There existed once a city whose inhabitants were so passionately fond of
poetry that if several weeks passed and no beautiful new verses had made
their appearance they regarded that poetical dearth as a public
calamity.
At such times they donned their worst garments, sprinkled ashes on their
heads, and gathering in throngs on the public squares, they shed tears,
and murmured bitterly against the Muse for having abandoned them.
On one such disastrous day the young poet Junius, presented himself on
the square, filled to overflowing with the sorrowing populace.
With swift steps he ascended a specially-constructed tribune and made a
sign that he wished to recite a poem.
The lictors immediately brandished their staves. "Silence! Attention!"
they shouted in stentorian tones.
"Friends! Comrades!" began Junius, in a loud, but not altogether firm
voice:
"Friends! Comrades! Ye lovers of verses!
Admirers of all that is graceful and fair!
Be not cast down by a moment of dark sadness!
The longed-for instant will come ... and light
will disperse the gloom!"[70]
Junius ceased speaking ... and in reply to him, from all points of the
square, clamour, whistling, and laughter arose.
All the faces turned toward him flamed with indignation, all eyes
flashed with wrath, all hands were uplifted, menaced, were clenched into
fists.
"A pretty thing he has thought to surprise us with!" roared angry
voices. "Away from the tribune with the talentless rhymster! Away with
the fool! Hurl rotten apples, bad eggs, at the empty-pated idiot! Give
us stones! Fetch stones!"
Junius tumbled headlong from the tribune ... but before he had succeeded
in fleeing to his own house, outbursts of rapturous applause, cries of
laudation and shouts reached his ear.
Filled with amazement, but striving not to be detected (for it is
dangerous to irritate an enraged wild beast), Junius returned to the
square.
And what did he behold?
High above the throng, above its shoulders, on a flat gold shield, stood
his rival, the young poet Julius, clad in a purple mantle, with a
laurel wreath on his waving curls.... And the populace round about was
roaring: "Glory! Glory! Glory to the immortal Julius! He hath comforted
us in our grief, in our great woe! He hath given us verses sweeter than
honey, more melodious than the cymbals, more fragrant than the rose,
more pure than heaven's azure! Bear him in triumph; surround his
inspired head with a soft billow of incense; refresh his brow with the
waving of palm branches; lavish at his feet all the spices of Arabia!
Glory!"
Junius approached one of the glorifiers.--"Inform me, O my
fellow-townsman! With what verses hath Julius made you happy?--Alas, I
was not on the square when he recited them! Repeat them, if thou canst
recall them, I pray thee!"
"Such verses--and not recall them?" briskly replied the man
interrogated.--"For whom dost thou take me? Listen--and rejoice, rejoice
together with us!"
'Ye lovers of verses!'--thus began the divine Julius....
"'Ye lovers of verses! Comrades! Friends!
Admirers of all that is graceful, melodious, tender!
Be not east down by a moment of heavy grief!
The longed-for moment will come--and day will chase away the night!'
"What dost thou think of that?"
"Good gracious!" roared Junius. "Why, those are my lines!--Julius must
have been in the crowd when I recited them; he heard and repeated them,
barely altering--and that, of course, not for the better--a few
expressions!"
"Aha! Now I recognise thee.... Thou art Junius," retorted the citizen
whom he had accosted, knitting his brows.--"Thou art either envious or a
fool!... Only consider just one thing, unhappy man! Julius says in such
lofty style: 'And day will chase away the night!'.... But with thee it
is some nonsense or other: 'And the light will disperse the
gloom!?'--What light?! What darkness?!"
"But is it not all one and the same thing...." Junius was beginning....
"Add one word more," the citizen interrupted him, "and I will shout to
the populace, and it will rend thee asunder."
Junius prudently held his peace, but a grey-haired old man, who had
overheard his conversation with the citizen, stepped up to the poor
poet, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said:
"Junius! Thou hast said thy say at the wrong time; but the other man
said his at the right time.--consequently, he is in the right, while for
thee there remain the consolations of thine own conscience."
But while his conscience was consoling Junius to the best of its
ability,--and in a decidedly-unsatisfactory way, if the truth must be
told,--far away, amid the thunder and patter of jubilation, in the
golden dust of the all-conquering sun, gleaming with purple, darkling
with laurel athwart the undulating streams of abundant incense, with
majestic leisureliness, like an emperor marching to his empire, the
proudly-erect figure of Julius moved forward with easy grace ... and
long branches of the palm-tree bent in turn before him, as though
expressing by their quiet rising, their submissive obeisance, that
incessantly-renewed adoration which filled to overflowing the hearts of
his fellow-citizens whom he had enchanted!
April, 1878.