent animalcula; ita et his, ad propagationis opus, indigere rerum illa sicque, quod ajunt, manus manum lavare videtur. 

 

Godofredi Sellii, J.U.D. ex Societate Regia Londinensi, Historia Naturalis Teredinis seu Xylophagi Marini, Tubulo-Conchoidis Speciatim Belgici: cum tabulis ad vivum coloratis. 

Trajecti ad Rhenum Apud Hermannum Besseling, 1733.

If we further consider the vast number of animalcules that dwell within the ship-worm,(*) then, behold, we discover a new purpose to it, albeit one that passes beyond all the bounds of our imagination. So elegantly conceived, the order and place that are as if assigned to the animalcules show us that the ship-worm is like a world created specifically for them, in which they find a home and life's sustenance. But this is not all: as the animalcules need the ship-worm in order to furnish themselves with food, so too the ship-worm needs the animalcules in order to propagate and thus, as they say, one hand washes the other.

(*) Teredo navalis (Linnaeus, 1758), a marine bivalve mollusc that bores into the wooden hulls of ships, underwater piles, submerged timber, and which lives in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria—the animalcules described by Sellius—whose enzymes help the ship-worm to digest the cellulose on which it feeds. 

    In the winter of 1731, the dikes along the Dutch North Sea coast collapsed, flooding villages inland, and it was subsequently discovered that they had been undermined by a ship-worm infestation that left their wooden piles riddled with holes. The worm-engendered calamity was seen by the fanatical ministers of the Reformed Church as divine punishment for the depravity then supposed to be flooding the Dutch Republic: 'The worm had been, it was said by the authors of The Worm a Warning to the Feckless and Sinful Netherlands and The Finger of God, Or Holland and Zeeland in Great Need from this Hitherto Unheard Plague of Worms, custom-made by the Almighty for the express purpose of punishing a stiff-necked people steeped in filth and sin' (Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches. An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Vintage Books, 1997, p. 607).

 

Parasitic worlds within worlds (1)

Sollte nicht eine Naturmythologie möglich sein? — Mythologie hier in meinem Sinn, als freie poetische Erfindung, die die Wirklichkeit sehr mannigfach symbolisiert.

Genialische, edle, divinatorische, wundertätige, kluge, dumme usw. Pflanzen, Tiere, Steine, Elemente usw. — Unendliche Invididualität dieser Wesen, — ihr musikalischer und Individualsinn — ihr Charakter — ihre Neigungen usw. Es sind vergangene geschichtliche Wesen.

Wir leben eigentlich in einem Tiere als parasitische Tiere. Die Konstitution dieses Tiers bestimmt die unsrige, et vice versa. Die Bedingungsverhältniße der atmosphärischen Bestandteile sind vielleicht sehr mit den Bedingungverhältnißen derselben Bestandteile im organischen Körper übereinstimmend. 

— Novalis

Why should a nature mythology not be possible? — I here take mythology to mean free poetic invention, which symbolises reality in a highly multifarious way. 

Ingenious, noble, divinatory, miraculous, stupid etc. Plants, animals, stones, elements etc. — endless individuality of such beings — their musical and individual meaning — their character — their tendencies etc. They are past historical beings. 

In actual fact we live as parasitic animals within another animal. This animal's constitution determines ours, and vice versa. The interdependent relations between the constitutive parts of the atmosphere are perhaps highly congruent with the interdependent relations of the same constitutive parts in the organic body.

The allotted world

So, to our business, now—the fate of such

As find our common nature—overmuch 

Despised because restricted and unfit

To bear the burthen they impose on it—

Cling when they would discard it; craving strength

To leap from the allotted world, at length

They do leap,—flounder on without a term,

Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ

In unexpanded infancy, unless . . . 

But that's the story—dull enough, confess!

 

Robert Browning, from Sordello (1840), Book the Third

Obscure waters

Still, what if I approach the august sphere

Named now with only one name, disentwine

That under-current soft and argentine

From its fierce mate in the majestic mass

Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass

In John's transcendent vision,—launch once more

That lustre? Dante, pacer of the shore

Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,

Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume—

Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope

Into a darkness quieted by hope;

Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye

In gracious twilights where his chosen lie,—

I would do this! If I should falter now!

Robert Browning, from Sordello (1840), Book the First