Part 5

By sloth and lust and mindlessness and pelf Spain sank in sadness and dishonour down, Each in his service serving but himself, Each in his passion striking at her crown. Not that these treasons blotted her renown Emblazoned higher than such hands can reach: There where she reaped but sorrow she has sown The balm of sorrow; all she had to teach She taught the younger world--her faith and heart and speech.

And now within her sea-girt walls withdrawn She waits in silence for the healing years, While where her sun has set a second dawn Comes from the north, with other hopes and fears. Spain's daughters stand, half ceasing from their tears, And watch the skies from Cuba to the Horn. "What is this dove or eagle that appears," They seem to cry, "what herald of what morn Hovers o'er Andes' peaks in love or guile or scorn?"

"O brooding Spirit, fledgling of the North, Winged for the levels of its shifting light, Child of a labouring ocean and an earth Shrouded in vapours, fear the southward flight, Dread waveless waters and their warm delight, Beware of peaks that cleave the cloudless blue And hold communion with the naked night. The souls went never back that hither flew, But sighing fell to earth or broke the heavens through.

"Haunt still thy storm-swept islands, and endure The shimmering forest where thy visions live. Then if we love thee--for thy heart is pure-- Thou shalt have something worthy love to give. Thrust not thy prophets on us, nor believe Thy sorry riches in our eyes are fair. Thy unctuous sophists never will deceive A mortal pang, or charm away despair. Not for the stranger's fee we plait our lustrous hair.

"But of thy lingering twilight bring some gleam, Memorial of the immaterial fire Lighting thy heart, and to a wider dream Waken the music of our plaintive lyre. Check our rash word, hush, hush our base desire. Hang paler clouds of reverence about Our garish skies: laborious hope inspire That uncomplaining walks the paths of doubt, A wistful heart within, a mailed breast without.

"Gold found is dross, but long Promethean art Transmutes to gold the unprofitable ore. Bring labour's joy, yet spare that better part Our mother, Spain, bequeathed to all she bore, For who shall covet if he once adore? Leave in our skies, strange Spirit passing there, No less of vision but of courage more, And of our worship take thy equal share, Thou who would'st teach us hope, with her who taught us prayer."

A MINUET

ON REACHING THE AGE OF FIFTY

I

Old Age, on tiptoe, lays her jewelled hand Lightly in mine.--Come, tread a stately measure, Most gracious partner, nobly poised and bland. Ours be no boisterous pleasure, But smiling conversation, with quick glance And memories dancing lightlier than we dance, Friends who a thousand joys Divide and double, save one joy supreme Which many a pang alloys. Let wanton girls and boys Cry over lovers' woes and broken toys. Our waking life is sweeter than their dream.

II

Dame Nature, with unwitting hand, Has sparsely strewn the black abyss with lights Minute, remote, and numberless. We stand Measuring far depths and heights, Arched over by a laughing heaven, Intangible and never to be scaled. If we confess our sins, they are forgiven. We triumph, if we know we failed.

III

Tears that in youth you shed, Congealed to pearls, now deck your silvery hair; Sighs breathed for loves long dead Frosted the glittering atoms of the air Into the veils you wear Round your soft bosom and most queenly head; The shimmer of your gown Catches all tints of autumn, and the dew Of gardens where the damask roses blew; The myriad tapers from these arches hung Play on your diamonded crown; And stars, whose light angelical caressed Your virgin days, Give back in your calm eyes their holier rays. The deep past living in your breast Heaves these half-merry sighs; And the soft accents of your tongue Breathe unrecorded charities.

Hasten not; the feast will wait. This is a master-night without a morrow. No chill and haggard dawn, with after-sorrow, Will snuff the spluttering candle out, Or blanch the revellers homeward straggling late. Before the rout Wearies or wanes, will come a calmer trance. Lulled by the poppied fragrance of this bower, We'll cheat the lapsing hour, And close our eyes, still smiling, on the dance.

_December_ 1913.

TRANSLATIONS

FROM MICHAEL ANGELO

I

"_Non so se s'è la desiata luce"_

I know not if from uncreated spheres Some longed-for ray it be that warms my breast, Or lesser light, in memory expressed, Of some once lovely face, that reappears, Or passing rumour ringing in my ears, Or dreamy vision, once my bosom's guest, That left behind I know not what unrest, Haply the reason of these wayward tears. But what I feel and seek, what leads me on, Comes not of me; nor can I tell aright Where shines the hidden star that sheds this light. Since I beheld thee, sweet and bitter fight Within me. Resolution have I none. Can this be, Master, what thine eyes have done?

