note one - awakening

Oft in the Stilly Night

Thomas Moore

1817

Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain hath bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

When I remember all
The friends, so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

This poem is the text of the song on the piano music stand in Awakening Conscience ... and it supports a growing concern I have about Holman Hunt's sentiments.

The narrator in the poem is male - "boyhood's years", "all but he departed". It is a poem in which a man looks back with fondness on former friends, and confesses that his sleep is troubled by the memory.

Did Holman choose this poem because his sympathies lay with the man in the painting? Looking back at the motif of the cat with the bird, whom does the cat represent?

I do wonder whether Hulman Hunt took the view that only one person was to blame for the (allegedly) immoral relationship, that person being the woman. This certainly squares with 19th-century images of prostitutes as spiders luring men into immorality (not to mention The Angel of the House by Coventry Patmore, which holds women entirely responsible for the behaviour of men).