initial commit of ebook 14338HEADmain

1 files changed, 8667 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/14338.txt b/old/14338.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d680ab6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/14338.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8667 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Habits from the Lectures of
+Lafcadio Hearn, by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Author: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: December 13, 2004 [EBook #14338]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND HABITS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Barbara Tozier and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS AND HABITS
+
+_from the lectures of_
+
+LAFCADIO HEARN
+
+
+
+_Selected and Edited with an Introduction by_
+
+JOHN ERSKINE
+
+_Professor of English Columbia University_
+
+
+
+1922
+
+London: William Heinemann
+
+
+
+
+    [Transcriber's note: Contents moved to precede the Introduction.]
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       INTRODUCTION
+    I  THE INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTY
+   II  ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY
+  III  THE IDEAL WOMAN IN ENGLISH POETRY
+   IV  NOTE UPON THE SHORTEST FORMS OF ENGLISH POETRY
+    V  SOME FOREIGN POEMS ON JAPANESE SUBJECTS
+   VI  THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
+  VII  THE "HAVAMAL"
+ VIII  BEYOND MAN
+   IX  THE NEW ETHICS
+    X  SOME POEMS ABOUT INSECTS
+   XI  SOME FRENCH POEMS ABOUT INSECTS
+  XII  NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF FINNISH POETRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
+ XIII  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
+  XIV  "IONICA"
+   XV  OLD GREEK FRAGMENTS
+       INDEX
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+These chapters, for the most part, are reprinted from Lafcadio Hearn's
+"Interpretations of Literature," 1915, from his "Life and Literature,"
+1916, and from his "Appreciations of Poetry," 1917. Three chapters appear
+here for the first time. They are all taken from the student notes of
+Hearn's lectures at the University of Tokyo, 1896-1902, sufficiently
+described in the earlier volumes just mentioned. They are now published in
+this regrouping in response to a demand for a further selection of the
+lectures, in a less expensive volume and with emphasis upon those papers
+which illustrate Hearn's extraordinary ability to interpret the exotic in
+life and in books.
+
+It should be remembered that these lectures were delivered to Japanese
+students, and that Hearn's purpose was not only to impart the information
+about Western literature usually to be found in our histories and
+text-books, but much more to explain to the Oriental mind those
+peculiarities of our civilization which might be hard to understand on the
+further side of the Pacific Ocean. The lectures are therefore unique, in
+that they are the first large attempt by a Western critic to interpret us
+to the East. That we shall be deeply concerned in the near future to
+continue this interpretation on an even larger scale, no one of us doubts.
+We wish we might hope for another genius like Hearn to carry on the work.
+
+The merit of the chapters printed or reprinted in the present volume seems
+to me their power to teach us to imagine our familiar traditions as
+foreign and exotic in the eyes of other peoples. We are accustomed, like
+every one else, to think of our literature as the final product of other
+literatures--as a terminal in itself, rather than as a channel through
+which great potentialities might flow. Like other men, we are accustomed
+to think of ourselves as native, under all circumstances, and of other
+people at all times as foreign. While we were staying in their country,
+did we not think of the French as foreigners? In these chapters, not
+originally intended for us, we have the piquant and salutary experience of
+seeing what we look like on at least one occasion when we are the
+foreigners; we catch at least a glimpse of what to the Orient seems exotic
+in us, and it does us no harm to observe that the peculiarly Western
+aspects of our culture are not self-justifying nor always justifiable when
+looked at through eyes not already disposed in their favour. Hearn was one
+of the most loyal advocates the West could possibly have sent to the East,
+but he was an honest artist, and he never tried to improve his case by
+trimming a fact. His interpretation of us, therefore, touches our
+sensitiveness in regions--and in a degree--which perhaps his Japanese
+students were unconscious of; we too marvel as well as they at his skill
+in explaining, but we are sensitive to what he found necessary to explain.
+We read less for the explanation than for the inventory of ourselves.
+
+Any interpretation of life which looks closely to the facts will probably
+increase our sense of mystery and of strangeness in common things. If on
+the other hand it is a theory of experience which chiefly interests us, we
+may divert our attention somewhat from the experience to the theory,
+leaving the world as humdrum as it was before we explained it. In that
+case we must seek the exotic in remote places and in exceptional
+conditions, if we are to observe it at all. But Lafcadio Hearn cultivated
+in himself and taught his students to cultivate a quick alertness to those
+qualities of life to which we are usually dulled by habit. Education as he
+conceived of it had for its purpose what Pater says is the end of
+philosophy, to rouse the human spirit, to startle it into sharp and eager
+observation. It is a sign that dulness is already spreading in us, if we
+must go far afield for the stimulating, the wondrous, the miraculous. The
+growing sensitiveness of a sound education would help us to distinguish
+these qualities of romance in the very heart of our daily life. To have so
+distinguished them is in my opinion the felicity of Hearn in these
+chapters. When he was writing of Japan for European or American readers,
+we caught easily enough the exotic atmosphere of the island
+kingdom--easily enough, since it was the essence of a world far removed
+from ours. The exotic note is quite as strong in these chapters. We shall
+begin to appreciate Hearn's genius when we reflect that here he finds for
+us the exotic in ourselves.
+
+The first three chapters deal from different standpoints with the same
+subject--the characteristic of Western civilization which to the East is
+most puzzling, our attitude toward women. Hearn attempted in other essays
+also to do full justice to this fascinating theme, but these illustrations
+are typical of his method. To the Oriental it is strange to discover a
+civilization in which the love of husband and wife altogether supersedes
+the love of children for their parents, yet this is the civilization he
+will meet in English and in most Western literatures. He can understand
+the love of individual women, as we understand the love of individual men,
+but he will not easily understand our worship of women as a sex, our
+esteem of womankind, our chivalry, our way of taking woman as a religion.
+How difficult, then, will he find such a poem as Tennyson's "Princess," or
+most English novels. He will wonder why the majority of all Western
+stories are love stories, and why in English literature the love story
+takes place before marriage, whereas in French and other Continental
+literatures it usually follows marriage. In Japan marriages are the
+concern of the parents; with us they are the concern of the lovers, who
+must choose their mates in competition more or less open with other
+suitors. No wonder the rivalries and the precarious technique of
+love-making are with us an obsession quite exotic to the Eastern mind. But
+the Japanese reader, if he would understand us, must also learn how it is
+that we have two ways of reckoning with love--a realistic way, which
+occupies itself in portraying sex, the roots of the tree, as Hearn says,
+and the idealistic way, which tries to fix and reproduce the beautiful
+illusion of either happy or unhappy passion. And if the Japanese reader
+has learned enough of our world to understand all this, he must yet
+visualize our social system more clearly perhaps than most of us see it,
+if he would know why so many of our love poems are addressed to the woman
+we have not yet met. When we begin to sympathize with him in his efforts
+to grasp the meaning of our literature, we are at last awakened ourselves
+to some notion of what our civilization means, and as Hearn guides us
+through the discipline, we realize an exotic quality in things which
+formerly we took for granted.
+
+Lecturing before the days of Imagism, before the attention of many
+American poets had been turned to Japanese art, Hearn recognized the
+scarcity in our literature of those short forms of verse in which the
+Greeks as well as the Japanese excel. The epigram with us is--or was until
+recently--a classical tradition, based on the brief inscriptions of the
+Greek anthology or on the sharp satires of Roman poetry; we had no native
+turn for the form as an expression of our contemporary life. Since Hearn
+gave his very significant lecture we have discovered for ourselves an
+American kind of short poem, witty rather than poetic, and few verse-forms
+are now practised more widely among us. Hearn spoke as a prophet or as a
+shrewd observer--which is the same thing--when he pointed out the
+possibility of development in this field of brevity. He saw that Japan was
+closer to the Greek world in this practice than we were, and that our
+indifference to the shorter forms constituted a peculiarity which we could
+hardly defend. He saw, also, in the work of Heredia, how great an
+influence Japanese painting might have on Western literature, even on
+those poets who had no other acquaintance with Japan. In this point also
+his observation has proved prophetic; the new poets in America have
+adopted Japan, as they have adopted Greece, as a literary theme, and it is
+somewhat exclusively from the fine arts of either country that they draw
+their idea of its life.
+
+The next chapters which are brought together here, consider the origin and
+the nature of English and European ethics. Hearn was an artist to the
+core, and as a writer he pursued with undivided purpose that beauty which,
+as Keats reminded us, is truth. In his creative moments he was a
+beauty-lover, not a moralist. But when he turned critic he at once
+stressed the cardinal importance of ethics in the study of literature. The
+art which strives to end in beauty will reveal even more clearly than more
+complex forms of expression the personality of the artist, and personality
+is a matter of character, and character both governs the choice of an
+ethical system and is modified by it. Literary criticism as Hearn
+practised it is little interested in theology or in the system of morals
+publicly professed; it is, however, profoundly concerned with the ethical
+principles upon which the artist actually proceeds, the directions in
+which his impulses assert themselves, the verdicts of right and wrong
+which his temperament pronounces unconsciously, it may be. Here is the
+true revelation of character, Hearn thinks, even though our habitual and
+instinctive ethics may differ widely from the ethics we quite sincerely
+profess. Whether we know it or not, we are in such matters the children of
+some educational or philosophical system, which, preached at our ancestors
+long ago, has come at last to envelop us with the apparent naturalness of
+the air we breathe. It is a spiritual liberation of the first order, to
+envisage such an atmosphere as what it truly is, only a system of ethics
+effectively inculcated, and to compare the principles we live by with
+those we thought we lived by. Hearn was contriving illumination for the
+Japanese when he made his great lecture on the "Havamal," identifying in
+the ancient Northern poem those precepts which laid down later qualities
+of English character; for the Oriental reader it would be easier to
+identify the English traits in Thackeray or Dickens or Meredith if he
+could first consider them in a dogmatic precept. But the lecture gives us,
+I think, an extraordinary insight into ourselves, a power of
+self-criticism almost disconcerting as we realize not only the persistence
+of ethical ideals in the past, but also the possible career of new ethical
+systems as they may permeate the books written to-day. To what standard
+will the reader of our contemporary literature be unconsciously moulded?
+What account will be given of literature a thousand years from now, when a
+later critic informs himself of our ethics in order to understand more
+vitally the pages in which he has been brought up?
+
+Partly to inform his Japanese students still further as to our ethical
+tendencies in literature, and partly I think to indulge his own
+speculation as to the morality that will be found in the literature of the
+future, Hearn gave his remarkable lectures on the ant-world, following
+Fabre and other European investigators, and his lecture on "The New
+Ethics." When he spoke, over twenty years ago, the socialistic ideal had
+not gripped us so effectually as it has done in the last decade, but he
+had no difficulty in observing the tendency. Civilization in some later
+cycle may wonder at our ambition to abandon individual liberty and
+responsibility and to subside into the social instincts of the ant; and
+even as it wonders, that far-off civilization may detect in itself
+ant-like reactions which we cultivated for it. With this description of
+the ant-world it is illuminating to read the two brilliant chapters on
+English and French poems about insects. Against this whole background of
+ethical theory, I have ventured to set Hearn's singularly objective
+account of the Bible.
+
+In the remaining four chapters Hearn speaks of the "Kalevala," of the
+mediaeval romance "Amis and Amile," of William Cory's "Ionica," and of
+Theocritus. These chapters deal obviously with literary influences which
+have become part and parcel of English poetry, yet which remain exotic to
+it, if we keep in mind the Northern stock which still gives character,
+ethical and otherwise, to the English tradition. The "Kalevala," which
+otherwise should seem nearest to the basic qualities of our poetry, is
+almost unique, as Hearn points out, in the extent of its preoccupation
+with enchantments and charms, with the magic of words. "Amis and Amile,"
+which otherwise ought to seem more foreign to us, is strangely close in
+its glorification of friendship; for chivalry left with us at least this
+one great ethical feeling, that to keep faith in friendship is a holy
+thing. No wonder Amicus and Amelius were popular saints. The story implies
+also, as it falls here in the book, some illustration of those unconscious
+or unconsidered ethical reactions which, as we saw in the chapter on the
+"Havamal," have a lasting influence on our ideals and on our conduct.
+
+Romanticist though he was, Hearn constantly sought the romance in the
+highway of life, the aspects of experience which seem to perpetuate
+themselves from age to age, compelling literature to reassert them under
+whatever changes of form. To one who has followed the large mass of his
+lectures it is not surprising that he emphasized those ethical positions
+which are likely to remain constant, in spite of much new philosophy, nor
+that he constantly recurred to such books as Cory's "Ionica," or Lang's
+translation of Theocritus, in which he found statements of enduring human
+attitudes. To him the Greek mind made a double appeal. Not only did it
+represent to him the best that has yet been thought or said in the world,
+but by its fineness and its maturity it seemed kindred to the spirit he
+found in ancient Japan. Lecturing to Japanese students on Greek poetry as
+it filters through English paraphrases and translations, he must have felt
+sometimes as we now feel in reading his lectures, that in his teaching the
+long migration of the world's culture was approaching the end of the
+circuit, and that the earliest apparition of the East known to most of us
+was once more arriving at its starting place, mystery returning to
+mystery, and its path at all points mysterious if we rightly observe the
+miracle of the human spirit.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS AND HABITS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTY
+
+
+I wish to speak of the greatest difficulty with which the Japanese
+students of English literature, or of almost any Western literature, have
+to contend. I do not think that it ever has been properly spoken about. A
+foreign teacher might well hesitate to speak about, it--because, if he
+should try to explain it merely from the Western point of view, he could
+not hope to be understood; and if he should try to speak about it from the
+Japanese point of view, he would be certain to make various mistakes and
+to utter various extravagances. The proper explanation might be given by a
+Japanese professor only, who should have so intimate an acquaintance with
+Western life as to sympathize with it. Yet I fear that it would be
+difficult to find such a Japanese professor for this reason, that just in
+proportion as he should find himself in sympathy with Western life, in
+that proportion he would become less and less able to communicate that
+sympathy to his students. The difficulties are so great that it has taken
+me many years even to partly guess how great they are. That they can be
+removed at the present day is utterly out of the question. But something
+may be gained by stating them even imperfectly. At the risk of making
+blunders and uttering extravagances, I shall make the attempt. I am
+impelled to do so by a recent conversation with one of the cleverest
+students that I ever had, who acknowledged his total inability to
+understand some of the commonest facts in Western life,--all those facts
+relating, directly or indirectly, to the position of woman in Western
+literature as reflecting Western life.
+
+Let us clear the ground it once by putting down some facts in the plainest
+and lowest terms possible. You must try to imagine a country in which the
+place of the highest virtue is occupied, so to speak, by the devotion of
+sex to sex. The highest duty of the man is not to his father, but to his
+wife; and for the sake of that woman he abandons all other earthly ties,
+should any of these happen to interfere with that relation. The first duty
+of the wife may be, indeed, must be, to her child, when she has one; but
+otherwise her husband is her divinity and king. In that country it would
+be thought unnatural or strange to have one's parents living in the same
+house with wife or husband. You know all this. But it does not explain for
+you other things, much more difficult to understand, especially the
+influence of the abstract idea of woman upon society at large as well as
+upon the conduct of the individual. The devotion of man to woman does not
+mean at all only the devotion of husband to wife. It means actually
+this,--that every man is bound by conviction and by opinion to put all
+women before himself, simply because they are women. I do not mean that
+any man is likely to think of any woman as being his intellectual and
+physical superior; but I do mean that he is bound to think of her as
+something deserving and needing the help of every man. In time of danger
+the woman must be saved first. In time of pleasure, the woman must be
+given the best place. In time of hardship the woman's share of the common
+pain must be taken voluntarily by the man as much as possible. This is not
+with any view to recognition of the kindness shown. The man who assists a
+woman in danger is not supposed to have any claim upon her for that
+reason. He has done his duty only, not to her, the individual, but to
+womankind at large. So we have arrived at this general fact, that the
+first place in all things, except rule, is given to woman in Western
+countries, and that it is given almost religiously.
+
+Is woman a religion? Well, perhaps you will have the chance of judging for
+yourselves if you go to America. There you will find men treating women
+with just the same respect formerly accorded only to religious dignitaries
+or to great nobles. Everywhere they are saluted and helped to the best
+places; everywhere they are treated as superior beings. Now if we find
+reverence, loyalty and all kinds of sacrifices devoted either to a human
+being or to an image, we are inclined to think of worship. And worship it
+is. If a Western man should hear me tell you this, he would want the
+statement qualified, unless he happened to be a philosopher. But I am
+trying to put the facts before you in the way in which you can best
+understand them. Let me say, then, that the all-important thing for the
+student of English literature to try to understand, is that in Western
+countries woman is a cult, a religion, or if you like still plainer
+language, I shall say that in Western countries woman is a god.
+
+So much for the abstract idea of woman. Probably you will not find that
+particularly strange; the idea is not altogether foreign to Eastern
+thought, and there are very extensive systems of feminine pantheism in
+India. Of course the Western idea is only in the romantic sense a feminine
+pantheism; but the Oriental idea may serve to render it more
+comprehensive. The ideas of divine Mother and divine Creator may be
+studied in a thousand forms; I am now referring rather to the sentiment,
+to the feeling, than to the philosophical conception.
+
+You may ask, if the idea or sentiment of divinity attaches to woman in the
+abstract, what about woman in the concrete--individual woman? Are women
+individually considered as gods? Well, that depends on how you define the
+word god. The following definition would cover the ground, I think:--"Gods
+are beings superior to man, capable of assisting or injuring him, and to
+be placated by sacrifice and prayer." Now according to this definition, I
+think that the attitude of man towards woman in Western countries might be
+very well characterized as a sort of worship. In the upper classes of
+society, and in the middle classes also, great reverence towards women is
+exacted. Men bow down before them, make all kinds of sacrifices to please
+them, beg for their good will and their assistance. It does not matter
+that this sacrifice is not in the shape of incense burning or of temple
+offerings; nor does it matter that the prayers are of a different kind
+from those pronounced in churches. There is sacrifice and worship. And no
+saying is more common, no truth better known, than that the man who hopes
+to succeed in life must be able to please the women. Every young man who
+goes into any kind of society knows this. It is one of the first lessons
+that he has to learn. Well, am I very wrong in saying that the attitude of
+men towards women in the West is much like the attitude of men towards
+gods?
+
+But you may answer at once,--How comes it, if women are thus reverenced as
+you say, that men of the lower classes beat and ill-treat their wives in
+those countries? I must reply, for the same reason that Italian and
+Spanish sailors will beat and abuse the images of the saints and virgins
+to whom they pray, when their prayer is not granted. It is quite possible
+to worship an image sincerely and to seek vengeance upon it in a moment of
+anger. The one feeling does not exclude the other. What in the higher
+classes may be a religion, in the lower classes may be only a
+superstition, and strange contradictions exist, side by side, in all forms
+of superstition. Certainly the Western working man or peasant does not
+think about his wife or his neighbour's wife in the reverential way that
+the man of the superior class does. But you will find, if you talk to
+them, that something of the reverential idea is there; it is there at
+least during their best moments.
+
+Now there is a certain exaggeration in what I have said. But that is only
+because of the somewhat narrow way in which I have tried to express a
+truth. I am anxious to give you the idea that throughout the West there
+exists, though with a difference according to class and culture, a
+sentiment about women quite as reverential as a sentiment of religion.
+This is true; and not to understand it, is not to understand Western
+literature.
+
+How did it come into existence? Through many causes, some of which are so
+old that we can not know anything about them. This feeling did not belong
+to the Greek and Roman civilization but it belonged to the life of the old
+Northern races who have since spread over the world, planting their ideas
+everywhere. In the oldest Scandinavian literature you will find that women
+were thought of and treated by the men of the North very much as they are
+thought of and treated by Englishmen of to-day. You will find what their
+power was in the old sagas, such as the Njal-Saga, or "The Story of Burnt
+Njal." But we must go much further than the written literature to get a
+full knowledge of the origin of such a sentiment. The idea seems to have
+existed that woman was semi-divine, because she was the mother, the
+creator of man. And we know that she was credited among the Norsemen with
+supernatural powers. But upon this Northern foundation there was built up
+a highly complex fabric of romantic and artistic sentiment. The Christian
+worship of the Virgin Mary harmonized with the Northern belief. The
+sentiment of chivalry reinforced it. Then came the artistic resurrection
+of the Renaissance, and the new reverence for the beauty of the old Greek
+gods, and the Greek traditions of female divinities; these also coloured
+and lightened the old feeling about womankind. Think also of the effect
+with which literature, poetry and the arts have since been cultivating and
+developing the sentiment. Consider how the great mass of Western poetry is
+love poetry, and the greater part of Western fiction love stories.
+
+Of course the foregoing is only the vaguest suggestion of a truth. Really
+my object is not to trouble you at all about the evolutional history of
+the sentiment, but only to ask you to think what this sentiment means in
+literature. I am not asking you to sympathize with it, but if you could
+sympathize with it you would understand a thousand things in Western books
+which otherwise must remain dim and strange. I am not expecting that you
+can sympathize with it. But it is absolutely necessary that you should
+understand its relation to language and literature. Therefore I have to
+tell you that you should try to think of it as a kind of religion, a
+secular, social, artistic religion, not to be confounded with any national
+religion. It is a kind of race feeling or race creed. It has not
+originated in any sensuous idea, but in some very ancient superstitious
+idea. Nearly all forms of the highest sentiment and the highest faith and
+the highest art have had their beginnings in equally humble soil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON LOVE IN ENGLISH POETRY
+
+
+I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the
+Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance
+given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry. Indeed, by
+this time I have begun to feel a little astonished at it myself. Of
+course, before I came to this country it seemed to me quite natural that
+love should be the chief subject of literature; because I did not know
+anything about any other kind of society except Western society. But
+to-day it really seems to me a little strange. If it seems strange to me,
+how much more ought it to seem strange to you! Of course, the simple
+explanation of the fact is that marriage is the most important act of
+man's life in Europe or America, and that everything depends upon it. It
+is quite different on this side of the world. But the simple explanation
+of the difference is not enough. There are many things to be explained.
+Why should not only the novel writers but all the poets make love the
+principal subject of their work? I never knew, because I never thought,
+how much English literature was saturated with the subject of love until I
+attempted to make selections of poetry and prose for class use--naturally
+endeavouring to select such pages or poems as related to other subjects
+than passion. Instead of finding a good deal of what I was looking for, I
+could find scarcely anything. The great prose writers, outside of the
+essay or history, are nearly all famous as tellers of love stories. And it
+is almost impossible to select half a dozen stanzas of classic verse from
+Tennyson or Rossetti or Browning or Shelley or Byron, which do not contain
+anything about kissing, embracing, or longing for some imaginary or real
+beloved. Wordsworth, indeed, is something of an exception; and Coleridge
+is most famous for a poem which contains nothing at all about love. But
+exceptions do not affect the general rule that love is the theme of
+English poetry, as it is also of French, Italian, Spanish, or German
+poetry. It is the dominant motive.
+
+So with the English novelists. There have been here also a few
+exceptions--such as the late Robert Louis Stevenson, most of whose novels
+contain little about women; they are chiefly novels or romances of
+adventure. But the exceptions are very few. At the present time there are
+produced almost every year in England about a thousand new novels, and all
+of these or nearly all are love stories. To write a novel without a woman
+in it would be a dangerous undertaking; in ninety-nine cases out of a
+hundred the book would not sell.
+
+Of course all this means that the English people throughout the world, as
+readers, are chiefly interested in the subject under discussion. When you
+find a whole race interested more in one thing than in anything else, you
+may be sure that it is so because the subject is of paramount importance
+in the life of the average person. You must try to imagine then, a society
+in which every man must choose his wife, and every woman must choose her
+husband, independent of all outside help, and not only choose but obtain
+if possible. The great principle of Western society is that competition
+rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man--that is to say,
+the strongest and cleverest--is likely to get the best woman, in the sense
+of the most beautiful person. The weak, the feeble, the poor, and the ugly
+have little chance of being able to marry at all. Tens of thousands of men
+and women can not possibly marry. I am speaking of the upper and middle
+classes. The working people, the peasants, the labourers, these marry
+young; but the competition there is just the same--just as difficult, and
+only a little rougher. So it may be said that every man has a struggle of
+some kind in order to marry, and that there is a kind of fight or contest
+for the possession of every woman worth having. Taking this view of
+Western society not only in England but throughout all Europe, you will
+easily be able to see why the Western public have reason to be more
+interested in literature which treats of love than in any other kind of
+literature.
+
+But although the conditions that I have been describing are about the same
+in all Western countries, the tone of the literature which deals with love
+is not at all the same. There are very great differences. In prose they
+are much more serious than in poetry; because in all countries a man is
+allowed, by public opinion, more freedom in verse than in prose. Now these
+differences in the way of treating the subject in different countries
+really indicate national differences of character. Northern love stories
+and Northern poetry about love are very serious; and these authors are
+kept within fixed limits. Certain subjects are generally forbidden. For
+example, the English public wants novels about love, but the love must be
+the love of a girl who is to become somebody's wife. The rule in the
+English novel is to describe the pains, fears, and struggles of the period
+before marriage--the contest in the world for the right of marriage. A man
+must not write a novel about any other point of love. Of course there are
+plenty of authors who have broken this rule but the rule still exists. A
+man may represent a contest between two women, one good and one bad, but
+if the bad woman is allowed to conquer in the story, the public will
+growl. This English fashion has existed since the eighteenth century.
+since the time of Richardson, and is likely to last for generations to
+come.
+
+Now this is not the rule at all which governs making of novels in France.
+French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and
+to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French
+novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about
+many things which the English public would not allow. This does not mean
+that the English are morally a better people than the French or other
+Southern races. But it does mean that there are great differences in the
+social conditions. One such difference can be very briefly expressed. An
+English girl, an American girl, a Norwegian, a Dane, a Swede, is allowed
+all possible liberty before marriage. The girl is told, "You must be able
+to take care of yourself, and not do wrong." After marriage there is no
+more such liberty. After marriage in all Northern countries a woman's
+conduct is strictly watched. But in France, and in Southern countries, the
+young girl has no liberty before marriage. She is always under the guard
+of her brother, her father, her mother, or some experienced relation. She
+is accompanied wherever she walks. She is not allowed to see her betrothed
+except in the presence of witnesses. But after marriage her liberty
+begins. Then she is told for the first time that she must take care of
+herself. Well, you will see that the conditions which inspire the novels,
+in treating of the subjects of love and marriage, are very different in
+Northern and in Southern Europe. For this reason alone the character of
+the novel produced in England could not be the same.
+
+You must remember, however, that there are many other reasons for this
+difference--reasons of literary sentiment. The Southern or Latin races
+have been civilized for a much longer time than the Northern races; they
+have inherited the feelings of the ancient world, the old Greek and Roman
+world, and they think still about the relation of the sexes in very much
+the same way that the ancient poets and romance writers used to think. And
+they can do things which English writers can not do, because their
+language has power of more delicate expression.
+
+We may say that the Latin writers still speak of love in very much the
+same way that it was considered before Christianity. But when I speak of
+Christianity I am only referring to an historical date. Before
+Christianity the Northern races also thought about love very much in the
+same way that their best poets do at this day. The ancient Scandinavian
+literature would show this. The Viking, the old sea-pirate, felt very much
+as Tennyson or as Meredith would feel upon this subject; he thought of
+only one kind of love as real--that which ends in marriage, the affection
+between husband and wife. Anything else was to him mere folly and
+weakness. Christianity did not change his sentiment on this subject. The
+modern Englishman, Swede, Dane, Norwegian, or German regards love in
+exactly that deep, serious, noble way that his pagan ancestors did. I
+think we can say that different races have differences of feeling on
+sexual relations, which differences are very much older than any written
+history. They are in the blood and soul of a people, and neither religion
+nor civilization can utterly change them.
+
+So far I have been speaking particularly about the differences in English
+and French novels; and a novel is especially a reflection of national
+life, a kind of dramatic narration of truth, in the form of a story. But
+in poetry, which is the highest form of literature, the difference is much
+more observable. We find the Latin poets of to-day writing just as freely
+on the subject of love as the old Latin poets of the age of Augustus,
+while Northern poets observe with few exceptions great restraint when
+treating of this theme. Now where is the line to be drawn? Are the Latins
+right? Are the English right? How are we to make a sharp distinction
+between what is moral and good and what is immoral and bad in treating
+love-subjects?
+
+Some definition must be attempted.
+
+What is meant by love? As used by Latin writers the word has a range of
+meanings, from that of the sexual relation between insects or animals up
+to the highest form of religious emotion, called "The love of God." I need
+scarcely say that this definition is too loose for our use. The English
+word, by general consent, means both sexual passion and deep friendship.
+This again is a meaning too wide for our purpose. By putting the adjective
+"true" before love, some definition is attempted in ordinary conversation.
+When an Englishman speaks of "true love," he usually means something that
+has no passion at all; he means a perfect friendship which grows up
+between man and wife and which has nothing to do with the passion which
+brought the pair together. But when the English poet speaks of love, he
+generally means passion, not friendship. I am only stating very general
+rules. You see how confusing the subject is, how difficult to define the
+matter. Let us leave the definition alone for a moment, and consider the
+matter philosophically.
+
+Some very foolish persons have attempted even within recent years to make
+a classification of different kinds of love--love between the sexes. They
+talk about romantic love, and other such things. All that is utter
+nonsense. In the meaning of sexual affection there is only one kind of
+love, the natural attraction of one sex for them other; and the only
+difference in the highest for of this attraction and the lowest is this,
+that in the nobler nature a vast number of moral, aesthetic, and ethical
+sentiments are related to the passion, and that in lower natures those
+sentiments are absent. Therefore we may say that even in the highest forms
+of the sentiment there is only one dominant feeling, complex though it be,
+the desire for possession. What follows the possession we may call love if
+we please; but it might better be called perfect friendship and sympathy.
+It is altogether a different thing. The love that is the theme of poets in
+all countries is really love, not the friendship that grows out of it.
+
+I suppose you know that the etymological meaning of "passion" is "a state
+of suffering." In regard to love, the word has particular significance to
+the Western mind, for it refers to the time of struggle and doubt and
+longing before the object is attained. Now how much of this passion is a
+legitimate subject of literary art?
+
+The difficulty may, I think, be met by remembering the extraordinary
+character of the mental phenomena which manifest themselves in the time of
+passion. There is during that time a strange illusion, an illusion so
+wonderful that it has engaged the attention of great philosophers for
+thousands of years; Plato, you know, tried to explain it in a very famous
+theory. I mean the illusion that seems to charm, or rather, actually does
+charm the senses of a man at a certain time. To his eye a certain face has
+suddenly become the most beautiful object in the world. To his ears the
+accents of one voice become the sweetest of all music. Reason has nothing
+to do with this, and reason has no power against the enchantment. Out of
+Nature's mystery, somehow or other, this strange magic suddenly
+illuminates the senses of a man; then vanishes again, as noiselessly as it
+came. It is a very ghostly thing, and can not be explained by any theory
+not of a very ghostly kind. Even Herbert Spencer has devoted his reasoning
+to a new theory about it. I need not go further in this particular than to
+tell you that in a certain way passion is now thought to have something to
+do with other lives than the present; in short, it is a kind of organic
+memory of relations that existed in thousands and tens of thousands of
+former states of being. Right or wrong though the theories may be, this
+mysterious moment of love, the period of this illusion, is properly the
+subject of high poetry, simply because it is the most beautiful and the
+most wonderful experience of a human life. And why?
+
+Because in the brief time of such passion the very highest and finest
+emotions of which human nature is capable are brought into play. In that
+time more than at any other hour in life do men become unselfish,
+unselfish at least toward one human being. Not only unselfishness but
+self-sacrifice is a desire peculiar to the period. The young man in love
+is not merely willing to give away everything that he possesses to the
+person beloved; he wishes to suffer pain, to meet danger, to risk his life
+for her sake. Therefore Tennyson, in speaking of that time, beautifully
+said:
+
+  Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might,
+  Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
+
+Unselfishness is, of course, a very noble feeling, independently of the
+cause. But this is only one of the emotions of a higher class when
+powerfully aroused. There is pity, tenderness--the same kind of tenderness
+that one feels toward a child--the love of the helpless, the desire to
+protect. And a third sentiment felt at such a time more strongly than at
+any other, is the sentiment of duty; responsibilities moral and social are
+then comprehended in a totally new way. Surely none can dispute these
+facts nor the beauty of them.
+
+Moral sentiments are the highest of all; but next to them the sentiment of
+beauty in itself, the artistic feeling, is also a very high form of
+intellectual and even of secondary moral experience. Scientifically there
+is a relation between the beautiful and the good, between the physically
+perfect and the ethically perfect. Of course it is not absolute. There is
+nothing absolute in this world. But the relation exists. Whoever can
+comprehend the highest form of one kind of beauty must be able to
+comprehend something of the other. I know very well that the ideal of the
+love-season is an illusion; in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of
+the thousand the beauty of the woman is only imagined. But does that make
+any possible difference? I do not think that it does. To imagine beauty is
+really to see it--not objectively, perhaps, but subjectively beyond all
+possibility of doubt. Though you see the beauty only in your mind, in your
+mind it is; and in your mind its ethical influence must operate. During
+the time that a man worships even imaginary bodily beauty, he receives
+some secret glimpse of a higher kind of beauty--beauty of heart and mind.
+Was there ever in this world a real lover who did not believe the woman of
+his choice to be not only the most beautiful of mortals, but also the best
+in a moral sense? I do not think that there ever was.
+
+The moral and the ethical sentiments of a being thus aroused call into
+sudden action all the finer energies of the man--the capacities for
+effort, for heroism, for high-pressure work of any sort, mental or
+physical, for all that requires quickness in thought and exactitude in
+act. There is for the time being a sense of new power. Anything that makes
+strong appeal to the best exercise of one's faculties is beneficent and,
+in most cases, worthy of reverence. Indeed, it is in the short season of
+which I am speaking that we always discover the best of everything in the
+character of woman or of man. In that period the evil qualities, the
+ungenerous side, is usually kept as much out of sight as possible.
