Part 2

PRIEST

Uplift! let it gleam in the sun— Uplift in the name of the Lord!

KAISER

Lo! how it gleams in the light, Beautiful, bloody, and bright. Yea, I uplift the Sword Thus in the name of the Lord!

THE CHIEFS

Form ye a circle of fire Around him, our King and our Sire— While in the centre he stands, Kneel with your swords in your hands, Then with one voice deep and free Echo like waves of the sea— “In the name of the Lord!”

VOICES WITHOUT

Where is he?—he fades from our sight! Where the Sword?—all is blacker than night. Is it finish’d, that loudly ye cry? Doth he sheathe the great Sword while we die? O bury us deep, most deep; Write o’er us, wherever we sleep, “In the name of the Lord!”

KAISER

While I uplift the Sword, Thus in the name of the Lord, Why, with mine eyes full of tears, Am I sick of the song in mine ears? God of the Israelite, hear; God of the Teuton, be near; Strengthen my pulse lest I fail. Shut out these slain while they wail— For they come with the voice of the grave On the glory they give me and gave.

CHORUS

In the name of the Lord? Of what Lord? Where is He, this God of the Sword? Unfold Him; where hath He His throne? Is He Lord of the Teuton alone? Doth He walk on the earth? Doth He tread On the limbs of the dying and dead? Unfold Him! We sicken, and long To look on this God of the strong!

PRIEST

Hush! In the name of the Lord, Kneel ye, and bless ye the Sword!

R. BUCHANAN (_The Apotheosis of the Sword, Versailles, 1871_)

* * * * *

Short is mine errand to tell, and the end of my desire: For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth, Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth; But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death; And the edge of the sword to the traitor and the flame to the slanderous breath: And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should sleep, And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap.

W. MORRIS (_Sigurd the Volsung, Book III_).

* * * * *

SACRIFICE

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,— “’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.”

R. W. EMERSON.

* * * * *

GREEKS OR GERMANS?

Do not imagine that you are fighting about a single issue, freedom or slavery. You have an empire to lose, and are exposed to danger by reason of the hatred which your imperial rule has inspired in other states. And you cannot resign your power, although some timid or unambitious spirits want you to act justly. For now your empire has become a _despotism_, a thing which in the opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired yet cannot be safely relinquished. The men of whom I speak, if they could find followers, would soon ruin the state, and, if they were to found a state of their own, would just as soon ruin that.

(_Speech by Pericles._)

I have observed again and again that a democracy cannot govern an empire; and never more clearly than now, when I see you regretting the sentence you pronounced on the Mityleneans. Having no fear or suspicion of one another, you deal with your allies on the same principle. You do not realize that, whenever you yield to them out of pity, or are prevailed on by their pleas, you are guilty of a weakness dangerous to yourselves and receive no gratitude from them. You need to bear in mind that your empire is a _despotism_ exercised over unwilling subjects who are ever conspiring against you. They do not obey because of any kindness you show them: they obey just so far as you show yourselves their masters. They have no love for you, but are held down by force....

You must not be misled by pity, or eloquent pleading or by generosity. There are no three things more fatal to empire.

(_Speech by Cleon_) THUCYDIDES, II, 63; III, 37, 40.

It will be seen that these odious sentiments are attributed by the impartial Thucydides to his hero Pericles as well as to the demagogue Cleon. The Greeks were fervent supporters of Democracy and Equality, but not when it came to dealing either with foreign states or with their own _women or slaves_. (See also Socrates and Aristotle, p. 367.)

* * * * *

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he, that stands it _now_, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives anything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

THOMAS PAINE (1776).

Outside the Bible and other books of religion, I think it would be difficult to find any single passage in the world’s literature that produced so wonderful a result as the above passage of Tom Paine’s. It was the opening paragraph of the first number of _The Crisis_, and was written by miserable, flaring candle-light, when Paine was a private in Washington’s ill-clad, worn-out army at Trenton. The soldiers, who were then despairing from hardship and defeat, were roused by these words to such enthusiasm that next day they rushed bravely in and won the first American victory, which turned the tide of the war of independence.

