“ ... taking off his hat,”
comes into the palace at Pretoria, where
“ ... in awful state alone,
Alone, the scientific Monist sat,
Who guards our realm, extends its narrow bounds,
And to achieve his end,
Is quite prepared to spend
The inconceivably imperial sum of twice three hundred times five
hundred thousand pounds,”
shows the grave difficulty of wedding the verse to the music.
The last line is intolerably clumsy, when read without the air
accompanying it; and the whole illustrates very well my contention
that music should be the chief thing in the composition of an ode,
and that the libretto should be entirely subservient to it.
A still better example is found in the great chorus “Pretoria,”
which begins--
“Pretoria with her hundred towers
Acknowledges his powers,”
and “Johannesburg,” which ends--
“Heil! heil! hoch! heil! du ubermenslich’ wohl-gebornen Graf
von Chamberlein,
While underground,
While underground,
Such rare and scattered Kaffirs as are found
Repeat the happy, happy, happy, happy sound.”