+
+Now for all these suggested reasons, as for many others which might be
+suggested, the period of illusion in love is really the period which poets
+and writers of romance are naturally justified in describing. Can they go
+beyond it with safety, with propriety? That depends very much upon whether
+they go up or down. By going up I mean keeping within the region of moral
+idealism. By going down I mean descending to the level of merely animal
+realism. In this realism there is nothing deserving the highest effort of
+art of any sort.
+
+What is the object of art? Is it not, or should it not be, to make us
+imagine better conditions than that which at present exist in the world,
+and by so imagining to prepare the way for the coming of such conditions?
+I think that all great art has done this. Do you remember the old story
+about Greek mothers keeping in their rooms the statue of a god or a man,
+more beautiful than anything real, so that their imagination might be
+constantly influenced by the sight of beauty, and that they might perhaps
+be able to bring more beautiful children into the world? Among the Arabs,
+mothers also do something of this kind, only, as they have no art of
+imagery, they go to Nature herself for the living image. Black luminous
+eyes are beautiful, and wives keep in their tents a little deer, the
+gazelle, which is famous for the brilliancy and beauty of its eyes. By
+constantly looking at this charming pet the Arab wife hopes to bring into
+the world some day a child with eyes as beautiful as the eyes of the
+gazelle. Well, the highest function of art ought to do for us, or at least
+for the world, what the statue and the gazelle were expected to do for
+Grecian and Arab mothers--to make possible higher conditions than the
+existing ones.
+
+So much being said, consider again the place and the meaning of the
+passion of love in any human life. It is essentially a period of idealism,
+of imagining better things and conditions than are possible in this world.
+For everybody who has been in love has imagined something higher than the
+possible and the present. Any idealism is a proper subject for art. It is
+not at all the same in the case of realism. Grant that all this passion,
+imagination, and fine sentiment is based upon a very simple animal
+impulse. That does not make the least difference in the value of the
+highest results of that passion. We might say the very same thing about
+any human emotion; every emotion can be evolutionally traced back to
+simple and selfish impulses shared by man with the lower animals. But,
+because an apple tree or a pear tree happens to have its roots in the
+ground, does that mean that its fruits are not beautiful and wholesome?
+Most assuredly we must not judge the fruit of the tree from the unseen
+roots; but what about turning up the ground to look at the roots? What
+becomes of the beauty of the tree when you do that? The realist--at least
+the French realist--likes to do that. He likes to bring back the attention
+of his reader to the lowest rather than to the highest, to that which
+should be kept hidden, for the very same reason that the roots of a tree
+should be kept underground if the tree is to live.
+
+The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it
+represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to
+be free to do the very best that he can. He may go beyond that zone; but
+then he has only two directions in which he can travel. Above it there is
+religion, and an artist may, like Dante, succeed in transforming love into
+a sentiment of religious ecstasy. I do not think that any artist could do
+that to-day; this is not an age of religious ecstasy. But upwards there is
+no other way to go. Downwards the artist may travel until he finds himself
+in hell. Between the zone of idealism and the brutality of realism there
+are no doubt many gradations. I am only indicating what I think to be an
+absolute truth, that in treating of love the literary master should keep
+to the period of illusion, and that to go below it is a dangerous
+undertaking. And now, having tried to make what are believed to be proper
+distinctions between great literature on this subject and all that is not
+great, we may begin to study a few examples. I am going to select at
+random passages from English poets and others, illustrating my meaning.
+
+Tennyson is perhaps the most familiar to you among poets of our own time;
+and he has given a few exquisite examples of the ideal sentiment in
+passion. One is a concluding verse in the beautiful song that occurs in
+the monodrama of "Maud," where the lover, listening in the garden, hears
+the steps of his beloved approaching.
+
+  She is coming, my own, my sweet,
+    Were it ever so airy a tread,
+  My heart would hear her and beat,
+    Were it earth in an earthy bed;
+  My dust would hear her and beat,
+    Had I lain for a century dead;
+  Would start and tremble under her feet,
+    And blossom in purple and red.
+
+This is a very fine instance of the purely idea emotion--extravagant, if
+you like, in the force of the imagery used, but absolutely sincere and
+true; for the imagination of love is necessarily extravagant. It would be
+quite useless to ask whether the sound of a girl's footsteps could really
+waken a dead man; we know that love can fancy such things quite naturally,
+not in one country only but everywhere. An Arabian poem written long
+before the time of Mohammed contains exactly the same thought in simpler
+words; and I think that there are some old Japanese songs containing
+something similar. All that the statement really means is that the voice,
+the look, the touch, even the footstep of the woman beloved have come to
+possess for the lover a significance as great as life and death. For the
+moment he knows no other divinity; she is his god, in the sense that her
+power over him has become infinite and irresistible.
+
+The second example may be furnished from another part of the same
+composition--the little song of exaltation after the promise to marry has
+been given.
+
+  O let the solid ground
+    Not fail beneath my feet
+  Before my life has found
+    What some have found so sweet;
+  Then let come what come may,
+  What matter if I go mad,
+  I shall have had my day.
+
+  Let the sweet heavens endure,
+    Not close and darken above me
+  Before I am quite, quite sure
+    That there is one to love me;
+  Then let come what come may
+  To a life that has been so sad,
+  I shall have had my day.
+
+The feeling of the lover is that no matter what happens afterwards, the
+winning of the woman is enough to pay for life, death, pain, or anything
+else. One of the most remarkable phenomena of the illusion is the supreme
+indifference to consequences--at least to any consequences which would not
+signify moral shame or loss of honour, Of course the poet is supposed to
+consider the emotion only in generous natures. But the subject of this
+splendid indifference has been more wonderfully treated by Victor Hugo
+than by Tennyson--as we shall see later on, when considering another phase
+of the emotion. Before doing that, I want to call your attention to a very
+charming treatment of love's romance by an American. It is one of the most
+delicate of modern compositions, and it is likely to become a classic, as
+it has already been printed in four or five different anthologies. The
+title is "Atalanta's Race."
+
+First let me tell you the story of Atalanta, so that you will be better
+able to see the fine symbolism of the poem. Atalanta, the daughter of a
+Greek king, was not only the most beautiful of maidens, but the swiftest
+runner in the world. She passed her time in hunting, and did not wish to
+marry. But as many men wanted to marry her, a law was passed that any one
+who desired to win her must run a race with her. If he could beat her in
+running, then she promised to marry him, but if he lost the race, he was
+to be killed. Some say that the man was allowed to run first, and that the
+girl followed with a spear in her hand and killed him when she overtook
+him. There are different accounts of the contest. Many suitors lost the
+race and were killed. But finally young man called Hippomenes obtained
+from the Goddess of Love three golden apples, and he was told that if he
+dropped these apples while running, the girl would stop to pick them up,
+and that in this way he might be able to win the race. So he ran, and when
+he found himself about to be beaten, he dropped one apple. She stopped to
+pick it up and thus he gained a little. In this way he won the race and
+married Atalanta. Greek mythology says that afterwards she and her husband
+were turned into lions because they offended the gods; however, that need
+not concern us here. There is a very beautiful moral in the old Greek
+story, and the merit of the American composition is that its author,
+Maurice Thompson, perceived this moral and used it to illustrate a great
+philosophical truth.
+
+  When Spring grows old, and sleepy winds
+    Set from the South with odours sweet,
+  I see my love, in green, cool groves,
+    Speed down dusk aisles on shining feet.
+  She throws a kiss and bids me run,
+    In whispers sweet as roses' breath;
+  I know I cannot win the race,
+   And at the end, I know, is death.
+
+  But joyfully I bare my limbs,
+    Anoint me with the tropic breeze,
+  And feel through every sinew run
+    The vigour of Hippomenes.
+
+  O race of love! we all have run
+    Thy happy course through groves of Spring,
+  And cared not, when at last we lost,
+    For life or death, or anything!
+
+There are a few thoughts here requiring a little comment. You know that
+the Greek games and athletic contests were held in the fairest season, and
+that the contestants were stripped. They were also anointed with oil,
+partly to protect the skin against sun and temperature and partly to make
+the body more supple. The poet speaks of the young man as being anointed
+by the warm wind of Spring, the tropic season of life. It is a very pretty
+fancy. What he is really telling us is this:
+
+"There are no more Greek games, but the race of love is still run to-day
+as in times gone by; youth is the season, and the atmosphere of youth is
+the anointing of the contestant."
+
+But the moral of the piece is its great charm, the poetical statement of a
+beautiful and a wonderful fact. In almost every life there is a time when
+we care for only one person, and suffer much for that person's sake; yet
+in that period we do not care whether we suffer or die, and in after life,
+when we look back at those hours of youth, we wonder at the way in which
+we then felt. In European life of to-day the old Greek fable is still
+true; almost everybody must run Atalanta's race and abide by the result.
+
+One of the delightful phases of the illusion of love is the sense of old
+acquaintance, the feeling as if the person loved had been known and loved
+long ago in some time and place forgotten. I think you must have observed,
+many of you, that when the senses of sight and hearing happen to be
+strongly stirred by some new and most pleasurable experience, the feeling
+of novelty is absent, or almost absent. You do not feel as if you were
+seeing or hearing something new, but as if you saw or heard something that
+you knew all about very long ago. I remember once travelling with a
+Japanese boy into a charming little country town in Shikoku--and scarcely
+had we entered the main street, than he cried out: "Oh, I have seen this
+place before!" Of course he had not seen it before; he was from Osaka and
+had never left the great city until then. But the pleasure of his new
+experience had given him this feeling of familiarity with the unfamiliar.
+I do not pretend to explain this familiarity with the new--it is a great
+mystery still, just as it was a great mystery to the Roman Cicero. But
+almost everybody that has been in love has probably had the same feeling
+during a moment or two--the feeling "I have known that woman before,"
+though the where and the when are mysteries. Some of the modern poets have
+beautifully treated this feeling. The best example that I can give you is
+the exquisite lyric by Rossetti entitled "Sudden Light."
+
+  I have been here before,
+    But when or how I cannot tell:
+  I know the grass beyond the door,
+    The sweet keen smell,
+  The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
+
+  You have been mine before,--
+    How long ago I may not know:
+  But just when at that swallow's soar
+    Your neck turn'd so,
+  Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.
+
+  Has this been thus before?
+    And shall not thus time's eddying flight
+  Still with our lives our loves restore
+    In death's despite,
+  And day and night yield one delight once more?
+
+I think you will acknowledge that this is very pretty; and the same poet
+has treated the idea equally well in other poems of a more complicated
+kind. But another poet of the period was haunted even more than Rossetti
+by this idea--Arthur O'Shaughnessy. Like Rossetti he was a great lover,
+and very unfortunate in his love; and he wrote his poems, now famous, out
+of the pain and regret that was in his heart, much as singing birds born
+in cages are said to sing better when their eyes are put out. Here is one
+example:
+
+  Along the garden ways just now
+    I heard the flowers speak;
+  The white rose told me of your brow,
+    The red rose of your cheek;
+  The lily of your bended head,
+    The bindweed of your hair:
+  Each looked its loveliest and said
+    You were more fair.
+
+  I went into the woods anon,
+    And heard the wild birds sing
+  How sweet you were; they warbled on,
+    Piped, trill'd the self-same thing.
+  Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause
+    The burden did repeat,
+  And still began again because
+    You were more sweet.
+
+  And then I went down to the sea,
+    And heard it murmuring too,
+  Part of an ancient mystery,
+    All made of me and you:
+  How many a thousand years ago
+    I loved, and you were sweet--
+  Longer I could not stay, and so
+    I fled back to your feet.
+
+The last stanza especially expresses the idea that I have been telling you
+about; but in a poem entitled "Greater Memory" the idea is much more fully
+expressed. By "greater memory" you must understand the memory beyond this
+life into past stages of existence. This piece has become a part of the
+nineteenth century poetry that will live; and a few of the best stanzas
+deserve to be quoted,
+
+  In the heart there lay buried for years
+  Love's story of passion and tears;
+  Of the heaven that two had begun
+    And the horror that tore them apart;
+  When one was love's slayer, but one
+    Made a grave for the love in his heart.
+
+  The long years pass'd weary and lone
+  And it lay there and changed there unknown;
+  Then one day from its innermost place,
+    In the shamed and ruin'd love's stead,
+  Love arose with a glorified face,
+    Like an angel that comes from the dead.
+
+  It uplifted the stone that was set
+  On that tomb which the heart held yet;
+  But the sorrow had moulder'd within
+    And there came from the long closed door
+  A dear image, that was not the sin
+    Or the grief that lay buried before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  There was never the stain of a tear
+  On the face that was ever so dear;
+  'Twas the same in each lovelier way;
+    'Twas old love's holier part,
+  And the dream of the earliest day
+    Brought back to the desolate heart.
+
+  It was knowledge of all that had been
+  In the thought, in the soul unseen;
+  'Twas the word which the lips could not say
+    To redeem or recover the past.
+  It was more than was taken away
+    Which the heart got back at the last.
+
+  The passion that lost its spell,
+  The rose that died where it fell,
+  The look that was look'd in vain,
+    The prayer that seemed lost evermore,
+  They were found in the heart again,
+    With all that the heart would restore.
+
+Put into less mystical language the legend is this: A young man and a
+young woman loved each other for a time; then they were separated by some
+great wrong--we may suppose the woman was untrue. The man always loved her
+memory, in spite of this wrong which she had done. The two died and were
+buried; hundreds and hundreds of years they remained buried, and the dust
+of them mixed with the dust of the earth. But in the perpetual order of
+things, a pure love never can die, though bodies may die and pass away. So
+after many generations the pure love which this man had for a bad woman
+was born again in the heart of another man--the same, yet not the same.
+And the spirit of the woman that long ago had done the wrong, also found
+incarnation again; and the two meeting, are drawn to each other by what
+people call love, but what is really Greater Memory, the recollection of
+past lives. But now all is happiness for them, because the weaker and
+worse part of each has really died and has been left hundreds of years
+behind, and only the higher nature has been born again. All that ought not
+to have been is not; but all that ought to be now is. This is really an
+evolutionary teaching, but it is also poetical license, for the immoral
+side of mankind does not by any means die so quickly as the poet supposes.
+It is perhaps a question of many tens of thousands of years to get rid of
+a few of our simpler faults. Anyway, the fancy charms us and tempts us
+really to hope that these things might be so.
+
+While the poets of our time so extend the history of a love backwards
+beyond this life, we might expect them to do the very same thing in the
+other direction. I do not refer to reunion in heaven, or anything of that
+sort, but simply to affection continued after death. There are some very
+pretty fancies of the kind. But they can not prove to you quite so
+interesting as the poems which treat the recollection of past life. When
+we consider the past imaginatively, we have some ground to stand on. The
+past has been--there is no doubt about that. The fact that we are at this
+moment alive makes it seem sufficiently true that we were alive thousands
+or millions of years ago. But when we turn to the future for poetical
+inspiration, the case is very different. There we must imagine without
+having anything to stand upon in the way of experience. Of course if born
+again into a body we could imagine many things; but there is the ghostly
+interval between death and birth which nobody is able to tell us about.
+Here the poet depends upon dream experiences, and it is of such an
+experience that Christina Rossetti speaks in her beautiful poem entitled
+"A Pause."
+
+  They made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves,
+    And the bed sweet with flowers on which I lay,
+    While my soul, love-bound, loitered on its way.
+  I did not hear the birds about the eaves,
+  Nor hear the reapers talk among the sheaves:
+  Only my soul kept watch from day to day,
+    My thirsty soul kept watch for one away:--
+  Perhaps he loves, I thought, remembers, grieves.
+
+  At length there came the step upon the stair,
+    Upon the lock the old familiar hand:
+  Then first my spirit seemed to scent the air
+    Of Paradise; then first the tardy sand
+  Of time ran golden; and I felt my hair
+    Put on a glory, and my soul expand.
+
+The woman is dead. In the room where her body died, flowers have been
+placed, offerings to the dead. Also there are flowers upon the bed. The
+ghost of the woman observes all this, but she does not feel either glad or
+sad because of it; she is thinking only of the living lover, who was not
+there when she died, but far away. She wants to know whether he really
+loved her, whether he will really be sorry to hear that she is dead.
+Outside the room of death the birds are singing; in the fields beyond the
+windows peasants are working, and talking as they work. But the ghost does
+not listen to these sounds. The ghost remains in the room only for love's
+sake; she can not go away until the lover comes. At last she hears him
+coming. She knows the sound of the step; she knows the touch of the hand
+upon the lock of the door. And instantly, before she sees him at all, she
+first feels delight. Already it seems to her that she can smell the
+perfume of the flowers of heaven; it then seems to her that about her
+head, as about the head of an angel, a circle of glory is shaping itself,
+and the real heaven, the Heaven of Love, is at hand.
+
+How very beautiful this is. There is still one line which requires a
+separate explanation--I mean the sentence about the sands of time running
+golden. Perhaps you may remember the same simile in Tennyson's "Locksley
+Hall":
+
+  Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in His glowing hands;
+  Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
+
+Here time is identified with the sand of the hour glass, and the verb "to
+run" is used because this verb commonly expresses the trickling of the
+sand from the upper part of the glass into the lower. In other words, fine
+sand "runs" just like water. To say that the sands of time run golden, or
+become changed into gold, is only a poetical way of stating that the time
+becomes more than happy--almost heavenly or divine. And now you will see
+how very beautiful the comparison becomes in this little poem about the
+ghost of the woman waiting for the coming step of her lover.
+
+Several other aspects of the emotion may now be considered separately. One
+of these, an especially beautiful one, is memory. Of course, there are
+many aspects of love's memories, some all happiness, others intensely
+sorrowful--the memory of a walk, a meeting, a moment of good-bye. Such
+memories occupy a very large place in the treasure house of English love
+poems. I am going to give three examples only, but each of a different
+kind. The first poet that I am going to mention is Coventry Patmore. He
+wrote two curious books of poetry, respectively called "The Angel in the
+House" and "The Unknown Eros." In the first of these books he wrote the
+whole history of his courtship and marriage--a very dangerous thing for a
+poet to do, but he did it successfully. The second volume is
+miscellaneous, and contains some very beautiful things. I am going to
+quote only a few lines from the piece called "Amelia." This piece is the
+story of an evening spent with a sweetheart, and the lines which I am
+quoting refer to the moment of taking the girl home. They are now rather
+famous:
+
+  ... To the dim street
+  I led her sacred feet;
+  And so the Daughter gave,
+  Soft, moth-like, sweet,
+  Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk,
+  Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.
+  And now "Good Night!"
+
+Why should the poet speak of the girl in this way? Why does he call her
+feet sacred? She has just promised to marry him; and now she seems to him
+quite divine. But he discovers very plain words with which to communicate
+his finer feelings to the reader. The street is "dim" because it is night;
+and in the night the beautifully dressed maiden seems like a splendid
+moth--the name given to night butterflies in England. In England the moths
+are much more beautiful than the true butterflies; they have wings of
+scarlet and purple and brown and gold. So the comparison, though
+peculiarly English, is very fine. Also there is a suggestion of the
+soundlessness of the moth's flight. Now "showy as damask rose" is a
+striking simile only because the damask-rose is a wonderfully splendid
+flower--richest in colour of all roses in English gardens. "Shy as musk"
+is rather a daring simile. "Musk" is a perfume used by English as well as
+Japanese ladies, but there is no perfume which must be used with more
+discretion, carefulness. If you use ever so little too much, the effect is
+not pleasant. But if you use exactly the proper quantity, and no more,
+there is no perfume which is more lovely. "Shy as musk" thus refers to
+that kind of girlish modesty which never commits a fault even by the
+measure of a grain--beautiful shyness incapable of being anything but
+beautiful. Nevertheless the comparison must be confessed one which should
+be felt rather than explained.
+
+The second of the three promised quotations shall be from Robert Browning.
+There is one feeling, not often touched upon by poets, yet peculiar to
+lovers, that is here treated--the desire when you are very happy or when
+you are looking at anything attractive to share the pleasure of the moment
+with the beloved. But it seldom happens that the wish and the conditions
+really meet. Referring to this longing Browning made a short lyric that is
+now a classic; it is among the most dainty things of the century.
+
+  Never the time and the place
+    And the loved one all together!
+  This path--how soft to pace!
+    This May--what magic weather!
+  Where is the loved one's face?
+  In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
+  But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
+  Where, outside, rain and wind combine
+  With a furtive ear, if I try to speak,
+  With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
+  With a malice that marks each word, each sign!
+
+Never can we have things the way we wish in this world--a beautiful day, a
+beautiful place, and the presence of the beloved all at the same time.
+Something is always missing; if the place be beautiful, the weather
+perhaps is bad. Or if the weather and the place both happen to be perfect,
+the woman is absent. So the poet finding himself in some very beautiful
+place, and remembering this, remembers also the last time that he met the
+woman beloved. It was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was
+rain and storm; and the sounds of the wind and of the rain were as the
+sounds of people secretly listening, or sounds of people trying to look in
+secretly through the windows. Evidently it was necessary that the meeting
+should be secret, and it was not altogether as happy as could have been
+wished.
+
+The third example is a very beautiful poem; we must content ourselves with
+an extract from it. It is the memory of a betrothal day, and the poet is
+Frederick Tennyson. I suppose you know that there were three Tennysons,
+and although Alfred happened to be the greatest, all of them were good
+poets.
+
+  It is a golden morning of the spring,
+    My cheek is pale, and hers is warm with bloom,
+    And we are left in that old carven room,
+  And she begins to sing;
+
+  The open casement quivers in the breeze,
+    And one large musk-rose leans its dewy grace
+    Into the chamber, like a happy face,
+  And round it swim the bees;
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I know not what I said--what she replied
+    Lives, like eternal sunshine, in my heart;
+    And then I murmured, Oh! we never part,
+  My love, my life, my bride!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  And silence o'er us, after that great bliss,
+    Fell like a welcome shadow--and I heard
+    The far woods sighing, and a summer bird
+  Singing amid the trees;
+
+  The sweet bird's happy song, that streamed around,
+    The murmur of the woods, the azure skies,
+    Were graven on my heart, though ears and eyes
+  Marked neither sight nor sound.
+
+  She sleeps in peace beneath the chancel stone,
+    But ah! so clearly is the vision seen,
+    The dead seem raised, or Death has never been,
+  Were I not here alone.
+
+This is great art in its power of picturing a memory of the heart. Let us
+notice some of the beauties. The lover is pale because he is afraid,
+anxious; he is going to ask a question and he does not know how she may
+answer him. All this was long ago, years and years ago, but the strong
+emotions of that morning leave their every detail painted in remembrance,
+with strange vividness After all those years the man still recollects the
+appearance of the room, the sunshine entering and the crimson rose looking
+into the room from the garden, with bees humming round it. Then after the
+question had been asked and happily answered, neither could speak for joy;
+and because of the silence all the sounds of nature outside became almost
+painfully distinct. Now he remembers how he heard in that room the sound
+of the wind in far-away trees, the singing of a bird--he also remembers
+all the colours and the lights of the day. But it was very, very long ago,
+and she is dead. Still, the memory is so clear and bright in his heart
+that it is as if time had stood still, or as if she had come back from the
+grave. Only one thing assures him that it is but a memory--he is alone.
+
+Returning now to the subject of love's illusion in itself, let me remind
+you that the illusion does not always pass away--not at all. It passes
+away in every case of happy union, when it has become no longer necessary
+to the great purposes of nature. But in case of disappointment, loss,
+failure to win the maiden desired, it often happens that the ideal image
+never fades away, but persistently haunts the mind through life, and is
+capable thus of making even the most successful life unhappy. Sometimes
+the result of such disappointment may be to change all a man's ideas about
+the world, about life, about religion; and everything remains darkened for
+him. Many a young person disappointed in love begins to lose religious
+feeling from that moment, for it seems to him, simply because he happens
+to be unfortunate, that the universe is all wrong. On the other hand the
+successful lover thinks that the universe is all right; he utters his
+thanks to the gods, and feels his faith in religion and human nature
+greater than before. I do not at this moment remember any striking English
+poem illustrating this fact; but there is a pretty little poem in French
+by Victor Hugo showing well the relation between successful love and
+religious feeling in simple minds. Here is an English translation of it.
+The subject is simply a walk at night, the girl-bride leaning upon the arm
+of her husband; and his memory of the evening is thus expressed:
+
+  The trembling arm I pressed
+  Fondly; our thoughts confessed
+    Love's conquest tender;
+  God filled the vast sweet night,
+  Love filled our hearts; the light
+    Of stars made splendour.
+
+  Even as we walked and dreamed,
+  'Twixt heaven and earth, it seemed
+    Our souls were speaking;
+  The stars looked on thy face;
+  Thine eyes through violet space
+    The stars were seeking.
+
+  And from the astral light
+  Feeling the soft sweet night
+    Thrill to thy soul,
+  Thou saidst: "O God of Bliss,
+  Lord of the Blue Abyss,
+    Thou madest the whole!"
+
+  And the stars whispered low
+  To the God of Space, "We know,
+    God of Eternity,
+  Dear Lord, all Love is Thine,
+  Even by Love's Light we shine!
+    Thou madest Beauty!"
+
+Of course here the religious feeling itself is part of the illusion, but
+it serves to give great depth and beauty to simple feeling. Besides, the
+poem illustrates one truth very forcibly--namely, that when we are
+perfectly happy all the universe appears to be divine and divinely
+beautiful; in other words, we are in heaven. On the contrary, when we are
+very unhappy the universe appears to be a kind of hell, in which there is
+no hope, no joy, and no gods to pray to.
+
+But the special reason I wished to call attention to Victor Hugo's lyric
+is that it has that particular quality called by philosophical critics
+"cosmic emotion." Cosmic emotion means the highest quality of human
+emotion. The word "cosmos" signifies the universe--not simply this world,
+but all the hundred millions of suns and worlds in the known heaven. And
+the adjective "cosmic" means, of course, "related to the whole universe."
+Ordinary emotion may be more than individual in its relations. I mean that
+your feelings may be moved by the thought or the perception of something
+relating not only to your own life but also to the lives of many others.
+The largest form of such ordinary emotion is what would be called national
+feeling, the feeling of your own relation to the whole nation or the whole
+race. But there is higher emotion even than that. When you think of
+yourself emotionally not only in relation to your own country, your own
+nation, but in relation to all humanity, then you have a cosmic emotion of
+the third or second order. I say "third or second," because whether the
+emotion be second or third rate depends very much upon your conception of
+humanity as One. But if you think of yourself in relation not to this
+world only but to the whole universe of hundreds of millions of stars and
+planets--in relation to the whole mystery of existence--then you have a
+cosmic emotion of the highest order. Of course there are degrees even in
+this; the philosopher or the metaphysician will probably have a finer
+quality of cosmic emotion than the poet or the artist is able to have. But
+lovers very often, according to their degree of intellectual culture,
+experience a kind of cosmic emotion; and Victor Hugo's little poem
+illustrates this. Night and the stars and the abyss of the sky all seem to
+be thrilling with love and beauty to the lover's eyes, because he himself
+is in a state of loving happiness; and then he begins to think about his
+relation to the universal life, to the supreme mystery beyond all Form and
+Name.
+
+A third or fourth class of such emotion may be illustrated by the
+beautiful sonnet of Keats, written not long before his death. Only a very
+young man could have written this, because only a very young man loves in
+this way--but how delightful it is! It has no title.
+
+  Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art--
+    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
+  And watching, with eternal lids apart,
+    Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
+  The moving waters at their priest-like task
+    Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
+  Or gazing on new soft-fallen mask
+    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
+
+  No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
+    Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
+  To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
+    Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
+  Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
+  And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
+
+Tennyson has charmingly represented a lover wishing that he were a
+necklace of his beloved, or her girdle, or her earring; but that is not a
+cosmic emotion at all. Indeed, the idea of Tennyson's pretty song was
+taken from old French and English love songs of the peasants--popular
+ballads. But in this beautiful sonnet of Keats, where the lover wishes to
+be endowed with the immortality and likeness of a star only to be forever
+with the beloved, there is something of the old Greek thought which
+inspired the beautiful lines written between two and three thousand years
+ago, and translated by J.A. Symonds:
+
+  Gazing on stars, my Star? Would that I were the welkin,
+  Starry with myriad eyes, ever to gave upon thee!
+
+But there is more than the Greek beauty of thought in Keats's sonnet, for
+we find the poet speaking of the exterior universe in the largest
+relation, thinking of the stars watching forever the rising and the
+falling of the sea tides, thinking of the sea tides themselves as
+continually purifying the world, even as a priest purifies a temple. The
+fancy of the boy expands to the fancy of philosophy; it is a blending of
+poetry, philosophy, and sincere emotion.
+
+You will have seen by the examples which we have been reading together
+that English love poetry, like Japanese love poetry, may be divided into
+many branches and classified according to the range of subject from the
+very simplest utterance of feeling up to that highest class expressing
+cosmic emotion. Very rich the subject is; the student is only puzzled
+where to choose. I should again suggest to you to observe the value of the
+theme of illusion, especially as illustrated in our examples. There are
+indeed multitudes of Western love poems that would probably appear to you
+very strange, perhaps very foolish. But you will certainly acknowledge
+that there are some varieties of English love poetry which are neither
+strange nor foolish, and which are well worth studying, not only in
+themselves but in their relation to the higher forms of emotional
+expression in all literature. Out of love poetry belonging to the highest
+class, much can be drawn that would serve to enrich and to give a new
+colour to your own literature of emotion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE IDEAL WOMAN IN ENGLISH POETRY
+
+
+As I gave already in this class a lecture on the subject of love poetry,
+you will easily understand that the subject of the present lecture is not
+exactly love. It is rather about love's imagining of perfect character and
+perfect beauty. The part of it to which I think your attention could be
+deservedly given is that relating to the imagined wife of the future, for
+this is a subject little treated of in Eastern poetry. It is a very pretty
+subject. But in Japan and other countries of the East almost every young
+man knows beforehand whom he is likely to marry. Marriage is arranged by
+the family: it is a family matter, indeed a family duty and not a romantic
+pursuit. At one time, very long ago, in Europe, marriages were arranged in
+much the same way. But nowadays it may be said in general that no young
+man in England or America can even imagine whom he will marry. He has to
+find his wife for himself; and he has nobody to help him; and if he makes
+a mistake, so much the worse for him. So to Western imagination the wife
+of the future is a mystery, a romance, an anxiety--something to dream
+about and to write poetry about.
+
+This little book that I hold in my hand is now very rare. It is out of
+print, but it is worth mentioning to you because it is the composition of
+an exquisite man of letters, Frederick Locker-Lampson, best of all
+nineteenth century writers of society verse. It is called "Patchwork."
+Many years ago the author kept a kind of journal in which he wrote down or
+copied all the most beautiful or most curious things which he had heard or
+which he had found in books. Only the best things remained, so the value
+of the book is his taste in selection. Whatever Locker-Lampson pronounced
+good, the world now knows to have been exactly what he pronounced, for his
+taste was very fine. And in this book I find a little poem quoted from Mr.
+Edwin Arnold, now Sir Edwin. Sir Edwin Arnold is now old and blind, and he
+has not been thought of kindly enough in Japan, because his work has not
+been sufficiently known. Some people have even said his writings did harm
+to Japan, but I want to assure you that such statements are stupid lies.
+On the contrary, he did for Japan whatever good the best of his talent as
+a poet and the best of his influence as a great journalist could enable
+him to do. But to come back to our subject: when Sir Edwin was a young
+student he had his dreams about marriage like other young English
+students, and he put one of them into verse, and that verse was at once
+picked out by Frederick Locker-Lampson for his little book of gems. Half a
+century has passed since then; but Locker-Lampson's judgment remains good,
+and I am going to put this little poem first because it so well
+illustrates the subject of the lecture. It is entitled "A Ma Future."
+
+  Where waitest thou,
+    Lady, I am to love? Thou comest not,
+    Thou knowest of my sad and lonely lot--
+  I looked for thee ere now!
+
+  It is the May,
+    And each sweet sister soul hath found its brother,
+    Only we two seek fondly each the other,
+  And seeking still delay.
+
+  Where art thou, sweet?
+    I long for thee as thirsty lips for streams,
+    O gentle promised angel of my dreams,
+  Why do we never meet?
+
+  Thou art as I,
+    Thy soul doth wait for mine as mine for thee;
+    We cannot live apart, must meeting be
+  Never before we die?
+
+  Dear Soul, not so,
+    For time doth keep for us some happy years,
+    And God hath portioned us our smiles and tears,
+  Thou knowest, and I know.
+
+  Therefore I bear
+    This winter-tide as bravely as I may,
+    Patiently waiting for the bright spring day
+  That cometh with thee, Dear.
+
+  'Tis the May light
+    That crimsons all the quiet college gloom,
+    May it shine softly in thy sleeping room,
+  And so, dear wife, good night!
+
+This is, of course, addressed to the spirit of the unknown future wife. It
+is pretty, though it is only the work of a young student. But some one
+hundred years before, another student--a very great student, Richard
+Crashaw,--had a fancy of the same kind, and made verses about it which are
+famous. You will find parts of his poem about the imaginary wife in the
+ordinary anthologies, but not all of it, for it is very long. I will quote
+those verses which seem to me the best.
+
+
+WISHES
+
+  Whoe'er she be,
+  That not impossible She,
+  That shall command my heart and me;
+
+  Where'er she lie,
+  Locked up from mortal eye,
+  In shady leaves of Destiny;
+
+  Till that ripe birth
+  Of studied Fate stand forth,
+  And teach her fair steps to our earth;
+
+  Till that divine
+  Idea take a shrine
+  Of crystal flesh, through which to shine;
+
+  Meet you her, my wishes,
+  Bespeak her to my blisses,
+  And be ye called my absent kisses.
+
+The poet is supposing that the girl whom he is to marry may not as yet
+even have been born, for though men in the world of scholarship can marry
+only late in life, the wife is generally quite young. Marriage is far away
+in the future for the student, therefore these fancies. What he means to
+say in short is about like this:
+
+"Oh, my wishes, go out of my heart and look for the being whom I am
+destined to marry--find the soul of her, whether born or yet unborn, and
+tell that soul of the love that is waiting for it." Then he tries to
+describe the imagined woman he hopes to find:
+
+  I wish her beauty
+  That owes not all its duty
+  To gaudy 'tire or glist'ring shoe-tie.
+
+  Something more than
+  Taffeta or tissue can;
+  Or rampant feather, or rich fan.
