It was night time,Night time lonely,It was night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,It was night time,It was night time, and the darkness hymeneal, deep and dewy,Shone fantastical with fire-flies.By my side then, slowly, slowly, by my side then silent, pallid,As if to you there came knowledge of a future dark and bitter,Troubling hidden, secret, soul-depths and the fibers of your being,By my side along the pathway of the flowers across the pale plain,You were walking,And the full moonThen up-swinging through the sweet sky’s serene azure shed upon us its white light;And your shadow,Graceful, languid,And my shadowFrom the moon’s pale light out-floating,On the sand-plain sad and lonelyWhere the path wound, were unitedAnd made one there,Were united in one lone and somber shadow,Were united in one lone and somber shadow,Were united in one lone and somber shadow.It was night time,Night time lonely,And my heart held naught save memory of your death and agony;Separated now forever, separated by time from you, by space, by the tomb forever,And by shadows black and blacker,Where my voice can never reach you,Silent, dumb, sad and aloneBy the pathway I was walking....At the lone moon dogs were baying,At the moon so sad and lone;I heard harsh and ghostly croakingOf the frogs beneath the moon....I felt chilly, and the chill was that which held you in your chamber,Held in your white, ghostly chamber, hands and breasts and cheeks I loved.Held between the snowy marbleOf the pale, dim plain of death.’Twas the chill of things sepulchral, ’twas the ancient chill of death,’Twas the chill of nothingness,And my shadow,From the moon’s pale light out-floating,Walked there lonely,Walked there lonely,Lonely walked the pale plain o’er,And your shadow grown more lovely,Graceful, languid,As upon that night of spring-time—fleeting spring of long ago;As that night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,Reached my shadow and swept with it,Reached my shadow and swept with it,Reached my shadow and swept with it—O! twin shadows interlacing!O the interlacing shadows of twin bodies reuniting with the shadows of their souls!O those interlacing shadows which are seeking, still are seeking,Through all night times, on, forever, for each other in their tears!
It was night time,Night time lonely,It was night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,It was night time,It was night time, and the darkness hymeneal, deep and dewy,Shone fantastical with fire-flies.By my side then, slowly, slowly, by my side then silent, pallid,As if to you there came knowledge of a future dark and bitter,Troubling hidden, secret, soul-depths and the fibers of your being,By my side along the pathway of the flowers across the pale plain,You were walking,And the full moonThen up-swinging through the sweet sky’s serene azure shed upon us its white light;And your shadow,Graceful, languid,And my shadowFrom the moon’s pale light out-floating,On the sand-plain sad and lonelyWhere the path wound, were unitedAnd made one there,Were united in one lone and somber shadow,Were united in one lone and somber shadow,Were united in one lone and somber shadow.It was night time,Night time lonely,And my heart held naught save memory of your death and agony;Separated now forever, separated by time from you, by space, by the tomb forever,And by shadows black and blacker,Where my voice can never reach you,Silent, dumb, sad and aloneBy the pathway I was walking....At the lone moon dogs were baying,At the moon so sad and lone;I heard harsh and ghostly croakingOf the frogs beneath the moon....I felt chilly, and the chill was that which held you in your chamber,Held in your white, ghostly chamber, hands and breasts and cheeks I loved.Held between the snowy marbleOf the pale, dim plain of death.’Twas the chill of things sepulchral, ’twas the ancient chill of death,’Twas the chill of nothingness,And my shadow,From the moon’s pale light out-floating,Walked there lonely,Walked there lonely,Lonely walked the pale plain o’er,And your shadow grown more lovely,Graceful, languid,As upon that night of spring-time—fleeting spring of long ago;As that night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,Reached my shadow and swept with it,Reached my shadow and swept with it,Reached my shadow and swept with it—O! twin shadows interlacing!O the interlacing shadows of twin bodies reuniting with the shadows of their souls!O those interlacing shadows which are seeking, still are seeking,Through all night times, on, forever, for each other in their tears!
It was night time,Night time lonely,It was night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,It was night time,It was night time, and the darkness hymeneal, deep and dewy,Shone fantastical with fire-flies.By my side then, slowly, slowly, by my side then silent, pallid,As if to you there came knowledge of a future dark and bitter,Troubling hidden, secret, soul-depths and the fibers of your being,By my side along the pathway of the flowers across the pale plain,You were walking,And the full moonThen up-swinging through the sweet sky’s serene azure shed upon us its white light;And your shadow,Graceful, languid,And my shadowFrom the moon’s pale light out-floating,On the sand-plain sad and lonelyWhere the path wound, were unitedAnd made one there,Were united in one lone and somber shadow,Were united in one lone and somber shadow,Were united in one lone and somber shadow.
