_Evening. The Summit of Etna._
EMPEDOCLES
Alone!--
On this charr'd, blacken'd, melancholy waste,
Crown'd by the awful peak, Etna's great mouth.
Round which the sullen vapour rolls--alone!
Pausanias is far hence, and that is well,
For I must henceforth speak no more with man
He hath his lesson too, and that debt's paid;
And the good, learned, friendly, quiet man,
May bravelier front his life, and in himself
Find henceforth energy and heart. But I--
The weary man, the banish'd citizen,
Whose banishment is not his greatest ill,
Whose weariness no energy can reach,
And for whose hurt courage is not the cure--
What should I do with life and living more?
No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!
And the world hath the day, and must break thee,
Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live,
Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine;
And being lonely thou art miserable,
For something has impair'd thy spirit's strength,
And dried its self-sufficing fount of joy.
Thou canst not live with men nor with thyself--
O sage! O sage!--Take then the one way left;
And turn thee to the elements, thy friends,
Thy well-tried friends, thy willing ministers,
And say: Ye helpers, hear Empedocles,
Who asks this final service at your hands!
Before the sophist-brood hath overlaid
The last spark of man's consciousness with words--
Ere quite the being of man, ere quite the world
Be disarray'd of their divinity--
Before the soul lose all her solemn joys,
And awe be dead, and hope impossible,
And the soul's deep eternal night come on--
Receive me, hide me, quench me, take me home!
_He advances to the edge of the crater. Smoke
and fire break forth with a loud noise, and_
CALLICLES _is heard below singing:--_
The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere;
In the court of Gods, in the city of men,
And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen,
In the still mountain air.
Only to Typho it sounds hatefully;
To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown,
Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone
To imbed them in the sea.
Wherefore dost thou groan so loud?
Wherefore do thy nostrils flash,
Through the dark night, suddenly,
Typho, such red jets of flame?--
Is thy tortured heart still proud?
Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash?
Still alert thy stone-crush'd frame?
Doth thy fierce soul still deplore
Thine ancient rout by the Cilician hills,
And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore?[31]
Do thy bloodshot eyes still weep
The fight which crown'd thine ills,
Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep?
Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair,
Where erst the strong sea-currents suck'd thee down,
Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest,
Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair?
That thy groans, like thunder prest,
Begin to roll, and almost drown
The sweet notes whose lulling spell
Gods and the race of mortals love so well,
When through thy caves thou hearest music swell?
But an awful pleasure bland
Spreading o'er the Thunderer's face,
When the sound climbs near his seat,
The Olympian council sees;
As he lets his lax right hand,
Which the lightnings doth embrace,
Sink upon his mighty knees.
And the eagle, at the beck
Of the appeasing, gracious harmony,
Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feather'd neck,
Nestling nearer to Jove's feet;
While o'er his sovran eye
The curtains of the blue films slowly meet
And the white Olympus-peaks
Rosily brighten, and the soothed Gods smile
At one another from their golden chairs,
And no one round the charmed circle speaks.
Only the loved Hebe bears
The cup about, whose draughts beguile
Pain and care, with a dark store
Of fresh-pull'd violets wreathed and nodding o'er;
And her flush'd feet glow on the marble floor.
_Empedocles_
He fables, yet speaks truth!
The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere
To the subtle, contriving head;
Great qualities are trodden down,
And littleness united
Is become invincible.
These rumblings are not Typho's groans, I know!
These angry smoke-bursts
Are not the passionate breath
Of the mountain-crush'd, tortured, intractable Titan king--
But over all the world
What suffering is there not seen
Of plainness oppress'd by cunning,
As the well-counsell'd Zeus oppress'd
That self-helping son of earth!
What anguish of greatness,
Rail'd and hunted from the world,
Because its simplicity rebukes
This envious, miserable age!
I am weary of it.
--Lie there, ye ensigns
Of my unloved preeminence
In an age like this!
Among a people of children,
Who throng'd me in their cities,
Who worshipp'd me in their houses,
And ask'd, not wisdom,
But drugs to charm with,
But spells to mutter--
All the fool's-armoury of magic!--Lie there,
My golden circlet,
My purple robe!
_Callicles_ (_from below_)
As the sky-brightening south-wind clears the day,
And makes the mass'd clouds roll,
The music of the lyre blows away
The clouds which wrap the soul.
Oh! that Fate had let me see
That triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,
That famous, final victory,
When jealous Pan with Marsyas did conspire;
When, from far Parnassus' side,
Young Apollo, all the pride
Of the Phrygian flutes to tame,
To the Phrygian highlands came;
Where the long green reed-beds sway
In the rippled waters grey
Of that solitary lake
Where Maeander's springs are born;
Whence the ridged pine-wooded roots
Of Messogis westward break,
Mounting westward, high and higher.
There was held the famous strife;
There the Phrygian brought his flutes,
And Apollo brought his lyre;
And, when now the westering sun
Touch'd the hills, the strife was done,
And the attentive Muses said:
"Marsyas, thou art vanquished!"
Then Apollo's minister
Hang'd upon a branching fir
Marsyas, that unhappy Faun,
And began to whet his knife.
But the Maenads, who were there,
Left their friend, and with robes flowing
In the wind, and loose dark hair
O'er their polish'd bosoms blowing,
Each her ribbon'd tambourine
Flinging on the mountain-sod,
With a lovely frighten'd mien
Came about the youthful God.
But he turn'd his beauteous face
Haughtily another way,
From the grassy sun-warm'd place
Where in proud repose he lay,
With one arm over his head,
Watching how the whetting sped.
But aloof, on the lake-strand,
Did the young Olympus stand,
Weeping at his master's end;
For the Faun had been his friend.
For he taught him how to sing,
And he taught him flute-playing.
Many a morning had they gone
To the glimmering mountain-lakes,
And had torn up by the roots
The tall crested water-reeds
With long plumes and soft brown seeds,
And had carved them into flutes,
Sitting on a tabled stone
Where the shoreward ripple breaks.
And he taught him how to please
The red-snooded Phrygian girls,
Whom the summer evening sees
Flashing in the dance's whirls
Underneath the starlit trees
In the mountain-villages.
Therefore now Olympus stands,
At his master's piteous cries
Pressing fast with both his hands
His white garment to his eyes,
Not to see Apollo's scorn;--
Ah, poor Faun, poor Faun! ah, poor Faun!