+
+  More than the spoil
+  Of shop or silk worm's toil,
+  Or a bought blush, or a set smile.
+
+  A face that's best
+  By its own beauty drest
+  And can alone command the rest.
+
+  A face made up
+  Out of no other shop
+  Than what nature's white hand sets ope.
+
+  A cheek where grows
+  More than a morning rose
+  Which to no box his being owes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Eyes that displace
+  The neighbor diamond and outface
+  That sunshine by their own sweet grace.
+
+  Tresses that wear
+  Jewels, but to declare
+  How much themselves more precious are.
+
+  Smiles, that can warm
+  The blood, yet teach a charm
+  That chastity shall take no harm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Life, that dares send
+  A challenge to his end,
+  And when it comes, say "Welcome, friend!"
+
+There is much more, but the best of the thoughts are here. They are not
+exactly new thoughts, nor strange thoughts, but they are finely expressed
+in a strong and simple way.
+
+There is another composition on the same subject--the imaginary spouse,
+the destined one. But this is written by a woman, Christina Rossetti.
+
+
+SOMEWHERE OR OTHER
+
+  Somewhere or other there must surely be
+    The face not seen, the voice not heard,
+  The heart that not yet--never yet--ah me!
+    Made answer to my word.
+
+  Somewhere or other, may be near or far;
+    Past land and sea, clean out of sight;
+  Beyond the wondering moon, beyond the star
+    That tracks her night by night.
+
+  Somewhere or other, may be far or near;
+    With just a wall, a hedge between;
+  With just the last leaves of the dying year,
+    Fallen on a turf grown green.
+
+And that turf means of course the turf of a grave in the churchyard. This
+poem expresses fear that the destined one never can be met, because death
+may come before the meeting time. All through the poem there is the
+suggestion of an old belief that for every man and for every woman there
+must be a mate, yet that it is a chance whether the mate will ever be
+found.
+
+You observe that all of these are ghostly poems, whether prospective or
+retrospective. Here is another prospective poem:
+
+
+AMATURUS
+
+  Somewhere beneath the sun,
+    These quivering heart-strings prove it,
+  Somewhere there must be one
+    Made for this soul, to move it;
+  Someone that hides her sweetness
+    From neighbors whom she slights,
+  Nor can attain completeness,
+    Nor give her heart its rights;
+  Someone whom I could court
+    With no great change of manner,
+  Still holding reason's fort
+    Though waving fancy's banner;
+  A lady, not so queenly
+    As to disdain my hand,
+  Yet born to smile serenely
+    Like those that rule the land;
+  Noble, but not too proud;
+    With soft hair simply folded,
+  And bright face crescent-browed
+    And throat by Muses moulded;
+
+  Keen lips, that shape soft sayings
+    Like crystals of the snow,
+  With pretty half-betrayings
+    Of things one may not know;
+  Fair hand, whose touches thrill,
+    Like golden rod of wonder,
+  Which Hermes wields at will
+    Spirit and flesh to sunder.
+  Forth, Love, and find this maid,
+    Wherever she be hidden;
+  Speak, Love, be not afraid,
+    But plead as thou art bidden;
+  And say, that he who taught thee
+    His yearning want and pain,
+  Too dearly dearly bought thee
+    To part with thee in vain.
+
+These lines are by the author of that exquisite little book "Ionica"--a
+book about which I hope to talk to you in another lecture. His real name
+was William Cory, and he was long the head-master of an English public
+school, during which time he composed and published anonymously the
+charming verses which have made him famous--modelling his best work in
+close imitation of the Greek poets. A few expressions in these lines need
+explanation. For instance, the allusion to Hermes and his rod. I think you
+know that Hermes is the Greek name of the same god whom the Romans called
+Mercury,--commonly represented as a beautiful young man, naked and running
+quickly, having wings attached to the sandals upon his feet. Runners used
+to pray to him for skill in winning foot races. But this god had many
+forms and many attributes, and one of his supposed duties was to bring the
+souls of the dead into the presence of the king of Hades. So you will see
+some pictures of him standing before the throne of the king of the Dead,
+and behind him a long procession of shuddering ghosts. He is nearly always
+pictured as holding in his hands a strange sceptre called the _caduceus_,
+a short staff about which two little serpents are coiled, and at the top
+of which is a tiny pair of wings. This is the golden rod referred to by
+the poet; when Hermes touched anybody with it, the soul of the person
+touched was obliged immediately to leave the body and follow after him. So
+it is a very beautiful stroke of art in this poem to represent the touch
+of the hand of great love as having the magical power of the golden rod of
+Hermes. It is as if the poet were to say: "Should she but touch me, I know
+that my spirit would leap out of my body and follow after her." Then there
+is the expression "crescent-browed." It means only having beautifully
+curved eyebrows--arched eyebrows being considered particularly beautiful
+in Western countries.
+
+Now we will consider another poem of the ideal. What we have been reading
+referred to ghostly ideals, to memories, or to hopes. Let us now see how
+the poets have talked about realities. Here is a pretty thing by Thomas
+Ashe. It is entitled "Pansie"; and this flower name is really a corruption
+of a French word "Penser," meaning a thought. The flower is very
+beautiful, and its name is sometimes given to girls, as in the present
+case.
+
+
+MEET WE NO ANGELS, PANSIE?
+
+  Came, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet,
+    In white, to find her lover;
+  The grass grew proud beneath her feet,
+    The green elm-leaves above her:--
+       Meet we no angels, Pansie?
+
+  She said, "We meet no angels now;"
+    And soft lights stream'd upon her;
+  And with white hand she touch'd a bough;
+    She did it that great honour:--
+       What! meet no angels, Pansie?
+
+  O sweet brown hat, brown hair, brown eyes,
+    Down-dropp'd brown eyes, so tender!
+  Then what said I? Gallant replies
+    Seem flattery, and offend her:--
+       But--meet no angels, Pansie?
+
+The suggestion is obvious, that the maiden realizes to the lover's eye the
+ideal of an angel. As she comes he asks her slyly,--for she has been to
+the church--"Is it true that nobody ever sees real angels?" She answers
+innocently, thinking him to be in earnest, "No--long ago people used to
+see angels, but in these times no one ever sees them." He does not dare
+tell her how beautiful she seems to him; but he suggests much more than
+admiration by the tone of his protesting response to her answer: "What!
+You cannot mean to say that there are no angels now?" Of course that is
+the same as to say, "I see an angel now"--but the girl is much too
+innocent to take the real and flattering meaning.
+
+Wordsworth's portrait of the ideal woman is very famous; it was written
+about his own wife though that fact would not be guessed from the poem.
+The last stanza is the most famous, but we had better quote them all.
+
+  She was a phantom of delight
+  When first she gleamed upon my sight;
+  A lovely apparition, sent
+  To be a moment's ornament;
+  Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
+  Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
+  But all things else about her drawn
+  From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
+  A dancing shape, an image gay,
+  To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
+
+  I saw her upon nearer view,
+  A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
+  Her household motions light and free,
+  And steps of virgin liberty;
+  A countenance in which did meet
+  Sweet records, promises as sweet;
+  A creature not too bright or good
+  For human nature's daily food;
+  For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
+  Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
+
+  And now I see with eye serene
+  The very pulse of the machine;
+  A being breathing thoughtful breath,
+  A traveller betwixt life and death;
+  The reason firm, the temperate will,
+  Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
+  A perfect woman, nobly plann'd,
+  To warn, to comfort and command;
+  And yet a Spirit still, and bright
+  With something of angelic light.
+
+I quoted this after the Pansie poem to show you how much more deeply
+Wordsworth could touch the same subject. To him, too, the first apparition
+of the ideal maiden seemed angelic; like Ashe he could perceive the
+mingled attraction of innocence and of youth. But innocence and youth are
+by no means all that make up the best attributes of woman; character is
+more than innocence and more than youth, and it is character that
+Wordsworth studies. But in the last verse he tells us that the angel is
+always there, nevertheless, even when the good woman becomes old. The
+angel is the Mother-soul.
+
+Wordsworth's idea that character is the supreme charm was expressed very
+long before him by other English poets, notably by Thomas Carew.
+
+  He that loves a rosy cheek,
+    Or a coral lip admires,
+  Or from star-like eyes doth seek
+    Fuel to maintain his fires:
+  As old Time makes these decay,
+    So his flames must waste away.
+
+  But a smooth and steadfast mind,
+    Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
+  Hearts with equal love combined,
+    Kindle never-dying fires.
+  Where these, are not, I despise
+    Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.
+
+For about three hundred years in English literature it was the fashion--a
+fashion borrowed from the Latin poets--to speak of love as a fire or
+flame, and you must understand the image in these verses in that
+signification. To-day the fashion is not quite dead, but very few poets
+now follow it.
+
+Byron himself, with all his passion and his affected scorn of ethical
+convention, could and did, when he pleased, draw beautiful portraits of
+moral as well as physical attraction. These stanzas are famous; they paint
+for us a person with equal attraction of body and mind.
+
+  She walks in beauty, like the night
+    Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
+  And all that's best of dark and bright
+    Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
+  Thus mellow'd to that tender light
+    Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
+
+  One shade the more, one ray the less,
+    Had half impair'd the nameless grace
+  Which waves in every raven tress,
+    Or softly lightens o'er her face;
+  Where thoughts serenely sweet express
+    How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
+
+  And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
+    So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
+  The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
+    But tell of days in goodness spent,
+  A mind at peace with all below,
+    A heart whose love is innocent!
+
+It is worth noticing that in each of the last three poems, the physical
+beauty described is that of dark eyes and hair. This may serve to remind
+you that there are two distinct types, opposite types, of beauty
+celebrated by English poets; and the next poem which I am going to quote,
+the beautiful "Ruth" of Thomas Hood, also describes a dark woman.
+
+  She stood breast-high amid the corn,
+  Clasp'd by the golden light of morn,
+  Like the sweetheart of the sun,
+  Who many a glowing kiss had won.
+
+  On her cheek an autumn flush,
+  Deeply ripen'd;--such a blush
+  In the midst of brown was born,
+  Like red poppies grown with corn.
+
+  Round her eyes her tresses fell,
+  Which were blackest none could tell,
+  But long lashes veil'd a light,
+  That had else been all too bright.
+
+  And her hat, with shady brim,
+  Made her tressy forehead dim;
+  Thus she stood among the stooks,
+  Praising God with sweetest looks:--
+
+  Sure, I said, Heav'n did not mean,
+  Where I reap thou shouldst but glean,
+  Lay thy sheaf adown and come,
+  Share my harvest and my home.
+
+We might call this the ideal of a peasant girl whose poverty appeals to
+the sympathy of all who behold her. The name of the poem is suggested
+indeed by the Bible story of Ruth the gleaner, but the story in the poem
+is only that of a rich farmer who marries a very poor girl, because of her
+beauty and her goodness. It is just a charming picture--a picture of the
+dark beauty which is so much admired in Northern countries, where it is
+less common than in Southern Europe. There are beautiful brown-skinned
+types; and the flush of youth on the cheeks of such a brown girl has been
+compared to the red upon a ripe peach or a russet apple--a hard kind of
+apple, very sweet and juicy, which is brown instead of yellow, or reddish
+brown. But the poet makes the comparison with poppy flowers and wheat.
+That, of course, means golden yellow and red; in English wheat fields red
+poppy flowers grow in abundance. The expression "tressy forehead" in the
+second line of the fourth stanza means a forehead half covered with
+falling, loose hair.
+
+The foregoing pretty picture may be offset by charming poem of Browning's
+describing a lover's pride in his illusion. It is simply entitled "Song,"
+and to appreciate it you must try to understand the mood of a young man
+who believes that he has actually realized his ideal, and that the woman
+that he loves is the most beautiful person in the whole world. The fact
+that this is simply imagination on his part does not make the poem less
+beautiful--on the contrary, the false imagining is just what makes it
+beautiful, the youthful emotion of a moment being so humanly and frankly
+described. Such a youth must imagine that every one else sees and thinks
+about the girl just as he does, and he expects them to confess it.
+
+  Nay but you, who do not love her,
+    Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
+  Holds earth aught--speak truth--above her?
+    Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
+  And this last fairest tress of all,
+  So fair, see, ere I let it fall?
+
+  Because you spend your lives in praising;
+    To praise, you search the wide world over;
+  Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
+    If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
+  Above this tress, and this, I touch
+  But cannot praise, I love so much!
+
+You see the picture, I think,--probably some artist's studio for a
+background. She sits or stands there with her long hair loosely flowing
+down to her feet like a river of gold; and her lover, lifting up some of
+the long tresses in his hand, asks his friend, who stands by, to notice
+how beautiful such hair is. Perhaps the girl was having her picture
+painted. One would think so from the question, "Since your business is to
+look for beautiful things, why can you not honestly acknowledge that this
+woman is the most beautiful thing in the whole world?" Or we might imagine
+the questioned person to be a critic by profession as well as an artist.
+Like the preceding poem this also is a picture. But the next poem, also by
+Browning, is much more than a picture--it is very profound indeed, simple
+as it looks. An old man is sitting by the dead body of a young girl of
+about sixteen. He tells us how he secretly loved her, as a father might
+love a daughter, as a brother might love a sister. But he would have
+wished, if he had not been so old, and she so young, to love her as a
+husband. He never could have her in this world, but why should he not hope
+for it in the future world? He whispers into her dead ear his wish, and he
+puts a flower into her dead hand, thinking, "When she wakes up, in another
+life, she will see that flower, and remember what I said to her, and how
+much I loved her." That is the mere story. But we must understand that the
+greatness of the love expressed in the poem is awakened by an ideal of
+innocence and sweetness and goodness, and the affection is of the
+soul--that is to say, it is the love of beautiful character, not the love
+of a beautiful face only, that is expressed.
+
+
+EVELYN HOPE
+
+  Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
+    Sit and watch by her side an hour.
+  That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
+    She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
+  Beginning to die too, in the glass;
+    Little has yet been changed, I think:
+  The shutters are shut, no light can pass
+    Save two long rays through the hinge's chink.
+
+  Sixteen years old when she died!
+    Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
+  It was not her time to love; beside,
+    Her life had many a hope and aim,
+  Duties enough and little cares,
+    And now was quiet, now astir,
+  Till God's hand beckoned unawares,--
+    And the sweet white brow is all of her.
+
+  Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope?
+    What, your soul was pure and true,
+  The good stars met in your horoscope,
+    Made you of spirit, fire and dew--
+  And just because I was thrice as old
+    And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
+  Each was naught to each, must I be told?
+    We were fellow mortals, naught beside?
+
+  No, indeed! for God above,
+    Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
+  And creates the love to reward the love:
+    I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
+  Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
+    Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
+  Much is to learn, much to forget,
+    Ere the time be come for taking you.
+
+  But the time will come,--at last it will,
+    When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
+  In the lower earth, in the years long still,
+    That body and soul so pure and gay?
+  Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
+    And your mouth of your own geranium's red--
+  And what you would do with me, in fine,
+    In the new life come in the old one's stead.
+
+  I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
+    Given up myself so many times,
+  Gained me the gains of various men,
+    Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
+  Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,
+    Either I missed or itself missed me:
+  And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
+    What is the issue? let us see!
+
+  I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!
+    My heart seemed full as it could hold;
+  There was space and to spare for the frank young smile,
+    And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.
+  So, hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep:
+    See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
+  There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
+    You will wake, and remember, and understand.
+
+No other poet has written so many different kinds of poems on this subject
+as Browning; and although I can not quote all of them, I must not neglect
+to make a just representation of the variety. Here is another example: the
+chief idea is again the beauty of truthfulness and fidelity, but the
+artistic impression is quite different.
+
+  A simple ring with a single stone,
+    To the vulgar eye no stone of price:
+  Whisper the right word, that alone--
+    Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice.
+  And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll)
+  Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole
+      Through the power in a pearl.
+
+  A woman ('tis I this time that say)
+    With little the world counts worthy praise:
+  Utter the true word--out and away
+    Escapes her soul; I am wrapt in blaze,
+  Creation's lord, of heaven and earth
+  Lord whole and sole--by a minute's birth--
+      Through the love in a girl!
+
+Paraphrased, the meaning will not prove as simple as the verses: Here is a
+finger ring set with one small stone, one jewel. It is a very
+cheap-looking stone to common eyes. But if you know a certain magical
+word, and, after putting the ring on your finger, you whisper that magical
+word over the cheap-looking stone, suddenly a spirit, a demon or a genie,
+springs from that gem like a flash of fire miraculously issuing from a
+lump of ice. And that spirit or genie has power to make you king of the
+whole world and of the sky above the world, lord of the spirits of heaven
+and earth and air and fire. Yet the stone is only--a pearl--and it can
+make you lord of the universe. That is the old Arabian story. The word
+scroll here means a manuscript, an Arabian manuscript.
+
+But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater
+happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the
+happiness of being truly loved. Here is a woman; to the eye of the world,
+to the sight of other men, she is not very beautiful nor at all remarkable
+in any way. She is just an ordinary woman, as the pearl in the ring is to
+all appearances just a common pearl. But let the right word be said, let
+the soul of that woman be once really touched by the magic of love, and
+what a revelation! As the spirit in the Arabian story sprang from the
+stone of the magical ring, when the word was spoken, so from the heart of
+this woman suddenly her soul displays itself in shining light. And the man
+who loves, instantly becomes, in the splendour of that light, verily the
+lord of heaven and earth; to the eyes of the being who loves him he is a
+god.
+
+The legend is the legend of Solomon--not the Solomon of the Bible, but the
+much more wonderful Solomon of the Arabian story-teller. His power is said
+to have been in a certain seal ring, upon which the mystical name of
+Allah, or at least one of the ninety and nine mystical names, was
+engraved. When he chose to use this ring, all the spirits of air, the
+spirits of earth, the spirits of water and the spirits of fire were
+obliged to obey him. The name of such a ring is usually "Talisman."
+
+Here is another of Browning's jewels, one of the last poems written
+shortly before his death. It is entitled "Summum Bonum,"--signifying "the
+highest good." The subject is a kiss; we may understand that the first
+betrothal kiss is the mark of affection described. When the promise of
+marriage has been made, that promise is sealed or confirmed by the first
+kiss. But this refers only to the refined classes of society. Among the
+English people proper, especially the country folk, kissing the girls is
+only a form of showing mere good will, and has no serious meaning at all.
+
+  All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
+    All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
+  In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
+    Breath and bloom, shade and shine,--wonder, wealth, and--how far
+            above them--
+  Truth, that's brighter than gem,
+    Trust, that's purer than pearl,--
+  Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe--all were for me
+    In the kiss of one girl.
+
+There is in this a suggestion of Ben Jonson, who uses almost exactly the
+same simile without any moral significance. The advantage of Browning is
+that he has used the sensuous imagery for ethical symbolism; here he
+greatly surpasses Jonson, though it would be hard to improve upon the
+beauty of Jonson's verses, as merely describing visual beauty. Here are
+Jonson's stanzas:
+
+
+THE TRIUMPH
+
+  See the Chariot at hand here of Love,
+    Wherein my Lady rideth!
+  Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
+    And well the car Love guideth.
+  As she goes, all hearts do duty
+    Unto her beauty;
+  And enamoured do wish, so they might
+    But enjoy such a sight,
+  That they still were to run by her side,
+  Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
+
+  Do but look on her eyes, they do light
+    All that Love's world compriseth!
+  Do but look on her hair, it is bright
+    As love's star when it riseth!
+  Do but mark, her forehead's smoother
+    Than words that soothe her;
+  And from her arch'd brows such a grace
+    Sheds itself through the face,
+  As alone there triumphs to the life
+  All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife.
+
+  Have you seen but a bright lily grow
+    Before rude hands have touched it?
+  Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow
+    Before the soil hath smutch'd it?
+  Have you felt the wool of beaver
+    Or swan's down ever?
+  Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier,
+    Or the nard in the fire?
+  Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
+  O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she!
+
+The first of the above stanzas is a study after the Roman poets; but the
+last stanza is Jonson's own and is very famous. You will see that Browning
+was probably inspired by him, but I think that his verses are much more
+beautiful in thought and feeling.
+
+There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry--the old
+maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her
+natural destiny. Commonly the woman who never marries is said to become
+cross, bad tempered, unpleasant in character. She could not be blamed for
+this, I think; but there are old maids who always remain as unselfish and
+frank and kind as a girl, and who keep the charm of girlhood even when
+their hair is white. Hartley Coleridge, son of the great Samuel, attempted
+to describe such a one, and his picture is both touching and beautiful.
+
+
+THE SOLITARY-HEARTED
+
+  She was a queen of noble Nature's crowning,
+    A smile of hers was like an act of grace;
+  She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning,
+    Like daily beauties of the vulgar race:
+  But if she smiled, a light was on her face,
+    A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam
+  Of peaceful radiance, silvering o'er the stream
+    Of human thought with unabiding glory;
+  Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream,
+    A visitation, bright and transitory.
+
+  But she is changed,--hath felt the touch of sorrow,
+    No love hath she, no understanding friend;
+  O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow
+    What the poor niggard earth has not to lend;
+  But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend.
+    The tallest flower that skyward rears its head
+  Grows from the common ground, and there must shed
+    Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely
+  That they should find so base a bridal bed,
+    Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely.
+
+  She had a brother, and a tender father,
+    And she was loved, but not as others are
+  From whom we ask return of love,--but rather
+    As one might love a dream; a phantom fair
+  Of something exquisitely strange and rare,
+    Which all were glad to look on, men and maids,
+  Yet no one claimed--as oft, in dewy glades,
+    The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness,
+  Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;--
+    The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness.
+
+  'Tis vain to say--her worst of grief is only
+    The common lot, which all the world have known
+  To her 'tis more, because her heart is lonely,
+    And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,--
+  Once she had playmates, fancies of her own,
+    And she did love them. They are past away
+  As fairies vanish at the break of day;
+    And like a spectre of an age departed,
+  Or unsphered angel woefully astray,
+    She glides along--the solitary-hearted.
+
+Perhaps it is scarcely possible for you to imagine that a woman finds it
+impossible to marry because of being too beautiful, too wise, and too
+good. In Western countries it is not impossible at all. You must try to
+imagine entirely different social conditions--conditions in which marriage
+depends much more upon the person than upon the parents, much more upon
+inclination than upon anything else. A woman's chances of marriage depend
+very much upon herself, upon her power of pleasing and charming. Thousands
+and tens of thousands can never get married. Now there are cases in which
+a woman can please too much. Men become afraid of her. They think, "She
+knows too much, I dare not be frank with her"--or, "She is too beautiful,
+she never would accept a common person like me"--or, "She is too formal
+and correct, she would never forgive a mistake, and I could never be happy
+with her." Not only is this possible, but it frequently happens. Too much
+excellence makes a misfortune. I think you can understand it best by the
+reference to the very natural prejudice against over-educated women, a
+prejudice founded upon experience and existing in all countries, even in
+Japan. Men are not attracted to a woman because she is excellent at
+mathematics, because she knows eight or nine different languages, because
+she has acquired all the conventions of high-pressure training. Men do not
+care about that. They want love and trust and kindliness and ability to
+make a home beautiful and happy. Well, the poem we have been reading is
+very pathetic because it describes a woman who can not fulfil her natural
+destiny, can not be loved--this through no fault of her own, but quite the
+reverse. To be too much advanced beyond one's time and environment is even
+a worse misfortune than to be too much behind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+NOTE UPON THE SHORTEST FORMS OF ENGLISH POETRY
+
+
+Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general
+difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former
+cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in
+part true. It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in
+the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature
+short forms of poetry are to be found--indeed quite as short as anything
+in Japanese. Like the Japanese, the old Greeks, who carried poetry to the
+highest perfection that it has ever attained, delighted in short forms;
+and the Greek Anthology is full of compositions containing only two or
+three lines. You will find beautiful translations of these in Symonds's
+"Studies of Greek Poets," in the second volume. Following Greek taste, the
+Roman poets afterwards cultivated short forms of verse, but they chiefly
+used such verse for satirical purposes, unfortunately; I say,
+unfortunately, because the first great English poets who imitated the
+ancients were chiefly influenced by the Latin writers, and they also used
+the short forms for epigrammatic satire rarely for a purely esthetic
+object. Ben Jonson both wrote and translated a great number of very short
+stanzas--two lines and four lines; but Jonson was a satirist in these
+forms. Herrick, as you know, delighted in very short poems; but he was
+greatly influenced by Jonson, and many of his couplets and of his
+quatrains are worthless satires or worthless jests. However, you will find
+some short verses in Herrick that almost make you think of a certain class
+of Japanese poems. After the Elizabethan Age, also, the miniature poems
+were still used in the fashion set by the Roman writers,--then the
+eighteenth century deluged us with ill-natured witty epigrams of the like
+brief form. It was not until comparatively modern times that our Western
+world fully recognized the value of the distich, triplet or quatrain for
+the expression of beautiful thoughts, rather than for the expression of
+ill-natured ones. But now that the recognition has come, it has been
+discovered that nothing is harder than to write a beautiful poem of two or
+four lines. Only great masters have been truly successful at it. Goethe,
+you know, made a quatrain that has become a part of world-literature:
+
+  Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,--
+    Who ne'er the lonely midnight hours,
+  Weeping upon his bed has sate,
+    He knows ye not, ye Heavenly Powers!
+
+--meaning, of course, that inspiration and wisdom come to us only through
+sorrow, and that those who have never suffered never can be wise. But in
+the universities of England a great deal of short work of a most excellent
+kind has been done in Greek and Latin; and there is the celebrated case of
+an English student who won a prize by a poem of a single line. The subject
+given had been the miracle of Christ's turning water into wine at the
+marriage feast; and while other scholars attempted elaborate composition
+on the theme, this student wrote but one verse, of which the English
+translation is
+
+  The modest water saw its Lord, and blushed.
+
+Of course the force of the idea depends upon the popular conception of
+wine being red. The Latin and Greek model, however, did not seem to
+encourage much esthetic effort in short poems of English verse until the
+time of the romantic movement. Then, both in France and England, many
+brief forms of poetry made their appearance. In France, Victor Hugo
+attempted composition in astonishingly varied forms of verse--some forms
+actually consisting of only two syllables to a line. With this
+surprisingly short measure begins one of Hugo's most remarkably early
+poems, "Les Djins," representing the coming of evil spirits with a storm,
+their passing over the house where a man is at prayer, and departing into
+the distance again. Beginning with only two syllables to the line, the
+measure of the poem gradually widens as the spirits approach, becomes very
+wide, very long and sonorous as they reach the house, and again shrinks
+back to lines of two syllables as the sound of them dies away. In England
+a like variety of experiments has been made; but neither in France nor in
+England has the short form yet been as successfully cultivated as it was
+among the Greeks. We have some fine examples; but, as an eminent English
+editor observed a few years ago, not enough examples to make a book. And
+of course this means that there are very few; for you can make a book of
+poetry very well with as little as fifty pages of largely and widely
+printed text. However, we may cite a few modern instances.
+
+I think that about the most perfect quatrains we have are those of the
+extraordinary man, Walter Savage Landor, who, you know, was a rare Greek
+scholar, all his splendid English work being very closely based upon the
+Greek models. He made a little epitaph upon himself, which is matchless of
+its kind:
+
+  I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
+    Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
+  I warmed both hands before the fire of life:
+    It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
+
+You know that Greeks used the short form a great deal for their exquisite
+epitaphs, and that a considerable part of the anthology consists of
+epitaphic literature. But the quatrain has a much wider range than this
+funereal limitation, and one such example of epitaph will suffice.
+
+Only one English poet of our own day, and that a minor one, has attempted
+to make the poem of four lines a specialty--that is William Watson. He has
+written a whole volume of such little poems, but very few of them are
+successful. As I said before, we have not enough good poems of this sort
+for a book; and the reason is not because English poets despise the short
+form, but because it is supremely difficult. The Greeks succeeded in it,
+but we are still far behind the Greeks in the shaping of any kind of
+verse. The best of Watson's pieces take the form of philosophical
+suggestions; and this kind of verse is particularly well adapted to
+philosophical utterance.
+
+  Think not thy wisdom can illume away
+  The ancient tanglement of night and day.
+  Enough to acknowledge both, and both revere;
+  They see not clearliest who see all things clear.
+
+That is to say, do not think that any human knowledge will ever be able to
+make you understand the mystery of the universe with its darkness and
+light, its joy and pain. It is best to revere the powers that make both
+good and evil, and to remember that the keenest, worldly, practical minds
+are not the minds that best perceive the great truths and mysteries of
+existence. Here is another little bit, reminding us somewhat of Goethe's
+quatrain, already quoted.
+
+  Lives there whom pain hath evermore passed by
+  And sorrow shunned with an averted eye?
+  Him do thou pity,--him above the rest,
+  Him, of all hapless mortals most unblessed.
+
+That needs no commentary, and it contains a large truth in small space.
+Here is a little bit on the subject of the artist's ambition, which is
+also good.
+
+  The thousand painful steps at last are trod,
+    At last the temple's difficult door we win,
+  But perfect on his pedestal, the God
+    Freezes us hopeless when we enter in.
+
+The higher that the artist climbs by effort, the nearer his approach to
+the loftier truth, the more he understands how little his very best can
+achieve. It is the greatest artist, he who veritably enters the presence
+of God--that most feels his own weakness; the perception of beauty that
+other men can not see, terrifies him, freezes him motionless, as the poet
+says.
+
+Out of all of Watson's epigrams I believe these are the best. The rest
+with the possible exception of those on the subject of love seem to me
+altogether failures. Emerson and various American poets also attempted the
+quatrain--but Emerson's verse is nearly always bad, even when his thought
+is sublime. One example of Emerson will suffice.
+
+  Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
+    Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
+  But it carves the bow of beauty there,
+    And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake.
+
+The form is atrociously bad; but the reflection is grand--it is another
+way of expressing the beautiful old Greek thought that "God _geometrizes_
+everywhere"--that is, that all motion is in geometrical lines, and full of
+beauty. You can pick hundreds of fine things in very short verse out of
+Emerson, but the verse is nearly always shapeless; the composition of the
+man invariably makes us think of diamonds in the rough, jewels uncut. So
+far as form goes a much better master of quatrain is the American poet
+Aldrich, who wrote the following little thing, entitled "Popularity."
+
+  Such kings of shreds have wooed and won her,
+    Such crafty knaves her laurel owned,
+  It has become almost an honour
+    Not to be crowned.
+
+This is good verse. The reference to "a king of shreds and patches"--that
+is, a beggar king--you will recognize as Shakespearean. But although this
+pretty verse has in it more philosophy than satire, it approaches the
+satiric class of epigrams. Neither America nor England has been able to do
+very much in the sort of verse that we have been talking about. Now this
+is a very remarkable thing,--because at the English universities beautiful
+work has been done in Greek or Latin--in poems of a single line, of two
+lines, of three lines and other very brief measures. Why can it not be
+done in English? I suspect that it is because our English language has not
+yet become sufficiently perfect, sufficiently flexible, sufficiently
+melodious to allow of great effect with a very few words. We can do the
+thing in Greek or in Latin because either Greek or Latin is a more perfect
+language.
+
+So much for theory. I should like to suggest, however, that it is very
+probable many attempts at these difficult forms of poetry will be
+attempted by English poets within the next few years. There is now a
+tendency in that direction. I do not know whether such attempts will be
+successful; but I should like you to understand that for Western poets
+they are extremely difficult and that you ought to obtain from the
+recognition of this fact a new sense of the real value of your own short
+forms of verse in the hands of a master. Effects can be produced in
+Japanese which the Greeks could produce with few syllables, but which the
+English can not. Now it strikes me that, instead of even thinking of
+throwing away old forms of verse in order to invent new ones, the future
+Japanese poets ought rather to develop and cultivate and prize the forms
+already existing, which belong to the genius of the language, and which
+have proved themselves capable of much that no English verse or even
+French verse could accomplish. Perhaps only the Italian is really
+comparable to Japanese in some respects; you can perform miracles with
+Italian verse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SOME FOREIGN POEMS ON JAPANESE SUBJECTS
+
+
+The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of
+difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending
+Western subjects. You will commonly find references to Japanese love poems
+of the popular kind made in such a way as to indicate the writer's belief
+that such poems refer to married life or at least to a courtship relation.
+No Western writer who has not lived for many years in the East, could
+write correctly about anything on this subject; and even after a long stay
+in the country he might be unable to understand. Therefore a great deal of
+Western poetry written about Japan must seem to you all wrong, and I can
+not hope to offer you many specimens of work in this direction that could
+deserve your praise. Yet there is some poetry so fine on the subject of
+Japan that I think you would admire it and I am sure that you should know
+it. A proof of really great art is that it is generally true--it seldom
+falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable. What do you
+think of the fact that the finest poetry ever written upon a Japanese
+subject by any Western poet, has been written by a man who never saw the
+land? But he is a member of the French Academy, a great and true lover of
+art, and without a living superior in that most difficult form of poetry,
+the sonnet. In the time of thirty years he produced only one very small
+volume of sonnets, but so fine are these that they were lifted to the very
+highest place in poetical distinction. I may say that there are now only
+three really great French poets--survivals of the grand romantic school.
+These are Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme, and Jose Maria de Heredia. It
+is the last of whom I am speaking. As you can tell by his name, he is not
+a Frenchman either by birth or blood, but a Spaniard, or rather a Spanish
+Creole, born in Cuba. Heredia knows Japan only through pictures, armour,
+objects of art in museums, paintings and carvings. Remembering this, I
+think that you will find that he does wonderfully well. It is true that he
+puts a woman in one of his pictures, but I think that his management of
+his subject is very much nearer the truth than that of almost any writer
+who has attempted to describe old Japan. And you must understand that the
+following sonnet is essentially intended to be a picture--to produce upon
+the mind exactly the same effect that a picture does, with the addition of
+such life as poetry can give.
+
+
+LE SAMOURAI
+
+  D'un doigt distrait frolant la sonore biva,
+  A travers les bambous tresses en fine latte,
+  Elle a vu, par la plage eblouissante et plate,
+  S'avancer le vainqueur que son amour reva.
+
+  C'est lui. Sabres au flanc, l'eventail haut, il va.
+  La cordeliere rouge et le gland ecarlate
+  Coupent l'armure sombre, et, sur l'epaule, eclate
+  Le blazon de Hizen ou de Tokungawa.