Previously to this, it was through Paine’s pamphlet, _Common Sense_, that the Americans first saw that separation was the only remedy for their grievances. Conway tells an amusing story about _Common Sense_ and _The Rights of Man_. When the Bolton town crier was sent round to seize these prohibited books, he reported that he could not find any Rights of Man or Common Sense anywhere!

For trying to save the life of Louis XVI during the revolution, Paine was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a curious accident. It was customary for chalk-marks to be made on the cell-doors of those to be guillotined the following morning, and these doors opened outwards. When Paine’s door was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark was made on the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have been described in those days as a wonderful interposition of Providence!

Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When Paine, whose services to America, and to Washington himself, had been so magnificent, was thrown into the Bastille, Washington could have saved him by a word—but remained silent! This was no doubt the reason why Paine, after his liberation, was led to make an unjust attack on Washington’s military and Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington and the bigotry of the time against the author of _The Age of Reason_, that Paine fell utterly into disrepute.

When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by an Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to the city by his admirers, but was promptly declined! And yet Conway says that on the day, whose centenary was then being celebrated, Paine was idolized in America above all other men, Washington included.

The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by Moncure D. Conway in _The Fortnightly_, March, 1879. I think the fact mentioned in the last paragraph and the town-crier story do not appear in Conway’s subsequent _Life of Paine_.

Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper recognition of Paine’s fine character and important work. (The unpleasant flippancy[5] with which he dealt with serious religious questions is no doubt partly the cause of this.) I find very inadequate appreciation of him in _The Americana_ and _The Biographical Dictionary of America_—and also in our own _Dictionary of National Biography_. The general impression among the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist; as a matter of fact, he was a Theist, and his will ends with the words, “I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

Carlyle’s reference to Paine is amusing: “Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her Paine: rebellious staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single needleman, did, by his _Common-Sense_ Pamphlet, free America—that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the other.” (_French Revolution._)

* * * * *

Buy my English posies! You that will not turn— Buy my hot-wood clematis, Buy a frond o’ fern Gather’d where the Erskine leaps Down the road to Lorne— Buy my Christmas creeper And I’ll say where you were born! West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin— They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn— Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main— Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies! Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother’s sake Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim— Bird ye never heeded, O, she calls his dead to him! Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land— Masters of the Seven Seas, O, love and understand!

RUDYARD KIPLING (_The Flowers_).

Of the verses in this fine poem which speak for the various British Dominions I take only the one that represents my own country. At the time Kipling wrote, the inhabitants of our beloved mother-country did not seem to fully realize that we were their kindred—that our fern and clematis made _English posies_—but no doubt their feeling has altered since we have fought side by side in mutual defence. However, to us England was always “home,” and when Kipling wrote this poem he entered straight into our hearts.

* * * * *

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

RUFINUS

Here lilies, here the rosebud, and here too The windflower with her petals drenched in dew, And daffodillies cool, and violets blue.

MELEAGER

It’s oh! to be a wild wind—when my lady’s in the sun— She’d just unbind her neckerchief and take me breathing in, It’s oh! to be a red rose—just a faintly blushing one— So she’d pull me with her hand and to her snowy breast I’d win.

PLATO TO ASTER

Thou gazest on the stars—a star to me Thou[6] art—but oh! that I the heavens might be And with a thousand eyes still gaze on thee!

PALLADAS

Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we Live, and a little space the sunlight see— Even all that live—each being an instrument To which the generous air its life has lent. If with the hand one quench our draught of breath, He sends the stark soul shuddering down to death. We, that are nothing on our pride are fed, Seeing, but for a little air, we are as dead.

AESOPUS

Is there no help from life save only death? “Life that such myriad sorrows harboureth I dare not break, I cannot bear”—one saith.