_Empedocles_
And lie thou there,
My laurel bough!
Scornful Apollo's ensign, lie thou there!
Though thou hast been my shade in the world's heat--
Though I have loved thee, lived in honouring thee--
Yet lie thou there,
My laurel bough!
I am weary of thee.
I am weary of the solitude
Where he who bears thee must abide--
Of the rocks of Parnassus,
Of the rocks of Delphi,
Of the moonlit peaks, and the caves.
Thou guardest them, Apollo!
Over the grave of the slain Pytho,
Though young, intolerably severe!
Thou keepest aloof the profane,
But the solitude oppresses thy votary!
The jars of men reach him not in thy valley--
But can life reach him?
Thou fencest him from the multitude--
Who will fence him from himself?
He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents,
And the beating of his own heart.
The air is thin, the veins swell,
The temples tighten and throb there--
Air! air!
Take thy bough, set me free from my solitude;
I have been enough alone!
Where shall thy votary fly then? back to men?--
But they will gladly welcome him once more,
And help him to unbend his too tense thought,
And rid him of the presence of himself,
And keep their friendly chatter at his ear,
And haunt him, till the absence from himself,
That other torment, grow unbearable;
And he will fly to solitude again,
And he will find its air too keen for him,
And so change back; and many thousand times
Be miserably bandied to and fro
Like a sea-wave, betwixt the world and thee,
Thou young, implacable God! and only death
Can cut his oscillations short, and so
Bring him to poise. There is no other way.
And yet what days were those, Parmenides!
When we were young, when we could number friends
In all the Italian cities like ourselves,
When with elated hearts we join'd your train.
Ye Sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth.[32]
Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought
Nor outward things were closed and dead to us;
But we received the shock of mighty thoughts
On simple minds with a pure natural joy;
And if the sacred load oppress'd our brain,
We had the power to feel the pressure eased,
The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again,
In the delightful commerce of the world.
We had not lost our balance then, nor grown
Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy.
The smallest thing could give us pleasure then--
The sports of the country-people,
A flute-note from the woods,
Sunset over the sea;
Seed-time and harvest,
The reapers in the corn,
The vinedresser in his vineyard,
The village-girl at her wheel.
Fulness of life and power of feeling, ye
Are for the happy, for the souls at ease,
Who dwell on a firm basis of content!
But he, who has outlived his prosperous days--
But he, whose youth fell on a different world
From that on which his exiled age is thrown--
Whose mind was fed on other food, was train'd
By other rules than are in vogue to-day--
Whose habit of thought is fix'd, who will not change,
But, in a world he loves not, must subsist
In ceaseless opposition, be the guard
Of his own breast, fetter'd to what he guards,
That the world win no mastery over him--
Who has no friend, no fellow left, not one;
Who has no minute's breathing space allow'd
To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy----
Joy and the outward world must die to him,
As they are dead to me.
_A long pause, during which_ EMPEDOCLES _remains
motionless, plunged in thought. The night deepens.
He moves forward and gazes round him, and
proceeds_:--
And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,
As of old, in the fields of heaven,
Your distant, melancholy lines!
Have you, too, survived yourselves?
Are you, too, what I fear to become?
You, too, once lived;
You too moved joyfully
Among august companions,
In an older world, peopled by Gods,
In a mightier order,
The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.
But now, ye kindle
Your lonely, cold-shining lights,
Unwilling lingerers
In the heavenly wilderness,
For a younger, ignoble world;
And renew, by necessity,
Night after night your courses,
In echoing, unnear'd silence,
Above a race you know not--
Uncaring and undelighted,
Without friend and without home;
Weary like us, though not
Weary with our weariness.
No, no, ye stars! there is no death with you,
No languor, no decay! languor and death,
They are with me, not you! ye are alive--
Ye, and the pure dark ether where ye ride
Brilliant above me! And thou, fiery world,
That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount
Upon whose charr'd and quaking crust I stand--
Thou, too, brimmest with life!--the sea of cloud,
That heaves its white and billowy vapours up
To moat this isle of ashes from the world,
Lives; and that other fainter sea, far down,
O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams leads
To Etna's Liparean sister-fires
And the long dusky line of Italy--
That mild and luminous floor of waters lives,
With held-in joy swelling its heart; I only,
Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has fail'd,
I, who have not, like these, in solitude
Maintain'd courage and force, and in myself
Nursed an immortal vigour--I alone
Am dead to life and joy, therefore I read
In all things my own deadness.
_A long silence. He continues_:--
Oh, that I could glow like this mountain!
Oh, that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea!
Oh, that my soul were full of light as the stars!
Oh, that it brooded over the world like the air!
But no, this heart will glow no more; thou art
A living man no more, Empedocles!
Nothing but a devouring flame of thought--
But a naked, eternally restless mind!
_After a pause_:--
To the elements it came from
Everything will return--
Our bodies to earth,
Our blood to water,
Heat to fire,
Breath to air.
They were well born, they will be well entomb'd--
But mind?...
And we might gladly share the fruitful stir
Down in our mother earth's miraculous womb;
Well would it be
With what roll'd of us in the stormy main;
We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air,
Or with the nimble, radiant life of fire.
But mind, but thought--
If these have been the master part of us--
Where will _they_ find their parent element?
What will receive _them_, who will call _them_ home?
But we shall still be in them, and they in us,
And we shall be the strangers of the world,
And they will be our lords, as they are now;
And keep us prisoners of our consciousness,
And never let us clasp and feel the All
But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils.
And we shall be unsatisfied as now;
And we shall feel the agony of thirst,
The ineffable longing for the life of life
Baffled for ever; and still thought and mind
Will hurry us with them on their homeless march,
Over the unallied unopening earth,
Over the unrecognising sea; while air
Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth,
And fire repel us from its living waves.
And then we shall unwillingly return
Back to this meadow of calamity,
This uncongenial place, this human life;
And in our individual human state
Go through the sad probation all again,
To see if we will poise our life at last,
To see if we will now at last be true
To our own only true, deep-buried selves,
Being one with which we are one with the whole world;
Or whether we will once more fall away
Into some bondage of the flesh or mind,
Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze
Forged by the imperious lonely thinking-power.
And each succeeding age in which we are born
Will have more peril for us than the last;
Will goad our senses with a sharper spur,
Will fret our minds to an intenser play,
Will make ourselves harder to be discern'd.