+
+  Ce beau guerrier vetu de lames et de plaques,
+  Sous le bronze, la soie et les brillantes laques,
+  Semble un crustace noir, gigantesque et vermeil.
+
+  Il l'a vue. Il sourit dans la barbe du masque,
+  Et son pas plus hatif fait reluire au soleil
+  Les deux antennes d'or qui tremblent a son casque.
+
+"Lightly touching her _biva_ with heedless finger, she has perceived,
+through the finely woven bamboo screen, the conqueror, lovingly thought
+of, approach over the dazzling level of the beach.
+
+"It is he. With his swords at his side he advances, holding up his fan.
+The red girdle and the scarlet tassel appear in sharply cut relief against
+the dark armour; and upon his shoulder glitters a crest of Hizen or of
+Tokungawa.
+
+"This handsome warrior sheathed with his scales and plates of metal, under
+his bronze, his silk and glimmering lacquer, seems a crustacean, gigantic,
+black and vermilion.
+
+"He has caught sight of her. Under the beaver of the war mask he smiles,
+and his quickened step makes to glitter in the sun the two antennae of gold
+that quiver upon his helmet."
+
+The comparison of a warrior in full armour to a gigantic crab or lobster,
+especially lobster, is not exactly new. Victor Hugo has used it before in
+French literature, just as Carlyle has used it in English literature;
+indeed the image could not fail to occur to the artist in any country
+where the study of armour has been carried on. But here the poet does not
+speak of any particular creature; he uses only the generic term,
+crustacean, the vagueness of which makes the comparison much more
+effective. I think you can see the whole picture at once. It is a Japanese
+colour-print,--some ancient interior, lighted by the sun of a great summer
+day; and a woman looking through a bamboo blind toward the seashore, where
+she sees a warrior approaching. He divines that he is seen; but if he
+smiles, it is only because the smile is hidden by his iron mask. The only
+sign of any sentiment on his part is that he walks a little quicker. Still
+more amazing is a companion picture, containing only a solitary figure:
+
+
+LE DAIMIO (Matin de bataille)
+
+  Sous le noir fouet de guerre a quadruple pompon,
+  L'etalon belliqueux en hennissant se cabre,
+  Et fait bruire, avec de cliquetis de sabre,
+  La cuirasse de bronze aux lames du jupon.
+
+  Le Chef vetu d'airain, de laque et de crepon,
+  Otant le masque a poils de son visage glabre,
+  Regarde le volcan sur un ciel de cinabre
+  Dresser la neige ou rit l'aurore du Nippon.
+
+  Mais il a vu, vers l'Est eclabousse d'or, l'astre,
+  Glorieux d'eclairer ce matin de desastre,
+  Poindre, orbe eblouissant, au-dessus de la mer;
+
+  Et pour couvrir ses yeux dont pas un cil ne bouge,
+  Il ouvre d'un seul coup son eventail de fer,
+  Ou dans le satin blanc se leve un Soleil rouge.
+
+"Under the black war whip with its quadruple pompon the fierce stallion,
+whinnying, curvets, and makes the rider's bronze cuirass ring against the
+plates of his shirt of mail, with a sound like the clashing of sword
+blades.
+
+"The Chief, clad in bronze and lacquer and silken crape, removing the
+bearded masque from his beardless face, turns his gaze to the great
+volcano, lifting its snows into the cinnabar sky where the dawn of Nippon
+begins to smile.
+
+"Nay! he has already seen the gold-spattered day star, gloriously
+illuminating the morning of disaster, rise, a blinding disk, above the
+seas. And to shade his eyes, on both of which not even a single eyelash
+stirs, he opens with one quick movement his iron fan, wherein upon a field
+of white satin there rises a crimson sun."
+
+Of course this hasty translation is very poor; and you can only get from
+it the signification and colour of the picture--the beautiful sonority and
+luminosity of the French is all gone. Nevertheless, I am sure that the
+more you study the original the more you will see how fine it is. Here
+also is a Japanese colour print. We see the figure of the horseman on the
+shore, in the light of dawn; behind him the still dark sky of night;
+before him the crimson dawn, and Fuji white against the red sky. And in
+the open fan, with its red sun, we have a grim suggestion of the day of
+blood that is about to be; that is all. But whoever reads that sonnet will
+never forget it; it burns into the memory. So, indeed, does everything
+that Heredia writes. Unfortunately he has not yet written anything more
+about Japan.
+
+I have quoted Heredia because I think that no other poet has even
+approached him in the attempt to make a Japanese picture--though many
+others have tried; and the French, nearly always, have done much better
+than the English, because they are more naturally artists. Indeed one must
+be something of an artist to write anything in the way of good poetry on a
+Japanese subject. If you look at the collection "Poems of Places," in the
+library, you will see how poorly Japan is there represented; the only
+respectable piece of foreign work being by Longfellow, and that is only
+about Japanese vases. But since then some English poems have appeared
+which are at least worthy of Japanese notice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to
+Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will
+have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken
+language of the English race. For this reason, to study English literature
+without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that
+literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete. It
+is not necessary to consider the work from a religious point of view at
+all; indeed, to so consider it would be rather a hindrance to the
+understanding of its literary excellence. Some persons have ventured to
+say that it is only since Englishmen ceased to believe in the Bible that
+they began to discover how beautiful it was. This is not altogether true;
+but it is partly true. For it is one thing to consider every word of a
+book as the word of God or gods, and another thing to consider it simply
+as the work of men like ourselves. Naturally we should think it our duty
+to suppose the work of a divine being perfect in itself, and to imagine
+beauty and truth where neither really exists. The wonder of the English
+Bible can really be best appreciated by those who, knowing it to be the
+work of men much less educated and cultivated than the scholars of the
+nineteenth century, nevertheless perceive that those men were able to do
+in literature what no man of our own day could possibly do.
+
+Of course in considering the work of the translators, we must remember the
+magnificence of the original. I should not like to say that the Bible is
+the greatest of all religious books. From the moral point of view it
+contains very much that we can not to-day approve of; and what is good in
+it can be found in the sacred books of other nations. Its ethics can not
+even claim to be absolutely original. The ancient Egyptian scriptures
+contain beauties almost superior in moral exaltation to anything contained
+in the Old Testament; and the sacred books of other Eastern nations,
+notably the sacred books of India, surpass the Hebrew scriptures in the
+highest qualities of imagination and of profound thought. It is only of
+late years that Europe, through the labour of Sanskrit and Pali scholars,
+has become acquainted with the astonishing beauty of thought and feeling
+which Indian scholars enshrined in scriptures much more voluminous than
+the Hebrew Bible; and it is not impossible that this far-off literature
+will some day influence European thought quite as much as the Jewish
+Bible. Everywhere to-day in Europe and America the study of Buddhist and
+Sanskrit literature is being pursued not only with eagerness but with
+enthusiasm--an enthusiasm which sometimes reaches to curious extremes. I
+might mention, in example, the case of a rich man who recently visited
+Japan on his way from India. He had in New Zealand a valuable property; he
+was a man of high culture, and of considerable social influence. One day
+he happened to read an English translation of the "Bhagavad-Gita." Almost
+immediately he resolved to devote the rest of his life to religious study
+in India, in a monastery among the mountains; and he gave up wealth,
+friends, society, everything that Western civilization could offer him, in
+order to seek truth in a strange country. Certainly this is not the only
+instance of the kind; and while such incidents can happen, we may feel
+sure that the influence of religious literature is not likely to die for
+centuries to come.
+
+But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese,
+apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special
+beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high
+as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose. If it is not the
+greatest of religious books as a literary creation, it is at all events
+one of the greatest; and the proof is to be found in the inspiration which
+millions and hundreds of millions, dead and living, have obtained from its
+utterances. The Semitic races have always possessed in a very high degree
+the genius of poetry, especially poetry in which imagination plays a great
+part; and the Bible is the monument of Semitic genius in this regard.
+Something in the serious, stern, and reverential spirit of the genius
+referred to made a particular appeal to Western races having certain
+characteristics of the same kind. Themselves uncultivated in the time that
+the Bible was first made known to them, they found in it almost everything
+that they thought and felt, expressed in a much better way than they could
+have expressed it. Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their
+inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite
+faded away.
+
+But the value of the original, be it observed, did not make the value of
+the English Bible. Certainly it was an inspiring force; but it was nothing
+more. The English Bible is perhaps a much greater piece of fine
+literature, altogether considered, than the Hebrew Bible. It was so for a
+particular reason which it is very necessary for the student to
+understand. The English Bible is a product of literary evolution.
+
+In studying English criticisms upon different authors, I think that you
+must have sometimes felt impatient with the critics who told you, for
+example, that Tennyson was partly inspired by Wordsworth and partly by
+Keats and partly by Coleridge; and that Coleridge was partly inspired by
+Blake and Blake by the Elizabethans, and so on. You may have been tempted
+to say, as I used very often myself to say, "What does it matter where the
+man got his ideas from? I care only for the beauty that is in his work,
+not for a history of his literary education." But to-day the value of the
+study of such relations appears in quite a new light. Evolutional
+philosophy, applied to the study of literature as to everything else, has
+shown us conclusively that man is not a god who can make something out of
+nothing, and that every great work of genius must depend even less upon
+the man of genius himself than upon the labours of those who lived before
+him. Every great author must draw his thoughts and his knowledge in part
+from other great authors, and these again from previous authors, and so on
+back, till we come to that far time in which there was no written
+literature, but only verses learned by heart and memorized by all the
+people of some one tribe or place, and taught by them to their children
+and to their grandchildren. It is only in Greek mythology that the
+divinity of Wisdom leaps out of a god's head, in full armour. In the world
+of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure,
+was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different
+minds which assisted in its development.
+
+So with the English Bible. No one man could have made the translation of
+1611. No one generation of men could have done it. It was not the labour
+of a single century. It represented the work of hundreds of translators
+working through hundreds of years, each succeeding generation improving a
+little upon the work of the previous generation, until in the seventeenth
+century the best had been done of which the English brain and the English
+language was capable. In no other way can the surprising beauties of style
+and expression be explained. No subsequent effort could improve the Bible
+of King James. Every attempt made since the seventeenth century has only
+resulted in spoiling and deforming the strength and the beauty of the
+authorized text.
+
+Now you will understand why, from the purely literary point of view, the
+English Bible is of the utmost importance for study. Suppose we glance for
+a moment at the principal events in the history of this evolution.
+
+The first translation of the Bible into a Western tongue was that made by
+Jerome (commonly called Saint Jerome) in the fourth century; he translated
+directly from the Hebrew and other Arabic languages into Latin, then the
+language of the Empire. This translation into Latin was called the
+Vulgate,--from _vulgare_, "to make generally known." The Vulgate is still
+used in the Roman church. The first English translations which have been
+preserved to us were made from the Vulgate, not from the original tongues.
+First of all, John Wycliffe's Bible may be called the foundation of the
+seventeenth century Bible. Wycliffe's translation, in which he was helped
+by many others, was published between 1380 and 1388. So we may say that
+the foundation of the English Bible dates from the fourteenth century, one
+thousand years after Jerome's Latin translation. But Wycliffe's version,
+excellent as it was, could not serve very long: the English language was
+changing too quickly. Accordingly, in the time of Henry VIII Tyndale and
+Coverdale, with many others, made a new translation, this time not from
+the Vulgate, but from the Greek text of the great scholar Erasmus. This
+was the most important literary event of the time, for "it coloured the
+entire complexion of subsequent English prose,"--to use the words of
+Professor Gosse. This means that all prose in English written since Henry
+VIII has been influenced, directly or indirectly, by the prose of
+Tyndale's Bible, which was completed about 1535. Almost at the same time a
+number of English divines, under the superintendence of Archbishop
+Cramner, gave to the English language a literary treasure scarcely
+inferior to the Bible itself, and containing wonderful translations from
+the Scriptures,--the "Book of Common Prayer." No English surpasses the
+English of this book, still used by the Church; and many translators have
+since found new inspiration from it.
+
+A revision of this famous Bible was made in 1565, entitled "The Bishops'
+Bible." The cause of the revision was largely doctrinal, and we need not
+trouble ourselves about this translation farther than to remark that
+Protestantism was reshaping the Scriptures to suit the new state religion.
+Perhaps this edition may have had something to do with the determination
+of the Roman Catholics to make an English Bible of their own. The Jesuits
+began the work in 1582 at Rheims, and by 1610 the Roman Catholic version
+known as the Douay (or Douai) version--because of its having been made
+chiefly at the Catholic College of Douai in France--was completed. This
+version has many merits; next to the wonderful King James version, it is
+certainly the most poetical; and it has the further advantage of including
+a number of books which Protestantism has thrown out of the authorized
+version, but which have been used in the Roman church since its
+foundation. But I am speaking of the book only as a literary English
+production. It was not made with the help of original sources; its merits
+are simply those of a melodious translation from the Latin Vulgate.
+
+At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous
+King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English
+language. It was the work of many learned men; but the chief worker and
+supervisor was the Bishop of Winchester, Lancelot Andrews, perhaps the
+most eloquent English preacher that ever lived. He was a natural-born
+orator, with an exquisite ear for the cadences of language. To this
+natural faculty of the Bishop's can be attributed much of the musical
+charm of the English in which the Bible was written. Still, it must not be
+supposed that he himself did all the work, or even more than a small
+proportion of it. What he did was to tone it; he overlooked and corrected
+all the text submitted to him, and suffered only the best forms to
+survive. Yet what magnificent material he had to choose from! All the
+translations of the Bible that had been made before his time were
+carefully studied with a view to the conservation of the best phrases,
+both for sound and for form. We must consider the result not merely as a
+study of literature in itself, but also as a study of eloquence; for every
+attention was given to those effects to be expected from an oratorical
+recitation of the text in public.
+
+This marks the end of the literary evolution of the Bible. Everything that
+has since been done has only been in the direction of retrogression, of
+injury to the text. We have now a great many later versions, much more
+scholarly, so far as correct scholarship is concerned, than the King James
+version, but none having any claim to literary importance. Unfortunately,
+exact scholars are very seldom men of literary ability; the two faculties
+are rarely united. The Bible of 1870, known as the Oxford Bible, and now
+used in the Anglican state-church, evoked a great protest from the true
+men of letters, the poets and critics who had found their inspirations in
+the useful study of the old version. The new version was the work of
+fourteen years; it was made by the united labour of the greatest scholars
+in the English-speaking world; and it is far the most exact translation
+that we have. Nevertheless the literary quality has been injured to such
+an extent that no one will ever turn to the new revision for poetical
+study. Even among the churches there was a decided condemnation of this
+scholarly treatment of the old text; and many of the churches refused to
+use the book. In this case, conservatism is doing the literary world a
+service, keeping the old King James version in circulation, and insisting
+especially upon its use in Sunday schools.
+
+We may now take a few examples of the differences between the revised
+version and the Bible of King James. Professor Saintsbury, in an essay
+upon English prose, published some years ago, said that the most perfect
+piece of English prose in the language was that comprised in the sixth and
+seventh verses of the eighth chapter of the Song of Songs:
+
+    Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine
+    arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave;
+    the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement
+    flame.
+
+    Many waters can not quench love, neither can the floods drown it:
+    if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it
+    would utterly be condemned.
+
+I should not like to say that the Professor is certainly right in calling
+this the finest prose in the English language; but he is a very great
+critic, whose opinion must be respected and considered, and the passage is
+certainly very fine. But in the revised version, how tame the same text
+has become in the hands of the scholarly translators!
+
+    The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord.
+
+Now as a description of jealousy, not to speak of the literary execution
+at all, which is the best? What, we may ask, has been gained by calling
+jealousy "a flame of the Lord" or by substituting the word "flashes" for
+"coals of fire"? All through the new version are things of this kind. For
+example, in the same Song of Songs there is a beautiful description of
+eyes, like "doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly
+set." By substituting "rivers" only for "rivers of waters" the text may
+have gained in exactness, but it has lost immeasurably, both in poetry and
+in sound. Far more poetical is the verse as given in the Douai version:
+"His eyes are as doves upon brooks of waters, which are washed with milk,
+and sit beside the beautiful streams."
+
+It may even be said without any question that the mistakes of the old
+translators were often much more beautiful than the original. A splendid
+example is given in the verse of Job, chapter twenty-six, verse thirteen:
+"By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the
+crooked serpent." By the crooked serpent was supposed to be signified the
+grand constellation called _Draco_, or the Dragon. And the figure is
+sublime. It is still more sublime in the Douai translation. "His obstetric
+hand hath brought forth the Winding Serpent." This is certainly a grand
+imagination--the hand of God, like the hand of a midwife, bringing forth a
+constellation out of the womb of the eternal night. But in the revised
+version, which is exact, we have only "His hand hath pierced the Swift
+Serpent!" All the poetry is dead.
+
+There are two methods for the literary study of any book--the first being
+the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its
+workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from
+both points of view. In attempting the former method he will do well to
+consider many works of criticism, but for the study of the text as
+literature, his duty is very plain--the King James version is the only one
+that ought to form the basis of his study, though he should look at the
+Douai version occasionally. Also he should have a book of references, such
+as Cruden's Concordance, by help of which he can collect together in a few
+moments all the texts upon any particular subject, such as the sea, the
+wind, the sky, human life, the shadows of evening. The study of the Bible
+is not one which I should recommend to very young Japanese students,
+because of the quaintness of the English. Before a good knowledge of
+English forms is obtained, the archaisms are apt to affect the students'
+mode of expression. But for the advanced student of literature, I should
+say that some knowledge of the finest books in the Bible is simply
+indispensable. The important books to read are not many. But one should
+read at least the books of Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Esther, the Song of
+Songs, Proverbs,--and, above all, Job. Job is certainly the grandest book
+in the Bible; but all of those which I have named are books that have
+inspired poets and writers in all departments of English literature to
+such an extent that you can scarcely read a masterpiece in which there is
+not some conscious or unconscious reference to them. Another book of
+philosophical importance is Ecclesiastes, where, in addition to much
+proverbial wisdom, you will find some admirable world-poetry--that is,
+poetry which contains universal truth about human life in all times and
+all ages. Of the historical books and the law books I do not think that it
+is important to read much; the literary element in these is not so
+pronounced. It is otherwise with the prophetic books, but here in order to
+obtain a few jewels of expression, you have to read a great deal that is
+of little value. Of the New Testament there is very little equal to the
+Old in literary value; indeed, I should recommend the reading only of the
+closing book--the book called the Revelation, or the Apocalypse, from
+which we have derived a literary adjective "apocalyptic," to describe
+something at once very terrible and very grand. Whether one understands
+the meaning of this mysterious text makes very little difference; the
+sonority and the beauty of its sentences, together with the tremendous
+character of its imagery, can not but powerfully influence mind and ear,
+and thus stimulate literary taste. At least two of the great prose writers
+of the nineteenth century, Carlyle and Ruskin, have been vividly
+influenced by the book of the Revelation. Every period of English
+literature shows some influence of Bible study, even from the old
+Anglo-Saxon days; and during the present year, the study has so little
+slackened that one constantly sees announcements of new works upon the
+literary elements of the Bible. Perhaps one of the best is Professor
+Moulton's "Modern Reader's Bible," in which the literary side of the
+subject receives better consideration than in any other work of the kind
+published for general use.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE "HAVAMAL"
+
+OLD NORTHERN ETHICS OF LIFE
+
+  Then from his lips in music rolled
+  The Havamal of Odin old,
+  With sounds mysterious as the roar
+  Of billows on a distant shore.
+
+
+Perhaps many of you who read this little verse in Longfellow's "Saga of
+King Olaf" have wished to know what was this wonderful song that the ghost
+of the god sang to the king. I am afraid that you would be very
+disappointed in some respects by the "Havamal." There is indeed a magical
+song in it; and it is this magical song especially that Longfellow refers
+to, a song of charms. But most of the "Havamal" is a collection of ethical
+teaching. All that has been preserved by it has been published and
+translated by Professors Vigfusson and Powell. It is very old--perhaps the
+oldest Northern literature that we have. I am going to attempt a short
+lecture upon it, because it is very closely related to the subject of
+Northern character, and will help us, perhaps better than almost anything
+else, to understand how the ancestors of the English felt and thought
+before they became Christians. Nor is this all. I venture to say that the
+character of the modern English people still retains much more of the
+quality indicated by the "Havamal" than of the quality implied by
+Christianity. The old Northern gods are not dead; they rule a very great
+part of the world to-day.
+
+The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about
+them than any other kind of literature. And this sort of literature is
+certainly among the oldest. It represents only the result of human
+experience in society, the wisdom that men get by contact with each other,
+the results of familiarity with right and wrong. By studying the proverbs
+of a people, you can always make a very good guess as to whether you could
+live comfortably among them or not.
+
+Froude, in one of his sketches of travel in Norway, made the excellent
+observation that if we could suddenly go back to the time of the terrible
+sea-kings, if we could revisit to-day the homes of the old Northern
+pirates, and find them exactly as they were one thousand or fifteen
+hundred years ago, we should find them very much like the modern
+Englishmen--big, simple, silent men, concealing a great deal of shrewdness
+under an aspect of simplicity. The teachings of the "Havamal" give great
+force to this supposition. The book must have been known in some form to
+the early English--or at least the verses composing it (it is all written
+in verse); and as I have already said, the morals of the old English, as
+well as their character, differed very little from those of the men of the
+still further North, with whom they mingled and intermarried freely, both
+before and after the Danish conquest, when for one moment England and
+Sweden were one kingdom.
+
+Of course you must remember that Northern society was a very terrible
+thing in some ways. Every man carried his life in his hands; every farmer
+kept sword and spear at his side even in his own fields; and every man
+expected to die fighting. In fact, among the men of the more savage
+North--the men of Norway in especial--it was considered a great disgrace
+to die of sickness, to die on one's bed. That was not to die like a man.
+Men would go out and get themselves killed, when they felt old age or
+sickness coming on. But these facts must not blind us to the other fact
+that there was even in that society a great force of moral cohesion, and
+sound principles of morality. If there had not been, it could not have
+existed; much less could the people who lived under it have become the
+masters of a great part of the world, which they are at the present day.
+There was, in spite of all that fierceness, much kindness and good nature
+among them; there were rules of conduct such as no man could find fault
+with--rules which still govern English society to some extent. And there
+was opportunity enough for social amusement, social enjoyment, and the
+winning of public esteem by a noble life.
+
+Still, even in the "Havamal," one is occasionally startled by teachings
+which show the darker side of Northern life, a life of perpetual vendetta.
+As in old Japan, no man could live under the same heaven with the murderer
+of his brother or father; vengeance was a duty even in the case of a
+friend. On the subject of enemies the "Havamal" gives not a little curious
+advice:
+
+    A man should never step a foot beyond his weapons; for he can
+    never tell where, on his path without, he may need his spear.
+
+    A man, before he goes into a house, should look to and espy all
+    the doorways (_so that he can find his way out quickly again_),
+    for he can never know where foes may be sitting in another man's
+    house.
+
+Does not this remind us of the Japanese proverb that everybody has three
+enemies outside of his own door? But the meaning of the "Havamal" teaching
+is much more sinister. And when the man goes into the house, he is still
+told to be extremely watchful--to keep his ears and eyes open so that he
+may not be taken by surprise:
+
+    The wary guest keeps watchful silence; he listens with his ears
+    and peers about with his eyes; thus does every wise man look about
+    him.
+
+One would think that men must have had very strong nerves to take comfort
+under such circumstances, but the poet tells us that the man who can enjoy
+nothing must be both a coward and a fool. Although a man was to keep watch
+to protect his life, that was not a reason why he should be afraid of
+losing it. There were but three things of which a man should be
+particularly afraid. The first was drink--because drink often caused a man
+to lose control of his temper; the second was another man's
+wife--repeatedly the reader is warned never to make love to another man's
+wife; and the third was thieves--men who would pretend friendship for the
+purpose of killing and stealing, The man who could keep constant watch
+over himself and his surroundings was, of course, likely to have the
+longest life.
+
+Now in all countries there is a great deal of ethical teaching, and always
+has been, on the subject of speech. The "Havamal" is full of teaching on
+this subject--the necessity of silence, the danger and the folly of
+reckless talk. You all know the Japanese proverb that "the mouth is the
+front gate of all misfortune." The Norse poet puts the same truth into a
+grimmer shape: "The tongue works death to the head." Here are a number of
+sayings on this subject:
+
+    He that is never silent talks much folly; a glib tongue, unless it
+    be bridled, will often talk a man into trouble.
+
+    Do not speak three angry words with a worse man; for often the
+    better man falls by the worse man's sword.
+
+    Smile thou in the face of the man thou trusteth not, and speak
+    against thy mind.
+
+This is of course a teaching of cunning; but it is the teaching, however
+immoral, that rules in English society to-day. In the old Norse, however,
+there were many reasons for avoiding a quarrel whenever possible--reasons
+which must have existed also in feudal Japan. A man might not care about
+losing his own life; but he had to be careful not to stir up a feud that
+might go on for a hundred years. Although there was a great deal of
+killing, killing always remained a serious matter, because for every
+killing there had to be a vengeance. It is true that the law exonerated
+the man who killed another, if he paid a certain blood-price; murder was
+not legally considered an unpardonable crime. But the family of the dead
+man would very seldom be satisfied with a payment; they would want blood
+for blood. Accordingly men had to be very cautious about quarreling,
+however brave they might personally be.
+
+But all this caution about silence and about watchfulness did not mean
+that a man should be unable to speak to the purpose when speech was
+required. "A wise man," says the "Havamal," "should be able both to ask
+and to answer." There is a proverb which you know, to the effect that you
+can not shut the door upon another man's mouth. So says the Norse poet:
+"The sons of men can keep silence about nothing that passes among men;
+therefore a man should be able to take his own part, prudently and
+strongly." Says the "Havamal": "A fool thinks he knows everything if he
+sits snug in his little corner; but he is at a loss for words if the
+people put to him a question." Elsewhere it is said: "Arch dunce is he who
+can speak nought, for that is the mark of a fool." And the sum of all this
+teaching about the tongue is that men should never speak without good
+reason, and then should speak to the point strongly and wisely.
+
+On the subject of fools there is a great deal in the "Havamal"; but you
+must understand always by the word fool, in the Northern sense, a man of
+weak character who knows not what to do in time of difficulty. That was a
+fool among those men, and a dangerous fool; for in such a state of society
+mistakes in act or in speech might reach to terrible consequences. See
+these little observations about fools:
+
+    Open-handed, bold-hearted men live most happily, they never feel
+    care; but a fool troubles himself about everything. The niggard
+    pines for gifts.
+
+    A fool is awake all night, worrying about everything; when the
+    morning comes he is worn out, and all his troubles are just the
+    same as before.
+
+    A fool thinks that all who smile upon him are his friends, not
+    knowing, when he is with wise men, who there may be plotting
+    against him.
+
+    If a fool gets a drink, all his mind is immediately displayed.
+
+But it was not considered right for a man not to drink, although drink was
+a dangerous thing. On the contrary, not to drink would have been thought a
+mark of cowardice and of incapacity for self-control. A man was expected
+even to get drunk if necessary, and to keep his tongue and his temper no
+matter how much he drank. The strong character would only become more
+cautious and more silent under the influence of drink; the weak man would
+immediately show his weakness. I am told the curious fact that in the
+English army at the present day officers are expected to act very much
+after the teaching of the old Norse poet; a man is expected to be able on
+occasion to drink a considerable amount of wine or spirits without showing
+the effects of it, either in his conduct or in his speech. "Drink thy
+share of mead; speak fair or not at all"--that was the old text, and a
+very sensible one in its way.
+
+Laughter was also condemned, if indulged in without very good cause. "The
+miserable man whose mind is warped laughs at everything, not knowing what
+he ought to know, that he himself has no lack of faults." I need scarcely
+tell you that the English are still a very serious people, not disposed to
+laugh nearly so much as are the men of the more sympathetic Latin races.
+You will remember perhaps Lord Chesterfield's saying that since he became
+a man no man had ever seen him laugh. I remember about twenty years ago
+that there was published by some Englishman a very learned and very
+interesting little book, called "The Philosophy of Laughter," in which it
+was gravely asserted that all laughter was foolish. I must acknowledge,
+however, that no book ever made me laugh more than the volume in question.
+
+The great virtue of the men of the North, according to the "Havamal," was
+indeed the virtue which has given to the English race its present great
+position among nations,--the simplest of all virtues, common sense. But
+common sense means much more than the words might imply to the Japanese
+students, or to any one unfamiliar with English idioms. Common sense, or
+mother-wit, means natural intelligence, as opposed to, and independent of,
+cultivated or educated intelligence. It means inherited knowledge; and
+inherited knowledge may take even the form of genius. It means foresight.
+It means intuitive knowledge of other people's character. It means cunning
+as well as broad comprehension. And the modern Englishman, in all times
+and in all countries, trusts especially to this faculty, which is very
+largely developed in the race to which he belongs. No Englishman believes
+in working from book learning. He suspects all theories, philosophical or
+other. He suspects everything new, and dislikes it, unless he can be
+compelled by the force of circumstances to see that this new thing has
+advantages over the old. Race-experience is what he invariably depends
+upon, whenever he can, whether in India, in Egypt, or in Australia. His
+statesmen do not consult historical precedents in order to decide what to
+do: they first learn the facts as they are; then they depend upon their
+own common sense, not at all upon their university learning or upon
+philosophical theories. And in the case of the English nation, it must be
+acknowledged that this instinctive method has been eminently successful.
+When the "Havamal" speaks of wisdom it means mother-wit, and nothing else;
+indeed, there was no reading or writing to speak of in those times:
+
+    No man can carry better baggage on his journey than wisdom.
+
+    There is no better friend than great common sense.
+
+But the wise man should not show himself to be wise without occasion. He
+should remember that the majority of men are not wise, and he should be
+careful not to show his superiority over them unnecessarily. Neither
+should be despise men who do not happen to be as wise as himself:
+
+    No man is so good but there is a flaw in him, nor so bad as to be
+    good for nothing.
+
+    Middling wise should every man be; never overwise. Those who know
+    many things rarely lead the happiest life.
+
+    Middling wise should every man be; never overwise. No man should
+    know his fate beforehand; so shall he live freest from care.
+
+    Middling wise should every man be, never too wise. A wise man's
+    heart is seldom glad, if its owner be a true sage.
+
+This is the ancient wisdom also of Solomon "He that increases wisdom
+increases sorrow." But how very true as worldly wisdom these little
+Northern sentences are. That a man who knows a little of many things, and
+no one thing perfectly, is the happiest man--this certainly is even more
+true to-day than it was a thousand years ago. Spencer has well observed
+that the man who can influence his generation, is never the man greatly in
+advance of his time, but only the man who is very slightly better than his
+fellows. The man who is very superior is likely to be ignored or disliked.
+Mediocrity can not help disliking superiority; and as the old Northern
+sage declared, "the average of men is but moiety." Moiety does not mean
+necessarily mediocrity, but also that which is below mediocrity. What we
+call in England to-day, as Matthew Arnold called it, the Philistine
+element, continues to prove in our own time, to almost every superior man,
+the danger of being too wise.
+
+Interesting in another way, and altogether more agreeable, are the old
+sayings about friendship: "Know this, if thou hast a trusty friend, go and
+see him often; because a road which is seldom trod gets choked with
+brambles and high grass."
+
+    Be not thou the first to break off from thy friend. Sorrow will
+    eat thy heart if thou lackest the friend to open thy heart to.
+
+    Anything is better than to be false; he is no friend who
+    only speaks to please.
+
+Which means, of course, that a true friend is not afraid to find fault
+with his friend's course; indeed, that is his solemn duty. But these
+teachings about friendship are accompanied with many cautions; for one
+must be very careful in the making friends. The ancient Greeks had a
+terrible proverb: "Treat your friend as if he should become some day your
+enemy; and treat your enemy as if he might some day become your friend."
+This proverb seems to me to indicate a certain amount of doubt in human
+nature. We do not find this doubt in the Norse teaching, but on the
+contrary, some very excellent advice. The first thing to remember is that
+friendship is sacred: "He that opens his heart to another mixes blood with
+him." Therefore one should be very careful either about forming or about
+breaking a friendship.
+
+    A man should be a friend to his friend's friend. But no man should
+    be a friend of his friend's foe, nor of his foe's friend.
+
+    A man should be a friend with his friend, and pay back gift with
+    gift; give back laughter for laughter (to his enemies), and lesing
+    for lies.
+
+    Give and give back makes the longest friend. Give not overmuch at
+    one time. Gift always looks for return.
+
+The poet also tells us how trifling gifts are quite sufficient to make
+friends and to keep them, if wisely given. A costly gift may seem like a
+bribe; a little gift is only the sign of kindly feeling. And as a mere
+matter of justice, a costly gift may be unkind, for it puts the friend
+under an obligation which he may not be rich enough to repay. Repeatedly
+we are told also that too much should not be expected of friendship. The
+value of a friend is his affection, his sympathy; but favours that cost
+must always be returned.
+
+    I never met a man so open-hearted and free with his food, but that
+    boon was boon to him--nor so generous as not to look for return if
+    he had a chance.
+
+Emerson says almost precisely the same thing in his essay on
+friendship--showing how little human wisdom has changed in all the
+centuries. Here is another good bit of advice concerning visits:
+
+    It is far away to an ill friend, even though he live on one's
+    road; but to a good friend there is a short cut, even though he
+    live far out.
+
+    Go on, be not a guest ever in the same house. The welcome becomes
+    wearisome if he sits too long at another's table.
+
+This means that we must not impose on our friends; but there is a further
+caution on the subject of eating at a friend's house. You must not go to
+your friend's house hungry, when you can help it.
+
+    A man should take his meal betimes, before he goes to his
+    neighbour--or he will sit and seem hungered like one starving, and
+    have no power to talk.
+
+That is the main point to remember in dining at another's house, that you
+are not there only for your own pleasure, but for that of other people.
+You are expected to talk; and you can not talk if you are very hungry. At
+this very day a gentleman makes it the rule to do the same thing.
+Accordingly we see that these rough men of the North must have had a good
+deal of social refinement--refinement not of dress or of speech, but of
+feeling. Still, says the poet, one's own home is the best, though it be
+but a cottage. "A man is a man in his own house."