It was night time,
Night time lonely,
It was night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,
With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,
It was night time,
It was night time, and the darkness hymeneal, deep and dewy,
Shone fantastical with fire-flies.
By my side then, slowly, slowly, by my side then silent, pallid,
As if to you there came knowledge of a future dark and bitter,
Troubling hidden, secret, soul-depths and the fibers of your being,
By my side along the pathway of the flowers across the pale plain,
You were walking,
And the full moon
Then up-swinging through the sweet sky’s serene azure shed upon us its white light;
And your shadow,
Graceful, languid,
And my shadow
From the moon’s pale light out-floating,
On the sand-plain sad and lonely
Where the path wound, were united
And made one there,
Were united in one lone and somber shadow,
Were united in one lone and somber shadow,
Were united in one lone and somber shadow.
It was night time,Night time lonely,And my heart held naught save memory of your death and agony;Separated now forever, separated by time from you, by space, by the tomb forever,And by shadows black and blacker,Where my voice can never reach you,Silent, dumb, sad and aloneBy the pathway I was walking....At the lone moon dogs were baying,At the moon so sad and lone;I heard harsh and ghostly croakingOf the frogs beneath the moon....I felt chilly, and the chill was that which held you in your chamber,Held in your white, ghostly chamber, hands and breasts and cheeks I loved.Held between the snowy marbleOf the pale, dim plain of death.
It was night time,
Night time lonely,
And my heart held naught save memory of your death and agony;
Separated now forever, separated by time from you, by space, by the tomb forever,
And by shadows black and blacker,
Where my voice can never reach you,
Silent, dumb, sad and alone
By the pathway I was walking....
At the lone moon dogs were baying,
At the moon so sad and lone;
I heard harsh and ghostly croaking
Of the frogs beneath the moon....
I felt chilly, and the chill was that which held you in your chamber,
Held in your white, ghostly chamber, hands and breasts and cheeks I loved.
Held between the snowy marble
Of the pale, dim plain of death.
’Twas the chill of things sepulchral, ’twas the ancient chill of death,’Twas the chill of nothingness,And my shadow,From the moon’s pale light out-floating,Walked there lonely,Walked there lonely,Lonely walked the pale plain o’er,And your shadow grown more lovely,Graceful, languid,As upon that night of spring-time—fleeting spring of long ago;As that night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,Reached my shadow and swept with it,Reached my shadow and swept with it,Reached my shadow and swept with it—O! twin shadows interlacing!O the interlacing shadows of twin bodies reuniting with the shadows of their souls!O those interlacing shadows which are seeking, still are seeking,Through all night times, on, forever, for each other in their tears!
’Twas the chill of things sepulchral, ’twas the ancient chill of death,
’Twas the chill of nothingness,
And my shadow,
From the moon’s pale light out-floating,
Walked there lonely,
Walked there lonely,
Lonely walked the pale plain o’er,
And your shadow grown more lovely,
Graceful, languid,
As upon that night of spring-time—fleeting spring of long ago;
As that night time filled with murmurings of sweetness,
With faint perfumes, and the music dim of birds’ wings,
Reached my shadow and swept with it,
Reached my shadow and swept with it,
Reached my shadow and swept with it—O! twin shadows interlacing!
O the interlacing shadows of twin bodies reuniting with the shadows of their souls!
O those interlacing shadows which are seeking, still are seeking,
Through all night times, on, forever, for each other in their tears!
In Bogotá, city of old churches, patrician pride, grave gray stone palaces, the room in which Silvá killed himself was found filled with books, in many tongues, collections of precious perfumes, and rare orchids.
How vastly learned was Tertullian! How eloquent! And how bronze muscled was his prose! As I read, I recall sharply old, resonant bronzes of Han, black and polished archaic pottery from fabulous dead cities upon the slopes of the Andes, in Peru, such as that fluent painter anddistinguished scientist and explorer, A. Hyatt Verrill, discovered, where in the long black night of time forgotten civilizations flowered then disappeared, and tides of Spanish conquest and exploration rose and fell, the black marble of the Baiæan pleasure-palaces of Tiberius Caesar, and black pearls from the Indian Ocean.