“Sweet are stars, sun, and moon, and sea, and earth, For service and for beauty these had birth, But all the rest of life is little worth—

“Yea, all the rest is pain and grief” saith he “For if it hap some good thing come to me An evil end befalls it speedily!”[7]

PHILODEMUS

I loved—and you. I played—who hath not been Steeped in such play? If I was mad, I ween ’Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.

Hence with it all! Then dark my youthful head, Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead, Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.

I gathered roses while the roses blew, Playtime is past, my play is ended too. Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue.

W. M. HARDINGE (_Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1878).

My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the “Leslie” in Mallock’s _New Republic_. Another version of Plato’s beautiful epigram (which was addressed to “Aster,” or “Star”) is the following by Professor Darnley Naylor:

Thou gazest on the stars, my Star; Oh! might I be The starry sky with myriad eyes To gaze on thee!

The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4,500 short poems by about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one thousand seven hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D. At first these poems were epigrams—using the word “epigram” in its original sense, as a verse intended to be inscribed on a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead person or important event. Later they included poems on any subject, so long as they contained one fine thought couched in concise language. Still later any short lyric was included.

This wonderful collection forms a great treasure-house of poetry, which gives much insight into the Greek life of the time, and it also largely influenced English and European literature. For instance, the first verse of Ben Jonson’s “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is taken direct from the Anthology (Agathias, _Anth. Pal._, V., 261). I may add that the second verse, in which the poet sends the wreath, not as a compliment to the lady but as a kindness to the roses which could not wither if worn by her, is also borrowed from a Greek source. (Philostratus, _Epistolai Erotikai_.)

Numberless English and European scholars have attempted the difficult task of translating or paraphrasing these little poetic gems into correspondingly poetic and concise language, but the beauty of the original can never be fully retained.

* * * * *

PLATO TO STELLA

Thou wert the morning star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled:— Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendour to the dead.

SHELLEY’S VERSION.

* * * * *

PTOLEMY

I know that we are mortal, the children of a day; But when I scan the circling spires, the serried stars’ array, I tread the earth no longer and soar where none hath trod, To feast in Heaven’s banquet-hall and drink the wine of God.

H. DARNLEY NAYLOR’S VERSION.

Although there cannot be absolute certainty, this Ptolemy is no doubt the great Greek astronomer; and the epigram would date from about 140 A.D.

* * * * *

HERACLEITUS.

They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

WILLIAM (JOHNSON) CORY (1823-1892).

This is a paraphrase of verses written by Callimachus on hearing of the death of his friend, the poet Heracleitus (not the philosopher of that name).

Francis Thompson (_Sister Songs_) hoped that his “nightingales” would continue to sing after his death, just as light would come from a star long after it had ceased to exist:

Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme, Set with a towering press of fantasies, Drop safely down the time, Leaving mine islèd self behind it far Soon to be sunk in the abysm of seas, (As down the years the splendour voyages From some long ruined and night-submergèd star).

* * * * *

When I consider the shortness of my life, lost in an eternity before and behind, “passing away as the remembrance of a guest who tarrieth but a day,” the little space I fill or behold in the infinite immensity of spaces, of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me—when I reflect this, I am filled with terror, and wonder why I am _here_ and not _there_, for there was no reason why it should be the one rather than the other; why _now_ rather than _then_. Who set me here? By whose command and rule were this time and place appointed me? How many kingdoms know nothing of us! The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.

PASCAL (_Pensées_).

* * * * *

Ye weep for those who weep? she said, Ah, fools! I bid you pass them by. Go weep for those whose hearts have bled What time their eyes were dry. Whom sadder can I say? she said.

E. B. BROWNING (_The Mask_).

See also Seneca (_Hipp._), _Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent_, “Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb.”

* * * * *

Star unto star speaks light.

P. J. BAILEY (_Festus, Scene 1, Heaven_).

* * * * *

O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,— How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death’s imperishable wing!

D. G. ROSSETTI (_Lovesight_).

* * * * *

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Romola_).