+
+Now we come to some sentences teaching caution, which are noteworthy in a
+certain way:
+
+    Tell one man thy secret, but not two. What three men know, all the
+    world knows.
+
+    Never let a bad man know thy mishaps; for from a bad man thou
+    shalt never get reward for thy sincerity.
+
+I shall presently give you some modern examples in regard to the advice
+concerning bad men. Another thing to be cautious about is praise. If you
+have to be careful about blame, you must be very cautious also about
+praise.
+
+    Praise the day at even-tide; a woman at her burying; a sword when
+    it has been tried; a maid when she is married; ice when
+    you have crossed over it; ale when it is drunk.
+
+If there is anything noteworthy in English character to-day it is the
+exemplification of this very kind of teaching. This is essentially
+Northern. The last people from whom praise can be expected, even for what
+is worthy of all praise, are the English. A new friendship, a new ideal, a
+reform, a noble action, a wonderful poet, an exquisite painting--any of
+these things will be admired and praised by every other people in Europe
+long before you can get Englishmen to praise. The Englishman all this time
+is studying, considering, trying to find fault. Why should he try to find
+fault? So that he will not make any mistakes at a later day. He has
+inherited the terrible caution of his ancestors in regard to mistakes. It
+must be granted that his caution has saved him from a number of very
+serious mistakes that other nations have made. It must also be
+acknowledged that he exercises a fair amount of moderation in the opposite
+direction--this modern Englishman; he has learned caution of another kind,
+which his ancestors taught him. "Power," says the "Havamal," "should be
+used with moderation; for whoever finds himself among valiant men will
+discover that no man is peerless." And this is a very important thing for
+the strong man to know--that however strong, he can not be the strongest;
+his match will be found when occasion demands it. Not only Scandinavian
+but English rulers have often discovered this fact to their cost. Another
+matter to be very anxious about is public opinion.
+
+    Chattels die; kinsmen pass away; one dies oneself; but I know
+    something that never dies--the name of the man, for good or bad.
+
+Do not think that this means anything religious. It means only that the
+reputation of a man goes to influence the good or ill fortune of his
+descendants. It is something to be proud of, to be the son of a good man;
+it helps to success in life. On the other hand, to have had a father of
+ill reputation is a very serious obstacle to success of any kind in
+countries where the influence of heredity is strongly recognized.
+
+I have nearly exhausted the examples of this Northern wisdom which I
+selected for you; but there are two subjects which remain to be
+considered. One is the law of conduct in regard to misfortune; and the
+other is the rule of conduct in regard to women. A man was expected to
+keep up a brave heart under any circumstances. These old Northmen seldom
+committed suicide; and I must tell you that all the talk about
+Christianity having checked the practice of suicide to some extent, can
+not be fairly accepted as truth. In modern England to-day the suicides
+average nearly three thousand a year; but making allowance for
+extraordinary circumstances, it is certainly true that the Northern races
+consider suicide in an entirely different way from what the Latin races
+do. There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because
+every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and
+to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being
+killed by others. In modern ethical training, quite apart from religious
+considerations a man is taught that suicide is only excusable in case of
+shame, or under such exceptional circumstances as have occurred in the
+history of the Indian mutiny. At all events, we have the feeling still
+strongly manifested in England that suicide is not quite manly; and this
+is certainly due much more to ancestral habits of thinking, which date
+back to pagan days, than to Christian doctrine. As I have said, the pagan
+English would not commit suicide to escape mere pain. But the Northern
+people knew how to die to escape shame. There is an awful story in Roman
+history about the wives and daughters of the conquered German tribes,
+thousands in number, asking to be promised that their virtue should be
+respected, and all killing themselves when the Roman general refused the
+request. No Southern people of Europe in that time would have shown such
+heroism upon such a matter. Leaving honour aside, however, the old book
+tells us that a man should never despair.
+
+    Fire, the sight of the sun, good health, and a blameless
+    life these are the goodliest things in this world.
+
+    Yet a man is not utterly wretched, though he have bad health, or
+    be maimed.
+
+    The halt may ride a horse; the handless may drive a herd; the deaf
+    can fight and do well; better be blind than buried. A corpse is
+    good for naught.
+
+On the subject of women there is not very much in the book beyond the
+usual caution in regard to wicked women; but there is this little
+observation:
+
+    Never blame a woman for what is all man's weakness. Hues charming
+    and fair may move the wise and not the dullard. Mighty love turns
+    the son of men from wise to fool.
+
+This is shrewd, and it contains a very remarkable bit of esthetic truth,
+that it requires a wise man to see certain kinds of beauty, which a stupid
+man could never be made to understand. And, leaving aside the subject of
+love, what very good advice it is never to laugh at a person for what can
+be considered a common failure. In the same way an intelligent man should
+learn to be patient with the unintelligent, as the same poem elsewhere
+insists.
+
+Now what is the general result of this little study, the general
+impression that it leaves upon the mind? Certainly we feel that the life
+reflected in these sentences was a life in which caution was above all
+things necessary--caution in thought and speech and act, never ceasing, by
+night or day, during the whole of a man's life. Caution implies
+moderation. Moderation inevitably develops a certain habit of justice--a
+justice that might not extend outside of the race, but a justice that
+would be exercised between man and man of the same blood. Very much of
+English character and of English history is explained by the life that the
+"Havamal" portrays. Very much that is good; also very much that is
+bad--not bad in one sense, so far as the future of the race is concerned,
+but in a social way certainly not good. The judgment of the Englishman by
+all other European peoples is that he is the most suspicious, the most
+reserved, the most unreceptive, the most unfriendly, the coldest hearted,
+and the most domineering of all Western peoples. Ask a Frenchman, an
+Italian, a German, a Spaniard, even an American, what he thinks about
+Englishmen; and every one of them will tell you the very same thing. This
+is precisely what the character of men would become who had lived for
+thousands of years in the conditions of Northern society. But you would
+find upon the other hand that nearly all nations would speak highly of
+certain other English qualities--energy, courage, honour, justice (between
+themselves). They would say that although no man is so difficult to make
+friends with, the friendship of an Englishman once gained is more strong
+and true than any other. And as the battle of life still continues, and
+must continue for thousands of years to come, it must be acknowledged that
+the English character is especially well fitted for the struggle. Its
+reserves, its cautions, its doubts, its suspicions, its brutality--these
+have been for it in the past, and are still in the present, the best
+social armour and panoply of war. It is not a lovable nor an amiable
+character; it is not even kindly. The Englishman of the best type is much
+more inclined to be just than he is to be kind, for kindness is an
+emotional impulse, and the Englishman is on his guard against every kind
+of emotional impulse. But with all this, the character is a grand one, and
+its success has been the best proof of its value.
+
+Now you will have observed in the reading of this ancient code of social
+morals that, while none of the teaching is religious, some of it is
+absolutely immoral from any religious standpoint. No great religion
+permits us to speak what is not true, and to smile in the face of an enemy
+while pretending to be his friend. No religion teaches that we should "pay
+back lesing for lies." Neither does a religion tell us that we should
+expect a return for every kindness done; that we should regard friendship
+as being actuated by selfish motives; that we should never praise when
+praise seems to be deserved. In fact, when Sir Walter Scott long ago made
+a partial translation of the "Havamal," he thought himself obliged to
+leave out a number of sentences which seemed to him highly immoral, and to
+apologize for others. He thought that they would shock English readers too
+much.
+
+We are not quite so squeamish to-day; and a thinker of our own time would
+scarcely deny that English society is very largely governed at this moment
+by the same kind of rules that Sir Walter Scott thought to be so bad. But
+here we need not condemn English society in particular. All European
+society has been for hundreds of years conducting itself upon very much
+the same principles; for the reason that human social experience has been
+the same in all Western countries. I should say that the only difference
+between English society and other societies is that the hardness of
+character is very much greater. Let us go back even to the most Christian
+times of Western societies in the most Christian country of Europe, and
+observe whether the social code was then and there so very different from
+the social code of the old "Havamal." Mr. Spencer observes in his "Ethics"
+that, so far as the conduct of life is concerned, religion is almost
+nothing and practice is everything. We find this wonderfully exemplified
+in a most remarkable book of social precepts written in the seventeenth
+century, in Spain, under the title of the "Oraculo Manual." It was
+composed by a Spanish priest, named Baltasar Gracian, who was born in the
+year 1601 and died in 1658; and it has been translated into nearly all
+languages. The best English translation, published by Macmillan, is called
+"The Art of Worldly Wisdom." It is even more admired to-day than in the
+seventeenth century; and what it teaches as to social conduct holds as
+good to-day of modern society as it did of society two hundred years ago.
+It is one of the most unpleasant and yet interesting books ever
+published--unpleasant because of the malicious cunning which it often
+displays--interesting because of the frightful perspicacity of the author.
+The man who wrote that book understood the hearts of men, especially the
+bad side. He was a gentleman of high rank before he became a priest, and
+his instinctive shrewdness must have been hereditary. Religion, this man
+would have said, teaches the best possible morals; but the world is not
+governed by religion altogether, and to mix with it, we must act according
+to its dictates.
+
+These dictates remind us in many ways of the cautions and the cunning of
+the "Havamal." The first thing enjoined upon a man both by the Norse
+writer and by the Spanish author is the art of silence. Probably this has
+been the result of social experience in all countries. "Cautious silence
+is the holy of holies of worldly wisdom," says Gracian. And he gives many
+elaborate reasons for this statement, not the least of which is the
+following: "If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse
+expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the
+object of general attention. Mix a little mystery with everything, and the
+very mystery arouses veneration." A little further on he gives us exactly
+the same advice as did the "Havamal" writer, in regard to being frank with
+enemies. "Do not," he says, "show your wounded finger, for everything will
+knock up against it; nor complain about it, for malice always aims where
+weakness can be injured.... Never disclose the source of mortification or
+of joy, if you wish the one to cease, the other to endure." About secrets
+the Spaniard is quite as cautious as the Norseman. He says, "Especially
+dangerous are secrets entrusted to friends. He that communicates his
+secret to another makes himself that other man's slave." But after a great
+many such cautions in regard to silence and secrecy, he tells us also that
+we must learn how to fight with the world. You remember the advice of the
+"Havamal" on this subject, how it condemns as a fool the man who can not
+answer a reproach. The Spaniard is, however, much more malicious in his
+suggestions. He tells as that we must "learn to know every man's
+thumbscrew." I suppose you know that a thumbscrew was an instrument of
+torture used in old times to force confessions from criminals. This advice
+means nothing less than that we should learn how to be be able to hurt
+other men's feelings, or to flatter other men's weaknesses. "First guess
+every man's ruling passion, appeal to it by a word, set it in motion by
+temptation, and you will infallibly give checkmate to his freedom of
+will." The term "give checkmate" is taken from the game of chess, and must
+here be understood as meaning to overcome, to conquer. A kindred piece of
+advice is "keep a store of sarcasms, and know how to use them." Indeed he
+tells us that this is the point of greatest tact in human intercourse.
+"Struck by the slightest word of this kind, many fall away from the
+closest intimacy with superiors or inferiors, which intimacy could not be
+in the slightest shaken by a whole conspiracy of popular insinuation or
+private malevolence." In other words, you can more quickly destroy a man's
+friendship by one word of sarcasm than by any amount of intrigue. Does not
+this read very much like sheer wickedness? Certainly it does; but the
+author would have told you that you must fight the wicked with their own
+weapons. In the "Havamal" you will not find anything quite so openly
+wicked as that; but we must suppose that the Norsemen knew the secret,
+though they might not have put it into words. As for the social teaching,
+you will find it very subtly expressed even in the modern English novels
+of George Meredith, who, by the way, has written a poem in praise of
+sarcasm and ridicule. But let us now see what the Spanish author has to
+tell us about friendship and unselfishness.
+
+The shrewd man knows that others when they seek him do not seek "him," but
+"their advantage in him and by him." That is to say, a shrewd man does not
+believe in disinterested friendship. This is much worse than anything in
+the "Havamal." And it is diabolically elaborated. What are we to say about
+such teaching as the following: "A wise man would rather see men needing
+him than thanking him. To keep them on the threshold of hope is
+diplomatic; to trust to their gratitude is boorish; hope has a good
+memory, gratitude a bad one"? There is much more of this kind; but after
+the assurance that only a boorish person (that is to say, an ignorant and
+vulgar man) can believe in gratitude, the author's opinion of human nature
+needs no further elucidation. The old Norseman would have been shocked at
+such a statement. But he might have approved the following: "When you hear
+anything favourable, keep a tight rein upon your credulity; if
+unfavourable, give it the spur." That is to say, when you hear anything
+good about another man, do not be ready to believe it; but if you hear
+anything bad about him, believe as much of it as you can.
+
+I notice also many other points of resemblance between the Northern and
+the Spanish teaching in regard to caution. The "Havamal" says that you
+must not pick a quarrel with a worse man than yourself; "because the
+better man often falls by the worse man's sword." The Spanish priest gives
+a still shrewder reason for the same policy. "Never contend," he says,
+"with a man who has nothing to lose; for thereby you enter into an unequal
+conflict. The other enters without anxiety; having lost everything,
+including shame, he has no further loss to fear." I think that this is an
+immoral teaching, though a very prudent one; but I need scarcely to tell
+you that it is still a principle in modern society not to contend with a
+man who has no reputation to lose. I think it is immoral, because it is
+purely selfish, and because a good man ought not to be afraid to denounce
+a wrong because of making enemies. Another point, however, on which the
+"Havamal" and the priest agree, is more commendable and interesting. "We
+do not think much of a man who never contradicts us; that is no sign he
+loves us, but rather a sign that he loves himself. Original and
+out-of-the-way views are signs of superior ability."
+
+I should not like you to suppose, however, that the whole of the book from
+which I have been quoting is of the same character as the quotations.
+There is excellent advice in it; and much kindly teaching on the subject
+of generous acts. It is a book both good and bad, and never stupid. The
+same man who tells you that friendship is seldom unselfish, also declares
+that life would be a desert without friends, and that there is no magic
+like a good turn--that is, a kind act. He teaches the importance of
+getting good will by honest means, although he advises us also to learn
+how to injure. I am sure that nobody could read the book without benefit.
+And I may close these quotations from it with the following paragraph,
+which is the very best bit of counsel that could be given to a literary
+student:
+
+    Be slow and sure. Quickly done can be quickly undone. To last an
+    eternity requires an eternity of preparation. Only excellence
+    counts. Profound intelligence is the only foundation for
+    immortality. Worth much costs much. The precious metals are the
+    heaviest.
+
+But so far as the question of human conduct is concerned, the book of
+Gracian is no more of a religious book than is the "Havamal" of the
+heathen North. You would find, were such a book published to-day and
+brought up to the present time by any shrewd writer, that Western morality
+has not improved in the least since the time before Christianity was
+established, so far as the rules of society go. Society is not, and can
+not be, religious, because it is a state of continual warfare. Every
+person in it has to fight, and the battle is not less cruel now because it
+is not fought with swords. Indeed, I should think that the time when every
+man carried his sword in society was a time when men were quite as kindly
+and much more honest than they are now. The object of this little lecture
+was to show you that the principles of the ancient Norse are really the
+principles ruling English society to-day; but I think you will be able to
+take from it a still larger meaning. It is that not only one form of
+society, but all forms of society, represent the warfare of man and man.
+That is why thinkers, poets, philosophers, in all ages, have tried to find
+solitude, to keep out of the contest, to devote themselves only to study
+of the beautiful and the true. But the prizes of life are not to be
+obtained in solitude, although the prizes of thought can only there be
+won. After all, whatever we may think about the cruelty and treachery of
+the social world, it does great things in the end. It quickens judgment,
+deepens intelligence, enforces the acquisition of self-control, creates
+forms of mental and moral strength that can not fail to be sometimes of
+vast importance to mankind. But if you should ask me whether it increases
+human happiness, I should certainly say "no." The "Havamal" said the same
+thing,--the truly wise man can not be happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BEYOND MAN
+
+
+It seems to me a lecturer's duty to speak to you about any remarkable
+thought at this moment engaging the attention of Western philosophers and
+men of science,--partly because any such new ideas are certain, sooner or
+later, to be reflected in literature, and partly because without a
+knowledge of them you might form incorrect ideas in relation to utterances
+of any important philosophic character. I am not going to discourse about
+Nietzsche, though the title of this lecture is taken from one of his
+books; the ideas about which I am going to tell you, you will not find in
+his books. It is most extraordinary, to my thinking, that these ideas
+never occurred to him, for he was an eminent man of science before writing
+his probably insane books. I have not the slightest sympathy with most of
+his ideas; they seem to me misinterpretations of evolutional teachings;
+and if not misinterpretations, they are simply undeveloped and
+ill-balanced thinking. But the title of one of his books, and the idea
+which he tries always unsuccessfully to explain,--that of a state above
+mankind, a moral condition "beyond man," as he calls it,--that is worth
+talking about. It is not nonsense at all, but fact, and I think that I can
+give you a correct idea of the realities in the case. Leaving Nietzsche
+entirely alone, then, let us ask if it is possible to suppose a condition
+of human existence above morality,--that is to say, more moral than the
+most moral ideal which a human brain can conceive? We may answer, it is
+quite possible, and it is not only possible, but it has actually been
+predicted by many great thinkers, including Herbert Spencer.
+
+We have been brought up to think that there can be nothing better than
+virtue, than duty, than strictly following the precepts of a good
+religion. However, our ideas of goodness and of virtue necessarily imply
+the existence of the opposite qualities. To do a good thing because it is
+our duty to do it, implies a certain amount of resolve, a struggle against
+difficulty. The virtue of honesty is a term implying the difficulty of
+being perfectly honest. When we think of any virtuous or great deed, we
+can not help thinking of the pain and obstacles that have to be met with
+in performing that deed. All our active morality is a struggle against
+immorality. And I think that, as every religion teaches, it must be
+granted that no human being has a perfectly moral nature.
+
+Could a world exist in which the nature of all the inhabitants would be so
+moral that the mere idea of what is immoral could not exist? Let me
+explain my question more in detail. Imagine a society in which the idea of
+dishonesty would not exist, because no person could be dishonest, a
+society in which the idea of unchastity could not exist, because no person
+could possibly be unchaste, a world in which no one could have any idea of
+envy, ambition or anger, because such passions could not exist, a world in
+which there would be no idea of duty, filial or parental, because not to
+be filial, not to be loving, not to do everything which we human beings
+now call duty, would be impossible. In such a world ideas of duty would be
+quite useless; for every action of existence would represent the constant
+and faultless performance of what we term duty. Moreover, there would be
+no difficulty, no pain in such performance; it would be the constant and
+unfailing pleasure of life. With us, unfortunately, what is wrong often
+gives pleasure; and what is good to do, commonly causes pain. But in the
+world which I am asking you to imagine there could not be any wrong, nor
+any pleasure in wrong-doing; all the pleasure would be in right-doing. To
+give a very simple illustration--one of the commonest and most pardonable
+faults of young people is eating, drinking, or sleeping too much. But in
+our imaginary world to eat or to drink or to sleep in even the least
+degree more than is necessary could not be done; the constitution of the
+race would not permit it. One more illustration. Our children have to be
+educated carefully in regard to what is right or wrong; in the world of
+which I am speaking, no time would be wasted in any such education, for
+every child would be born with full knowledge of what is right and wrong.
+Or to state the case in psychological language--I mean the language of
+scientific, not of metaphysical, psychology--we should have a world in
+which morality would have been transmuted into inherited instinct. Now
+again let me put the question: can we imagine such a world? Perhaps you
+will answer, Yes, in heaven--nowhere else. But I answer you that such a
+world actually exists, and that it can be studied in almost any part of
+the East or of Europe by a person of scientific training. The world of
+insects actually furnishes examples of such a moral transformation. It is
+for this reason that such writers as Sir John Lubbock and Herbert Spencer
+have not hesitated to say that certain kinds of social insects have
+immensely surpassed men, both in social and in ethical progress.
+
+But that is not all that it is necessary to say here. You might think that
+I am only repeating a kind of parable. The important thing is the opinion
+of scientific men that humanity will at last, in the course of millions of
+years, reach the ethical conditions of the ants. It is only five or six
+years ago that some of these conditions were established by scientific
+evidence, and I want to speak of them. They have a direct bearing upon
+important ethical questions; and they have startled the whole moral world,
+and set men thinking in entirely new directions.
+
+In order to explain how the study of social insects has set moralists of
+recent years thinking in a new direction, it will be necessary to
+generalize a great deal in the course of so short a lecture. It is
+especially the social conditions of the ants which has inspired these new
+ideas; but you must not think that any one species of ants furnishes us
+with all the facts. The facts have been arrived at only through the study
+of hundreds of different kinds of ants by hundreds of scientific men; and
+it is only by the consensus of their evidence that we get the ethical
+picture which I shall try to outline for you. Altogether there are
+probably about five thousand different species of ants, and these
+different species represent many different stages of social evolution,
+from the most primitive and savage up to the most highly civilized and
+moral. The details of the following picture are furnished by a number of
+the highest species only; that must not be forgotten. Also, I must remind
+you that the morality of the ant, by the necessity of circumstance, does
+not extend beyond the limits of its own species. Impeccably ethical within
+the community, ants carry on war outside their own borders; were it not
+for this, we might call them morally perfect creatures.
+
+Although the mind of an ant can not be at all like to the mind of the
+human being, it is so intelligent that we are justified in trying to
+describe its existence by a kind of allegorical comparison with human
+life. Imagine, then, a world full of women, working night and
+day,--building, tunnelling, bridging,--also engaged in agriculture, in
+horticulture, and in taking care of many kinds of domestic animals. (I may
+remark that ants have domesticated no fewer than five hundred and
+eighty-four different kinds of creatures.) This world of women is
+scrupulously clean; busy as they are, all of them carry combs and brushes
+about them, and arrange themselves several times a day. In addition to
+this constant work, these women have to take care of myriads of
+children,--children so delicate that the slightest change in the weather
+may kill them. So the children have to be carried constantly from one
+place to another in order to keep them warm.
+
+Though this multitude of workers are always gathering food, no one of them
+would eat or drink a single atom more than is necessary; and none of them
+would sleep for one second longer than is necessary. Now comes a
+surprising fact, about which a great deal must be said later on. These
+women have no sex. They are women, for they sometimes actually give birth,
+as virgins, to children; but they are incapable of wedlock. They are more
+than vestals. Sex is practically suppressed.
+
+This world of workers is protected by an army of soldiers. The soldiers
+are very large, very strong, and shaped so differently from the working
+females that they do not seem at first to belong to the same race. They
+help in the work, though they are not able to help in some delicate kinds
+of work--they are too clumsy and strong. Now comes the second astonishing
+fact: these soldiers are all women--amazons, we might call them; but they
+are sexless women. In these also sex has been suppressed.
+
+You ask, where do the children come from? Most of the children are born of
+special mothers--females chosen for the purpose of bearing offspring, and
+not allowed to do anything else. They are treated almost like empresses,
+being constantly fed and attended and served, and being lodged in the best
+way possible. Only these can eat and drink at all times--they must do so
+for the sake of their offspring. They are not suffered to go out, unless
+strongly attended, and they are not allowed to run any risk of danger or
+of injury The life of the whole race circles about them and about their
+children, but they are very few.
+
+Last of all are the males, the men. One naturally asks why females should
+have been specialized into soldiers instead of men. It appears that the
+females have more reserve force, and all the force that might have been
+utilized in the giving of life has been diverted to the making of
+aggressive powers. The real males are very small and weak. They appear to
+be treated with indifference and contempt. They are suffered to become the
+bridegrooms of one night, after which they die very quickly. By contrast,
+the lives of the rest are very long. Ants live for at least three or four
+years, but the males live only long enough to perform their solitary
+function.
+
+In the foregoing little fantasy, the one thing that should have most
+impressed you is the fact of the suppression of sex. But now comes the
+last and most astonishing fact of all: this suppression of sex is not
+natural, but artificial--I mean that it is voluntary. It has been
+discovered that ants are able, by a systematic method of nourishment, to
+suppress or develop sex as they please. The race has decided that sex
+shall not be allowed to exist except in just so far as it is absolutely
+necessary to the existence of the race. Individuals with sex are tolerated
+only as necessary evils. Here is an instance of the most powerful of all
+passions voluntarily suppressed for the benefit of the community at large.
+It vanishes whenever unnecessary; when necessary after a war or a calamity
+of some kind, it is called into existence again. Certainly it is not
+wonderful that such a fact should have set moralists thinking. Of course
+if a human community could discover some secret way of effecting the same
+object, and could have the courage to do it, or rather the unselfishness
+to do it, the result would simply be that sexual immorality of any kind
+would become practically impossible The very idea of such immorality would
+cease to exist.
+
+But that is only one fact of self-suppression and the ant-world furnishes
+hundreds. To state the whole thing in the simplest possible way, let me
+say the race has entirely got rid of everything that we call a selfish
+impulse. Even hunger and thirst allow of no selfish gratification. The
+entire life of the community is devoted to the common good and to mutual
+help and to the care of the young. Spencer says it is impossible to
+imagine that an ant has a sense of duty like our own,--a religion, if you
+like. But it does not need a sense of duty, it does not need religion. Its
+life is religion in the practical sense. Probably millions of years ago
+the ant had feelings much more like our own than it has now. At that time,
+to perform altruistic actions may have been painful to the ant; to perform
+them now has become the one pleasure of its existence. In order to bring
+up children and serve the state more efficiently these insects have
+sacrificed their sex and every appetite that we call by the name of animal
+passion. Moreover they have a perfect community, a society in which nobody
+could think of property, except as a state affair, a public thing, or as
+the Romans would say a _res publica_. In a human community so organized,
+there could not be ambition, any jealousy, any selfish conduct of any
+sort--indeed, no selfishness at all. The individual is said to be
+practically sacrificed for the sake of the race; but such a supposition
+means the highest moral altruism. Therefore thinkers have to ask, "Will
+man ever rise to something like the condition of ants?"
+
+Herbert Spencer says that such is the evident tendency. He does not say,
+nor is it at all probable, that there will be in future humanity such
+physiological specialization as would correspond to the suppression of sex
+among ants, or to the bringing of women to the dominant place in the human
+world, and the masculine sex to an inferior position. That is not likely
+ever to happen, for reasons which it would take very much too long to
+speak of now. But there is evidence that the most selfish of all human
+passions will eventually be brought under control--under such control that
+the present cause of wellnigh all human suffering, the pressure of
+population, will be practically removed. And there is psychological
+evidence that the human mind will undergo such changes that wrong-doing,
+in the sense of unkindly action, will become almost impossible, and that
+the highest pleasure will be found not in selfishness but in
+unselfishness. Of course there are thousands of things to think about,
+suggested by this discovery of the life of ants. I am only telling the
+more important ones. What I have told you ought at least to suggest that
+the idea of a moral condition much higher than all our moral conditions of
+today is quite possible,--that it is not an idea to be laughed at. But it
+was not Nietzsche who ever conceived this possibility. His "Beyond Man"
+and the real and much to be hoped for "beyond man," are absolutely
+antagonistic conceptions. When the ancient Hebrew writer said, thousands
+of years ago, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways," he could
+not have imagined how good his advice would prove in the light of
+twentieth century science.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE NEW ETHICS
+
+
+Before leaving the subject of these latter-day intellectual changes, a
+word must be said concerning the ethical questions involved. Of course
+when a religious faith has been shaken to its foundation, it is natural to
+suppose that morals must have been simultaneously affected. The relation
+of morals to literature is very intimate; and we must expect that any
+change of ideas in the direction of ethics would show themselves in
+literature. The drama, poetry, romance, the novel, all these are
+reflections of moral emotion in especial, of the eternal struggle between
+good and evil, as well as of the temporary sentiments concerning right and
+wrong. And every period of transition is necessarily accompanied by
+certain tendencies to disintegration. Contemporary literature in the West
+has shown some signs of ethical change. These caused many thinkers to
+predict a coming period of demoralization in literature. But the alarm was
+really quite needless. These vagaries of literature, such as books
+questioning the morality of the marriage relation, for example, were only
+repetitions of older vagaries, and represented nothing more than the
+temporary agitation of thought upon all questions. The fact seems to be
+that in spite of everything, moral feeling was never higher at any time in
+Western social history than it is at present. The changes of thought have
+indeed been very great, but the moral experience of mankind remains
+exactly as valuable as it was before, and new perceptions of that value
+have been given to us by the new philosophy.
+
+It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that
+mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in
+morality. Moral progress has not been rapid simply because the moral ideal
+has always been kept a little in advance of the humanly possible.
+Thousands of years ago the principles of morality were exactly the same as
+those which rule our lives to-day. We can not improve upon them; we can
+not even improve upon the language which expressed them. The most learned
+of our poets could not make a more beautiful prayer than the prayer which
+Egyptian mothers taught to their little children in ages when all Europe
+was still a land of savages. The best of the moral philosophy of the
+nineteenth century is very little of improvement upon the moral philosophy
+of ancient India or China. If there is any improvement at all, it is
+simply in the direction of knowledge of causes and effects. And that is
+why in all countries the common sense of mankind universally condemns any
+attempt to interfere with moral ideas. These represent the social
+experience of man for thousands and thousands of years; and it is not
+likely that the wisdom of any one individual can ever better them. If
+bettered at all it can not be through theory. The amelioration must be
+effected by future experience of a universal kind. We may improve every
+branch of science, every branch of art, everything else relating to the
+work of human heads and hands; but we can not improve morals by invention
+or by hypothesis. Morals are not made, but grow.
+
+Yet, as I have said, there is what may be called a new system of ethics.
+But this new system of ethics means nothing more than a new way of
+understanding the old system of ethics. By the application of evolutional
+science to the study of morals, we have been enabled to trace back the
+whole history of moral ideas to the time of their earliest inception,--to
+understand the reasons of them, and to explain them without the help of
+any supernatural theory. And the result, so far from diminishing our
+respect for the wisdom of our ancestors, has immensely increased that
+respect. There is no single moral teaching common to different
+civilizations and different religions of an advanced stage of development
+which we do not find to be eternally true. Let us try to study this view
+of the case by the help of a few examples.
+
+In early times, of course, men obeyed moral instruction through religious
+motives. If asked why they thought it was wrong to perform certain actions
+and right to perform others, they could have answered only that such was
+ancestral custom and that the gods will it so. Not until we could
+understand the laws governing the evolution of society could we understand
+the reason of many ethical regulations. But now we can understand very
+plainly that the will of the gods, as our ancestors might have termed it,
+represents divine laws indeed, for the laws of ethical evolution are
+certainly the unknown laws shaping all things--suns, worlds, and human
+societies. All that opposes itself to the operation of those universal
+laws is what we have been accustomed to call bad, and everything which
+aids the operation of those laws is what we have been accustomed to think
+of as good. The common crimes condemned by all religions, such as theft,
+murder, adultery, bearing false witness, disloyalty, all these are
+practices which directly interfere with the natural process of evolution;
+and without understanding why, men have from the earliest times of real
+civilisation united all their power to suppress them. I think that we need
+not dwell upon the simple facts; they will at once suggest to you all that
+is necessary to know. I shall select for illustration only one less
+familiar topic, that of the ascetic ideal.
+
+A great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be
+superstitious or useless, prove to-day on examination to have been of
+immense value to mankind. Probably no superstition ever existed which did
+not have some social value; and the most seemingly repulsive or cruel
+sometimes turn out to have been the most precious. To choose one of these
+for illustration, we must take one not confined to any particular
+civilization or religion, but common to all human societies at a certain
+period of their existence; and the ascetic ideal best fits our purpose.
+From very early times, even from a time long preceding any civilization,
+we find men acting under the idea that by depriving themselves of certain
+pleasures and by subjecting themselves to certain pains they could please
+the divine powers and thereby obtain strength. Probably there is no people
+in the world among whom this belief has not had at some one time or
+another a very great influence. At a later time, in the early
+civilizations, this idea would seem to have obtained much larger sway, and
+to have affected national life more and more extensively. In the age of
+the great religions the idea reaches its acme, an acme often represented
+by extravagances of the most painful kind and sacrifices which strike
+modern imagination as ferocious and terrible. In Europe asceticism reached
+its great extremes as you know during the Middle Ages, and especially took
+the direction of antagonism to the natural sex-relation. Looking back
+to-day to the centuries in which celibacy was considered the most moral
+condition, and marriage was counted as little better than weakness, when
+Europe was covered with thousands of monasteries, and when the best
+intellects of the age deemed it the highest duty to sacrifice everything
+pleasurable for the sake of an imaginary reward after death, we can not
+but recognize that we are contemplating a period of religious insanity.
+Even in the architecture of the time, the architecture that Ruskin devoted
+his splendid talent to praise, there is a grim and terrible something that
+suggests madness. Again, the cruelties of the age have an insane
+character, the burning alive of myriads of people who refused to believe
+or could not believe in the faith of their time; the tortures used to
+extort confessions from the innocent; the immolation of thousands charged
+with being wizards or witches; the extinction of little centres of
+civilization in the South of France and elsewhere by brutal
+crusades--contemplating all this, we seem to be contemplating not only
+madness but furious madness. I need not speak to you of the Crusades,
+which also belonged to this period. Compared with the Roman and Greek
+civilizations before it, what a horrible Europe it was! And yet the
+thinker must recognize that it had a strength of its own, a strength of a
+larger kind than that of the preceding civilizations. It may seem
+monstrous to assert that all this cruelty and superstition and contempt of
+learning were absolutely necessary for the progress of mankind; and yet we
+must so accept them in the light of modern knowledge. The checking of
+intellectual development for hundreds of years is certainly a fact that
+must shock us; but the true question is whether such a checking had not
+become necessary. Intellectual strength, unless supported by moral
+strength, leads a people into the ways of destruction. Compared with the
+men of the Middle Ages, the Greeks and Romans were incomparably superior
+intellectually; compared with them morally they were very weak. They had
+conquered the world and developed all the arts, these Greeks and Romans;
+they had achieved things such as mankind has never since been able to
+accomplish, and then, losing their moral ideal, losing their simplicity,
+losing their faith, they were utterly crushed by inferior races in whom
+the principles of self-denial had been intensely developed. And the old
+instinctive hatred of the Church for the arts and the letters and the
+sciences of the Greek and Roman civilizations was not quite so much of a
+folly as we might be apt to suppose. The priests recognized in a vague way
+that anything like a revival of the older civilizations would signify
+moral ruin. The Renaissance proves that the priests were not wrong. Had
+the movement occurred a few hundred years earlier, the result would
+probably have been a universal corruption I do not mean to say that the
+Church at any time was exactly conscious of what she was doing; she acted
+blindly under the influence of an instinctive fear. But the result of all
+that she did has now proved unfortunate. What the Roman and Greek
+civilizations had lost in moral power was given back to the world by the
+frightful discipline of the Middle Ages. For a long series of generations
+the ascetic idea was triumphant; and it became feeble only in proportion
+as men became strong enough to do without it. Especially it remodelled
+that of which it first seemed the enemy, the family relation. It created a
+new basis for society, founded upon a new sense of the importance to
+society of family morals. Because this idea, this morality, came through
+superstition, its value is not thereby in the least diminished.