II

"_Il mio refugio_"

The haven and last refuge of my pain (A safe and strong defence) Are tears and supplications, but in vain. Love sets upon me banded with Disdain, One armed with pity and one armed with death, And as death smites me, pity lends me breath. Else had my soul long since departed thence. She pineth to remove Whither her hopes of endless peace abide And beauty dwelleth without beauty's pride, There her last bliss to prove. But still the living fountain of her tears Wells in the heart when all thy truth appears, Lest death should vanquish love.

III

"_Gli occhi miei vaghi delle cose belle_"

Ravished by all that to the eyes is fair, Yet hungry for the joys that truly bless, My soul can find no stair To mount to heaven, save earth's loveliness. For from the stars above Descends a glorious light That lifts our longing to their highest height And bears the name of love. Nor is there aught can move A gentle heart, or purge or make it wise, But beauty and the starlight of her eyes.

FROM THEOPHILE GAUTIER

ART

All things are doubly fair If patience fashion them And care-- Verse, enamel, marble, gem.

No idle chains endure: Yet, Muse, to walk aright, Lace tight Thy buskin proud and sure.

Fie on a facile measure, A shoe where every lout At pleasure Slips his foot in and out!

Sculptor, lay by the clay On which thy nerveless finger May linger, Thy thoughts flown far away.

Keep to Carrara rare, Struggle with Paros cold, That hold The subtle line and fair.

Lest haply nature lose That proud, that perfect line, Make thine The bronze of Syracuse.

And with a tender dread Upon an agate's face Retrace Apollo's golden head.

Despise a watery hue And tints that soon expire. With fire Burn thine enamel true.

Twine, twine in artful wise The blue-green mermaid's arms, Mid charms Of thousand heraldries.

Show in their triple lobe Virgin and Child, that hold Their globe, Cross-crowned and aureoled.

--All things return to dust Save beauties fashioned well. The bust Outlasts the citadel.

Oft doth the ploughman's heel, Breaking an ancient clod, Reveal A Caesar or a god.

The gods, too, die, alas! But deathless and more strong Than brass Remains the sovereign song.

Chisel and carve and file, Till thy vague dream imprint Its smile On the unyielding flint.

An Essay on the work of GEORGE SANTAYANA, written by EDMUND GOSSE, is, with the kind permission of the author and the proprietors of the _Sunday Times_, reprinted overleaf.

A SPANIARD IN ENGLAND

BY EDMUND GOSSE

_(Reprinted by kind permission of the author and of the proprietors of the_ "_Sunday Times.")_

Only in solitude can soliloquies be appreciated, and Mr. Santayana is not an author for loud streets or for them who tear round the country in a blatant char-à-banc. He avoids even the high roads, and we shall come upon him, if we are lucky, in a grassy hollow of the bank of some dark river, and hear him talking to himself in a voice which disturbs neither the dragon-flies nor the thrushes. He meditates by the hour together on the sunlight in the buttercups, which gives him the illusion of life, or on the hurrying flood of liquid agate, which reminds him of the illusion of death. Everything is a symbol to him, and if he has a volume of poetry open at his side he does not distinguish its verse from the puzzling confidences of the blackbirds, and the insects are dreams which mingle with his own. The activity of existence is arrested for him, and time has become a vain expression.

This is his dominant mood, but sometimes he rouses himself and walks to the wayside inn, where he watches the farmers and the travellers, unobserved by them. He notes their ways and their talk with a shrewd and sometimes humorous pertinacity, but they hardly exist for him more vividly than did the thrushes and the dragon-flies. All are dreams, all are in a condition of _maia,_ and the more he tries to distinguish them the more they melt into one. He exists, and he soliloquises, in a mood of perpetual reverie.

This is an allegory, and in plain terms Mr. Santayana is a cosmopolitan philosopher of wide reputation. He is the son of a gentleman of Spain, who emigrated to New York. He tells us that his father learned to read English, which implies that he never learned to speak it. The son not only speaks, but writes, our language with an exquisite exactitude and grace, so that he is one of those rare figures, like Mr. Conrad and Mme. Mary Duclaux, who, having adopted in mature years a tongue not theirs by birth, contrive not merely to master but to excel in it. Mr. Santayana was for many years a professor of philosophy in Harvard University, where he showed no mercy to Hegel and was a thorn in the side of the Pragmatists. He is the author of a _Life of Reason,_ in five volumes, which I know that I shall never read, but which I am sure it is safe to recommend to persons younger and more thoughtful than myself. Since he ceased to be a professor, Mr. Santayana has wandered much in Europe, which, distracted as it is, he prefers to America, as quieter. The Great War found him at Oxford, waiting for the spark from heaven and meditating on the importunities of the hour. He stayed there, listening to the whirr of the aeroplanes over Port Meadow, and admiring, perhaps not without envy, the gallant ardour of the youths who started forth so bravely to arrest "the demons of the whirlwind" in France and Gallipoli. He stayed in England, because, glancing over the world, he found England pre-eminently the home of decent happiness, even at that desolating hour.