And we shall struggle awhile, gasp and rebel--
And we shall fly for refuge to past times,
Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness;
And the reality will pluck us back,
Knead us in its hot hand, and change our nature
And we shall feel our powers of effort flag,
And rally them for one last fight--and fail;
And we shall sink in the impossible strife,
And be astray for ever.
Slave of sense
I have in no wise been;--but slave of thought?...
And who can say: I have been always free,
Lived ever in the light of my own soul?--
I cannot; I have lived in wrath and gloom,
Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man,
Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light.
But I have not grown easy in these bonds--
But I have not denied what bonds these were.
Yea, I take myself to witness,
That I have loved no darkness,
Sophisticated no truth,
Nursed no delusion,
Allow'd no fear!
And therefore, O ye elements! I know--
Ye know it too--it hath been granted me
Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved.
I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud
Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free.
Is it but for a moment?
--Ah, boil up, ye vapours!
Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!
My soul glows to meet you.
Ere it flag, ere the mists
Of despondency and gloom
Rush over it again,
Receive me, save me!
[_He plunges into the crater._
_Callicles_
(_from below_)
Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea,
Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!
On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks,
On the cliff-side the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.
In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lull'd by the rills,
Lie wrapt in their blankets
Asleep on the hills.
--What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flower'd broom?
What sweet-breathing presence
Out-perfumes the thyme?
What voices enrapture
The night's balmy prime?--
'Tis Apollo comes leading
His choir, the Nine.
--The leader is fairest,
But all are divine.
They are lost in the hollows!
They stream up again!
What seeks on this mountain
The glorified train?--
They bathe on this mountain,
In the spring by their road;
Then on to Olympus,
Their endless abode.
--Whose praise do they mention?
Of what is it told?--
What will be for ever;
What was from of old.
First hymn they the Father
Of all things; and then,
The rest of immortals,
The action of men.
The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.
LATER POEMS
WESTMINSTER ABBEY
JULY 25, 1881.
(_The Day of Burial, in the Abbey, of_ ARTHUR PENRHYN
STANLEY, _Dean of Westminster._)
What! for a term so scant
Our shining visitant
Cheer'd us, and now is pass'd into the night?
Couldst thou no better keep, O Abbey old,
The boon thy dedication-sign foretold,[33]
The presence of that gracious inmate, light?--
A child of light appear'd;
Hither he came, late-born and long-desired,
And to men's hearts this ancient place endear'd;
What, is the happy glow so soon expired?
--Rough was the winter eve;
Their craft the fishers leave,
And down over the Thames the darkness drew.
One still lags last, and turns, and eyes the Pile
Huge in the gloom, across in Thorney Isle,
King Sebert's work, the wondrous Minster new.
--'Tis Lambeth now, where then
They moor'd their boats among the bulrush stems;
And that new Minster in the matted fen
The world-famed Abbey by the westering Thames.
His mates are gone, and he
For mist can scarcely see
A strange wayfarer coming to his side--
Who bade him loose his boat, and fix his oar,
And row him straightway to the further shore,
And wait while he did there a space abide.
The fisher awed obeys,
That voice had note so clear of sweet command;
Through pouring tide he pulls, and drizzling haze,
And sets his freight ashore on Thorney strand.
The Minster's outlined mass
Rose dim from the morass,
And thitherward the stranger took his way.
Lo, on a sudden all the Pile is bright!
Nave, choir and transept glorified with light,
While tongues of fire on coign and carving play!
And heavenly odours fair
Come streaming with the floods of glory in,
And carols float along the happy air,
As if the reign of joy did now begin.
Then all again is dark;
And by the fisher's bark
The unknown passenger returning stands.
_O Saxon fisher! thou hast had with thee_
_The fisher from the Lake of Galilee--_
So saith he, blessing him with outspread hands;
Then fades, but speaks the while:
_At dawn thou to King Sebert shalt relate_
_How his St. Peter's Church in Thorney Isle_
_Peter, his friend, with light did consecrate._
Twelve hundred years and more
Along the holy floor
Pageants have pass'd, and tombs of mighty kings
Efface the humbler graves of Sebert's line,
And, as years sped, the minster-aisles divine
Grew used to the approach of Glory's wings.
Arts came, and arms, and law,
And majesty, and sacred form and fear;
Only that primal guest the fisher saw,
Light, only light, was slow to reappear.
The Saviour's happy light,
Wherein at first was dight
His boon of life and immortality,
In desert ice of subtleties was spent
Or drown'd in mists of childish wonderment,
Fond fancies here, there false philosophy!
And harsh the temper grew
Of men with mind thus darken'd and astray;
And scarce the boon of life could struggle through,
For want of light which should the boon convey.
Yet in this latter time
The promise of the prime
Seem'd to come true at last, O Abbey old!
It seem'd, a child of light did bring the dower
Foreshown thee in thy consecration-hour,
And in thy courts his shining freight unroll'd:
Bright wits, and instincts sure,
And goodness warm, and truth without alloy,
And temper sweet, and love of all things pure,
And joy in light, and power to spread the joy.
And on that countenance bright
Shone oft so high a light,
That to my mind there came how, long ago,
Lay on the hearth, amid a fiery ring,
The charm'd babe of the Eleusinian king--[34]
His nurse, the Mighty Mother, will'd it so.
Warm in her breast, by day,
He slumber'd, and ambrosia balm'd the child;
But all night long amid the flames he lay,
Upon the hearth, and play'd with them, and smiled.
But once, at midnight deep,
His mother woke from sleep,
And saw her babe amidst the fire, and scream'd.
A sigh the Goddess gave, and with a frown
Pluck'd from the fire the child, and laid him down;
Then raised her face, and glory round her stream'd.
The mourning-stole no more
Mantled her form, no more her head was bow'd;
But raiment of celestial sheen she wore,
And beauty fill'd her, and she spake aloud:--
"O ignorant race of man!
Achieve your good who can,
If your own hands the good begun undo?
Had human cry not marr'd the work divine,
Immortal had I made this boy of mine;
But now his head to death again is due
And I have now no power
Unto this pious household to repay
Their kindness shown me in my wandering hour."
--She spake, and from the portal pass'd away.
The Boy his nurse forgot,
And bore a mortal lot.
Long since, his name is heard on earth no more.
In some chance battle on Cithaeron-side
The nursling of the Mighty Mother died,
And went where all his fathers went before.