+Superstitions often represent correct guesses at eternal truth. To-day we
+know that all social progress, all national strength, all national vigour,
+intellectual as well as physical, depend essentially upon the family, upon
+the morality of the household, upon the relation of parents to children.
+It was this fact which the Greeks and Romans forgot, and lost themselves
+by forgetting. It was this fact which the superstitious tyranny of the
+Middle Ages had to teach the West over again, and after such a fashion
+that it is not likely ever to become forgotten. So much for the mental
+history of the question. Let us say a word about the physical aspects of
+it.
+
+No doubt you have read that the result of macerating the body, of
+depriving oneself of all comfort, and even of nourishing food, is not an
+increase of intellectual vigour or moral power of any kind. And in one
+sense this is true. The individual who passes his life in
+self-mortification is not apt to improve under that regime. For this
+reason the founder of the greatest of Oriental religions condemned
+asceticism on the part of his followers, except within certain fixed
+limits. But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not
+a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by
+the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many
+generations. Not in one lifetime can we perceive the measure of ethical
+force obtained by self-control; but in the course of several hundreds of
+years we find that the result obtained is so large as to astonish us. This
+result, imperceptibly obtained, signifies a great increase of that nervous
+power upon which moral power depends; it means an augmentation in strength
+of every kind; and this augmentation again represents what we might call
+economy. Just as there is a science of political economy, there is a
+science of ethical economy; and it is in relation to such a science that
+we should rationally consider the influence of all religions teaching
+self-suppression. So studying, we find that self-suppression does not mean
+the destruction of any power, but only the economical storage of that
+power for the benefit of the race As a result, the highly civilized man
+can endure incomparably more than the savage, whether of moral or physical
+strain. Being better able to control himself under all circumstances, he
+has a great advantage over the savage.
+
+That which is going on in the new teaching of ethics is really the
+substitution of a rational for an emotional morality. But this does not
+mean that the value of the emotional element in morality is not
+recognized. Not only is it recognized, but it is even being
+enlarged--enlarged, however, in a rational way. For example, let us take
+the very emotional virtue of loyalty. Loyalty, in a rational form, could
+not exist among an uneducated people; it could only exist as a feeling, a
+sentiment. In the primitive state of society this sentiment takes the
+force and the depth of a religion. And the ruler, regarded as divine,
+really has in relation to his people the power of a god. Once that people
+becomes educated in the modern sense, their ideas regarding their ruler
+and their duties to their ruler necessarily undergo modification. But does
+this mean that the sentiment is weakened in the educated class? I should
+say that this depends very much upon the quality of the individual mind.
+In a mind of small capacity, incapable of receiving the higher forms of
+thought, it is very likely that the sentiment may be weakened and almost
+destroyed. But in the mind of a real thinker, a man of true culture, the
+sense of loyalty, although changed, is at the same time immensely
+expanded. In order to give a strong example, I should take the example not
+from a monarchical country but from a republican one. What does the
+President of the United States of America, for example, represent to the
+American of the highest culture? He appears to him in two entirely
+different capacities. First he appears to him merely as a man, an ordinary
+man, with faults and weaknesses like other ordinary men. His private life
+is apt to be discussed in the newspapers. He is expected to shake hands
+with anybody and with everybody whom he meets at Washington; and when he
+ceases to hold office, he has no longer any particular distinction from
+other Americans. But as the President of the United States, he is also
+much more than a man. He represents one hundred millions of people; he
+represents the American Constitution; he represents the great principles
+of human freedom laid down by that Constitution; he represents also the
+idea of America, of everything American, of all the hopes, interests, and
+glories of the nation. Officially he is quite as sacred as a divinity
+could be. Millions would give their lives for him at an instant's notice;
+and thousands capable of making vulgar jokes about the man would hotly
+resent the least word spoken about the President as the representative of
+America. The very same thing exists in other Western countries,
+notwithstanding the fact that the lives of rulers are sometimes attempted.
+England is a striking example. The Queen has really scarcely any power;
+her rule is little more than nominal. Every Englishman knows that England
+is a monarchy only in name. But the Queen represents to every Englishman
+more than a woman and more than a queen: she represents England, English
+race feeling, English love of country, English power, English dignity; she
+is a symbol, and as a symbol sacred. The soldier jokingly calls her "the
+Widow"; he makes songs about her; all this is well and good. But a soldier
+who cursed her a few years ago was promptly sent to prison for twenty
+years. To sing a merry song about the sovereign as a woman is a right
+which English freedom claims; but to speak disrespectfully of the Queen,
+as England, as the government, is properly regarded as a crime; because it
+proves the man capable of it indifferent to all his duties as an
+Englishman, as a citizen, as a soldier. The spirit of loyalty is far from
+being lost in Western countries; it has only changed in character, and it
+is likely to strengthen as time goes on.
+
+Broad tolerance in the matter of beliefs is necessarily a part of the new
+ethics. It is quite impossible in the present state of mankind that all
+persons should be well educated, or that the great masses of a nation
+should attain to the higher forms of culture. For the uneducated a
+rational system of ethics must long remain out of the question and it is
+proper that they should cling to the old emotional forms of moral
+teaching. The observation of Huxley that he would like to see every
+unbeliever who could not get a reason for his unbelief publicly put to
+shame, was an observation of sound common sense. It is only those whose
+knowledge obliges them to see things from another standpoint than that of
+the masses who can safely claim to base their rule of life upon
+philosophical morality. The value of the philosophical morality happens to
+be only in those directions where it recognizes and supports the truth
+taught by common morality, which, after all, is the safest guide.
+Therefore the philosophical moralist will never mock or oppose a belief
+which he knows to exercise a good influence upon human conduct. He will
+recognize even the value of many superstitions as being very great; and he
+will understand that any attempt to suddenly change the beliefs of man in
+any ethical direction must be mischievous. Such changes as he might desire
+will come; but they should come gradually and gently, in exact proportion
+to the expanding capacity of the national mind. Recognizing this
+probability, several Western countries, notably America, have attempted to
+introduce into education an entirely new system of ethical
+teaching--ethical teaching in the broadest sense, and in harmony with the
+new philosophy. But the result there and elsewhere can only be that which
+I have said at the beginning of this lecture,--namely, the enlargement of
+the old moral ideas, and the deeper comprehension of their value in all
+relations of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SOME POEMS ABOUT INSECTS
+
+
+One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is
+the want of an index. The importance of being able to refer at once to any
+subject treated of in a book was not recognized until the days when exact
+scholarship necessitated indexing of the most elaborate kind. But even now
+we constantly find good books severely criticized because of this
+deficiency. All that I have said tends to show that even to-day in Western
+countries the immense importance of systematic arrangement in literary
+collections is not sufficiently recognized. We have, of course, a great
+many English anthologies,--that is to say, collections of the best typical
+compositions of a certain epoch in poetry or in prose. But you must have
+observed that, in Western countries, nearly all such anthologies are
+compiled chronologically--not according to the subject of the poems. To
+this general rule there are indeed a few exceptions. There is a collection
+of love poetry by Watson, which is famous; a collection of child poetry by
+Patmore; a collection of "society verse" by Locker-Lampson; and several
+things of that sort. But even here the arrangement is not of a special
+kind; nor is it ever divided according to the subject of each particular
+poem. I know that some books have been published of late years with such
+titles as "Poems of the Sea," "Poems of Nature"--but these are of no
+literary importance at all and they are not compiled by competent critics.
+Besides, the subject-heads are always of much too general a kind. The
+French are far in advance of the English in the art of making anthologies;
+but even in such splendid anthologies as those of Crepet and of Lemerre
+the arrangement is of the most general kind,--chronological, and little
+more.
+
+I was reminded to tell you this, because of several questions recently
+asked me, which I found it impossible to answer. Many a Japanese student
+might suppose that Western poetry has its classified arrangements
+corresponding in some sort to those of Japanese poetry. Perhaps the
+Germans have something of the kind, but the English and French have not.
+Any authority upon the subject of Japanese literature can, I have been
+told, inform himself almost immediately as to all that has been written in
+poetry upon a particular subject. Japanese poetry has been classified and
+sub-classified and double-indexed or even quadruple-indexed after a manner
+incomparably more exact than anything English anthologies can show. I am
+aware that this fact is chiefly owing to the ancient rules about subjects,
+seasons, contrasts, and harmonies, after which the old poets used to
+write. But whatever be said about such rules, there can be no doubt at all
+of the excellence of the arrangements which the rules produced. It is
+greatly to be regretted that we have not in English a system of
+arrangement enabling the student to discover quickly all that has been
+written upon a particular subject--such as roses, for example, or pine
+trees, or doves, or the beauties of the autumn season. There is nobody to
+tell you where to find such things; and as the whole range of English
+poetry is so great that it takes a great many years even to glance through
+it, a memorized knowledge of the subjects is impossible for the average
+man. I believe that Macaulay would have been able to remember almost any
+reference in the poetry then accessible to scholars,--just as the
+wonderful Greek scholar Porson could remember the exact place of any text
+in the whole of Greek literature, and even all the variations of that
+text. But such men are born only once in hundreds of years; the common
+memory can not attempt to emulate their feats. And it is very difficult at
+the present time for the ordinary student of poetry to tell you just how
+much has been written upon any particular subject by the best English
+poets.
+
+Now you will recognize some difficulties in the way of a lecturer in
+attempting to make classifications of English poetry after the same manner
+that Japanese classification can be made of Japanese poetry. One must read
+enormously merely to obtain one's materials, and even then the result is
+not to be thought of as exhaustive. I am going to try to give you a few
+lectures upon English poetry thus classified, but we must not expect that
+the lectures will be authoritatively complete. Indeed, we have no time for
+lectures of so thorough a sort. All that I can attempt will be to give you
+an idea of the best things that English poets have thought and expressed
+upon certain subjects.
+
+You know that the old Greeks wrote a great deal of beautiful poetry about
+insects,--especially about musical insects, crickets, cicadas, and other
+insects such as those the Japanese poets have been writing about for so
+many hundreds of years. But in modern Western poetry there is very little,
+comparatively speaking, about insects. The English poets have all written
+a great deal about birds, and especially about singing birds; but very
+little has been written upon the subject of insects--singing insects. One
+reason is probably that the number of musical insects in England is very
+small, perhaps owing to the climate. American poets have written more
+about insects than English poets have done, though their work is of a much
+less finished kind. But this is because musical insects in America are
+very numerous. On the whole, we may say that neither in English nor in
+French poetry will you find much about the Voices of rickets, locusts, or
+cicadae. I could not even give you a special lecture upon that subject. We
+must take the subject "insect" in a rather general signification; and if
+we do that we can edit together a nice little collection of poetical
+examples.
+
+The butterfly was regarded by the Greeks especially as the emblem of the
+soul and therefore of immortality. We have several Greek remains,
+picturing the butterfly as perched upon a skull, thus symbolizing life
+beyond death. And the metamorphosis of the insect is, you know, very often
+referred to in Greek philosophy. We might expect that English poets would
+have considered the butterfly especially from this point of view; and we
+do have a few examples. Perhaps the best known is that of Coleridge.
+
+    The butterfly the ancient Grecians made
+  The soul's fair emblem, and its only name--
+  But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
+  Of earthly life! For in this mortal frame
+  Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,
+  Manifold motions making little speed,
+  And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.
+
+The allusion to the "name" is of course to the Greek word, _psyche_, which
+signifies both soul and butterfly. Psyche, as the soul, was pictured by
+the Greeks as a beautiful girl, with a somewhat sad face, and butterfly
+wings springing from her shoulders. Coleridge tells us here that although
+the Greeks likened the soul to the butterfly, we must remember what the
+butterfly really is,--the last and highest state of insect-being--"escaped
+the slavish trade of earthly life." What is this so-called slavish trade?
+It is the necessity of working and struggling in order to live--in order
+to obtain food. The butterfly is not much of an eater; some varieties,
+indeed, do not eat at all. All the necessity for eating ended with the
+life of the larva. In the same manner religion teaches that the soul
+represents the changed state of man. In this life a man is only like a
+caterpillar; death changes him into a chrysalis, and out of the chrysalis
+issues the winged soul which does not have to trouble itself about such
+matters as eating and drinking. By the word "reptile" in this verse, you
+must understand caterpillar. Therefore the poet speaks of all our human
+work as manifold motions making little speed; you have seen how many
+motions a caterpillar must make in order to go even a little distance, and
+you must have noticed the manner in which it spoils the appearance of the
+plant upon which it feeds. There is here an allusion to the strange and
+terrible fact, that all life--and particularly the life of man--is
+maintained only by the destruction of other life. In order to live we must
+kill--perhaps only plants, but in any case we must kill.
+
+Wordsworth has several poems on butterflies, but only one of them is
+really fine. It is fine, not because it suggests any deep problem, but
+because with absolute simplicity it pictures the charming difference of
+character in a little boy and a little girl playing together in the
+fields. The poem is addressed to the butterfly.
+
+  Stay near me--do not take thy flight!
+  A little longer stay in sight!
+  Much converse do I find in thee,
+  Historian of my infancy!
+  Float near me; do not yet depart!
+  Dead times revive in thee:
+  Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
+  A solemn image to my heart,
+    My father's family.
+
+  Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
+  The time, when, in our childish plays,
+  My sister Emmeline and I
+  Together chased the butterfly!
+  A very hunter did I rush
+  Upon the prey: with leaps and springs
+  I followed on from brake to bush;
+  But she, God love her, feared to brush
+  The dust from off its wings.
+
+What we call and what looks like dust on the wings of a butterfly, English
+children are now taught to know as really beautiful scales or featherlets,
+but in Wordsworth's time the real structure of the insect was not so well
+known as now to little people. Therefore to the boy the coloured matter
+brushed from the wings would only have seemed so much dust. But the little
+girl, with the instinctive tenderness of the future mother-soul in her,
+dreads to touch those strangely delicate wings; she fears, not only to
+spoil, but also to hurt.
+
+Deeper thoughts than memory may still be suggested to English poets by the
+sight of a butterfly, and probably will be for hundreds of years to come.
+Perhaps the best poem of a half-metaphorical, half-philosophical thought
+about butterflies is the beautiful prologue to Browning's "Fifine at the
+Fair," which prologue is curiously entitled "Amphibian"--implying that we
+are about to have a reference to creatures capable of living in two
+distinctive elements, yet absolutely belonging neither to the one nor to
+the other. The poet swims out far into the sea on a beautiful day; and,
+suddenly, looking up, perceives a beautiful butterfly flying over his
+head, as if watching him. The sight of the insect at once suggests to him
+its relation to Greek fancy as a name for the soul; then he begins to
+wonder whether it might not really be the soul, or be the symbol of the
+soul, of a dead woman who loved him. From that point of the poem begins a
+little metaphysical fantasy about the possible condition of souls.
+
+  The fancy I had to-day,
+  Fancy which turned a fear!
+  I swam far out in the bay,
+  Since waves laughed warm and clear.
+
+  I lay and looked at the sun,
+  The noon-sun looked at me:
+  Between us two, no one
+  Live creature, that I could see.
+
+  Yes! There came floating by
+  Me, who lay floating too,
+  Such a strange butterfly!
+  Creature as dear as new:
+
+  Because the membraned wings
+  So wonderful, so wide,
+  So sun-suffused, were things
+  Like soul and nought beside.
+
+So much for the conditions of the poet's revery. He is swimming in the
+sea; above his face, only a few inches away, the beautiful butterfly is
+hovering. Its apparition makes him think of many things--perhaps first
+about the dangerous position of the butterfly, for if it should only touch
+the water, it is certain to be drowned. But it does not touch the water;
+and he begins to think how clumsy is the man who moves in water compared
+with the insect that moves in air, and how ugly a man is by comparison
+with the exquisite creature which the Greeks likened to the soul or ghost
+of the man. Thinking about ghosts leads him at once to the memory of a
+certain very dear ghost about which he forthwith begins to dream.
+
+  What if a certain soul
+  Which early slipped its sheath,
+  And has for its home the whole
+  Of heaven, thus look beneath,
+
+  Thus watch one who, in the world,
+  Both lives and likes life's way,
+  Nor wishes the wings unfurled
+  That sleep in the worm, they say?
+
+  But sometimes when the weather
+  Is blue, and warm waves tempt
+  To free oneself of tether,
+  And try a life exempt
+
+  From worldly noise and dust,
+  In the sphere which overbrims
+  With passion and thought,--why, just
+  Unable to fly, one swims!
+
+This is better understood by paraphrase: "I wonder if the soul of a
+certain person, who lately died, slipped so gently out of the hard sheath
+of the perishable body--I wonder if she does not look down from her home
+in the sky upon me, just as that little butterfly is doing at this moment.
+And I wonder if she laughs at the clumsiness of this poor swimmer, who
+finds it so much labour even to move through the water, while she can move
+through whatever she pleases by the simple act of wishing. And this man,
+strangely enough, does not want to die, and to become a ghost. He likes to
+live very much; he does not yet desire those soul-wings which are supposed
+to be growing within the shell of his body, just as the wings of the
+butterfly begin to grow in the chrysalis. He does not want to die at all.
+But sometimes he wants to get away from the struggle and the dust of the
+city, and to be alone with nature; and then, in order to be perfectly
+alone, he swims. He would like to fly much better; but he can not.
+However, swimming is very much like flying, only the element of water is
+thicker than air."
+
+However, more than the poet's words is suggested here. We are really told
+that what a fine mind desires is spiritual life, pure intellectual
+life--free from all the trammels of bodily necessity. Is not the swimmer
+really a symbol of the superior mind in its present condition? Your best
+swimmer can not live under the water, neither can he rise into the
+beautiful blue air. He can only keep his head in the air; his body must
+remain in the grosser element. Well, a great thinker and poet is ever
+thus--floating between the universe of spirit and the universe of matter.
+By his mind he belongs to the region of pure mind,--the ethereal state;
+but the hard necessity of living keeps him down in the world of sense and
+grossness and struggle. On the other hand the butterfly, freely moving in
+a finer element, better represents the state of spirit or soul.
+
+What is the use of being dissatisfied with nature? The best we can do is
+to enjoy in the imagination those things which it is not possible for us
+to enjoy in fact.
+
+  Emancipate through passion
+  And thought, with sea for sky,
+  We substitute, in a fashion,
+  For heaven--poetry:
+
+  Which sea, to all intent,
+  Gives flesh such noon-disport,
+  As a finer element
+  Affords the spirit-sort.
+
+Now you see where the poet's vision of a beautiful butterfly has been
+leading his imagination. The nearest approach which we can make to the act
+of flying, in the body, is the act of swimming. The nearest approach that
+we can make to the heavenly condition, mentally, is in poetry. Poetry,
+imagination, the pleasure of emotional expression--these represent our
+nearest approach to paradise. Poetry is the sea in which the soul of man
+can swim even as butterflies can swim in the air, or happy ghosts swim in
+the finer element of the infinite ether. The last three stanzas of the
+poem are very suggestive:
+
+  And meantime, yonder streak
+  Meets the horizon's verge;
+  That is the land, to seek
+  If we tire or dread the surge:
+
+  Land the solid and safe--
+  To welcome again (confess!)
+  When, high and dry, we chafe
+  The body, and don the dress.
+
+  Does she look, pity, wonder
+  At one who mimics flight,
+  Swims--heaven above, sea under,
+  Yet always earth in sight?
+
+"Streak," meaning an indistinct line, here refers to the coast far away,
+as it appears to the swimmer. It is just such a word as a good Japanese
+painter ought to appreciate in such a relation. In suggesting that the
+swimmer is glad to return to shore again and get warm, the poet is telling
+us that however much we may talk about the happiness of spirits in
+heaven--however much we may praise heaven in poetry--the truth is that we
+are very fond of this world, we like comfort, we like company, we like
+human love and human pleasures. There is a good deal of nonsense in
+pretending that we think heaven is a better place than the world to which
+we belong. Perhaps it is a better place, but, as a matter of fact, we do
+not know anything about it; and we should be frightened if we could go
+beyond a certain distance from the real world which we do know. As he
+tells us this, the poet begins again to think about the spirit of the dead
+woman. Is she happy? Is she looking at him--and pitying him as he swims,
+taking good care not to go too far away from the land? Or is she laughing
+at him, because in his secret thoughts he confesses that he likes to
+live--that he does not want to become a pure ghost at the present time?
+
+Evidently a butterfly was quite enough, not only to make Browning's mind
+think very seriously, but to make that mind teach us the truth and
+seriousness which may attach to very small things--incidents, happenings
+of daily life, in any hour and place. I believe that is the greatest
+English poem we have on the subject of the butterfly.
+
+The idea that a butterfly might be, not merely the symbol of the soul, but
+in very fact the spirit of a dead person, is somewhat foreign to English
+thought; and whatever exists in poetry on the subject must necessarily be
+quite new. The idea of a relation between insects, birds, or other living
+creatures, and the spirits of the dead, is enormously old in Oriental
+literature;--we find it in Sanskrit texts thousands of years ago. But the
+Western mind has not been accustomed to think of spiritual life as outside
+of man; and much of natural poetry has consequently remained undeveloped
+in Western countries. A strange little poem, "The White Moth," is an
+exception to the general rule that I have indicated; but I am almost
+certain that its author, A.T. Quiller-Couch, must have read Oriental
+books, or obtained his fancy from some Eastern source. As the knowledge of
+Indian literature becomes more general in England, we may expect to find
+poetry much influenced by Oriental ideas. At the present time, such a
+composition as this is quite a strange anomaly.
+
+  _If a leaf rustled, she would start:
+  And yet she died, a year ago.
+  How had so frail a thing the heart
+  To journey where she trembled so?
+  And do they turn and turn in fright,
+  Those little feet, in so much night?_
+
+  The light above the poet's head
+  Streamed on the page and on the cloth,
+  And twice and thrice there buffeted
+  On the black pane a white-winged moth:
+  'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside,
+  And "Open, open, open!" cried:
+
+  "I could not find the way to God;
+  There were too many flaming suns
+  For signposts, and the fearful road
+  Led over wastes where millions
+  Of tangled comets hissed and burned--
+  I was bewildered and I turned.
+
+  "Oh, it was easy then! I knew
+  Your window and no star beside.
+  Look up and take me back to you!"
+  --He rose and thrust the window wide.
+  'Twas but because his brain was hot
+  With rhyming; for he heard her not.
+
+  But poets polishing a phrase
+  Show anger over trivial things;
+  And as she blundered in the blaze
+  Towards him, on ecstatic wings,
+  He raised a hand and smote her dead;
+  Then wrote "_That I had died instead!_"
+
+The lover, or bereaved husband, is writing a poem of which a part is given
+in the first stanza--which is therefore put in italics. The action proper
+begins with the second stanza. The soul of the dead woman taps at the
+window in the shape of a night-butterfly or moth--imagining, perhaps, that
+she has still a voice and can make herself heard by the man that she
+loves. She tells the story of her wandering in space--privileged to pass
+to heaven, yet afraid of the journey. Now the subject of the poem which
+the lover happens to be writing inside the room is a memory of the dead
+woman--mourning for her, describing her in exquisite ways. He can not hear
+her at all; he does not hear even the beating of the little wings at the
+window, but he stands up and opens the window--because he happens to feel
+hot and tired. The moth thinks that he has heard her, that he knows; and
+she flies toward him in great delight. But he, thinking that it is only a
+troublesome insect, kills her with a blow of his hand; and then sits down
+to continue his poem with the words, "Oh, how I wish I could have died
+instead of that dear woman!" Altogether this is a queer poem in English
+literature, and I believe almost alone of its kind. But it is queer only
+because of its rarity of subject. As for construction, it is very good
+indeed.
+
+I do not know that it is necessary to quote any more poems upon
+butterflies or moths. There are several others; but the workmanship and
+the thought are not good enough or original enough to justify their use
+here as class texts. So I shall now turn to the subject of dragon-flies.
+Here we must again be very brief. References to dragon-flies are common
+throughout English poetry, but the references signify little more than a
+mere colourless mention of the passing of the insect. However, it so
+happens that the finest modern lines of pure description written about any
+insect, are about dragon-flies. And they also happen to be by Tennyson.
+Naturalists and men of science have greatly praised these lines, because
+of their truth to nature and the accuracy of observation which they show.
+You will find them in the poem entitled "The Two Voices."
+
+  To-day I saw the dragon-fly
+  Come from the wells where he did lie.
+
+  An inner impulse rent the veil
+  Of his old husk; from head to tail
+  Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
+
+  He dried his wings; like gauze they grew;
+  Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
+  A living rush of light he flew.
+
+There are very few real poems, however, upon the dragon-fly in English,
+and considering the extraordinary beauty and grace of the insect, this may
+appear strange to you. But I think that you can explain the strangeness at
+a later time. The silence of English poets on the subject of insects as
+compared with Japanese poets is due to general causes that we shall
+consider at the close of the lecture.
+
+Common flies could scarcely seem to be a subject for poetry--disgusting
+and annoying creatures as they are. But there are more poems about the
+house-fly than about the dragon-fly. Last year I quoted for you a
+remarkable and rather mystical composition by the poet Blake about
+accidentally killing a fly. Blake represents his own thoughts about the
+brevity of human life which had been aroused by the incident. It is
+charming little poem; but it does not describe the fly at all. I shall not
+quote it here again, because we shall have many other things to talk
+about; but I shall give you the text of a famous little composition by
+Oldys on the same topic. It has almost the simplicity of Blake,--and
+certainly something of the same kind of philosophy.
+
+  Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
+  Drink with me and drink as I;
+  Freely welcome to my cup,
+  Couldst thou sip and sip it up:
+  Make the most of life you may,
+  Life is short and wears away.
+
+  Both alike are mine and thine
+  Hastening quick to their decline:
+  Thine's a summer, mine's no more,
+  Though repeated to threescore.
+  Threescore summers, when they're gone,
+  Will appear as short as one!
+
+The suggestion is that, after all, time is only a very relative affair in
+the cosmic order of things. The life of the man of sixty years is not much
+longer than the life of the insect which lives but a few hours, days, or
+months. Had Oldys, who belongs to the eighteenth century, lived in our own
+time, he might have been able to write something very much more curious on
+this subject. It is now known that time, to the mind of an insect, must
+appear immensely longer than it appears to the mind of a man. It has been
+calculated that a mosquito or a gnat moves its wings between four and five
+hundred times a second. Now the scientific dissection of such an insect,
+under the microscope, justifies the opinion that the insect must be
+conscious of each beat of the wings--just as a man feels that he lifts his
+arm or bends his head every time that the action is performed. A man can
+not even imagine the consciousness of so short an interval of time as the
+five-hundredth part of one second. But insect consciousness can be aware
+of such intervals; and a single day of life might well appear to the gnat
+as long as the period of a month to a man. Indeed, we have reason to
+suppose that to even the shortest-lived insect life does not appear short
+at all; and that the ephemeral may actually, so far as felling is
+concerned, live as long as a man--although its birth and death does occur
+between the rising and the setting of the sun.
+
+We might suppose that bees would form a favourite subject of poetry,
+especially in countries where agriculture is practised upon such a scale
+as in England. But such is not really the case. Nearly every English poet
+makes some reference to bees, as Tennyson does in the famous couplet--
+
+  The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
+  And murmuring of innumerable bees.
+
+But the only really remarkable poem addressed to a bee is by the American
+philosopher Emerson. The poem in question can not be compared as to mere
+workmanship with some others which I have cited; but as to thinking, it is
+very interesting, and you must remember that the philosopher who writes
+poetry should be judged for his thought rather than for the measure of his
+verse. The whole is not equally good, nor is it short enough to quote
+entire; I shall only give the best parts.
+
+  Burly, dozing humble-bee,
+  Where thou art is clime for me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
+  Let me chase thy waving lines;
+  Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
+  Singing over shrubs and vines.
+
+  Insect lover of the sun,
+  Joy of thy dominion!
+  Sailor of the atmosphere;
+  Swimmer through the waves of air;
+  Voyager of light and noon;
+  Epicurean of June;
+  Wait, I prithee, till I come
+  Within earshot of thy hum,--
+  All without is martyrdom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Thou, in sunny solitudes,
+  Rover of the underwoods,
+  The green silence dost displace
+  With thy mellow, breezy bass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Aught unsavory or unclean
+  Hath my insect never seen;
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Wiser far than human seer,
+  Yellow-breeched philosopher!
+  Seeing only what is fair,
+  Sipping only what is sweet,
+  Thou dost mock at fate and care,
+  Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
+
+This is really the poetry of the bee--visiting only beautiful flowers, and
+sucking from them their perfumed juices--always healthy, happy, and
+surrounded by beautiful things. A great rover, a constant wanderer is the
+bee--visiting many different places, seeing many different things, but
+stopping only to enjoy what is beautiful to the sight and sweet to the
+taste. Now Emerson tells us that a wise man should act like the bee--never
+stopping to look at what is bad, or what is morally ugly, but seeking only
+what is beautiful and nourishing for the mind. It is a very fine thought;
+and the manner of expressing it is greatly helped by Emerson's use of
+curious and forcible words--such as "burly," "zigzag," and the famous
+expression "yellow-breeched philosopher"--which has passed almost into an
+American household phrase. The allusion of course is to the thighs of the
+bee, covered with the yellow pollen of flowers so as to make them seem
+covered with yellow breeches, or trousers reaching only to the knees.
+
+I do not of course include in the lecture such child songs about insects
+as that famous one beginning with the words, "How doth the little busy bee
+improve each shining hour." This is no doubt didactically very good; but I
+wish to offer you only examples of really fine poetry on the topic.
+Therefore leaving the subject of bees for the time, let us turn to the
+subject of musical insects--the singers of the fields and
+woods--grasshoppers and crickets.
+
+In Japanese poetry there are thousands of verses upon such insects.
+Therefore it seems very strange that we have scarcely anything on the
+subject in English. And the little that we do have is best represented by
+the poem of Keats on the night cricket. The reference is probably to what
+we call in England the hearth cricket, an insect which hides in houses,
+making itself at home in some chink of the brickwork or stonework about a
+fireplace, for it loves the warmth. I suppose that the small number of
+poems in English about crickets can be partly explained by the scarcity of
+night singers. Only the house cricket seems to be very well known. But on
+the other hand, we can not so well explain the rarity of composition in
+regard to the day-singers--the grasshoppers and locusts which can be
+heard, though somewhat faintly, in any English country place after sunset
+during the warm season. Another queer thing is that the example set by
+Keats has not been imitated or at least followed even up to the present
+time.
+
+  The poetry of earth is never dead:
+  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, etc.
+
+In this charming composition you will have noticed the word "stove"; but
+you must remember that this is not a stove as we understand the term now,
+and signifies only an old-fashioned fireplace of brick or tile. In Keats's
+day there were no iron stoves. Another word which I want to notice is the
+word "poetry" in the first line. By the poetry of nature the poet means
+the voices of nature--the musical sounds made by its idle life in woods
+and fields. So the word "poetry" here has especially the meaning of song,
+and corresponds very closely to the Japanese word which signifies either
+poem or song, but perhaps more especially the latter. The general meaning
+of the sonnet is that at no time, either in winter or in summer, is nature
+silent. When the birds do not sing, the grasshoppers make music for us;
+and when the cold has killed or banished all other life, then the house
+cricket begins with its thin sweet song to make us think of the dead
+voices of the summer.
+
+There is not much else of note about the grasshopper and the cricket in
+the works of the great English poets. But perhaps you do not know that
+Tennyson in his youth took up the subject and made a long poem upon the
+grasshopper, but suppressed it after the edition of 1842. He did not think
+it good enough to rank with his other work. But a few months ago the poems
+which Tennyson suppressed in the final edition of his works have been
+published and carefully edited by an eminent scholar, and among these
+poems we find "The Grasshopper." I will quote some of this poem, because
+it is beautiful, and because the fact of its suppression will serve to
+show you how very exact and careful Tennyson was to preserve only the very
+best things that he wrote.
+
+  Voice of the summer wind,
+  Joy of the summer plain,
+  Life of the summer hours,
+  Carol clearly, bound along,
+  No Tithon thou as poets feign
+  (Shame fall 'em, they are deaf and blind),
+  But an insect lithe and strong
+  Bowing the seeded summer flowers.
+  Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel,
+  Vaulting on thine airy feet
+  Clap thy shielded sides and carol,
+  Carol clearly, chirrups sweet.
+  Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete;
+    Armed cap-a-pie,
+    Full fair to see;
+    Unknowing fear,
+    Undreading loss,
+    A gallant cavalier,
+    _Sans peur et sans reproche_.
+    In sunlight and in shadow,
+    The Bayard of the meadow.
+
+The reference to Tithonus is a reference of course to a subject afterwards
+beautifully elaborated in another poem by Tennyson, the great poem of
+"Tithonus." The Bayard here referred to was the great French model of
+perfect chivalry, and is sometimes called the last of the feudal knights.
+He was said to be without fear and without blame. You may remember that he
+was killed by a ball from a gun--it was soon after the use of artillery in
+war had been introduced; and his dying words were to the effect that he
+feared there was now an end of great deeds, because men had begun to fight
+from a distance with machines instead of fighting in the old knightly and
+noble way with sword and spear. The grasshopper, covered with green plates
+and bearing so many little sharp spines upon its long limbs, seems to have
+suggested to Tennyson the idea of a fairy knight in green armour.