In truth Tertullian’s prose is black and splendid. It glows with the magic light of poignant drowned moons in perished Egyptian midnights, and the pictured onyx pendants that chilled the cruel breasts of Herodias. It moves me tremendously. And what power to swing the great sentence, then make it humbly sinuous, simple, and supple! Hear him:
“O tardy messengers! O sleepy despatches, through whose fault Cybele had not an earlier knowledge of the Imperial decease, that the Christians might have no occasion to ridicule a goddess so unworthy!...”
“And yet the Romans have never done such homage to the Fates which gave them Carthage against the purpose and the will of Juno, as to the abandoned harlot Larentina. It is not undoubted that not a few of your gods have reigned on earth as men.”
“If from the beginning of the world the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Serians spun trees, and the Tyrians dyed, and the Phrygians embroidered with the needle and the Babylonians with the loom, and pearls gleamed and onyx-stones flashed, if gold had issued with the cupidity which accompanies it from the ground, if the mirror had license to lie so largely, Eve, expelled from Paradise, already dead, would have coveted these things!”
The preachments of Tertullian keep the interest of romance and the exciting, restless intrigue of the novel. It is not surprising that a few books could satisfy so well the elder world: It is because each of the few kept the power of many. In the confusing complexity of today, Tertullian and Procopius could take the place of many for me. The long breath of power was theirs.
The sentences of Procopius are packed richly with meaning. Each has meat for meditation. And it is that rare writing that I love, because I keep the illusion of it being chiseled upon metal. It is firm. And it keeps a gleam in my mind. The attack of the first lines of his chapters is frequently magnificent. Here is an example:
“The Taurus mountain range of Cilicia passes first Cappadocia and Armenia and the land of the so-called Persarmenians, then Albania and Iberia both independent or subject to Persia. It extends a great distance, and as one proceeds along its range, it spreads out to extraordinary breadth, rises to imposing height....”
What an eminence from which to view the outspread plain of events of the chapter, and what harmony of mind and emotion he has given us, by the powerful placing of words and the unfolding of idea.
The old writing has kinship with plastic art; it was of line and form and surface, instead of color, emotion, nerves. Thought is a plastic thing when it is not chipped, sliced thin, like cheap cheese. That sense of plasticity, the need of a different moulding process, is something lost in word-craft. It helps give that which is deathless to much antique art. That, and a sincerity which is priceless.
I can read Tertullian and Procopius over and over. They are always new; they are filled with the essential of thought, which is something inexhaustible. They inspire. They give comfort and courage.
But the old writers wrote because they had something to say, not for applause, popularity, nor money.
The Bible tells us somewhere, that in the end of the world there will be many gods. As writing, as an art, a conveyance of thought, of idea, comes to an end, before all writing is used for purely scientific matter, there are many writers.
It is too bad they do not make children’s books for grown people today, delightful, unreal fables for adults, to temper the prosaic duties of living, to make them forget the regrettable, cast off care, and be joyous. There are none who need such books more than grown people. I am thinking of Ariosto, hisOrlando Furioso. How long ago Ariosto was born! Before the discovery of America.
I like the name an old Italian historian applied to him in his youth,uno gentiluomo ferrarese. His charm of manner won him appointment as gentleman in waiting at the Court of Cardinal Hippolyte of Este. He was grateful for this. It meant life among lettered men, nobles, beauties, at Court of a powerful Cardinal.
In the first Canto of theFuriosohe thanks him.
Ippolito aggradír questo che vuolee darvi sol puo l’úmil sérvo vostroQuel ch’io vi debbo, posso di parolePagare in parte, e d’opere d’inchióstro.
Ippolito aggradír questo che vuolee darvi sol puo l’úmil sérvo vostroQuel ch’io vi debbo, posso di parolePagare in parte, e d’opere d’inchióstro.
Ippolito aggradír questo che vuole
e darvi sol puo l’úmil sérvo vostro
Quel ch’io vi debbo, posso di parole
Pagare in parte, e d’opere d’inchióstro.
He can pay only in part and with words; with pen and ink, he declares humbly.
The story-telling splendor of the world is in this glowing, complex, impossible fable, written when chivalry was in flower, in Italy.
Its remote forebears were great Indian Epics, the heroic tales of Firdusi, who was the Persian Homer; and its relative in time in his own land, was Virgil’sÆneid. All this accomplished invention went to its grace.
The opening is from Virgil:
Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amóri,Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto.
Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amóri,Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto.
Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amóri,
Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto.
One of this book’s gay far descendants (It has many!) wandered from Italy northward, to fields of France. There it was known asThe Three Musketeers. It has had rollicking, gay followers, imitators in the art of letters, throughout the world; not only merry, entire book-sequences, like the romance of Dumaspère, but individual lines have been re-written down the centuries.
Tennyson was a renowned borrower from Latin, from Italian masters. It is difficult indeed to estimate his debt to Horace.
Here are descriptions of castles like that impregnable one of the Niebelungs. Here are lines that tally with Dante—
Come i gru van cantando lor lai.
Come i gru van cantando lor lai.
Come i gru van cantando lor lai.
Here is the modern storehouse of romance, in short, from which scholars, from which poets, drew material. Here are pictures in words which Watteau painted again in colors. Here is an art of writing rich, fluent, as the countless carven marbles of Italy.
No one can write such books today. It belongs to the mammoth, the monumental past. We arelittle. Its fluency, ease, grace, its inventive power, are incomparable.
There lingers about it the tapestried leisure of ancient monarchies. Not many books keep so securely the atmosphere in which they were first read. The atmosphere that created it dominates.
It belonged to a period that did not know subways nor moving pictures.
It belonged to sheltered corners of old-world gardens, graveled, bordered gravely with cypress, with ilex, where fountains played, where the yellow marbles of Greece, of Rome, were not out of place.
It belonged to luxurious drawing rooms, lighted by long oriel-topped windows, where furniture was slenderly shapen, gilt, and where hundreds of tall white tapers glimmered crisply in the twilight. It belonged to dim corners of walnut or oak, wainscoated libraries, where the early, pale, precious celadon of China gleamed, and ancient pink and blue globes stood, mounted in silver, mounted in crystal.
How different was the place where I read it! How far removed from nobly beautiful, romantic Italy!
I read it in the hot summers of the plains, with all the curtains drawn down tightly, with just one exception, which permitted a narrow strip to be open, through which filtered sunlight yellower than the peach’s heart, while outside through deep sand, green farm wagons rumbled heavily, laden with ripe melons, or painted Indians pranced on limber-legged ponies, which bright floating blankets covered.
To me the romance of Italy was a golden arabesque, covered with gems, covered with glowing enamels, a noble, far-reaching arabesque of art, which generously connected me in my little dwelling upon the plains with the gracious, the splendid thinking of gifted Mediterranean peoples.
I can renew youth and delight by opening its worn, finger-printed covers.
From the court-romances of Italy, much of the art of France came, when a daughter of the luxury loving Medici condescended to become Queen of France.
Ah!—what did she not teach these younger, these more ingenuous people of the north, of art, of crime, of subtlety, of luxurious thinking!
The long tradition of the Caesars was in her blood. Her heart had ripened for crime in palaces whose far architectural ancestry had been in Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, while over her cumulative consciousness there had drifted all the sins of Asia. I would like to look into her eyes! I would like to peer into those deep wells of the past.
There is a book that is chiseled in bronze. Do you know it? It has splendid, bare monotonous spaces where echoes beat like iron. It has resonance. It responds like metal struck by savages for battle. It is richly hued, deepened in splendor, with the dusty accumulated gold of centuries.
It is Xenophon’s story ofThe Expedition of Cyrus. Not in Greek, thunderous and splendid, I regret to tell you, but in Latin:De Cyri Expeditione. Oxford Edition. The translation made by Thomas Hutchinson. (What Latin scholars they made in England in the days of the Oxford Press!) My edition was printed in 1735.
There are no false strokes. There are no vacillations. There are no explanations. It marches onward with the iron feet of warriors. It is proud as the crests upon their helmets.
This sure, this masterly carving upon metal, which only Time is permitted to shade, is a lost art. It proceeded from a mental equipment different from that with which the modern artist works.
The old writers put down what they knew. The modern writers put down loosely, and sometimes eloquently, what they do not know. Always in the vague, weedy, word-garden of the present, I miss this unequivocating directness; clearness, firmness; this chiseled accuracy.
No roads have been so clear in my mind as the road the warriors of Cyrus traveled on the expedition which Xenophon recounts. No cities have been so firmly situated beside the roads, alluringly, so glowingly. No expanse of plain, of meadow or mountain, so reliably bounded. After the Latin and Greek historians ceased writing, it seemed suddenly to me that there were no roads left leading to Great Asia. A part of the world had fallen into space.