* * * * *

Room in all the ages For our love to grow, Prayers of both demanded A little while ago:

And now a few poor moments, Between life and death, May be proven all too ample For love’s breath.

RODEN NOEL (_The Pity of It_).

* * * * *

There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining Under those spider-webs lying!...

Is it your moral of Life? Such a web, simple and subtle, Weave we on earth here in impotent strife, Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle, Death ending all with a knife?

Over our heads truth and nature— Still our life’s zigzags and dodges, Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature— God’s gold just showing its last where that lodges, Palled beneath man’s usurpature.

So we o’ershroud stars and roses, Cherub and trophy and garland; Nothings grow something which quietly closes Heaven’s earnest eye; not a glimpse of the far land Gets through our comments and glozes.

R. BROWNING (_Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_).

Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is an imaginary name, but it probably indicates the great Sebastian Bach, who came from that part of Germany. The “masterpiece, hard number twelve,” referred to in the poem, may be (Dr. E. Harold Davies tells me) the great Organ Fugue in F Minor, which is in “five part” counter-point.

This very interesting poem is written in a half-humorous fashion, but its intention is quite serious. In a wonderfully imitative manner,[8] it describes the wrangling and disputing in a five-voiced fugue (where five persons appear to be taking part):

One is incisive, corrosive; Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant; Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive; Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant: Five ... O Danaïdes, O Sieve!

(For killing their husbands the fifty Danaïdes were doomed to pour water everlastingly into a sieve.)

“Where in all this is the music?” asks Browning. And, although he is writing humorously, yet, however rank the heresy, he finds that the fugue, with its elaborate counterpoint, is wanting in the essentials of true art. He prefers Palestrina’s simpler and more emotional mode of expression:

Hugues! I advise _meâ poenâ_[9] (Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon) Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena! Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ, Blare out the _mode Palestrina_.

In the poem, where occurs the passage quoted, one can vividly follow the poet’s thought. Music is essentially the language of feeling, of _emotion_; the fugue is a triumph of _invention_, and, therefore, the result of _intellect_. Feeling is elemental, simple, and unanalysable. The subtleties of pure harmony are the expression of deepness and richness of feeling; the intricacies of the fugue are artificially constructed and, therefore, unsuited to the expression of pure emotion. They represent intellect as against feeling. And essentially in the moral world, but also in our general outlook upon truth and nature, the spiritual perception is derived from simple human emotion rather than intellect; “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (The whole of Browning’s poetry teaches that love, not intellect, is the solution of all moral problems, and the goal of the universe.)

In the poem the organist has been playing on the organ in an old church; and Browning suddenly sees an illustration of his thought in the fine gilded ceiling covered by thick cobwebs. The cobwebs that obscure the gold of the ceiling are the intellectual wranglings that destroy music in the fugue—and both are symbolical of what occurs in our lives. Truth and Nature, “God’s gold”—the pure, simple truths of the higher life—are over us, bright and clear as the noon-day sun. But by doubts and disputations, warring philosophies and contending creeds, by strife over non-essentials, casuistries, self-deceptions, by questions of dogma (often as fine as any spider’s web), by endless “comments and glozes,” we lose sight of the elemental truths and clear principles that should guide our lives. The pure and simple-hearted reach the Mount of Vision: to them comes the clear sense of Love and Duty. Those of us who turn our intellects to a perverse use and exclude the spiritual perception of the soul are like the spiders who cover up “stars and roses, Cherub and trophy and garland.” We obscure and forget all noble ideals, abolish God’s high “legislature,” and follow a lawless life of selfish passion and sordid ambitions. The Good and Beautiful and True have been obliterated and forgotten; “God’s gold” is tarnished, His harmonies lost in discord; and we become morally dead.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air; Cold plashing past it, crystal waters roll; We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!...

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high, Upon our life a ruling effluence send; And when it fails, fight as we will, we die, And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

MATTHEW ARNOLD (_Palladium_).

* * * * *