+
+As I said before, England is poor in singing insects, while America is
+rich in them--almost, perhaps, as rich as Japan, although you will not
+find as many different kinds of singing insects in any one state or
+district. The singing insects of America are peculiar to particular
+localities. But the Eastern states have perhaps the most curious insect of
+this kind. It is called the Katydid. This name is spelt either Katydid, or
+Catydid--though the former spelling is preferable. Katy, or Katie, is the
+abbreviation of the name Catherine; very few girls are called by the full
+name Catherine, also spelt Katherine; because the name is long and
+unmusical, their friends address them usually as Katy, and their
+acquaintances, as Kate. Well, the insect of which I am speaking, a kind of
+_semi_, makes a sound resembling the sound of the words "Katie did!" Hence
+the name--one of the few corresponding to the names given to the Japanese
+_semi_, such as _tsuku-tsuku-boshi_, or _minmin-semi_. The most
+interesting composition upon this cicada is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, but
+it is of the lighter sort of verse, with a touch of humour in it. I shall
+quote a few verses only, as the piece contains some allusions that would
+require explanation at considerable length.
+
+  I love to hear thine earnest voice,
+    Wherever thou art hid,
+  Thou testy little dogmatist,
+    Thou pretty Katydid!
+  Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,--
+    Old gentlefolks are they,--
+  Thou say'st an undisputed thing
+    In such a solemn way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Oh tell me where did Katy live,
+    And what did Katy do?
+  And was she very fair and young,
+    And yet so wicked, too?
+  Did Katy love a naughty man,
+    Or kiss more cheeks than one?
+  I warrant Katy did no more
+    Than many a Kate has done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Ah, no! The living oak shall crash,
+    That stood for ages still,
+  The rock shall rend its mossy base
+    And thunder down the hill,
+  Before the little Katydid
+    Shall add one word, to tell
+  The mystic story of the maid
+    Whose name she knows so well.
+
+The word "testy" may be a little unfamiliar to some of you; it is a good
+old-fashioned English term for "cross," "irritable." The reference to the
+"old gentlefolks" implies the well-known fact that in argument old persons
+are inclined to be much more obstinate than young people. And there is
+also a hint in the poem of the tendency among old ladies to blame the
+conduct of young girls even more severely than may be necessary. There is
+nothing else to recommend the poem except its wit and the curiousness of
+the subject. There are several other verses about the same creature, by
+different American poets; but none of them is quite so good as the
+composition of Holmes. However, I may cite a few verses from one of the
+earlier American poets, Philip Freneau, who flourished in the eighteenth
+century and the early part of the nineteenth. He long anticipated the
+fancy of Holmes; but he spells the word Catydid.
+
+  In a branch of willow hid
+  Sings the evening Catydid:
+  From the lofty locust bough
+  Feeding on a drop of dew,
+  In her suit of green arrayed
+  Hear her singing in the shade--
+    Catydid, Catydid, Catydid!
+
+  While upon a leaf you tread,
+  Or repose your little head
+  On your sheet of shadows laid,
+  All the day you nothing said;
+  Half the night your cheery tongue
+  Revelled out its little song,--
+    Nothing else but Catydid.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Tell me, what did Caty do?
+  Did she mean to trouble you?
+  Why was Caty not forbid
+  To trouble little Catydid?
+  Wrong, indeed, at you to fling,
+  Hurting no one while you sing,--
+    Catydid! Catydid! Catydid!
+
+To Dr. Holmes the voice of the cicada seemed like the voice of an old
+obstinate woman, an old prude, accusing a young girl of some fault,--but
+to Freneau the cry of the little creature seemed rather to be like the cry
+of a little child complaining--a little girl, perhaps, complaining that
+somebody had been throwing stones at her, or had hurt her in some way.
+And, of course, the unfinished character of the phrase allows equally well
+either supposition.
+
+Before going back to more serious poetry, I want--while we are speaking of
+American poets--to make one reference to the ironical or satirical poetry
+which insects have inspired in some minds, taking for example the poem by
+Charlotte Perkins Stetson about a butterfly. This author is rather a
+person of note, being a prominent figure in educational reforms and the
+author of a volume of poems of a remarkably strong kind in the didactic
+sense. In other words, she is especially a moral poet; and unless moral
+poetry be really very well executed, it is scarcely worth while classing
+it as literature. I think, however, that the symbolism in the following
+verses will interest you--especially when we comment upon them. The
+composition from which they are taken is entitled "A Conservative."
+
+The poet, walking in the garden one morning, sees a butterfly, very
+unhappy, and gifted with power to express the reason of its unhappiness.
+The butterfly says, complaining of its wings,
+
+  "My legs are thin and few
+  Where once I had a swarm!
+  Soft fuzzy fur--a joy to view--
+  Once kept my body warm,
+  Before these flapping wing-things grew,
+  To hamper and deform!"
+
+  At that outrageous bug I shot
+  The fury of mine eye;
+  Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
+  In rage and anger high,
+  "You ignominious idiot!
+  Those wings are made to fly!"
+
+  "I do not want to fly," said he,
+  "I only want to squirm!"
+  And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
+  But still his voice was firm:
+  "I do not want to be a fly!
+  I want to be a worm!"
+
+  O yesterday of unknown lack!
+  To-day of unknown bliss!
+  I left my fool in red and black,
+  The last I saw was this,--
+  The creature madly climbing back
+  Into his chrysalis.
+
+Of course the wings here represent the powers of the mind--knowledge,
+reason, will. Men ought to use these in order to reach still nobler and
+higher states of life. But there are men who refuse to use their best
+faculties for this end. Such men are like butterflies who do not want to
+take the trouble to fly, but prefer the former condition of the
+caterpillar which does nothing but eat and sleep. As applied to certain
+forms of conservatism the satire is strong.
+
+Something may now be said as to poems about spiders. But let me remind you
+that a spider is not an insect. Scientifically it has no relation to the
+great family of true insects; it belongs to the very distinct family of
+the arthropoda or "joint-footed" animals. But as it is still popularly
+called an insect in most European countries, we may be excused for
+including it in the subject of the present lecture. I suppose you know
+that one of the scientific names for this whole class of creatures is
+Arachnida,--a name derived from the Greek name Arachne. The story of
+Arachne is interesting, and everybody studying natural history ought to
+know it. Arachne was a young girl, according to the Greek story, who was
+very skilful at weaving. She wove cloths of many different colours and
+beautiful patterns, and everybody admired her work. This made her vain--so
+vain that at last she said that even the goddess of weaving could not
+weave better than she. Immediately after she had said that, the terrible
+goddess herself--Pallas Athena--entered the room. Pallas Athena was not
+only the goddess of wisdom, you know, but especially the goddess of young
+girls, presiding over the chastity, the filial piety, and the domestic
+occupations of virgins; and she was very angry at the conceit of this
+girl. So she said to her, "You have boasted that you can weave as well as
+I can; now let me see you weave!" So Arachne was obliged to sit down at
+her loom and weave in the presence of the goddess; and the goddess also
+wove, far surpassing the weaving of Arachne. When the weaving was done,
+the goddess asked the girl, "Now see! which is the better, my work or
+yours?" And Arachne was obliged to confess that she had been defeated and
+put to shame. But the goddess was not thoroughly satisfied; to punish
+Arachne, she touched her lightly with the distaff, saying, "Spin forever!"
+and thereupon Arachne was changed into a spider, which forever spins and
+weaves perishable films of perishable shiny thread. Poetically we still
+may call a spider Arachne.
+
+I have here a little poem of a touching character entitled "Arachne," by
+Rose Terry Cooke,--one of the symbolic poems which are becoming so
+numerous in these days of newer and deeper philosophy. I think that you
+will like it: a spinster, that is, a maiden passed the age of girlhood, is
+the speaker.
+
+  I watch her in the corner there,
+  As, restless, bold, and unafraid,
+  She slips and floats along the air
+  Till all her subtile house is made.
+
+  Her home, her bed, her daily food,
+  All from that hidden store she draws;
+  She fashions it and knows it good,
+  By instinct's strong and sacred laws.
+
+  No tenuous threads to weave her nest,
+  She seeks and gathers there or here;
+  But spins it from her faithful breast,
+  Renewing still, till leaves are sere.
+
+  Then, worn with toil, and tired of life,
+  In vain her shining traps are set.
+  Her frost hath hushed the insect strife
+  And gilded flies her charm forget.
+
+  But swinging in the snares she spun,
+  She sways to every wintry wind:
+  Her joy, her toil, her errand done,
+  Her corse the sport of storms unkind.
+
+The symbolism of these verses will appear to you more significant when I
+tell you that it refers especially to conditions in New England in the
+present period. The finest American population--perhaps the finest
+Anglo-Saxons ever produced--were the New Englanders of the early part of
+the century. But with the growth of the new century, the men found
+themselves attracted elsewhere, especially westward; their shrewdness,
+their energies, their inventiveness, were needed in newer regions. And
+they wandered away by thousands and thousands, never to come back again,
+and leaving the women behind them. Gradually the place of these men was
+taken by immigrants of inferior development--but the New England women had
+nothing to hope for from these strangers. The bravest of them also went
+away to other states; but myriads who could not go were condemned by
+circumstances to stay and earn their living by hard work without any
+prospect of happy marriage. The difficulty which a girl of culture may
+experience in trying to live by the work of her hands in New England is
+something not easily imagined. But it is getting to be the same in most
+Western countries. Such a girl is watching a spider weaving in the corner
+of the same room where she herself is weaving; and she thinks, "Am I not
+like that spider, obliged to supply my every need by the work of my own
+hands, without sympathy, without friends? The spider will spin and catch
+flies until the autumn comes; then she will die. Perhaps I too must
+continue to spin until the autumn of my own life--until I become too old
+to work hard, and die of cold and of exhaustion."
+
+  Poor sister of the spinster clan!
+  I too from out my store within
+  My daily life and living plan,
+  My home, my rest, my pleasure spin.
+
+  I know thy heart when heartless hands
+  Sweep all that hard-earned web away;
+  Destroy its pearled and glittering bands,
+  And leave thee homeless by the way.
+
+  I know thy peace when all is done.
+  Each anchored thread, each tiny knot,
+  Soft shining in the autumn sun;
+  A sheltered, silent, tranquil lot.
+
+  I know what thou hast never known,--
+  Sad presage to a soul allowed--
+  That not for life I spin, alone,
+  But day by day I spin my shroud.
+
+The reference to the sweeping away of the spider's web, of course, implies
+the pain often caused to such hardworking girls by the meanness of men who
+employ them only to cheat them--shopkeepers or manufacturers who take
+their work without justly paying for it, and who criticize it as bad in
+order to force the owner to accept less money than it is worth. Again a
+reference may be intended to the destruction of the home by some legal
+trick--some unscrupulous method of cheating the daughter out of the
+property bequeathed to her by her parents.
+
+Notice a few pretty words here. The "pearled" as applied to the spider's
+thread gives an intimation of the effect produced by dew on the thread,
+but there is also the suggestion of tears upon the thread work woven by
+the hands of the girl. The participle "anchored" is very pretty in its use
+here as an adjective, because this word is now especially used for
+rope-fastening, whether the rope be steel or hemp; and particularly for
+the fastening of the cables of a bridge. The last stanza might be
+paraphrased thus: "Sister Spider, I know more than you--and that knowledge
+makes me unhappy. You do not know, when you are spinning your little web,
+that you are really weaving your own shroud. But I know this, my work is
+slowly but surely killing me. And I know it because I have a soul--at
+least a mind made otherwise than yours."
+
+The use of the word "soul" in the last stanza of this poem, brings me back
+to the question put forth in an earlier part of the lecture--why European
+poets, during the last two thousand years, have written so little upon the
+subject of insects? Three thousand, four thousand years ago, the most
+beautiful Greek poetry--poetry more perfect than anything of English
+poetry--was written upon insects. In old Japanese literature poems upon
+insects are to be found by thousands. What is the signification of the
+great modern silence in Western countries upon this delightful topic? I
+believe that Christianity, as dogma, accounts for the long silence. The
+opinions of the early Church refused soul, ghost, intelligence of any sort
+to other creatures than man. All animals were considered as automata--that
+is, as self-acting machines, moved by a something called instinct, for
+want of a better name. To talk about the souls of animals or the spirits
+of animals would have been very dangerous in the Middle Ages, when the
+Church had supreme power; it would indeed have been to risk or to invite
+an accusation of witchcraft, for demons were then thought to take the
+shape of animals at certain times. To discuss the _mind_ of an animal
+would have been for the Christian faith to throw doubt upon the existence
+of human souls as taught by the Church; for if you grant that animals are
+able to think, then you must acknowledge that man is able to think without
+a soul, or you must acknowledge that the soul is not the essential
+principle of thought and action. Until after the time of Descartes, who
+later argued philosophically that animals were only machines, it was
+scarcely possible to argue rationally about the matter in Europe.
+
+Nevertheless, we shall soon perceive that this explanation will not cover
+all the facts. You will naturally ask how it happens that, if the question
+be a question of animal souls, birds, horses, dogs, cats, and many other
+animals have been made the subject of Western poems from ancient times.
+The silence is only upon the subject of insects. And, again, Christianity
+has one saint--the most beautiful character in all Christian
+hagiography--who thought of all nature in a manner that, at first sight,
+strangely resembles Buddhism. This saint was Francis of Assisi, born in
+the latter part of the twelfth century, so that he may be said to belong
+to the very heart of the Middle Ages,--the most superstitious epoch of
+Christianity. Now this saint used to talk to trees and stones as if they
+were animated beings. He addressed the sun as "my brother sun"; and he
+spoke of the moon as his sister. He preached not only to human beings, but
+also to the birds and the fishes; and he made a great many poems on these
+subjects, full of a strange and childish beauty. For example, his sermon
+to the doves, beginning, "My little sisters, the doves," in which he
+reminds them that their form is the emblem or symbol of the Holy Ghost, is
+a beautiful poem; and has been, with many others, translated into nearly
+all modern languages. But observe that neither St. Francis nor any other
+saint has anything to say on the subject of insects.
+
+Perhaps we must go back further than Christianity to guess the meaning of
+these distinctions. Among the ancient races of Asia, where the Jewish
+faith arose, there were strange and sinister beliefs about insects--old
+Assyrian superstitions, old Babylonian beliefs. Insects seemed to those
+early peoples very mysterious creatures (which they really are); and it
+appears to have been thought that they had a close relation to the world
+of demons and evil spirits. I suppose you know that the name of one of
+their gods, Beelzebub, signifies the Lord of Flies. The Jews, as is shown
+by their Talmudic literature, inherited some of these ideas; and it is
+quite probable that they were passed on to the days of Christianity.
+Again, in the early times of Christianity in Northern Africa the Church
+had to fight against superstitions of an equally strange sort derived from
+old Egyptian beliefs. Among the Egyptians, certain insects were sacred and
+became symbols of divinity,--such as the beetle. Now I imagine that for
+these reasons the subject of insects became at an early time a subject
+which Christianity thought dangerous, and that thereafter a kind of
+hostile opinion prevailed regarding any literature upon this topic.
+
+However, to-day things are very different. With the development of
+scientific studies--especially of microscopic study--it has been found
+that insects, far from being the lowliest of creatures, are the most
+highly organized of all beings; that their special senses are incomparably
+superior to our own; and that in natural history, from the evolutional
+standpoint, they have to be given first place. This of course renders it
+impossible any longer to consider the insect as a trifling subject.
+Moreover, the new philosophy is teaching the thinking classes in all
+Western countries the great truth of the unity of life. With the
+recognition of such unity, an insect must interest the philosophers--even
+the man of ordinary culture--quite as much as the bird or any other
+animal.
+
+Nearly all the poems which I have quoted to you have been poems of very
+modern date--from which we may infer that interest in the subject of
+insects has been developing of late years only. In this connection it is
+interesting to note that a very religious poet, Whittier, gave us in the
+last days of his life a poem upon ants. This would have seemed strange
+enough in a former age; it does not seem strange to-day, and it is
+beautiful. The subject is taken from old Jewish literature.
+
+
+KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS
+
+  Out from Jerusalem
+    The King rode with his great
+    War chiefs and lords of state,
+  And Sheba's queen with them;
+
+  Comely, but black withal,
+    To whom, perchance, belongs
+    That wondrous Song of Songs,
+  Sensuous and mystical,
+
+  Whereto devout souls turn
+    In fond, ecstatic dream,
+    And through its earth-born theme
+  The Love of Loves discern.
+
+  Proud in the Syrian sun,
+    In gold and purple sheen,
+    The dusky Ethiop queen
+  Smiled on King Solomon.
+
+  Wisest of men, he knew
+    The languages of all
+    The creatures great or small
+  That trod the earth or flew.
+
+  Across an ant-hill led
+    The king's path, and he heard
+    Its small folk, and their word
+  He thus interpreted:
+
+  "Here comes the king men greet
+    As wise and good and just,
+    To crush us in the dust
+  Under his heedless feet."
+
+The king, understanding the language of insects, turns to the queen and
+explains to her what the ants have just said. She advises him to pay no
+attention to the sarcasm of the ants--how dare such vile creatures speak
+thus about a king! But Solomon thinks otherwise:
+
+  "Nay," Solomon replied,
+    "The wise and strong should seek
+    The welfare of the weak,"
+  And turned his horse aside.
+
+  His train, with quick alarm,
+    Curved with their leader round
+    The ant-hill's peopled mound,
+  And left it free from harm.
+
+  The jewelled head bent low;
+    "Oh, king!" she said, "henceforth
+    The secret of thy worth
+  And wisdom well I know.
+
+  "Happy must be the State
+    Whose ruler heedeth more
+    The murmurs of the poor
+  Than flatteries of the great."
+
+The reference to the Song of Songs--also the Song of Solomon and Canticle
+of Canticles--may require a little explanation. The line "Comely but black
+withal," is borrowed from a verse of this song--"I am black but beautiful,
+oh, ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of
+Solomon." In another part of the song the reason of this blackness is
+given: "I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me." From which we
+can see that the word black only means dark, brown, tanned by the sun.
+Perhaps you do not know that as late as the middle of the eighteenth
+century it was still the custom in England to speak of a person with black
+hair and eyes as "a black man"--a custom which Charles Lamb had reason to
+complain of even at a later day. The tents referred to in the text were
+probably tents made of camel-skin, such as the Arabs still make, and the
+colour of these is not black but brown. Whether Solomon wrote the
+so-called song or not we do not know; but the poet refers to a legend that
+it was written in praise of the beauty of the dark queen who came from
+Sheba to visit the wisest man of the world. Such is not, however, the
+opinion of modern scholars. The composition is really dramatic, although
+thrown into lyrical form, and as arranged by Renan and others it becomes a
+beautiful little play, of which each act is a monologue. "Sensuous" the
+poet correctly calls it; for it is a form of praise of woman's beauty in
+all its details, as appears in such famous verses as these: "How beautiful
+are thy feet in shoes, O prince's daughter; the joints of thy thighs are
+like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy two breasts
+are like two young roes that are twins which feed among the lilies." But
+Christianity, instead of dismissing this part of the Bible, interpreted
+the song mystically--insisting that the woman described meant the Church,
+and the lover, Christ. Of course only very pious people continue to
+believe this; even the good Whittier preferred the legend that it was
+written about the Queen of Sheba.
+
+I suppose that I ought to end this lecture upon insect poetry by some
+quotation to which a moral or philosophical meaning can be attached. I
+shall end it therefore with a quotation from the poet Gray. The poetry of
+insects may be said to have first appeared in English literature during
+the second half of the eighteenth century, so that it is only, at the
+most, one hundred and fifty years old. But the first really fine poem of
+the eighteenth century relating to the subject is quite as good as
+anything since composed by Englishmen upon insect life in general. Perhaps
+Gray referred especially to what we call May-flies--those delicate ghostly
+insects which hover above water surfaces in fine weather, but which die on
+the same day that they are born. He does not specify May-flies, however,
+and we may consider the moral of the poem quite apart from any particular
+kind of insect. You will find this reference in the piece entitled "Ode on
+the Spring," in the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas.
+
+  Still is the toiling hand of care:
+    The panting herds repose:
+  Yet hark, how through the peopled air
+   The busy murmur glows!
+  The insect youth are on the wing,
+  Eager to taste the honied spring,
+  And float amid the liquid noon:
+  Some lightly o'er the current skim,
+  Some show their gaily-gilded trim
+    Quick-glancing to the sun.
+
+  To Contemplation's sober eye
+    Such is the race of man:
+  And they that creep, and they that fly,
+    Shall end where they began.
+  Alike the Busy and the Gay
+  But flutter through life's little day,
+  In fortune's varying colours dressed:
+  Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
+  Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
+    They leave, in dust to rest.
+
+  Methinks I hear in accents low
+    The sportive kind reply:
+  Poor moralist! and what art thou?
+    A solitary fly!
+  Thy joys no glittering female meets,
+  No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
+  No painted plumage to display:
+  On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
+  Thy sun is set; thy spring is gone--
+    We frolic, while 'tis May.
+
+The poet Gray was never married, and the last stanza which I have quoted
+refers jocosely to himself. It is an artistic device to set off the moral
+by a little mockery, so that it may not appear too melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SOME FRENCH POEMS ABOUT INSECTS
+
+
+Last year I gave a lecture on the subject of English poems about insects,
+with some reference to the old Greek poems on the same subject. But I did
+not then have an opportunity to make any reference to French poems upon
+the same subject, and I think that it would be a pity not to give you a
+few examples.
+
+Just as in the case of English poems about insects, nearly all the French
+literature upon this subject is new. Insect poetry belongs to the newer
+and larger age of thought, to the age that begins to perceive the great
+truth of the unity of life. We no longer find, even in natural histories,
+the insect treated as a mere machine and unthinking organism; on the
+contrary its habits, its customs and its manifestation both of
+intelligence and instinct are being very carefully studied in these times,
+and a certain sympathy, as well as a certain feeling of respect or
+admiration, may be found in the scientific treatises of the greatest men
+who write about insect life. So, naturally, Europe is slowly returning to
+the poetical standpoint of the old Greeks in this respect. It is not
+improbable that keeping caged insects as pets may again become a Western
+custom, as it was in Greek times, when cages were made of rushes or straw
+for the little creatures. I suppose you have heard that the Japanese
+custom is very likely to become a fashion in America. If that should
+really happen, the fact would certainly have an effect upon poetry. I
+think that it is very likely to happen.
+
+The French poets who have written pretty things about insects are nearly
+all poets of our own times. Some of them treat the subject from the old
+Greek standpoint--indeed the beautiful poem of Heredia upon the tomb of a
+grasshopper is perfectly Greek, and reads almost like a translation from
+the Greek. Other poets try to express the romance of insects in the form
+of a monologue, full of the thought of our own age. Others again touch the
+subject of insects only in connection with the subject of love. I will
+give one example of each method, keeping the best piece for the last, and
+beginning with a pretty fancy about a dragonfly.
+
+
+MA LIBELLULE
+
+  En te voyant, toute mignonne,
+  Blanche dans ta robe d'azure,
+  Je pensais a quelque madone
+  Drapee en un pen de ciel pur.
+
+  Je songeais a ces belles saintes
+  Que l'on voyait au temps jadis
+  Sourire sur les vitres peintes,
+  Montrant d'un doigt le paradis:
+
+  Et j'aurais voulu, loin du monde
+  Qui passait frivole entre nous,
+  Dans quelque retraite profonde
+  T'adorer seul a deux genoux.
+
+This first part of the poem is addressed of course to a beautiful child,
+some girl between the age of childhood and womanhood:
+
+"Beholding thee, Oh darling one, all white in thy azure dress, I thought
+of some figure of the Madonna robed in a shred of pure blue sky.
+
+"I dreamed of those beautiful figures of saints whom one used to see in
+olden times smiling in the stained glass of church windows, and pointing
+upward to Paradise.
+
+"And I could have wished to adore you alone upon my bended knees in some
+far hidden retreat, away from the frivolous world that passed between us."
+
+This little bit of ecstasy over the beauty and purity of a child is
+pretty, but not particularly original. However, it is only an
+introduction. Now comes the pretty part of the poem:
+
+  Soudain un caprice bizarre
+  Change la scene et le decor,
+  Et mon esprit au loin s'egare
+  Sur des grands pres d'azure et d'or
+
+  Ou, pres de ruisseaux muscules
+  Gazouillants comme des oiseaux,
+  Se poursuivent les libellules,
+  Ces fleurs vivantes des roseaux.
+
+  Enfant, n'es tu pas l'une d'elles
+  Qui me poursuit pour consoler?
+  Vainement tu caches tes ailes;
+  Tu marches, mais tu sais voler.
+
+  Petite fee au bleu corsage,
+  Que j'ai connu des mon berceau,
+  En revoyant ton doux visage,
+  Je pense aux joncs de mon ruisseau!
+
+  Veux-tu qu'en amoureux fideles
+  Nous revenions dans ces pres verts?
+  Libellule, reprends tes ailes;
+  Moi, je brulerai tous mes vers!
+
+  Et nous irons, sous la lumiere,
+  D'un ciel plus frais et plus leger
+  Chacun dans sa forme premiere,
+  Moi courir, et toi voltiger.
+
+"Suddenly a strange fancy changes for me the scene and the scenery; and my
+mind wanders far away over great meadows of azure and gold.
+
+"Where, hard by tiny streams that murmur with a sound like voices of
+little birds, the dragon-flies, those living flowers of the reeds, chase
+each other at play.
+
+"Child, art thou not one of those dragon-flies, following after me to
+console me? Ah, it is in vain that thou tryest to hide thy wings; thou
+dost walk, indeed, but well thou knowest how to fly!
+
+"O little fairy with the blue corsage whom I knew even from the time I was
+a baby in the cradle; seeing again thy sweet face, I think of the rushes
+that border the little stream of my native village!
+
+"Dost thou not wish that even now as faithful lovers we return to those
+green fields? O dragon-fly, take thy wings again, and I--I will burn all
+my poetry,
+
+"And we shall go back, under the light of the sky more fresh and pure than
+this, each of us in the original form--I to run about, and thou to hover
+in the air as of yore."
+
+The sight of a child's face has revived for the poet very suddenly and
+vividly, the recollection of the village home, the green fields of
+childhood, the little stream where he used to play with the same little
+girl, sometimes running after the dragon-fly. And now the queer fancy
+comes to him that she herself is so like a dragon-fly--so light, graceful,
+spiritual! Perhaps really she is a dragon-fly following him into the great
+city, where he struggles to live as a poet, just in order to console him.
+She hides her wings, but that is only to prevent other people knowing. Why
+not return once more to the home of childhood, back to the green fields
+and the sun? "Little dragon-fly," he says to her, "let us go back! do you
+return to your beautiful summer shape, be a dragon-fly again, expand your
+wings of gauze; and I shall stop trying to write poetry. I shall burn my
+verses; I shall go back to the streams where we played as children; I
+shall run about again with the joy of a child, and with you beautifully
+flitting hither and thither as a dragon-fly."
+
+Victor Hugo also has a little poem about a dragon-fly, symbolic only, but
+quite pretty. It is entitled "La Demoiselle"; and the other poem was
+entitled, as you remember, "Ma Libellule." Both words mean a dragon-fly,
+but not the same kind of dragon-fly. The French word "demoiselle," which
+might be adequately rendered into Japanese by the term _ojosan_, refers
+only to those exquisitely slender, graceful, slow-flitting dragon-flies
+known to the scientist by the name of Calopteryx. Of course you know the
+difference by sight, and the reason of the French name will be poetically
+apparent to you.
+
+  Quand la demoiselle doree
+  S'envole au depart des hivers,
+  Souvent sa robe diapree,
+  Souvent son aile est dechiree
+  Aux mille dards des buissons verts.
+
+  Ainsi, jeunesse vive et frele,
+  Qui, t'egarant de tous cotes,
+  Voles ou ton instinct t'appele,
+  Souvent tu dechires ton aile
+  Aux epines des voluptes.
+
+"When, at the departure of winter, the gilded dragon-fly begins to soar,
+often her many-coloured robe, often her wing, is torn by the thousand
+thorns of the verdant shrubs.
+
+"Even so, O frail and joyous Youth, who, wandering hither and thither, in
+every direction, flyest wherever thy instinct calls thee--even so thou
+dost often tear thy wings upon the thorns of pleasure."
+
+You must understand that pleasure is compared to a rose-bush, whose
+beautiful and fragrant flowers attract the insects, but whose thorns are
+dangerous to the visitors. However, Victor Hugo does not use the word for
+rose-bush, for obvious reasons; nor does he qualify the plants which are
+said to tear the wings of the dragon-fly. I need hardly tell you that the
+comparison would not hold good in reference to the attraction of flowers,
+because dragon-flies do not care in the least about flowers, and if they
+happen to tear their wings among thorn bushes, it is much more likely to
+be in their attempt to capture and devour other insects. The merit of the
+poem is chiefly in its music and colour; as natural history it would not
+bear criticism. The most beautiful modern French poem about insects,
+beautiful because of its classical perfection, is I think a sonnet by
+Heredia, entitled "Epigramme Funeraire"--that is to say, "Inscription for
+a Tombstone." This is an exact imitation of Greek sentiment and
+expression, carefully studied after the poets of the anthology. Several
+such Greek poems are extant, recounting how children mourned for pet
+insects which had died in spite of all their care. The most celebrated one
+among these I quoted in a former lecture--the poem about the little Greek
+girl Myro who made a tomb for her grasshopper and cried over it. Heredia
+has very well copied the Greek feeling in this fine sonnet:
+
+  Ici git, Etranger, la verte sauterelle
+  Que durant deux saisons nourrit la jeune Helle,
+  Et dont l'aile vibrant sous le pied dentele.
+  Bruissait dans le pin, le cytise, ou l'airelle.
+
+  Elle s'est tue, helas! la lyre naturelle,
+  La muse des guerets, des sillons et du ble;
+  De peur que son leger sommeil ne soit trouble,
+  Ah, passe vite, ami, ne pese point sur elle.
+
+  C'est la. Blanche, au milieu d'une touffe de thym,
+  Sa pierre funeraire est fraichement posee.
+  Que d'hommes n'ont pas eu ce supreme destin!
+
+  Des larmes d'un enfant la tombe est arrosee,
+  Et l'Aurore pieuse y fait chaque matin
+  Une libation de gouttes de rosee.
+
+"Stranger, here reposes the green grasshopper that the young girl Helle
+cared for during two seasons,--the grasshopper whose wings, vibrating
+under the strokes of its serrated feet, used to resound in the pine, the
+trefoil and the whortleberry.
+
+"She is silent now, alas! that natural lyre, muse of the unsown fields, of
+the furrows, and of the wheat. Lest her light sleep should be disturbed,
+ah! pass quickly, friend! do not be heavy upon her.
+
+"It is there. All white, in the midst of a tuft of thyme, her funeral
+monument is placed, in cool shadow; how many men have not been able to
+have this supremely happy end!
+
+"By the tears of a child the insect's tomb is watered; and the pious
+goddess of dawn each morning there makes a libation of drops of dew."
+
+This reads very imperfectly in a hasty translation; the original charm is
+due to the perfect art of the form. But the whole thing, as I have said
+before, is really Greek, and based upon a close study of several little
+Greek poems on the same kind of subject. Little Greek girls thousands of
+years ago used to keep singing insects as pets, every day feeding them
+with slices of leek and with fresh water, putting in their little cages
+sprigs of the plants which they liked. The sorrow of the child for the
+inevitable death of her insect pets at the approach of winter, seems to
+have inspired many Greek poets. With all tenderness, the child would make
+a small grave for the insect, bury it solemnly, and put a little white
+stone above the place to imitate a grave-stone. But of course she would
+want an inscription for this tombstone--perhaps would ask some of her
+grown-up friends to compose one for her. Sometimes the grown-up friend
+might be a poet, in which case he would compose an epitaph for all time.
+
+I suppose you perceive that the solemnity of this imitation of the Greek
+poems on the subject is only a tender mockery, a playful sympathy with the
+real grief of the child. The expression, "pass, friend," is often found in
+Greek funeral inscriptions together with the injunction to tread lightly
+upon the dust of the dead. There is one French word to which I will call
+attention,--the word "guerets." We have no English equivalent for this
+term, said to be a corruption of the Latin word "veractum," and meaning
+fields which have been ploughed but not sown.
+
+Not to dwell longer upon the phase of art indicated by this poem, I may
+turn to the subject of crickets. There are many French poems about
+crickets. One by Lamartine is known to almost every French child.
+
+  Grillon solitaire,
+  Ici comme moi,
+  Voix qui sors de terre,
+  Ah! reveille-toi!
+  J'attise la flamme,
+  C'est pour t'egayer;
+  Mais il manque une ame,
+  Une ame au foyer.
+
+  Grillon solitaire,
+  Voix qui sors de terre,
+  Ah! reveille-toi
+    Pour moi.
+
+  Quand j'etais petite
+  Comme ce berceau,
+  Et que Marguerite
+  Filait son fuseau,
+  Quand le vent d'automne
+  Faisait tout gemir,
+  Ton cri monotone
+  M'aidait a dormir.
+
+  Grillon solitaire,
+  Voix qui sors de terre,
+  Ah! reveille-toi
+    Pour moi.
+
+  Seize fois l'annee
+  A compte mes jours;
+  Dans la cheminee
+  Tu niches toujours.
+  Je t'ecoute encore
+  Aux froides saisons.
+  Souvenir sonore
+  Des vieilles maisons.
+
+  Grillon solitaire,
+  Voix qui sors de terre,
+  Ah! reveille-toi
+    Pour moi.
+
+It is a young girl who thus addresses the cricket of the hearth, the house
+cricket. It is very common in country houses in Europe. This is what she
+says:
+
+"Little solitary cricket, all alone here just like myself, little voice
+that comes up out of the ground, ah, awake for my sake! I am stirring up
+the fires, that is just to make you comfortable; but there lacks a
+presence by the hearth; a soul to keep me company.
+
+"When I was a very little girl, as little as that cradle in the corner of
+the room, then, while Margaret our servant sat there spinning, and while
+the autumn wind made everything moan outside, your monotonous cry used to
+help me to fall asleep.