It is amusing to pick out here and there, and put together in a bunch, some of this Hispano-American philosopher's impressions of our race, but we make a mistake if we suppose him largely or generally interested in any particular nation. What makes him attractive, but also a little alarming, is his excessive detachment from the modern life in which he moves so silently and observantly. He is not a social essayist, like Montaigne or Charles Lamb or Stevenson. He is almost obtrusively indifferent to whether he has an audience or not. This makes him, in spite of his extreme attention to moral action, a little inhuman. I do not think that he mentions the Scholar Gipsy, but he has a great deal of the spirit which made that hero of Matthew Arnold's beautiful poem fly the haunts of men. Mr. Santayana will not fly too far; he will see "the line of festal light in Christ Church Hall," before he turns to the woods and the wilds. But the essence of him is solitary, and he escapes from society not that he may forget it, but that, removed from that element in it which seems to kill the mind, he may reflect upon it with the minimum of disturbance.

He is anxious to disown the name of metaphysician, but he is a psychologist to the tips of his fingers, and he is still in hopes of discovering a scientific philosophy which may explain to him the apparent discord between man and nature over which he is always brooding. His temper, excessively disturbed by recent events in the political and moral history of the world, may be clearly studied in the very remarkable essay called "War Shrines," and again in "Tipperary," one of the most whimsical and most individual. He started life with a premonition of things noble and tender, and his dreams have often seemed to betray him. But when he has escaped from the fatiguing conventions of life, when he can forget the ugly side of society, his old visions come back to him with smiling eyes, and he can admit that they have kept half their promise.

We are so well accustomed to attacks, often very petulant and silly, made against England by Englishmen, that it is quite refreshing to read the impressions of a Spanish philosopher trained in America, who has a much higher opinion of us than we are apt to have of ourselves. Mr. Santayana is prompt to protest that nothing would make him wish to become an Englishman. His birthright was settled at his birth, and we feel that there is that kind of patriotism about him which if he had been born a Mongolian would not allow him to waver in his loyalty to Mongolia.

But he has been a sort of Ulysses, and the result of his wanderings is to make him prefer the Englishman to any other human variety. This is decidedly gratifying, and it will amuse the desultory reader to skim Mr. Santayana's pages in search of his impressions of our race. They are not given in dogmatic form, but they are found to be consistent, and, as I say, they are gratifying in the mouth of so shrewd and so disinterested an observer. After traversing many lands he concludes that the English character is the best; it is as strong as the American, and softer, and less obstreperous. He finds the nearest parallel to that old Greek temperament, which he adores, in the English modesty in determination. It seems to rest his spirit to see that we are self-sufficing. Not that he is blind to our national defects, for he thinks that an exquisite or subtle Englishman, although such exist, is a _lusus natures._ It is not our business to be subtle, and when we are, there is always a tendency in us to become wrong-headed. We turn affected or else puritanical, and these extremes are highly distasteful to Mr. Santayana.

"The Englishman travels and conquers without a settled design, because he has the instinct of exploration. His adventures are all external; they change him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him."

To give a general idea of Mr. Santayana's essays, I find a difficult task, because of a certain density and uniformity in his expression. He avoids the positive in all its forms. Not merely is he careful not to be dogmatic, but, speaking as he does to and as it were for himself alone, he is apt to combine an exactitude of language with a considerable dilution of thought. He is not averse from the pleasant foible of repeating himself, and as he does this in fresh language the reader, if he is at all censorious, is apt to resent a little the revolving flight of the ideas. Mr. Santayana soliloquises like an aeroplane making graceful curves and daring drops in one section of the ether. His profound scepticism forbids him to alight, for he has no faith in the current assumptions of daily life, and but a very faint interest in facts. He swoops in the light like a swallow, and we must be content to follow his turns and returns, with sympathy for his candour and freshness, and gratitude for his gracious skill. But to define what his object is, though he makes a hundred affirmations of it, is not altogether easy.