Achilles and myself piping in as well as their loud voices would let
us. The rest of the bracken was then thrown down and on that the dark
loam, the turfs were replaced, wine spilled in libation and grain
strewn. The rites were ended: the two centaurs shouldered spade and
mattock and clattered off. Achilles asked if he might go into the
woods with his bow and arrow to shoot something. Chiron nodded consent
and came to examine my ankle. While he uncased it and did it up again
with fresh leaves, I asked why, if Thamyris so loved the lonely hills
and scorned men, he was so angry at seeing them crowd about other
rhapsodists. When he had finished with my foot he replied, "One of our
friend's hymns is now trotting in my head," then touching his lyre he
chanted:
From the west upward
I toiled heavy-hearted;
From the east joyous,
Poising his weight on
An arching instep,
Came man to meet me.
And high in the azure,
Where the rocks ended
We sat down, friends.
He heard there how often
Was said, shown or felt
The thing that rebuked me.
Then laughed and pretended
That what the hand fashioned,
House, sword or dead body,
Alone remained;
Thoughts and intentions
Lost their existence.
His glad voice inveigled
Belief from my candour;
And lo! he was gone.
Poising my weight on
An arching instep
Down I came, gaily
Facing the sunset,
As though in the sea-port
That glittered beneath it
I had not yet smitten
The sonorous lyre.
As though the folk there
Had come from the eastward
That very morning
And found empty houses
And ships abandoned,
Needing only to be cleaned and repainted,
And meant to make them gay as spring flowers,
And were sure in the twilight
To gather about me.
"There, that is his own answer to your question. I do not think he
craved just _any_ praise, nor did he much over-prize his own gift; and
you see he was not thinking of this coast, but of one facing the other
way, so that the poet could arrive from the quarter opposite to the sun
and meet him at noon on the peak. As much as to say, 'Not myself, nor
this town's people, but any place, any people, any poet.' He worshipped
man, and it angered him to see homespun preferred to the skyey fabric
the god had helped him weave. He regretted his violence and could not
live without those eyes it had cost him." Having drawn these sentences
one by one from his sad heart, Chiron lapsed into silence till I asked,
"But why did he address the Muses as enemies in his last hymn, if what
the folk said was quite false?" "It is strange. Can they have appeared
to him smartly fledged in white plumage, with dapper tail and wings
and vulture heart? Stately women clothed in daffodil chitons delighted
my gaze the only time I ever had a glimpse of them." "When was that?"
"I was scarcely older than yourself, and woke in a cave to see them
sitting and resting at its mouth, delicately grouped against the dawn.
I remember Euterpe's lap full of flowers, and Melpomene, for her hair
was stormy, black and unbound, and a deep brown cloak had slipped from
her shoulders, but still hung over her elbows; it was only afterwards
that I regretted not having noted the features of Urania, but assuredly
no single one of them had the eye of a hawk. They rose as I woke,
and strolled on. I crept after them, but when I turned the buttress
of rock, no glad-robed figure was in sight, though it seemed that
choral voices floated in the air; yet soon I found myself listening
to silence, so could not be sure." "It must be sad to sing unpraised,
however beautiful the words." "Yes, boy, and the ecstasy that sings is
counterfaced with a destroying rage; that is perhaps why his darkened
soul figured the Muses as birds of prey." "Do you know any more of his
rhapsodies?" "Perhaps I can recall another," and he struck some strange
bell-like notes and then sang:
Leap, Ibex, leap: the drop
From that mountain turret-top
Is sheer two hundred feet!
Crash head foremost to the rock;
Those massive hoops, thy curved horns, take the shock
And throw thee up! Albeit
Tossed by their supple springs,
Without the help of wings,
Scarcely may eye believe
Thou hast righted in the air!
Rashness thou dost retrieve;
Whence thou wast bounced, even there
Arrivest without let;
Four sturdy hooves of jet
Plant thee on the slab thine eye
Had chosen from on high.
So melodist that haunts
The spirit-firing peaks,
And deep in azure chants,
Must take like dizzy leap
Back to some sea-board town
To find the praise he seeks.