They did not say anything for effect. Space upon bronze was too precious to waste in filling in.
There are no vague foolishnesses. There are no indefinite horizons. Words were serious, expressive things. They were treated like gold, like silver. They did not throw them away.
They were majestic, these historians, like the Hebrew Prophets. They force respect. The vision I keep in my eye of them is something the same. They too were white robed, stately, brave, and eloquent.
I like the picture of the Persian princes,
Darii et Parysatidis duo fuere filii,
Darii et Parysatidis duo fuere filii,
Darii et Parysatidis duo fuere filii,
the two royal sons, come from that fabulous, painted palace of Persepolis, upon the highlands of Persia, down, down, steep mountain passes to the plains. Just where, Xenophon is careful not to tell us. But we know it was not far from Babylon. These two sons were Artaxerxes and Cyrus. Their names filled the known world.
I should like to look uponurbes Ionicæ illæ, about which he tells us, those seductive Ionian cities, which the youthful eyes of Cyrus saw. The cities of the past, spread out impressively upon the Syrian plain which lay between Europe and Asia, have held the charm of magic for me.
I should like to have looked upon Cyrus, too, in his young manhood, moving upon Sardis. What a sight that must have been!
Cyrus autem cum iis copiis Sardibus movit, Xenophon begins to relate.
Ovid, I think it was among the Romans, remembered it and alluded to it. It teased his mind, too, with the perishing beauty of the past. He saw in fancy, probably, the crisp curls of black, the crisp, black, pointed, shining beard; the daring eyes whose gleam matched gold; the lithe, arrow-like erectness; and the barbaric gemming of Asia.
Even in his sumptuous Rome, which still kept something of the vanishing greatness of vast ages that were perishing, it made him tremble. His artist’s eyes loved the retrospective splendor of the vision of black-eyed Asia moving in battle upon the proud, blond race of the south, and giving it its death blow.
That is all history has been, will ever be, the swaying tides of a human sea, now toward Asia, toward Europe. History is a wave lifted by cosmic urge.
Today they go to battle wearing hideous clothing and disguising head gear.
In the old days they moved in the pomp of purple and gold, semi-naked and splendid, glittering with gems, under canopies of crocus silk, while clarions shrieked and long plumes caressed the air.
Go refresh your eyes with a picture of it upon the bronze pages of Xenophon! It is fortunate it was written in bronze. Otherwise it might fade.
How lonely will they be in that new, scientific, commercially-minded future, so rapidly approaching, whose eyes have kept a memory of the picture which was the past.
The scholiast of Aristophanes tells us, among other interesting things, that Timandra, who was born at Hykkara, in Sicily, was given by the Tyrant Dionysius, to Philoxenus, the poet. With Philoxenus he goes on to say, she journeyed farther. She came at length as far as Corinth. Here she lived for a considerable time and was beloved of many.
This is the kind of novel I like, one that I can expand at leisure, to suit myself, one that unfolds long, radiant, geographical vistas. In 1843, De Musset published a book calledVoyage ou il vous plaira, (Travel Wherever You Wish). How I should like that! And how I now wish it were a part of life realized. In fancy I shall see the antique world. The notes of the scholiasts contain fascinating information.
“...of the wind always louder and bleaker, of the black roaring winters, of the gloom of high-lying old stone cities, imminent on the windy seaboard.”
This quotation from Stevenson’sEdinburgh, Picturesque Notesillustrates something not unworthy notice.
Its beauty, which no one will dispute, is not a spiritual question, nor one of mind wholly. It is founded upon the flesh.
Stylists play with vowels, with consonants, just as the pianist plays with black and white keys of his instrument. He, indeed, is not a dissimilar musician.
To return to the sentence in question. The underlined letters,i,a,oo, in the wordswind,blackandgloommean the opening wider and wider of the back of the throat to emit sound, going from a shorti, to longoo, a skillful climax, a physical emotion where muscles of the body are the instrument played upon.
The use of alternating vowels is remarkable. It is witchery. After height of stressed sound is reached in the wordgloom, he glides gently down to rest, satisfied sound-completeness, in the slightly muted finalsof the wordcities.
The sentence gives pleasant sense of slipping quietly into a blue, smiling harbor, after storm.
Stevenson performed miracles in handling sound. His verse, however, was merely graceful, which is a word good to apply to him.
