In the old attic of the humble house,
The guitar hangs in cobwebs wrapped:
Softly, oh, softly touch her! Listen!
You have awaked the sleeping one!
She is awake, and with her waking,
Something like distant humming bees
Creeps far away and weeps about her;
Something that lives while ruins choke it.
Something like moans, like humming bees,
Thy sickened children, old guitar,
Thy words and airs. What evil pest,
What blight is eating thine old age!
In the old attic of the humble house,
Thou hast awaked; but who will tend thee?
O Mother, wilderness about thee!
Thy children, withering; and something,
Like humming bees, sounds far away!
A distinct note of pessimism is found in the lines of both these poems.
In the latter, it becomes a helpless cry of anguish. But despair seems
to cure the poet rather than drown his faith in hopelessness. As a
critic, he encourages every initiate of the cause. As a "soldier of the
verse," he himself fights his battles of song in every field. In short
story, in drama, in epic poetry, and above all in lyrics, he creates
work after work. From the _Songs of my Country_, the _Hymn to Athena_,
the _Eyes of my Soul_ and the _Iambs and Anapaests_, he rises gradually
and steadily to the tragic drama of the _Thrice Noble-One_, to the epic
of _The King's Flute_, and to the splendid lyrics of _Life Immovable_
and _The Twelve Words of the Gypsy_ which are his masterpieces.
Nor does he always meet adversity with songs of resignation. At times,
he faces indignantly the hostile world with a satire as stinging as that
of Juvenal. He dares attack with Byronic boldness every idol that his
enemies worship. Often he strikes at the whole people with Archilochean
bitterness and parries blow for blow like Hipponax. At times, he even
seems to approach the rancor of Swift. But then he immediately throws
away his whip and transcends his satire with a loftier thought, a
soothing moral, a note of lyricism, and above all with an unshaken faith
in the new day for which he works. The eighth and ninth poems of the
first book of his "Satires" are good illustrations of this side of his
work:
8
The lazy drones! The frogs! The locusts!
Big men! Politicians! Men who draw
Their learning from the thoughtless journals!
A crowd of stupid, haughty blockheads!
Unworthily, thy name is set
By each as target for blind blows;
But forward still thy steps thou leadest,
Up toward the high bell-tower above,
And climbest: Spaces spread about thee,
And at thy feet, a world of scorners.
Though thou rainest not the godsent manna,
A great Life-giver still, thou tollest
With a new bell a new-born creed.
9
Aye! Break the tyrant's hated chains!
But with their breaking go not drunk!
The world is always slaves and lords:
Though free, chain-bound your life must be;
Other kinds of chains are there
For you: Kneel down! For lo, I bring them!
They fit you, redeemers or redeemed!
Bind with these chains your golden youth;
I bring you cares and sacrifices.
And you shall call them Truth and Beauty,
Modesty, Knowledge, Discipline!
To one command obey last, first,
The world's great laws, and men, and nations.
One of his "Hundred Voices" has something of this satiric note. It is a
blow against a worthless pretender of the art of verse, who courts
popularity with strains not worthy of the sacred Muse. Palamas, acting
with greater wisdom than Pope, does not give the name of this unknown
pretender:
Bad? Would that thou wert bad; but something worse thou art:
Thou stretchedst an unworthy hand to the sacred lyre,
And the untaught mob took thy reeling in the dust
For the true song of golden wings; and thou didst take
Thy seat close by the poet's side so thoughtlessly,
And none dared rise and come to drag thee thence away.
And see, instead of scorning thee, the just was angry;
Yet, even his verse's arrow is for thee a glory!
_The Grave_
In tracing the great life influences of our poet, we must not pass over
the loss of his third child, "the child without a peer," as he says
in one of his poems addressed to his wife, "who changed the worldly
air about us into divine nectar, a worthy offering to the spotless-white
light of Olympus." To this loss, the poet has never reconciled himself.
The sorrow finds expression in direct or covert strains in every work he
has written. But its lasting monument was created soon after the child's
death. A collection of poems, entitled _The Grave_, entirely devoted
to his memory, is overflowing with an unique intensity of feeling.
The poems are composed in short quatrains of a slowly moving rhythm
restrained by frequent pauses and occasional metrical irregularities,
and thus they reflect with faithfulness the paternal agony with which
they are filled. They belong to the earlier works of the poet, but they
disclose great lyric power and are the first deep notes of the poet's
genius. A few lines from the dedication follow:
Neither with iron,
Nor with gold,
Nor with the colors
That the painters scatter,
Nor with marble
Carved with art,
Your little house I built
For you to dwell for ever;
With spirit charms alone
I raised it in a land
That knows no matter nor
The withering touch of Time.
With all my tears,
With all my blood,
I founded it
And built its vault....
In another poem, in similar strains, he paints the ominous tranquility
with which the child's birth and parting were attended:
Tranquilly, silently,
Thirsting for our kisses,
Unknown you glided
Into our bosom;
Even the heavy winter
Suddenly smiled
Tranquilly, silently,
But to receive you;
Tranquilly, silently,
The breeze caressed you,
O Sunlight of Night
And Dream of the Day;
Tranquilly, silently,
Our home was gladdened
With sweetness of amber
With your grace magnetic;
Tranquilly, silently,
Our home beheld you,
Beauty of the morning star,
Light of the star of evening;
Tranquilly, silently,
Little moons, mouth and eyes,
One dawn you vanished
Upon a cruel deathbed;
Tranquilly, silently,
In spite of all our kisses,
Away you wandered
Torn from our bosom;
Tranquilly, silently,
O word, O verse, O rime,
Your witherless flowers
Sow on his grave faith-shaking.
In another poem reminiscent of Tibullean tenderness, the corners of the
deserted home, in which the child, during his life, had lingered to
play, laugh, or weep, converse with each other about their absent guest:
Things living weep for you,
And lifeless things are mourning;
The corners, too, forlorn,
Remember you with longing:
"One evening, angry here he sat,
And slept in bitterness."
"Here, often he sat listening
Enchanted to the tale."
"Here, I beheld with pride
The grace of Love half-naked;
An empty bed and stripped
Is all that now is left me."
"I always looked for him;
He held a book; how often
He sat by me to read
With singing tongue its pages!"
"What is this pile of toys?
Why are they piled before me
As if I were a grave?
Are they his little playthings?
"The little man comes not;
For death with early frost
Has nipped his little dreams
And chilled his little doings."
"His little sword is idle,
And here has come to rest."
"And here his little ship
Without its captain waits."
"To me, they brought him sick
And took him away extinguished."
"They watered me with tears
And perfumed me with incense."
"The dead child's taper burns
Consuming and consumed."
"The tempest wildly beats
Upon the doors and windows,
And deep into our breasts
The tempest's moan is echoed."
And all the house about
For thee, my child, is groaning ...