And would he still his fervour keep,
As fine resilience will he need
So featly to light down,
Hoop-horned Goat, as thine,
By chamois herds acclaimed divine!
A god's grace truly will he need
If he be not to suffer, not to bleed--
A shattered heart and brain a-fire,
A trodden mantle and snapt lyre!
And how by headlong rapture whirled and blinded
Should he know where 'tis won or how to find it?
That unpredictable address
Whose magic cleaves the rough quartz stone
And makes its secret crystals known
When the most boorish bless
The most divine
And flash back to their eyes the grace by which they shine!
This history has been written with Chiron's help, who says we have
often found more appropriate words than were actually used, yet
have not departed from truth as Clio bestows it on those who do her
unfeigned reverence.
* * * * *
I covered this sheepskin years ago in the cave and have kept it ever
since; now I must soon bequeath it to the care of others. Achilles and
Chiron are both long since dead, and who wants to hear the lays of
Thamyris now? I never picked up the slough of any god; though a bit
later, when my foot was sufficiently healed for me to limp about, I
found behind some bushes, where Caudon or Rhoetus had chucked it, the
filthy ragged homespun mantle of Thamyris, for when I spread it out
one could see where the blood had run down from his eyes by the dark
stains. I folded it and laid it at the foot of his grave and raised a
pyramid of stones over it, bringing them toilsomely from the pool each
day as my ankle grew stronger, even as in two or three years' time I
was adding crooked letter to crooked letter on the inside of this skin
that Thamyris might be remembered. And as I wrote I was persuaded, in
spite of Chiron's presentiment and that vivid dream of a white chlamys
broidered over with blue, violet, and silver serpents, that such
"magnificent joys" would never be mine. Which secret conviction, as
I grew a beard and it grew grey, has been proved correct. Maeonides,
best loved of all rhapsodists, may have found it, though when I heard
him chant the war for Troy, he also was dressed in homespun and
already blind; but old Agenor has kept his two eyes as safely as this
sheepskin.
THE ROMANCE OF RHYME
By G. K. CHESTERTON
The poet in the comic opera, it will be remembered (I hope), claimed
for his æsthetic authority that "Hey diddle diddle will rank as an
idyll, if I pronounce it chaste." In face of a satire which still
survives the fashion it satirised, it may require some moral courage
seriously to pronounce it chaste, or to suggest that the nursery rhyme
in question has really some of the qualities of an idyll. Of its
chastity, in the vulgar sense, there need be little dispute, despite
the scandal of the elopement of the dish with the spoon, which would
seem as free from grossness as the loves of the triangles. And though
the incident of the cow may have something of the moonstruck ecstasy
of Endymion, that also has a silvery coldness about it worthy of the
wilder aspects of Diana. The truth more seriously tenable is that this
nursery rhyme is a complete and compact model of the nursery short
story. The cow jumping over the moon fulfils to perfection the two
essentials of such a story for children. It makes an effect that is
fantastic out of objects that are familiar; and it makes a picture that
is at once incredible and unmistakable. But it is yet more tenable,
and here more to the point, that this nursery rhyme is emphatically a
rhyme. Both the lilt and the jingle are just right for their purpose,
and are worth whole libraries of elaborate literary verse for children.
And the best proof of its vitality is that the satirist himself has
unconsciously echoed the jingle even in making the joke. The metre
of that nineteenth-century satire is the metre of the nursery rhyme.
"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle" and "Hey diddle diddle
will rank as an idyll" are obviously both dancing to the same ancient
tune; and that by no means the tune the old cow died of, but the more
exhilarating air to which she jumped over the moon.
The whole history of the thing called rhyme can be found between those
two things: the simple pleasure of rhyming "diddle" to "fiddle," and
the more sophisticated pleasure of rhyming "diddle" to "idyll." Now the
fatal mistake about poetry, and more than half of the fatal mistake
about humanity, consists in forgetting that we should have the first
kind of pleasure as well as the second. It might be said that we should
have the first pleasure as the basis of the second; or yet more truly,
the first pleasure inside the second. The fatal metaphor of progress,
which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real
idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. The heart of
the tree remains the same, however many rings are added to it; and
a man cannot leave his heart behind by running hard with his legs.