Lafcadio Hearn was another master of the same kind, working with a sentence-line of keener, sharper, spirit-winged beauty. Few literatures of the world can show anything to surpass Hearn at his best.
It is possible to diagram with something approaching accuracy the effect of a sentence upon the muscles of the body.
A fine sentence is a geometrical sound-picture affecting the body as line affects the eye, built up out of vowels, soft padding of consonants packed between, to keep them from bruising each other in their expanding ecstacy, their lift, their lyric laugh.
The greatest rhythms are personal rhythms, that conform to no rule save deeps of self, consciousness of world-currents, the moment’s inspired emotion.
Lafcadio Hearn is a delicate, learned, vowel-musician. No language has a master who surpasses him. Listen to this, (I quote from memory): “So I wait for the poet’s Pentecost, the inspiration of nature, the descent of the Tongues of Fire. And I think they will come when the wild skies brighten and the Sun of the Mexican Gulf reappears for his worshipper, with hymns of wind and sea, and the prayers of birds.”
Learned, exquisite, infinitely wise in construction. He has worked magic.
Hear this from Aristophanes: “Our splendid dithyrambs are misty and duskyish, and dark gleaming, and high flown.”
This from Euripedes, from one of the choruses of Electra:
“In ancient song is the tale yet told,How Pan the master of forest and mead,Unearthly sweet while the melody rolled,From his pipes of cunningly linked reed,Did of yore from the mountains of Argus leadFrom the midst of the tender ewes of the fold....”
“In ancient song is the tale yet told,How Pan the master of forest and mead,Unearthly sweet while the melody rolled,From his pipes of cunningly linked reed,Did of yore from the mountains of Argus leadFrom the midst of the tender ewes of the fold....”
“In ancient song is the tale yet told,
How Pan the master of forest and mead,
Unearthly sweet while the melody rolled,
From his pipes of cunningly linked reed,
Did of yore from the mountains of Argus lead
From the midst of the tender ewes of the fold....”
The construction shines through the none too skillful turning into a modern tongue, in both examples. And in both we still feel recurrence of balanced sound that can not be reproduced in English, and unmapped spaces of loveliness.
Goethe declares, thinking, perhaps, of this: “Man studiere nicht die Mitgeborenen und Mitstrebenden, sondern grosse Menschen der Vorseit, deren Werke seit Jahrhunderten gleichen Wert und gleiches Ansehen behalten haben.... Man studiere Molière, man studiere Shakespeare, aber vor allen Dingen, die alten Griechen, und immer die alten Griechen.”
(Study not always men of your own age and those engaged in the same occupation as yourself, but likewise the great men of antiquity whose works have kept the same worth for centuries.... Study Molière, study Shakespeare, above all things study the ancient Greeks,and always the ancient Greeks.)
The choruses of Euripedes are among the loveliest things in existence, an undying beauty, which not time nor change mar. Do you happen to recall this?
The long white reach of Achilles’ BeachWhere his ghost feet shine on the sand.
The long white reach of Achilles’ BeachWhere his ghost feet shine on the sand.
The long white reach of Achilles’ Beach
Where his ghost feet shine on the sand.
After centuries, after wasted ink and paper, the thundering, the fault-finding of teachers, we know no more about words than the Attic Greeks, centuries before the birth of Christ. No more did I say? We do not know as much.
The age of Attic splendor antidated, I believe, the Birth of the Saviour by some five hundred years. In nobility of form, in beauty of tone, they are masters. We do not learn easily.
I wonder if beauty is a pagan thing which Christianity helped to kill? Has anything so supremely lovely been done since? And I am quoting at random, and always from memory. Memory, of course, is not a storehouse for so great a treasure as the past.
They say the cedars of Lebanon can not grow in the modern world. There is something that kills them as soon as the city, modern civilization, begin to approach. Their last stronghold is the slopes of the Atlas Mountains in Africa. Now they tell us, the French, who are trying to change ways of living there, that few young trees are springing up and the old are showing rapid signs of decay, the same decay that ruined their beauty in the Holy Land.
The Cedars of Lebanon and Beauty!Can they exist only in a pre-Christian world? It will never be possible to harmonize the Hellenic and the Hebraic spirit.
There has been no poet in these calm centuries of Catholic Spain to compare in quality with the poets under reign of the Moor, and the proud Prophet of Islam.
The Hellenic spirit and the Hebraic spirit are oil and water. We do not know how to mingle them. We can not perform the miracle. The alkahest is missing.