--On thee too, in thy day
Of childhood, Arthur! did some check have power,
That, radiant though thou wert, thou couldst but stay,
Bringer of heavenly light, a human hour?
Therefore our happy guest
Knew care, and knew unrest,
And weakness warn'd him, and he fear'd decline.
And in the grave he laid a cherish'd wife,
And men ignoble harass'd him with strife,
And deadly airs his strength did undermine.
Then from his Abbey fades
The sound beloved of his victorious breath;
And light's fair nursling stupor first invades,
And next the crowning impotence of death.
But hush! This mournful strain,
Which would of death complain,
The oracle forbade, not ill-inspired.--
That Pair, whose head did plan, whose hands did forge
The Temple in the pure Parnassian gorge,[35]
Finish'd their work, and then a meed required.
"Seven days," the God replied,
"Live happy, then expect your perfect meed!"
Quiet in sleep, the seventh night, they died.
Death, death was judged the boon supreme indeed.
And truly he who here
Hath run his bright career,
And served men nobly, and acceptance found,
And borne to light and right his witness high,
What could he better wish than then to die,
And wait the issue, sleeping underground?
Why should he pray to range
Down the long age of truth that ripens slow;
And break his heart with all the baffling change,
And all the tedious tossing to and fro?
For this and that way swings
The flux of mortal things,
Though moving inly to one far-set goal.--
What had our Arthur gain'd, to stop and see,
After light's term, a term of cecity,
A Church once large and then grown strait in soul?
To live, and see arise,
Alternating with wisdom's too short reign,
Folly revived, re-furbish'd sophistries,
And pullulating rites externe and vain?
Ay me! 'Tis deaf, that ear
Which joy'd my voice to hear;
Yet would I not disturb thee from thy tomb,
Thus sleeping in thine Abbey's friendly shade,
And the rough waves of life for ever laid!
I would not break thy rest, nor change thy doom.
Even as my father, thou--
Even as that loved, that well-recorded friend--
Hast thy commission done; ye both may now
Wait for the leaven to work, the let to end.
And thou, O Abbey grey!
Predestined to the ray
By this dear guest over thy precinct shed--
Fear not but that thy light once more shall burn,
Once more thine immemorial gleam return,
Though sunk be now this bright, this gracious head!
Let but the light appear
And thy transfigured walls be touch'd with flame--
Our Arthur will again be present here,
Again from lip to lip will pass his name.
GEIST'S GRAVE
Four years!--and didst thou stay above
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,
Were crowded, Geist! into no more?
Only four years those winning ways,
Which make me for thy presence yearn,
Call'd us to pet thee or to praise,
Dear little friend! at every turn?
That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span,
To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?
That liquid, melancholy eye,
From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,[B]
The sense of tears in mortal things--
That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
By spirits gloriously gay,
And temper of heroic mould--
What, was four years their whole short day?
Yes, only four!--and not the course
Of all the centuries yet to come,
And not the infinite resource
Of Nature, with her countless sum
Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.
Stern law of every mortal lot!
Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,
And builds himself I know not what
Of second life I know not where.
But thou, when struck thine hour to go,
On us, who stood despondent by,
A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.
Yet would we keep thee in our heart--
Would fix our favourite on the scene,
Nor let thee utterly depart
And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.
And so there rise these lines of verse
On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:
_Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!_
We stroke thy broad brown paws again,
We bid thee to thy vacant chair,
We greet thee by the window-pane,
We hear thy scuffle on the stair.
We see the flaps of thy large ears
Quick raised to ask which way we go;
Crossing the frozen lake, appears
Thy small black figure on the snow!
Nor to us only art thou dear
Who mourn thee in thine English home;
Thou hast thine absent master's tear,
Dropt by the far Australian foam.
Thy memory lasts both here and there,
And thou shall live as long as we.
And after that--thou dost not care!
In us was all the world to thee.
Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame,
Even to a date beyond our own
We strive to carry down thy name,
By mounded turf, and graven stone.
We lay thee, close within our reach,
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
Between the holly and the beech,
Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form,
Asleep, yet lending half an ear
To travellers on the Portsmouth road;--
There build we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode!
Then some, who through this garden pass,
When we too, like thyself, are clay,
Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
And stop before the stone, and say:
_People who lived here long ago_
_Did by this stone, it seems, intend_
_To name for future times to know_
_The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend._
[Footnote B: _Sunt lacrimae rerum!_]
POOR MATTHIAS
Poor Matthias!--Found him lying
Fall'n beneath his perch and dying?
Found him stiff, you say, though warm--
All convulsed his little form?
Poor canary! many a year
Well he knew his mistress dear;
Now in vain you call his name,
Vainly raise his rigid frame,
Vainly warm him in your breast,
Vainly kiss his golden crest,
Smooth his ruffled plumage fine,
Touch his trembling beak with wine.
One more gasp--it is the end!
Dead and mute our tiny friend!
--Songster thou of many a year,
Now thy mistress brings thee here,
Says, it fits that I rehearse,
Tribute due to thee, a verse,
Meed for daily song of yore
Silent now for evermore.
Poor Matthias! Wouldst thou have
More than pity? claim'st a stave?
--Friends more near us than a bird
We dismiss'd without a word.
Rover, with the good brown head,
Great Atossa, they are dead;
Dead, and neither prose nor rhyme
Tells the praises of their prime.
Thou didst know them old and grey,
Know them in their sad decay.
Thou hast seen Atossa sage
Sit for hours beside thy cage;
Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,
Flutter, chirp--she never stirr'd!
What were now these toys to her?
Down she sank amid her fur;
Eyed thee with a soul resign'd--
And thou deemedst cats were kind!
--Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat.
Rover died--Atossa too.
Less than they to us are you!
Nearer human were their powers,
Closer knit their life with ours.
Hands had stroked them, which are cold,
Now for years, in churchyard mould;
Comrades of our past were they,
Of that unreturning day.
Changed and aging, they and we
Dwelt, it seem'd, in sympathy.
Alway from their presence broke
Somewhat which remembrance woke
Of the loved, the lost, the young--
Yet they died, and died unsung.
Geist came next, our little friend;
Geist had verse to mourn his end.
Yes, but that enforcement strong
Which compell'd for Geist a song--
All that gay courageous cheer,
All that human pathos dear;
Soul-fed eyes with suffering worn,
Pain heroically borne,
Faithful love in depth divine--
Poor Matthias, were they thine?