In the core of all culture are the things that may be said, in every
sense, to be learned by heart. In the innermost part of all poetry is
the nursery rhyme, the nonsense that is too happy even to care about
being nonsensical. It may lead on to the more elaborate nonsense of the
Gilbertian line, or even the far less poetic nonsense of some of the
Browningesque rhymes. But the true enjoyment of poetry is always in
having the simple pleasure as well as the subtle pleasure. Indeed it is
on this primary point that so many of our artistic and other reforms
seem to go wrong. What is the matter with the modern world is that
it is trying to get simplicity in everything except the soul. Where
the soul really has simplicity it can be grateful for anything--even
complexity. Many peasants have to be vegetarians, and their ordinary
life is really a simple life. But the peasants do not despise a good
dinner when they can get it; they wolf it down with enthusiasm, because
they have not only the simple life but the simple spirit. And it is so
with the modern modes of art which revert, very rightly, to what is
"primitive." But their moral mistake is that they try to combine the
ruggedness that should belong to simplicity with a superciliousness
that should only belong to satiety. The last Futurist draughtsmanship,
for instance, evidently has the aim of drawing a tree as it might be
drawn by a child of ten. I think the new artists would admit it; nor do
I merely sneer at it. I am willing to admit, especially for the sake of
argument, that there is a truth of philosophy and psychology in this
attempt to attain the clarity even through the crudity of childhood.
In this sense I can see what a man is driving at when he draws a tree
merely as a stick with smaller sticks standing out of it. He may be
trying to trace in black and white or grey a primeval and almost
pre-natal illumination; that it is very remarkable that a stick should
exist, and still more remarkable that a stick should stick up or stick
out. He may be similarly enchanted with his own stick of charcoal or
grey chalk; he may be enraptured, as a child is, with the mere fact
that it makes a mark on the paper--a highly poetic fact in itself. But
the child does not despise the real tree for being different from his
drawing of the tree. He does not despise Uncle Humphrey because that
talented amateur can really draw a tree. He does not think less of the
real sticks because they are live sticks, and can grow and branch and
curve in a way uncommon in walking-sticks. Because he has a single eye
he can enjoy a double pleasure. This distinction, which seems strangely
neglected, may be traced again in the drama and most other domains of
art. Reformers insist that the audiences of simpler ages were content
with bare boards or rudimentary scenery if they could hear Sophocles
or Shakespeare talking a language of the gods. They were very properly
contented with plain boards. But they were not discontented with
pageants. The people who appreciated Antony's oration as such would
have appreciated Aladdin's palace as such. They did not think gilding
and spangles substitutes for poetry and philosophy, because they are
not. But they did think gilding and spangles great and admirable gifts
of God, because they are.
But the application of this distinction here is to the case of rhyme in
poetry. And the application of it is that we should never be ashamed
of enjoying a thing as a rhyme as well as enjoying it as a poem. And I
think the modern poets who try to escape from the rhyming pleasure, in
pursuit of a freer poetical pleasure, are making the same fundamentally
fallacious attempt to combine simplicity with superiority. Such a poet
is like a child who could take no pleasure in a tree because it looked
like a tree, or a playgoer who could take no pleasure in the Forest
of Arden because it looked like a forest. It is not impossible to
find a sort of prig who professes that he could listen to literature
in any scenery, but strongly objects to good scenery. And in poetical
criticism and creation there has also appeared the prig who insists
that any new poem must avoid the sort of melody that makes the beauty
of any old song. Poets must put away childish things, including the
child's pleasure in the mere sing-song of irrational rhyme. It may be
hinted that when poets put away childish things they will put away
poetry. But it may be well to say a word in further justification of
rhyme as well as poetry, in the child as well as the poet. Now, the
neglect of this nursery instinct would be a blunder, even if it were
merely an animal instinct or an automatic instinct. If a rhyme were to
a man merely what a bark is to a dog, or a crow to a cock, it would
be clear that such natural things cannot be merely neglected. It is
clear that a canine epic, about Argus instead of Ulysses, would have
a beat ultimately consisting of barks. It is clear that a long poem
like _Chantecler_, written by a real cock, would be to the tune of
Cock-a-doodle-doo. But in truth the nursery rhyme has a nobler origin;
if it be ancestral it is not animal; its principle is a primary one,
not only in the body but in the soul.
