University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD repose, as distinct from the absolute, we seek in vain. The mind of man must work; it is a restless, energetic, tireless agent and its activities cannot be suspended except in sleep. But that is abso- lute repose, and what we want is a type of mental repose as dis- tinct from the absolute and from the physical. The dumb ox would serve the purpose admirably, but that would take us out of our field; we have to do with man. The only illustration therefore is that state of intellectual torpor into which man sometimes falls and which makes him comparable to the ox, a brother to the ox, soul-quenched, a thing that grieves not and that never hopes. So much for the varying nature of repose. To study its mor- ality is another and a far more difficult thing, and yet it is only after an earnest study of its morality that one is justified in an- swering the question already put: When, where and how long may we pause? It may be dull to pause, but it certainly is not always wrong. To re pose our wearied virtue after exertions is a necessity, to repose in sleep from physical and mental efforts is also a necessity, and though some strenuous minds of old cried out in an excess of ardor: ' ' Deliver us from our necessities, O I ord — they were not delivered therefrom, nor can any mortal hope for such a boon. Dull then and disagreeable as it may be for hungry hearts to pause, pause they must, and taking all in all, they will find that life is a stern mistress requiring almost as much time for rest as she allows for labor. To hearts that are not hungry she may not appear stern in this that she demands so much rest, but in this that she does not allow more. According to the motive, therefore, with which man seeks re- pose, will the morality of his action be determined. But because the moral qualities of an action are more easily grasped from posi- tive elements, we must find something positive in repose. This is easily done; in physical repose there is always some degree of mental activity and indeed, the greater the physical repose, pro- vided it does not approach the absolute, the more intense are the mental activities. So on the other hand in mental repose there will ever be found a degree of physical activity, varying in intensity according to the nature of the repose. In absolute rest alone shall we find an absence of activity. Our motive therefore in seeking physical repose may be and generally is mental activity; our motive

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THE REDWOOD and how long we may pause. How dull it is to pause, says Ulysses in Tennyson; but in the same poet we find a beautiful pic- ture of repose in St. Agnes ' Eve. Maybe both qualities are laudatory and maybe both have their faults. At all events it will do no harm to delay on the nature of repose after having been re- galed in last month ' s Rkdwood by a plea for action. I. In the first place, what is repose? We find the word vari- ously used by various authors: Have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue? asks Satan of the terrified companions of his fall; — and W. W. Hall tells us that the three best medicines in the world are warmth, abstinence and repose, ' ' while Emerson with his characteristic odd- ity speaks thus: ' ' Repose and cheerfulness are the badges of a gentleman. In all three quotations there is an approach to the root meaning of the word, but in Milton it is more than an ap- proach; it is the root meaning. Re-pauso, to pause, is a late Eatin term traceable however to the old Greek z , i x Mx: pause, which means to make an end, ' ' to put a stop to, so that in Tennyson ' s line: How dull it is to pause to make an end, we have similar terms which may also stand for the word before us, repose, with this limitation, that the afl x re must be taken to imply rest after work. Briefly then repose means the act of tak- ing rest or the state of being at rest after action. Now as there are mental activities and physical activities in man, there needs must be mental repose and physical repose and a combination of both, or absolute repose. The terms are self-ex- planatory and need but a few illustrations to be grasped in all their fullness of significance. Sleep, provided there be no dreams to call on mental activities, is typical of absolute repose. In fact it is the only type, for though sleep ' s brother, death, may suggest something even more absolute, the truth of the matter is that in the sleep of death there are dreams and more than dreams. Death may be taken as a perfect form of physical repose, because in death all the physical activities are suspended, while the powers of the mind become more active than ever. For an illustration of mental

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THE REDWOOD in seeking mental repose is physical activity; our motive in seeking absolute repose is a desire to avoid all kinds of activity. Now if the order of thought be superior to the physical order and the physical order be above the state of absolute quietude, we may make our classification thus, numbering in the order of merit the dif- ferent phases of activity: First mental activity; secondly, physical activity; thirdly, the absence of activity, or quietude. Again by changing these terms to the corresponding form of repose we have: First, phj sical repose; secondly, mental repose; thirdly, absolute repose. There may of course be various degrees of morality in all three cases, but it will be sufficient to keep the general principles in mind and to apply them according as cases arise. I proposed to apply them to two very interesting cases, ' ' St. Agnes ' Eve and The Lotus-Eaters and for this reason I thought it proper to be profuse in my explanation of the general terms, before I attempted an application. II. It may occur to some that at best it is prosaic to try these principles on Tennyson ' s poems and at worst it is comparable to an attempt to test a problem in mathematics by its fluidity of movement and liquidness of diction; but poems and poets must be approached according to our capacity. If we cannot drink in all the hidden pleasure at a gulp, we must sip the honeyed flowers; if we cannot gather the full meaning in one reading, we must read the poem over and over again, and if it helps us to analyze and to break the piece up into prose, we may analyze and break it up into prose. This is my intent. To begin with St. Agnes ' Eve. This poem may be called a soliloquy in which — I was going to say — St. Agnes unburdens her heart; but it is not St. Agnes. The poet had in mind no particular saint and no particular person; he gives us a picture of an ordi- nary nun praying in the silence of night that she may be released from the bonds of the flesh. Originally the piece was entitled St. Agnes, but as that might have been misleading and as it certainly was inappropriate, the poet changed it to the present form. He would, I think, have been more happy in selecting as his title, Sister Agnes for this reason that the poem is nothing whatever but the prayer of some indefinite nun.