Max and Kaiser we to-day
Greet upon the lawn at play;
Max a dachshound without blot--
Kaiser should be, but is not.
Max, with shining yellow coat,
Prinking ears and dewlap throat--
Kaiser, with his collie face,
Penitent for want of race.
--Which may be the first to die,
Vain to augur, they or I!
But, as age comes on, I know,
Poet's fire gets faint and low;
If so be that travel they
First the inevitable way,
Much I doubt if they shall have
Dirge from me to crown their grave.
Yet, poor bird, thy tiny corse
Moves me, somehow, to remorse;
Something haunts my conscience, brings
Sad, compunctious visitings.
Other favourites, dwelling here,
Open lived to us, and near;
Well we knew when they were glad,
Plain we saw if they were sad,
Joy'd with them when they were gay,
Soothed them in their last decay;
Sympathy could feel and show
Both in weal of theirs and woe.
Birds, companions more unknown,
Live beside us, but alone;
Finding not, do all they can,
Passage from their souls to man.
Kindness we bestow, and praise,
Laud their plumage, greet their lays;
Still, beneath their feather'd breast,
Stirs a history unexpress'd.
Wishes there, and feelings strong,
Incommunicably throng;
What they want, we cannot guess,
Fail to track their deep distress--
Dull look on when death is nigh,
Note no change, and let them die.
Poor Matthias! couldst thou speak,
What a tale of thy last week!
Every morning did we pay
Stupid salutations gay,
Suited well to health, but how
Mocking, how incongruous now!
Cake we offer'd, sugar, seed,
Never doubtful of thy need;
Praised, perhaps, thy courteous eye,
Praised thy golden livery.
Gravely thou the while, poor dear!
Sat'st upon thy perch to hear,
Fixing with a mute regard
Us, thy human keepers hard,
Troubling, with our chatter vain,
Ebb of life, and mortal pain--
Us, unable to divine
Our companion's dying sign,
Or o'erpass the severing sea
Set betwixt ourselves and thee,
Till the sand thy feathers smirch
Fallen dying off thy perch!
Was it, as the Grecian sings,
Birds were born the first of things,
Before the sun, before the wind,
Before the gods, before mankind,
Airy, ante-mundane throng--
Witness their unworldly song!
Proof they give, too, primal powers,
Of a prescience more than ours--
Teach us, while they come and go,
When to sail, and when to sow.
Cuckoo calling from the hill,
Swallow skimming by the mill,
Swallows trooping in the sedge,
Starlings swirling from the hedge,
Mark the seasons, map our year,
As they show and disappear.
But, with all this travail sage
Brought from that anterior age,
Goes an unreversed decree
Whereby strange are they and we;
Making want of theirs, and plan,
Indiscernible by man.
No, away with tales like these
Stol'n from Aristophanes![36]
Does it, if we miss your mind,
Prove us so remote in kind?
Birds! we but repeat on you
What amongst ourselves we do.
Somewhat more or somewhat less,
'Tis the same unskilfulness.
What you feel, escapes our ken--
Know we more our fellow men?
Human suffering at our side,
Ah, like yours is undescried!
Human longings, human fears,
Miss our eyes and miss our ears.
Little helping, wounding much,
Dull of heart, and hard of touch,
Brother man's despairing sign
Who may trust us to divine?
Who assure us, sundering powers
Stand not 'twixt his soul and ours?
Poor Matthias! See, thy end
What a lesson doth it lend!
For that lesson thou shalt have,
Dead canary bird, a stave!
Telling how, one stormy day,
Stress of gale and showers of spray
Drove my daughter small and me
Inland from the rocks and sea.
Driv'n inshore, we follow down
Ancient streets of Hastings town--
Slowly thread them--when behold,
French canary-merchant old
Shepherding his flock of gold
In a low dim-lighted pen
Scann'd of tramps and fishermen!
There a bird, high-coloured, fat,
Proud of port, though something squat--
Pursy, play'd-out Philistine--
Dazzled Nelly's youthful eyne.
But, far in, obscure, there stirr'd
On his perch a sprightlier bird,
Courteous-eyed, erect and slim;
And I whisper'd: "Fix on _him_!"
Home we brought him, young and fair,
Songs to trill in Surrey air.
Here Matthias sang his fill,
Saw the cedars of Pains Hill;
Here he pour'd his little soul,
Heard the murmur of the Mole.
Eight in number now the years
He hath pleased our eyes and ears;
Other favourites he hath known
Go, and now himself is gone.
--Fare thee well, companion dear!
Fare for ever well, nor fear,
Tiny though thou art, to stray
Down the uncompanion'd way!
We without thee, little friend,
Many years have not to spend;
What are left, will hardly be
Better than we spent with thee.
KAISER DEAD
_April_ 6, 1887.
What, Kaiser dead? The heavy news
Post-haste to Cobham calls the Muse,
From where in Farringford she brews
The ode sublime,
Or with Pen-bryn's bold bard pursues
A rival rhyme.
Kai's bracelet tail, Kai's busy feet,
Were known to all the village-street.
"What, poor Kai dead?" say all I meet;
"A loss indeed!"
O for the croon pathetic, sweet,
Of Robin's reed![37]
Six years ago I brought him down,
A baby dog, from London town;
Round his small throat of black and brown
A ribbon blue,
And vouch'd by glorious renown
A dachshound true.
His mother, most majestic dame,
Of blood-unmix'd, from Potsdam came;
And Kaiser's race we deem'd the same--
No lineage higher.
And so he bore the imperial name.
But ah, his sire!
Soon, soon the days conviction bring.
The collie hair, the collie swing,
The tail's indomitable ring,
The eye's unrest--
The case was clear; a mongrel thing
Kai stood confest.
But all those virtues, which commend
The humbler sort who serve and tend,
Were thine in store, thou faithful friend.
What sense, what cheer!
To us, declining tow'rds our end,
A mate how dear!
For Max, thy brother-dog, began
To flag, and feel his narrowing span.
And cold, besides, his blue blood ran,
Since, 'gainst the classes,
He heard, of late, the Grand Old Man
Incite the masses.
Yes, Max and we grew slow and sad;
But Kai, a tireless shepherd-lad,
Teeming with plans, alert, and glad
In work or play,
Like sunshine went and came, and bade
Live out the day!