Milton prefaced _Paradise Lost_ with a ponderous condemnation of
rhyme. And perhaps the finest and even the most familiar line in the
whole of _Paradise Lost_ is really a glorification of rhyme. "Seasons
return, but not to me return," is not only an echo that has all the
ring of a rhyme in its form, but it happens to contain nearly all the
philosophy of rhyme in its spirit. The wonderful word "return" has,
not only in its sound but in its sense, a hint of the whole secret
of song. It is not merely that its very form is a fine example of a
certain quality in English, somewhat similar to that which Mrs. Meynell
admirably analysed in a former issue of this magazine in the case of
words like "unforgiven." It is that it describes poetry itself, not
only in a mechanical but a moral sense. Song is not only a recurrence,
it is a return. It does not merely, like the child in the nursery,
take pleasure in seeing the wheels go round. It also wishes to go back
as well as round; to go back to the nursery where such pleasures are
found. Or to vary the metaphor slightly, it does not merely rejoice in
the rotation of a wheel on the road, as if it were a fixed wheel in the
air. It is not only the wheel but the waggon that is returning. That
labouring caravan is always travelling towards some camping-ground that
it has lost and cannot find again. No lover of poetry needs to be told
that all poems are full of that noise of returning wheels; and none
more than the poems of Milton himself. The whole truth is obvious, not
merely in the poem, but even in the two words of the title. All poems
might be bound in one book under the title of _Paradise Lost_. And the
only object of writing _Paradise Lost_ is to turn it, if only by a
magic and momentary illusion, into _Paradise Regained_.
It is in this deeper significance of return that we must seek for the
peculiar power in the recurrence we call rhyme. It would be easy enough
to reply to Milton's strictures on rhyme in the spirit of a sensible
if superficial liberality by saying that it takes all sorts to make a
world, and especially the world of the poets. It is evident enough that
Milton might have been right to dispense with rhyme without being right
to despise it. It is obvious that the peculiar dignity of his religious
epic would have been weakened if it had been a rhymed epic, beginning:
Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal root.
But it is equally obvious that Milton himself would not have tripped on
the light fantastic toe with quite so much charm and cheerfulness in
the lines:
But come thou Goddess fair and free
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne
if the goddess had been yclept something else, as, for the sake of
argument, Syrinx. Milton in his more reasonable moods would have
allowed rhyme in theory a place in all poetry, as he allowed it in
practice in his own poetry. But he would certainly have said at this
time, and possibly at all times, that he allowed it an inferior place,
or at least a secondary place. But is its place secondary; and is it in
any sense inferior?
The romance of rhyme does not consist merely in the pleasure of a
jingle, though this is a pleasure of which no man should be ashamed.
Certainly most men take pleasure in it, whether or not they are ashamed
of it. We see it in the older fashion of prolonging the chorus of a
song with syllables like "rumty tumty" or "tooral looral." We see
it in the similar but later fashion of discussing whether a truth
is objective or subjective, or whether a reform is constructive
or destructive, or whether an argument is deductive or inductive:
all bearing witness to a very natural love for those nursery rhyme
recurrences which make a sort of song without words, or at least
without any kind of intellectual significance. But something much
deeper is involved in the love of rhyme as distinct from other poetic
forms, something which is perhaps too deep and subtle to be described.
