Chapter 2

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias _sees_, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:

‘. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est Quam, quae contingit maribus,’ dixisse, ‘voluptas.’ Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota. Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’ Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet, Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago. Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte, At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in _The Vicar of Wakefield_.

257. V. _The Tempest_, as above.

264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See _The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches_ (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. _Götterdämmerung_, III. i: the Rhine-daughters.

279. V. Froude, _Elizabeth_, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:

“In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.”

293. Cf. _Purgatorio_, v. 133:

“Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”

307. V. St. Augustine’s _Confessions_: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”

308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s _Buddhism in Translation_ (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.

309. From St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357. This is _Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii_, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (_Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America_) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.

360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was _one more member_ than could actually be counted.

366-76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, _Blick ins Chaos_:

“Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”

401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the _Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad_, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s _Sechzig Upanishads des Veda_, p. 489.

407. Cf. Webster, _The White Devil_, v. vi:

“. . . they’ll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.” 411. Cf. _Inferno_, xxxiii. 46:

“ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto all’orribile torre.” Also F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, p. 346:

“My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”

424. V. Weston, From _Ritual to Romance_; chapter on the Fisher King.

427. V. _Purgatorio_, xxvi. 148.

“‘Ara vos prec per aquella valor ‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina, ‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’ Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.” 428. V. _Pervigilium Veneris_. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet _El Desdichado_.

431. V. Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_.

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is a feeble translation of the content of this word.