Still, still I see the figure smart--
Trophy in mouth, agog to start,
Then, home return'd, once more depart;
Or prest together
Against thy mistress, loving heart,
In winter weather.
I see the tail, like bracelet twirl'd,
In moments of disgrace uncurl'd,
Then at a pardoning word re-furl'd,
A conquering sign;
Crying, "Come on, and range the world,
And never pine."
Thine eye was bright, thy coat it shone;
Thou hadst thine errands, off and on;
In joy thy last morn flew; anon,
A fit! All's over;
And thou art gone where Geist hath gone,
And Toss, and Rover.
Poor Max, with downcast, reverent head,
Regards his brother's form outspread;
Full well Max knows the friend is dead
Whose cordial talk,
And jokes in doggish language said,
Beguiled his walk.
And Glory, stretch'd at Burwood gate,
Thy passing by doth vainly wait;
And jealous Jock, thy only hate,
The chiel from Skye,
Lets from his shaggy Highland pate
Thy memory die.
Well, fetch his graven collar fine,
And rub the steel, and make it shine,
And leave it round thy neck to twine,
Kai, in thy grave.
There of thy master keep that sign,
And this plain stave.
NOTES
NOTES
[Footnote 1: NOTE 1, PAGE 2.
_Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen._
The name Europe ([Greek: Europe], _the wide prospect_) probably
describes the appearance of the European coast to the Greeks on the
coast of Asia Minor opposite. The name Asia, again, comes, it has been
thought, from the muddy fens of the rivers of Asia Minor, such as the
Cayster or Maeander, which struck the imagination of the Greeks living
near them.]
[Footnote 2: NOTE 2, PAGE 8.
_Mycerinus._
"After Chephren, Mycerinus, son of Cheops, reigned over Egypt. He
abhorred his father's courses, and judged his subjects more justly than
any of their kings had done.--To him there came an oracle from the city
of Buto, to the effect that he was to live but six years longer, and to
die in the seventh year from that time."--HERODOTUS.]
[Footnote 3: NOTE 3, PAGE 38.
_Stagirius._
Stagirius was a young monk to whom St. Chrysostom addressed three books,
and of whom those books give an account. They will be found in the first
volume of the Benedictine edition of St. Chrysostom's works.]
[Footnote 4: NOTE 4, PAGE 47.
_Horatian Echo._
Written in 1847. Printed by permission of Mr. Arthur Galton, to whom the
Poem was given in 1886 for publication in _The Hobby Horse_.]
[Footnote 5: NOTE 5, PAGE 54.
_That wayside inn we left to-day._
Those who have been long familiar with the English Lake-Country will
find no difficulty in recalling, from the description in the text, the
roadside inn at Wythburn on the descent from Dunmail Raise towards
Keswick; its sedentary landlord of thirty years ago, and the passage
over the Wythburn Fells to Watendlath.]
[Footnote 6: NOTE 6, PAGE 65.
_Sohrab and Rustum._
The story of Sohrab and Rustum is told in Sir John Malcolm's _History of
Persia_, as follows:--
"The young Sohrab was the fruit of one of Rustum's early amours. He
had left his mother, and sought fame under the banners of Afrasiab,
whose armies he commanded, and soon obtained a renown beyond that
of all contemporary heroes but his father. He had carried death and
dismay into the ranks of the Persians, and had terrified the
boldest warriors of that country, before Rustum encountered him,
which at last that hero resolved to do, under a feigned name. They
met three times. The first time they parted by mutual consent,
though Sohrab had the advantage; the second, the youth obtained a
victory, but granted life to his unknown father; the third was
fatal to Sohrab, who, when writhing in the pangs of death, warned
his conqueror to shun the vengeance that is inspired by parental
woes, and bade him dread the rage of the mighty Rustum, who must
soon learn that he had slain his son Sohrab. These words, we are
told, were as death to the aged hero; and when he recovered from a
trance, he called in despair for proofs of what Sohrab had said.
The afflicted and dying youth tore open his mail, and showed his
father a seal which his mother had placed on his arm when she
discovered to him the secret of his birth, and bade him seek his
father. The sight of his own signet rendered Rustum quite frantic;
he cursed himself, attempting to put an end to his existence, and
was only prevented by the efforts of his expiring son. After
Sohrab's death, he burnt his tents and all his goods, and carried
the corpse to Seistan, where it was interred; the army of Turan
was, agreeably to the last request of Sohrab, permitted to cross
the Oxus unmolested. To reconcile us to the improbability of this
tale, we are informed that Rustum could have no idea his son was in
existence. The mother of Sohrab had written to him her child was a
daughter, fearing to lose her darling infant if she revealed the
truth; and Rustum, as before stated, fought under a feigned name,
an usage not uncommon in the chivalrous combats of those days."]
[Footnote 7: NOTE 7, PAGE 101.
_Balder Dead._
"Balder the Good having been tormented with terrible dreams,
indicating that his life was in great peril, communicated them to
the assembled AEsir, who resolved to conjure all things to avert
from him the threatened danger. Then Frigga exacted an oath from
fire and water, from iron, and all other metals, as well as from
stones, earths, diseases, beasts, birds, poisons, and creeping
things, that none of them would do any harm to Balder. When this
was done, it became a favourite pastime of the AEsir, at their
meetings, to get Balder to stand up and serve them as a mark, some
hurling darts at him, some stones, while others hewed at him with
their swords and battle-axes, for do what they would, none of them
could harm him, and this was regarded by all as a great honour
shown to Balder. But when Loki beheld the scene he was sorely vexed
that Balder was not hurt. Assuming, therefore, the shape of a
woman, he went to Fensalir, the mansion of Frigga. That goddess,
when she saw the pretended woman, inquired of her if she knew what
the AEsir were doing at their meetings. She replied, that they were
throwing darts and stones at Balder without being able to hurt him.
"'Ay,' said Frigga, 'neither metal nor wood can hurt Balder, for I
have exacted an oath from all of them.'
"'What!' exclaimed the woman, 'have all things sworn to spare
Balder?'
"'All things,' replied Frigga, 'except one little shrub that grows
on the eastern side of Valhalla, and is called Mistletoe, and which
I thought too young and feeble to crave an oath from.'
"As soon as Loki heard this he went away, and, resuming his natural
shape, cut off the mistletoe, and repaired to the place where the
gods were assembled. There he found Hoedur standing apart, without
partaking of the sports, on account of his blindness, and going up
to him said, 'Why dost thou not also throw something at Balder?'