The nearest approximation to the truth I can think of is something
like this: that while all forms of genuine verse recur, there is in
rhyme a sense of return to exactly the same place. All modes of song
go forward and backward like the tides of a sea; but in the great sea
of Homeric or Virgilian hexameters, the sea that carried the labouring
ships of Ulysses and Æneas, the thunder of the breakers is rhythmic,
but the margin of the foam is necessarily irregular and vague. In rhyme
there is rather a sense of water poured safely into one familiar well,
or (to use a nobler metaphor) of ale poured safely into one familiar
flagon. The armies of Homer and Virgil advance and retreat over a vast
country, and suggest vast and very profound sentiments about it, about
whether it is their own country or only a strange country. But when
the old nameless ballad boldly rhymes "the bonny ivy tree" to "my ain
countree" the vision at once dwindles and sharpens to a very vivid
image of a single soldier passing under the ivy that darkens his own
door. Rhythm deals with similarity, but rhyme with identity. Now in
the one word identity are involved perhaps the deepest and certainly
the dearest human things. He who is homesick does not desire houses or
even homes. He who is lovesick does not want to see all the women with
whom he might have fallen in love. Only he who is sea-sick, perhaps,
may be said to have a cosmopolitan craving for all lands or any kind
of land. And this is probably why sea-sickness, like cosmopolitanism,
has never yet been a high inspiration to song. Songs, especially the
most poignant of them, generally refer to some absolute, to some
positive place or person for whom no similarity is a substitute. In
such a case all approximation is merely asymptotic. The prodigal
returns to his father's house and not the house next door, unless he
is still an imperfectly sober prodigal; the lover desires his lady and
not her twin sister, except in old complications of romance; and even
the spiritualist is generally looking for a ghost and not merely for
ghosts. I think the intolerable torture of spiritualism must be a doubt
about identity. Anyhow, it will generally be found that where this call
for the identical has been uttered most ringingly and unmistakably in
literature, it has been uttered in rhyme. Another purpose for which
this pointed and definite form is very much fitted is the expression of
dogma, as distinct from doubt or even opinion. This is why, with all
allowance for a decline in the most classical effects of the classical
tongue, the rhymed Latin of the mediæval hymns does express what it had
to express in a very poignant poetical manner, as compared with the
reverent agnosticism so nobly uttered in the rolling unrhymed metres of
the ancients. For even if we regard the matter of the mediæval verses
as a dream, it was at least a vivid dream, a dream full of faces, a
dream of love and of lost things. And something of the same spirit
runs in a vaguer way through proverbs and phrases that are not exactly
religious, but rather in a rude sense philosophical, but which all
move with the burden of returning; things to be felt only in familiar
fragments ... _on revient toujours_ ... it's the old story--it's love
that makes the world go round; and all roads lead to Rome: we might
almost say that all roads lead to Rhyme.
Milton's revolt against rhyme must be read in the light of history.
Milton is the Renascence frozen into a Puritan form; the beginning of a
period which was in a sense classic, but was in a still more definite
sense aristocratic. There the Classicist was the artistic aristocrat
because the Calvinist was the spiritual aristocrat. The seventeenth
century was intensely individualistic; it had both in the noble and
the ignoble sense a respect for persons. It had no respect whatever
for popular traditions; and it was in the midst of its purely logical
and legal excitement that most of the popular traditions died. The
Parliament appeared and the people disappeared. The arts were put under
patrons, where they had once been under patron saints. The schools and
colleges at once strengthened and narrowed the New Learning, making
it something rather peculiar to one country and one class. A few men
talked a great deal of good Latin, where all men had once talked a
little bad Latin. But they talked even the good Latin so that no
Latinist in the world could understand them. They confined all study
of the classics to that of the most classical period, and grossly
exaggerated the barbarity and barrenness of patriotic Greek or mediæval
Latin. It is as if a man said that because the English translation of
the Bible is perhaps the best English in the world, therefore Addison
and Pater and Newman are not worth reading. We can imagine what men
in such a mood would have said of the rude rhymed hexameters of the
monks; and it is not unnatural that they should have felt a reaction
against rhyme itself. For the history of rhyme is the history of
something else, very vast and sometimes invisible, certainly somewhat
indefinable, against which they were in aristocratic rebellion.