"'Because I am blind,' answered Hoedur, 'and see not where Balder
is, and have, moreover, nothing to throw with.'
"'Come, then,' said Loki, 'do like the rest, and show honour to
Balder by throwing this twig at him, and I will direct thy arm
toward the place where he stands.'
"Hoedur then took the mistletoe, and, under the guidance of Loki,
darted it at Balder, who, pierced through and through, fell down
lifeless."--_Edda_.]
[Footnote 8: NOTE 8, PAGE 138.
_Tristram and Iseult._
"In the court of his uncle King Marc, the king of Cornwall, who at
this time resided at the castle of Tyntagel, Tristram became expert
in all knightly exercises.--The king of Ireland, at Tristram's
solicitations, promised to bestow his daughter Iseult in marriage
on King Marc. The mother of Iseult gave to her daughter's
confidante a philtre, or love-potion, to be administered on the
night of her nuptials. Of this beverage Tristram and Iseult, on
their voyage to Cornwall, unfortunately partook. Its influence,
during the remainder of their lives, regulated the affections and
destiny of the lovers.--
"After the arrival of Tristram and Iseult in Cornwall, and the
nuptials of the latter with King Marc, a great part of the romance
is occupied with their contrivances to procure secret
interviews.--Tristram, being forced to leave Cornwall, on account
of the displeasure of his uncle, repaired to Brittany, where lived
Iseult with the White Hands.--He married her--more out of gratitude
than love.--Afterwards he proceeded to the dominions of Arthur,
which became the theatre of unnumbered exploits.
"Tristram, subsequent to these events, returned to Brittany, and to
his long-neglected wife. There, being wounded and sick, he was soon
reduced to the lowest ebb. In this situation, he despatched a
confidant to the queen of Cornwall, to try if he could induce her
to follow him to Brittany, etc."--DUNLOP'S _History of Fiction_.]
[Footnote 9: NOTE 9, PAGE 177.
_That son of Italy who tried to blow._
Giacopone di Todi.]
[Footnote 10: NOTE 10, PAGE 183.
_Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh'd._
Gilbert de la Porree, at the Council of Rheims, in 1148.]
[Footnote 11: NOTE 11, PAGE 184.
_Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried._
The Montanists.]
[Footnote 12: NOTE 12, PAGE 184.
_Monica._
See St. Augustine's _Confessions_, book ix. chapter 11.]
[Footnote 13: NOTE 13, PAGE 189.
_My Marguerite smiles upon the strand._
See, among "Early Poems," the poem called _A Memory-Picture_.]
[Footnote 14: NOTE 14, PAGE 213.
_The Hunter of the Tanagraean Field._
Orion, the Wild Huntsman of Greek legend, and in this capacity appearing
in both earth and sky.]
[Footnote 15: NOTE 15, PAGE 214.
_O'er the sun-redden'd western straits._
Erytheia, the legendary region around the Pillars of Hercules, probably
took its name from the redness of the West under which the Greeks saw
it.]
[Footnote 16: NOTE 16, PAGE 273.
_The Scholar-Gipsy._
"There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who was
by his poverty forced to leave his studies there; and at last to
join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these
extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he
quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they
discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while
exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of
scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly
spied out their old friend among the gipsies; and he gave them an
account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and
told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as
they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of
learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of
imagination, their fancy binding that of others: that himself had
learned much of their art, and when he had compassed the whole
secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the
world an account of what he had learned."--GLANVIL'S _Vanity of
Dogmatizing_, 1661.]
[Footnote 17: NOTE 17, PAGE 281.
_Thyrsis._
Throughout this poem there is reference to the preceding piece, _The
Scholar-Gipsy_.]
[Footnote 18: NOTE 18, PAGE 287.
_Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing._
Daphnis, the ideal Sicilian shepherd of Greek pastoral poetry, was
said to have followed into Phrygia his mistress Piplea, who had
been carried off by robbers, and to have found her in the power of
the king of Phrygia, Lityerses. Lityerses used to make strangers
try a contest with him in reaping corn, and to put them to death if
he overcame them. Hercules arrived in time to save Daphnis, took
upon himself the reaping-contest with Lityerses, overcame him, and
slew him. The Lityerses-song connected with this tradition was,
like the Linus-song, one of the early plaintive strains of Greek
popular poetry, and used to be sung by corn-reapers. Other
traditions represented Daphnis as beloved by a nymph who exacted
from him an oath to love no one else. He fell in love with a
princess, and was struck blind by the jealous nymph. Mercury, who
was his father, raised him to Heaven, and made a fountain spring up
in the place from which he ascended. At this fountain the Sicilians
offered yearly sacrifices.--See Servius, _Comment. in Virgil.
Bucol._, v. 20, and viii. 68.]
[Footnote 19: NOTE 19, PAGE 294.
_Ah! where is he, who should have come._
The author's brother, William Delafield Arnold, Director of Public
Instruction in the Punjab, and author of _Oakfield, or Fellowship in the
East_, died at Gibraltar on his way home from India, April the 9th,
1859.]
[Footnote 20: NOTE 20, PAGE 295.
_So moonlit, saw me once of yore._
See the poem, _A Summer Night_, p. 257.]
[Footnote 21: NOTE 21, PAGE 295.
_My brother! and thine early lot._
See Note 19.]
[Footnote 22: NOTE 22, PAGE 299.
_I saw the meeting of two
Gifted women._
Charlotte Bronte and Harriet Martineau.]
[Footnote 23: NOTE 23, PAGE 302.
_Whose too bold dying song._
See the last verses by Emily Bronte in _Poems by Currer, Ellis, and
Acton Bell_.]
[Footnote 24: NOTE 24, PAGE 317.
_Goethe, too, had been there._
See _Harzreise im Winter_, in Goethe's _Gedichte_.]
[Footnote 25: NOTE 25, PAGE 325.
The author of _Obermann_, Etienne Pivert de Senancour, has little
celebrity in France, his own country; and out of France he is almost
unknown. But the profound inwardness, the austere sincerity, of his
principal work, _Obermann_, the delicate feeling for nature which it
exhibits, and the melancholy eloquence of many passages of it, have
attracted and charmed some of the most remarkable spirits of this
century, such as George Sand and Sainte-Beuve, and will probably always
find a certain number of spirits whom they touch and interest.
Senancour was born in 1770. He was educated for the priesthood, and
passed some time in the seminary of St. Sulpice; broke away from the
Seminary and from France itself, and passed some years in Switzerland,
where he married; returned to France in middle life, and followed
thenceforward the career of a man of letters, but with hardly any fame
or success. He died an old man in 1846, desiring that on his grave might
be placed these words only: _Eternite, deviens mon asile!_
The influence of Rousseau, and certain affinities with more famous and
fortunate authors of his own day,--Chateaubriand and Madame de
Stael,--are everywhere visible in Senancour. But though, like these
eminent personages, he may be called a sentimental writer, and though
_Obermann_, a collection of letters from Switzerland treating almost
entirely of nature and of the human soul, may be called a work of
sentiment, Senancour has a gravity and severity which distinguish him
from all other writers of the sentimental school. The world is with him
in his solitude far less than it is with them; of all writers he is the
most perfectly isolated and the least attitudinising. His chief work,
too, has a value and power of its own, apart from these merits of its
author. The stir of all the main forces, by which modern life is and has
been impelled, lives in the letters of _Obermann_; the dissolving
agencies of the eighteenth century, the fiery storm of the French
Revolution, the first faint promise and dawn of that new world which
our own time is but now more fully bringing to light,--all these are to
be felt, almost to be touched, there. To me, indeed, it will always seem
that the impressiveness of this production can hardly be rated too high.
Besides _Obermann_ there is one other of Senancour's works which, for
those spirits who feel his attraction, is very interesting; its title
is, _Libres Meditations d'un Solitaire Inconnu_.]
[Footnote 26: NOTE 26, PAGE 326.
_Behind are the abandon'd baths._
The Baths of Leuk. This poem was conceived, and partly composed, in the
valley going down from the foot of the Gemmi Pass towards the Rhone.]
[Footnote 27: NOTE 27, PAGE 332.
_Glion?----Ah, twenty years, it cuts._
Probably all who know the Vevey end of the Lake of Geneva, will
recollect Glion, the mountain-village above the castle of Chillon. Glion
now has hotels, _pensions_, and villas; but twenty years ago it was
hardly more than the huts of Avant opposite to it,--huts through which
goes that beautiful path over the Col de Jaman, followed by so many
foot-travellers on their way from Vevey to the Simmenthal and Thun.]
[Footnote 28: NOTE 28, PAGE 333.
_The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame._
The blossoms of the _Gentiana lutea_.]
[Footnote 29: NOTE 29, PAGE 333.
_And walls where Byron came._
Montbovon. See Byron's Journal, in his _Works_, vol. iii. p. 258. The
river Saane becomes the Sarine below Montbovon.]
[Footnote 30: NOTE 30, PAGE 429.
_And the kind, chance-arrived Wanderer._
Poias, the father of Philoctetes. Passing near, he was attracted by the
concourse round the pyre, and at the entreaty of Hercules set fire to
it, receiving the bow and arrows of the hero as his reward.]
[Footnote 31: NOTE 31, PAGE 462.
_And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore._
Mount Haemus, so called, said the legend, from Typho's blood spilt on it
in his last battle with Zeus, when the giant's strength failed, owing to
the Destinies having a short time before given treacherously to him, for
his refreshment, perishable fruits. See APOLLODORUS, _Bibliotheca_, book
i. chap. vi.]
[Footnote 32: NOTE 32, PAGE 468
_Ye Sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth._
See the Fragments of Parmenides:
... [Greek: kourai d' hodon hegemoneuon,
heliades kourai, prolipousai domata nyktos,
eis phaos]....
[Footnote 33: NOTE 33, PAGE 479.
_Couldst thou no better keep, O Abbey old,
The boon thy dedication-sign foretold._
"Ailred of Rievaulx, and several other writers, assert that Sebert,
king of the East Saxons and nephew of Ethelbert, founded the Abbey
of Westminster very early in the seventh century.
"Sulcardus, who lived in the time of William the Conqueror, gives a
minute account of the miracle supposed to have been worked at the
consecration of the Abbey.
"The church had been prepared against the next day for dedication.
On the night preceding, St. Peter appeared on the opposite side of
the water to a fisherman, desiring to be conveyed to the farther
shore. Having left the boat, St. Peter ordered the fisherman to
wait, promising him a reward on his return. An innumerable host
from heaven accompanied the apostle, singing choral hymns, while
everything was illuminated with a supernatural light. The
dedication having been completed, St. Peter returned to the
fisherman, quieted his alarm at what had passed, and announced
himself as the apostle. He directed the fisherman to go as soon as
it was day to the authorities, to state what he had seen and heard,
and to inform them that, in corroboration of his testimony, they
would find the marks of consecration on the walls of the church. In
obedience to the apostle's direction, the fisherman waited on
Mellitus, Bishop of London, who, going to the church, found not
only marks of the chrism, but of the tapers with which the church
had been illuminated. Mellitus, therefore, desisted from
proceeding to a new consecration, and contented himself with the
celebration of the mass."--DUGDALE, _Monasticon Anglicanum_
(edition of 1817), vol. i. pp. 265, 266. See also MONTALEMBERT,
_Les 'Moines d'Occident_, vol. iii. pp. 428-432.]
[Footnote 34: NOTE 34, PAGE 482.
_The charm'd babe of the Eleusinian king._
Demophooen, son of Celeus, king of Eleusis. See, in the _Homeric Hymns_,
the _Hymn to Demeter_, 184-298.]
[Footnote 35: NOTE 35, PAGE 483.
_That Pair, whose head did plan, whom hands did forge
The Temple in the pure Parnassian gorge._
Agamedes and Trophonius, the builders of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
See Plutarch, _Consolatio ad Apollonium_, c. 14.]
[Footnote 36: NOTE 36, PAGE 493.
_Stol'n from Aristophanes._
See _The Birds_ of Aristophanes, 465-485.]
[Footnote 37: NOTE 37, PAGE 495.
_Of Robin's reed._
"Come, join the melancholious croon
O' Robin's reed."--BURNS, _Poor Mailie's Elegy_.]
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Transcriber's note
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 289: The number 2 removed from in front of line that begins: "Too
rare, too rare".
Page 510: The number 1 removed from in front of "Come, join the
melancholious croon".