+
+"Solitary cricket, voice that issues from the ground, awaken, for my sake.
+
+"Now I am sixteen years of age and you are still nestling in the chimneys
+as of old. I can hear you still in the cold season,--like a
+sound--memory,--a sonorous memory of old houses.
+
+"Solitary cricket, voice that issues from the ground, awaken, O awaken for
+my sake."
+
+I do not think this pretty little song needs any explanation; I would only
+call your attention to the natural truth of the fancy and the feeling.
+Sitting alone by the fire in the night, the maiden wants to hear the
+cricket sing, because it makes her think of her childhood, and she finds
+happiness in remembering it.
+
+So far as mere art goes, the poem of Gautier on the cricket is very much
+finer than the poem of Lamartine, though not so natural and pleasing. But
+as Gautier was the greatest master of French verse in the nineteenth
+century, not excepting Victor Hugo, I think that one example of his poetry
+on insects may be of interest. He was very poor, compared with Victor
+Hugo; and he had to make his living by writing for newspapers, so that he
+had no time to become the great poet that nature intended him to be.
+However, he did find time to produce one volume of highly finished poetry,
+which is probably the most perfect verse of the nineteenth century, if not
+the most perfect verse ever made by a French poet; I mean the "Emaux et
+Camees." But the little poem which I am going to read to you is not from
+the "Emaux et Camees."
+
+  Souffle, bise! Tombe a flots, pluie!
+  Dans mon palais tout noir de suie,
+  Je ris de la pluie et du vent;
+  En attendant que l'hiver fuie,
+  Je reste au coin du feu, revant.
+
+  C'est moi qui suis l'esprit de l'atre!
+  Le gaz, de sa langue bleuatre,
+  Leche plus doucement le bois;
+  La fumee en filet d'albatre,
+  Monte et se contourne a ma voix.
+
+  La bouilloire rit et babille;
+  La flamme aux pieds d'argent sautille
+  En accompagnant ma chanson;
+  La buche de duvet s'habille;
+  La seve bout dans le tison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Pendant la nuit et la journee
+  Je chante sous la cheminee;
+  Dans mon langage de grillon
+  J'ai, des rebuts de son ainee,
+  Souvent console Cendrillon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Quel plaisir? Prolonger sa veille,
+  Regarder la flamme vermeille
+  Prenant a deux bras le tison,
+  A tous les bruits preter l'oreille,
+  Entendre vivre la maison.
+
+  Tapi dans sa niche bien chaude,
+  Sentir l'hiver qui pleure et rode,
+  Tout bleme, et le nez violet,
+  Tachant de s'introduire en fraude
+  Par quelque fente du volet!
+
+This poem is especially picturesque, and is intended to give us the
+comfortable sensations of a winter night by the fire, and the amusement of
+watching the wood burn and of hearing the kettle boiling. You will find
+that the French has a particular quality of lucid expression; it is full
+of clearness and colour.
+
+"Blow on, cold wind! pour down, O rain. I, in my soot-black palace, laugh
+at both rain and wind; and while waiting for winter to pass I remain in my
+corner by the fire dreaming.
+
+"It is I that am really the spirit of the hearth! The gaseous flame licks
+the wood more softly with its bluish tongue when it hears me; and the
+smoke rises up like an alabaster thread, and curls itself about (or
+twists) at the sound of my voice.
+
+"The kettle chuckles and chatters; the golden-footed flame leaps, dancing
+to the accompaniment of my song (or in accompaniment to my song); the
+great log covers itself with down, the sap boils in the wooden embers
+("duvet," meaning "down," refers to the soft fluffy white ash that forms
+upon the surface of burning wood).
+
+"All night and all day I sing below the chimney. Often in my
+cricket-language, I have consoled Cinderella for the snubs of her elder
+sister.
+
+"Ah, what pleasure to sit up at night, and watch the crimson flames
+embracing the wood (or hugging the wood) with both arms at once, and to
+listen to all the sounds and to hear the life of the house!
+
+"Nestling in one's good warm nook, how pleasant to hear Winter, who weeps
+and prowls round about the house outside, all wan and blue-nosed with
+cold, trying to smuggle itself inside some chink in the shutter!"
+
+Of course this does not give us much about the insect itself, which
+remains invisible in the poem, just as it really remains invisible in the
+house where the voice is heard. Rather does the poem express the feelings
+of the person who hears the cricket.
+
+When we come to the subject of grasshoppers, I think that the French poets
+have done much better than the English. There are many poems on the field
+grasshopper; I scarcely know which to quote first. But I think you would
+be pleased with a little composition by the celebrated French painter,
+Jules Breton. Like Rossetti he was both painter and poet; and in both arts
+he took for his subjects by preference things from country life. This
+little poem is entitled "Les Cigales." The word "cigales," though really
+identical with our word "cicala," seldom means the same thing. Indeed the
+French word may mean several different kinds of insects, and it is only by
+studying the text that we can feel quite sure what sort of insect is
+meant.
+
+  Lorsque dans l'herbe mure ancun epi ne bouge,
+  Qu'a l'ardeur des rayons crepite le frement,
+  Que le coquelicot tombe languissament
+  Sous le faible fardeau de sa corolle rouge,
+
+  Tous les oiseaux de l'air out fait taire leur chants;
+  Les ramiers paresseux, au plus noir des ramures,
+  Somnolents, dans les bois, out cesse leurs murmures
+  Loin du soleil muet incendiant les champs.
+
+  Dans le ble, cependant, d'intrepides cigales
+  Jetant leurs mille bruits, fanfare de l'ete,
+  Out frenetiquement et sans treve agite
+  Leurs ailes sur l'airaine de leurs folles cymbales.
+
+  Tremoussantes, deboutes sur les longs epis d'or,
+  Virtuoses qui vont s'eteindre avant l'automne,
+  Elles poussent au del leur hymne monotone
+  Que dans I'ombre des nuits retentisse encore.
+
+  Et rien n'arretera leurs cris intarissables;
+  Quand on les chassera de l'avoine et des bles.
+  Elles emigreront sur les buissons brules
+  Qui se meurent de soif dans les deserts de sable.
+
+  Sur l'arbuste effeuille, sur les chardons fletris
+  Qui laissent s'envoler leur blanche chevelure,
+  On reverra l'insecte a la forte encolure,
+  Pleine d'ivresse, toujours s'exalter dans ses cris.
+
+  Jusqu'a ce qu'ouvrant l'aile en lambeaux arrachee,
+  Exaspere, brulant d'un feu toujours plus pur,
+  Son oeil de bronze fixe et tendu vers l'azur,
+  II expire en chantant sur la tige sechee.
+
+For the word "encolure" we have no English equivalent; it means the line
+of the neck and shoulder--sometimes the general appearance of shape of the
+body.
+
+"When in the ripening grain field not a single ear of wheat moves; when in
+the beaming heat the corn seems to crackle; when the poppy languishes and
+bends down under the feeble burden of its scarlet corolla,
+
+"Then all the birds of the air have hushed their songs; even the indolent
+doves, seeking the darkest part of the foliage in the tree, have become
+drowsy in the woods, and have ceased their cooing, far from the fields,
+which the silent sun is burning.
+
+"Nevertheless, in the wheat, the brave grasshoppers uttering their
+thousand sounds, a trumpet flourish of summer, have continued furiously
+and unceasingly to smite their wings upon the brass of their wild cymbal.
+
+"Quivering as they stand upon the long gold ears of the grain, master
+musicians who must die before the coming of Fall, they sound to heaven
+their monotonous hymn, which re-echoes even in the darkness of the night.
+
+"And nothing will check their inexhaustible shrilling. When chased away
+from the oats and from the wheat, they will migrate to the scorched bushes
+which die of thirst in the wastes of sand.
+
+"Upon the leafless shrubs, upon the dried up thistles, which let their
+white hair fall and float away, there the sturdily-built insect can be
+seen again, filled with enthusiasm, even more and more excited as he
+cries,
+
+"Until, at last, opening his wings, now rent into shreds, exasperated,
+burning more and more fiercely in the frenzy of his excitement, and with
+his eyes of bronze always fixed motionlessly upon the azure sky, he dies
+in his song upon the withered grain."
+
+This is difficult to translate at all satisfactorily, owing to the
+multitude of images compressed together. But the idea expressed is a fine
+one--the courage of the insect challenging the sun, and only chanting more
+and more as the heat and the thirst increase. The poem has, if you like,
+the fault of exaggeration, but the colour and music are very fine; and
+even the exaggeration itself has the merit of making the images more
+vivid.
+
+It will not be necessary to quote another text; we shall scarcely have the
+time; but I want to translate to you something of another poem upon the
+same insect by the modern French poet Jean Aicard. In this poem, as in the
+little poem by Gautier, which I quoted to you, the writer puts his thought
+in the mouth of the insect, so to say--that is, makes the insect tell its
+own story.
+
+"I am the impassive and noble insect that sings in the summer solstice
+from the dazzling dawn all the day long in the fragrant pine-wood. And my
+song is always the same, regular as the equal course of the season and of
+the sun. I am the speech of the hot and beaming sun, and when the reapers,
+weary of heaping the sheaves together, lie down in the lukewarm shade, and
+sleep and pant in the ardour of noonday--then more than at any other time
+do I utter freely and joyously that double-echoing strophe with which my
+whole body vibrates. And when nothing else moves in all the land round
+about, I palpitate and loudly sound my little drum. Otherwise the sunlight
+triumphs; and in the whole landscape nothing is heard but my cry,--like
+the joy of the light itself.
+
+"Like a butterfly I take up from the hearts of the flowers that pure water
+which the night lets fall into them like tears. I am inspired only by the
+almighty sun. Socrates listened to me; Virgil made mention of me. I am the
+insect especially beloved by the poets and by the bards. The ardent sun
+reflects himself in the globes of my eyes. My ruddy bed, which seems to be
+powdered like the surface of fine ripe fruit, resembles some exquisite
+key-board of silver and gold, all quivering with music. My four wings,
+with their delicate net-work of nerves, allow the bright down upon my
+black back to be seen through their transparency. And like a star upon the
+forehead of some divinely inspired poet, three exquisitely mounted rubies
+glitter upon my head."
+
+These are fair examples of the French manner of treating the interesting
+subject of insects in poetry. If you should ask me whether the French
+poets are better than the English, I should answer, "In point of feeling,
+no." The real value of such examples to the student should be emotional,
+not descriptive. I think that the Japanese poems on insects, though not
+comparable in point of mere form with some of the foreign poems which I
+have quoted, are better in another way--they come nearer to the true
+essence of poetry. For the Japanese poets have taken the subject of
+insects chiefly for the purpose of suggesting human emotion; and that is
+certainly the way in which such a subject should be used. Remember that
+this is an age in which we are beginning to learn things about insects
+which could not have been even imagined fifty years ago, and the more that
+we learn about these miraculous creatures, the more difficult does it
+become for us to write poetically about their lives, or about their
+possible ways of thinking and feeling. Probably no mortal man will ever be
+able to imagine how insects think or feel or hear or even see. Not only
+are their senses totally different from those of animals, but they appear
+to have a variety of special senses about which we can not know anything
+at all. As for their existence, it is full of facts so atrocious and so
+horrible as to realize most of the imaginations of old about the torments
+of hell. Now, for these reasons to make an insect speak in poetry--to put
+one's thoughts, so to speak, into the mouth of an insect--is no longer
+consistent with poetical good judgment. No; we must think of insects
+either in relation to the mystery of their marvellous lives, or in
+relation to the emotion which their sweet and melancholy music makes
+within our minds. The impressions produced by hearing the shrilling of
+crickets at night or by hearing the storm of cicadae in summer woods--those
+impressions indeed are admirable subjects for poetry, and will continue to
+be for all time.
+
+When I lectured to you long ago about Greek and English poems on insects,
+I told you that nearly all the English poems on the subject were quite
+modern. I still believe that I was right in this statement, as a general
+assertion; but I have found one quaint poem about a grasshopper, which
+must have been written about the middle of the seventeenth century or,
+perhaps, a little earlier. The date of the author's birth and death are
+respectively 1618 and 1658. His name, I think, you are familiar
+with--Richard Lovelace, author of many amatory poems, and of one
+especially famous song, "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars"--containing the
+celebrated stanza--
+
+  Yet this inconstancy is such
+    As you too shall adore;
+  I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
+    Loved I not honour more.
+
+Well, as I said, this man wrote one pretty little poem on a grasshopper,
+which antedates most of the English poems on insects, if not all of them.
+
+
+THE GRASSHOPPER
+
+  O Thou that swing'st upon the waving ear
+    Of some well-filled oaten beard,
+  Drunk every night with a delicious tear
+    Dropt thee from heaven, where now th'art rear'd!
+
+  The joys of earth and air are thine entire,
+    That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;
+  And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire
+    To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.
+
+  Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom'st then,
+    Sport'st in the gilt plaits of his beams,
+  And all these merry days mak'st merry men
+    Thyself, and melancholy streams.
+
+A little artificial, this poem written at least two hundred and fifty
+years ago; but it is pretty in spite of its artifice. Some of the conceits
+are so quaint that they must be explained. By the term "oaten beard," the
+poet means an ear of oats; and you know that the grain of this plant is
+furnished with very long hair, so that many poets have spoken of the
+bearded oats. You may remember in this connection Tennyson's phrase "the
+bearded barley" in the "Lady of Shalott," and Longfellow's term "bearded
+grain" in his famous poem about the Reaper Death. When a person's beard is
+very thick, we say in England to-day "a full beard," but in the time of
+Shakespeare they used to say "a well filled beard"--hence the phrase in
+the second line of the first stanza.
+
+In the third line the term "delicious tear" means dew,--which the Greeks
+called the tears of the night, and sometimes the tears of the dawn; and
+the phrase "drunk with dew" is quite Greek--so we may suspect that the
+author of this poem had been reading the Greek Anthology. In the third
+line of the second stanza the word "poppy" is used for sleep--a very
+common simile in Elizabethan times, because from the poppy flower was
+extracted the opiate which enables sick persons to sleep. The Greek
+authors spoke of poppy sleep. "And when thy poppy works," means, when the
+essence of sleep begins to operate upon you, or more simply, when you
+sleep. Perhaps the phrase about the "carved acorn-bed" may puzzle you; it
+is borrowed from the fairy-lore of Shakespeare's time, when fairies were
+said to sleep in little beds carved out of acorn shells; the simile is
+used only by way of calling the insect a fairy creature. In the second
+line of the third stanza you may notice the curious expression about the
+"gilt plaits" of the sun's beams. It was the custom in those days, as it
+still is in these, for young girls to plait their long hair; and the
+expression "gilt plaits" only means braided or plaited golden hair. This
+is perhaps a Greek conceit; for classic poets spoke of the golden hair of
+the Sun God as illuminating the world. I have said that the poem is a
+little artificial, but I think you will find it pretty, and even the
+whimsical similes are "precious" in the best sense.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF FINNISH POETRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the
+Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more
+closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western
+poetry. Indeed it is supposed that the Finnish race is more akin to the
+Tartar races, and therefore probably to the Japanese, than the races of
+Europe proper. Again, through Longfellow, the value of Finnish poetry to
+English poetry was first suggested, and I think you know that Longfellow's
+Indian epic, "The Song of Hiawatha," was modelled entirely upon the
+Finnish "Kalevala."
+
+But a word about the "Kalevala," which has a very interesting history. I
+believe you know that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
+"Kalevala" was not known to exist. During the first half of the century,
+Finnish scholars in the University of Helsingfors (where there is now a
+great and flourishing university) began to take literary interest in the
+popular songs of Finland. For years the people had been singing
+extraordinary songs full of a strange beauty and weirdness quite unlike
+any other popular songs of Europe; and for centuries professional singers
+had been wandering about the country teaching these songs to the
+accompaniment of a kind of _biwa_ called Kantela. The scholars of the
+University began to collect these songs from the mouths of the peasants
+and musicians--at first with great difficulty, afterwards with much
+success. The difficulty was a very curious one. In Finland the ancient
+pagan religion had really never died; the songs of the peasants were full
+of allusions to the old faith and the old gods, and the orthodox church
+had often attempted in vain to prevent the singing of these songs, because
+they were not Christian. So the peasants at first thought that the
+scholars who wanted to copy the songs were government spies or church
+spies who wanted evidence to justify punishments. When the fears of the
+people had been removed and when they came to understand that the
+questioners were only scholars interested in literary beauty, all the
+secret stores of songs were generously opened, and an immense collection
+of oral literature was amassed in the University at Helsingfors.
+
+The greatest of the scholars engaged in the subsequent work of arranging
+and classifying was Doctor Loennrot. While examining the manuscript of
+these poems he was struck by the fact that, put together in a particular
+order, they naturally made one great continuous story or epic. Was it
+possible that the Finnish people had had during all these centuries an
+epic unknown to the world of literature? Many persons would have ridiculed
+the idea. But Loennrot followed up that idea, and after some years' study
+he disengaged from all that mass of song something in the shape of a
+wonderful epic, the epic of the "Kalevala." Loennrot was probably, almost
+certainly, the only one who had even understood the idea of an epic of
+this kind. The peasants did not know. They only had the fragments of the
+whole; parts of the poem existed in one province, parts in another; no
+Finnish musician had ever known the whole. The whole may have been made
+first by Loennrot. At all events he was the Homer of the "Kalevala," and it
+was fortunate for Finland that he happened to be himself both a scholar
+and a poet--qualifications seldom united in the same person.
+
+What is the "Kalevala" as we now possess it? It is an epic, but not like
+any other epic in the world, for the subject of it is Magic. We might call
+it the Epic of Magic. It is the story of how the world and the heaven and
+the sun and the moon and the stars, the elements and the races of living
+creatures and all other things were created by magic; also how the first
+inhabitants of the world lived, and loved, and fought. But there is
+another thing to be said in a general was about this magic. The magic of
+"Kalevala" is not like anything else known by that name in European
+literature. The magic of "Kalevala" is entirely the magic of words. These
+ancient people believed in the existence of words, by the utterance of
+which anything might be accomplished. Instead of buying wood and hiring
+carpenters, you might build a house by uttering certain magical words. If
+you had no horse and wanted to travel rapidly, you could make a horse for
+yourself out of bits of bark and old sticks by uttering over them certain
+magical words. But this was not all. Beings of intellect, men and women,
+whole armies of men, in fact, might be created in a moment by the
+utterance of these mystical words. There is the real subject of the
+"Kalevala."
+
+I told you that the epic is not like anything else in European literature
+and not like anything else in the world as to the subject. But this is not
+the case as regards the verse. The verse is not like Japanese verse,
+indeed, but it comes nearer to it than any other European verse does. Of
+course even in Finnish verse, accents mean a great deal, and accent means
+nothing at all in Japanese verse. But I imagine something very much like
+Finnish verse might be written in Japanese, provided that in reciting it a
+slight stress is thrown on certain syllables. Of course you know something
+about Longfellow's "Hiawatha"--such lines as these:
+
+  And the evening sun descending
+  Set the clouds on fire with redness,
+  Burned the broad sky like a prairie,
+  Left upon the level water
+  One long track and trail of splendour,
+  Down whose stream, as down a river,
+  Westward, westward Hiawatha
+  Sailed into the fiery sunset,
+  Sailed into the purple vapours,
+  Sailed into the dusk of evening.
+
+You will observe this is verse of eight syllables with four trochees to a
+line. Now it is perhaps as near to Finnish verse as English verse can be
+made. But the Finnish verse is more musical, and it is much more flexible,
+and the rules of it can be better carried out than in English. There is
+much more to be thought about than the placing of four trochaic feet to a
+line. Not only must the verse be trochaic, it must also be alliterative,
+and it must also be, to some extent, rhymed verse--a matter which
+Longfellow did not take into consideration. That would have doubled his
+difficulty. To make verse trochaic, alliterative and rhymed, is very
+difficult indeed--that is, to do it well. Only one liberty is allowed; it
+is not necessary that the rhyme shall be regular and constant; it is
+necessary only that it should be occasional. But the interest of Finnish
+verse does not end here. I have not yet mentioned the most important law
+of Finnish poetry--the law of parallelism or repetition. Parallelism is
+the better word. It means the repetition of a thought in a slightly
+modified way. It is parallelism especially that makes so splendid the
+English translation of the Bible, and the majesty of such passages in the
+Book of Common Prayer as the Funeral Service. So that Finnish poetry is
+anything but very simple. We may now sum it up thus--trochaic verse of
+eight syllables, with alliteration and rhyme, a caesura in the same part
+of every line, and every line reiterated in parallelism.
+
+A little above I mentioned the English of the Bible. Long ago I explained
+why that English is so beautiful and so strong. But remember that much of
+the best of the Bible, in the original Hebrew, was not prose but verse,
+and that the fine effects have been produced by translating the verse into
+musical prose. The very effect can be produced by translating the
+"Kalevala" into prose. Occasionally the passages are of surprising beauty,
+and they are always of surprising strangeness.
+
+It is in parallelism especially that Finnish poetry offers a contrast to
+Japanese, but there is no reason whatever why, in the longer poems of
+Japanese poetry, parallelism could not be used. All things have value
+according to place and time, and this has value--provided that it has a
+special effect on a special occasion. All through the "Kalevala," all
+through five hundred pages, large pages, the parallelism is carried on,
+and yet one never gets tired. It is not monotonous. But that is because
+the subject is so well adapted to this form of poetry. See how the poem
+opens, when the poet begins to talk about what he is going to sing:
+
+"Anciently my father sang me these words in hewing the handle of his ax;
+anciently my mother taught me these words as she turned her spindle. In
+that time I was only a child, a little child at the breast,--a useless
+little being creeping upon the floor at the feet of its nurse, its cheek
+bedaubed with milk. And there are other words which I drew from the spring
+of knowledge, which I found by the wayside, which I snatched from the
+heart of the thickets, which I detached from the branches of the trees,
+which I gathered at the edges of the pastures--when, In my infancy, I used
+to go to guard the flocks, in the midst of the honey-streaming meadows,
+upon the gold-shining hills, behind the black Murikki, behind the spotted
+Kimmo, my favourite cows.
+
+"Also the cold sang the songs, the rain sang me verses, the winds of
+heaven, the waves of the sea made me hear their poems, the birds
+instructed me with their melodies, the long-haired trees invited me to
+their concerts. And all the songs I gathered together, I rolled them up in
+a skin, I carried them away in my beautiful little holiday sledge, I
+deposited them in the bottom of a chest of brass, upon the highest shelf
+of my treasure house."
+
+Now when a poem opens that way we may be sure that there are great things
+in it; and some of these great things we shall read about presently. The
+"Kalevala" is full of wonderful stories, But in the above quotation, I
+want you to see how multiple it is, and yet it is beautiful. Now there is
+a very interesting thing yet to tell you about this parallelism. Such
+poems as those of the "Kalevala" have always to be sung not by one singer
+but by two. The two singers straddle a bench facing each other and hold
+each other's hands. Then they sing alternately, each chanting one line,
+rocking back and forward, pulling each other to and fro as they sing--so
+that it is like the motion of rowing. One chants a line and pulls
+backward, then the other chants the next line and pulls in the opposite
+direction. Not to be able to answer at once would be considered a great
+disgrace; and every singer has to be able to improvise as well as to sing.
+And that is the signification of the following verse:
+
+"Put thy hand to my hand--place thy fingers between my fingers--that we
+may sing of the things which are."
+
+The most beautiful story in this wonderful book is the story of Kullervo.
+It was after reading this story that Longfellow imagined his story of the
+Strong Man Kwasind. Kullervo is born so strong that as an infant he breaks
+his cradle to pieces, and as a boy he can not do any work, for all the
+tools and instruments break in his grasp. Therefore he gives a great deal
+of trouble at home and has to go out into the world to seek his fortune.
+In the world, of course, he has just the same trouble; for nobody will
+employ him very long. However, the story of Kullervo's feats of strength,
+though interesting, need not now concern us. The great charm of this
+composition is in the description of a mother's love which it contains.
+Kullervo brought misfortune everywhere simply by his strength and by his
+great passions--at last committing a terrible crime, causing the death of
+his own sister, whom he does not recognize. He goes back home in
+desperation and remorse; and there everybody regards him with horror,
+except only his mother. She alone tries to console him; she alone tells
+him that repentance may bring him rest. He then proposes to go away and
+amend his wrong-doing in solitude. But first he bids them all goodbye, and
+the episode is characteristic.
+
+Kullervo, the son of Kalervo, gets him ready to depart; he goes to his old
+father and says: "Farewell now, O my dear father. Wilt thou regret me
+bitterly, when thou shalt learn that I am dead?--that I have disappeared
+from among the multitude of the living?--that I no longer am one of the
+members of thy family?" The father answered: "No, certainly I will not
+regret thee when I shall hear that thou art dead. Another son perchance
+will be born to me--a son who will grow up better and wiser than thou."
+
+Kullervo, son of Kalervo, answered: "And I also will not be sorry if I
+hear that thou art dead. Without any trouble I can find me such a father
+as thou--a stone-hearted father, a clay-mouthed father, a berry-eyed
+father, a straw-bearded father, a father whose feet are made of the roots
+of the willow tree, a father whose flesh is decaying wood." Why does
+Kullervo use these extraordinary terms? It is a reference to magic--out of
+stone and clay and straw, a phantom man can be made, and Kullervo means to
+say that his father is no more to him than a phantom father, an unreal
+father, a father who has no fatherly feeling. His brothers and sisters all
+questioned in turn if they will be sorry to hear that he is dead, make the
+same cruel answer; and he replies to them with the same angry words. But
+it is very different when he speaks to his mother.
+
+For to his mother he said--"Oh my sweet mother, my beautiful nurse, my
+loved protectress, wilt thou regret me bitterly when thou shalt learn that
+I am dead, that I have disappeared from the multitude of the living, that
+I am no longer one of the members of thy family?"
+
+The mother made answer: "Thou does not comprehend the soul of the
+mother--thou canst not understand the heart of the mother. Assuredly will
+I regret thee most bitterly when I shall learn that thou art dead, that
+thou hast disappeared, from among the multitude of the living, that thou
+hast ceased to be one of the members of my family. Floods of tears shall I
+weep in my chamber. The waves of tears will overflow on the floor. And
+upon the stairway lamentably shall I weep; and in the stable loudly shall
+I sorrow. Upon the icy ways the snow shall melt under my tears--under my
+tears the earth of the roads shall melt away; under my tears new meadow
+grass shall grow up, green sprouting, and through that grass little
+streams shall murmur away." To this mother, naturally, Kullervo says no
+unkind words. He goes away, able at least to feel that there is one person
+in the world who loves him and one person in the world whom he loves. But
+how much his mother really loves him he does not yet know; he will know
+that later--it forms the most beautiful part of the poem.
+
+"Kullervo directed his steps once more to the home of his fathers.
+Desolate he found it, desolate and deserted; no person advanced to salute
+him, no person came to press his hand, to give him welcome.
+
+"He drew near to the hearth: the embers were extinguished. By that he knew
+that his mother had ceased to be.
+
+"He drew near to the fire-place, and the stones of the fire-place were
+cold. By that he knew that his father had ceased to be.
+
+"He turned his eyes upon the floor of his home; the planks of the floor
+were covered with dirt and rubbish. By that he knew that his sister had
+ceased to be.
+
+"To the shore of the sea he went; the boat that used to be there was there
+no longer. By that he knew that his brother had ceased to be.
+
+"Then he began to weep. For a whole day he wept, for two whole days he
+wept; then he cried aloud: 'O my mother, O my sweet mother, what didst
+thou leave thy son yet in the world? Alas! now thou canst hear me no
+longer; and it is in vain that I stand above thy tomb, that I sob over the
+place of thine eyebrows, over the place of thy temples; it is in vain that
+I cry out my grief above thy dead forehead.'
+
+"The mother of Kullervo awakened in her tomb, and out of the depth of the
+dust she spake to him: 'I have left the dog Mastif, in order that thou
+mayst go with him to the chase. Take therefore the faithful dog, and go
+with him into the wild forest, into the dark wilderness, even to the
+dwelling place, far away, of the blue-robed Virgins of the wood, and there
+thou wilt seek thy nourishment, thou wilt ask for the game that is
+necessary to thy existence.'"
+
+It was believed that there was a particular forest god, who protected the
+trees and the wild things of the wood. The hunter could be successful in
+the chase only upon condition of obtaining his favour and permission to
+hunt. This explains the reference to the abode of the forest god. But
+Kullervo can not go far; his remorse takes him by the throat.
+
+"Kullervo, son of Kalervo, took his faithful dog, and directed his steps
+toward the wild forest, toward the dark wilderness. But when he had gone
+only a little way he found himself at the very place where he had outraged
+the young girl, where he had dishonoured the child of his mother. And all
+things there mourned for her--all things; the soft grass and the tender
+foliage, and the little plants, and the sorrowful briars. The grass was no
+longer green, the briars no longer blossomed, the leaves and the plants
+hung withered and dry about the spot where the virgin had been
+dishonoured, where the brother had dishonoured his sister.
+
+"Kullervo drew forth his sword, his sharpedged sword; a long time he
+looked at it, turning it in his hand, and asking it whether it would feel
+no pleasure in eating the flesh of the man thus loaded with infamy, in
+drinking the blood of the man thus covered with crime.
+
+"And the sword knew the heart of the man: it understood the question of
+the hero. And it made answer to him saying: 'Why indeed should I not
+gladly devour the flesh of the man who is loaded with infamy? Why indeed
+should I not drink with pleasure the blood of the man who is burdened with
+crime? For well I devoured even the flesh of the innocent man, well can I
+drink even the blood of the man who is free from crime.'
+
+"Then Kullervo fixed his sword in the earth, with the handle downwards and
+the point upwards, and he threw himself upon the point, and the point
+passed through all the depth of his breast.
+
+"This was the end of all, this was the cruel destiny of Kullervo, the
+irrevocable end of the son of the heroes--the death of the 'Man of
+Misfortune.'"
+
+You can see how very much unlike other Western poetry this poetry is. The
+imagination indeed is of another race and another time than those to whose
+literary productions we have become accustomed. But there is beauty here;
+and the strangeness of it indicates a possible literary value by which any
+literature may be more or less enriched. Many are the particular episodes
+which rival the beauty and strangeness of the episode of Kullervo; and I
+wish that we could have time to quote them. But I can only refer to them.
+There is, for example, the legend of the invention of music, when the hero
+Wainamoinen (supposed to represent the Spirit of the Wind, and the sound
+of the name indicates the wailing of the wind) invents the first musical
+instrument. In no other literature is there anything quite like this
+except in the Greek story of Orpheus. Even as the trees bent down their
+heads to listen to the song of Orpheus, and as the wild beasts became
+tamed at the sound, and as the very stones of the road followed to the
+steps of the musician, so is it in the "Kalevala." But the Finnish Orpheus
+is the greater magician. To hear him, the sun and moon come nearer to the
+earth, the waves of the sea stop short, bending their heads; the cataracts
+of the rivers hang motionless and silent; the fish raise their heads above
+the water. And when he plays a sad melody, all nature weeps with him, even
+the trees and the stones and the little plants by the wayside. And his own
+tears in falling become splendid pearls for the crowns of kings.
+
+Then very wonderful too is the story of the eternal smith, Ilmarinen, who
+forged the foundations of the world, forged the mountains, forged the blue
+sky, so well forging them that nowhere can be seen the marks of the
+pincer, the marks of the hammer, the heads of the nails. Working in his
+smithy we see him all grime and black; upon his head there is one yard
+deep of iron firing, upon his shoulders there is one fathom deep of
+soot--the soot of the forge; for he seldom has time to bathe himself. But
+when the notion takes him to get married, for the first time he bathes
+himself, and dresses himself handsomely, then he becomes the most
+beautiful of men. In order to win his wife he is obliged to perform
+miracles of work; yet after he wins her she is killed by wild beasts. Then
+he sets to work to forge himself a wife, a wife of silver, a bride of
+gold. Very beautiful she is, but she has no heart, and she is always cold,
+and there is no comfort in her; even all the magic of the world-maker can
+not give her a warm heart. But the work is so beautiful that he does not
+like to destroy it. So he takes the wife of silver, the bride of gold, to
+the wisest of heroes, Wainamoinen, and offers her to him as a gift. But
+the hero will have no such gift, "Throw her back into your forged fire, O
+Ilmarinen," the hero makes answer--"What greater folly, what greater
+sorrow can come upon man than to love a wife of silver, a bride of gold?"
+
+This pretty story needs no explanation; the moral is simply "Never marry
+for money."
+
+Then there is the story of Lemminkainen (this personality suggested the
+Pau-puk-keewis of Longfellow)--the joyous, reckless, handsome, mischievous
+pleasure-lover,--always falling into trouble, because he will not follow
+his mother's advice, but always loved by her in spite of his follies. The
+mother of Lemminkainen is a more wonderful person than the mother of
+Kullervo. Her son has been murdered, thrown into a river--the deepest of
+all rivers, the river of the dead, the river of hell. And his mother goes
+out to find him. She asks the trees in the forest to tell her where her
+son is, and she obliges them to answer. But they do not know. She asks the
+grass, the plants, the animals, the birds; she obliges even the road upon
+which he walked to talk to her, she talks to the stars and the moon and
+the sun. Only the sun knows, because he sees everything and he answers,
+"Your son is dead, torn to pieces; he has been thrown into the river of
+Tuoni, the river of hell, the river of the dead." But the mother does not
+despair. Umarinen, the eternal smith, must make for her a rake of brass
+with teeth long enough to reach into the world of the dead, into the
+bottom of the abyss; and out of the abyss she brings up the parts of the
+torn body of her son; she puts them together; she sings over them a magic
+song; she brings her son to life again, and takes him home. But for a long
+time he is not able to remember, because he has been dead. After a long
+time he gets back his memory--only to get into new mischief out of which
+his mother must help him afresh.
+
+The names of the three heroes quoted to you represent also the names of
+three great stories, out of the many stories contained in the epics. But
+in this epic, as in the Indian epics (I mean the Sanskrit epic), there is
+much more than stories. There are also chapters of moral instruction of a
+very curious kind--chapters about conduct, the conduct of the parents, the
+conduct of the children, the conduct of the husband, the conduct of the
+bride. The instructions to the bride are contained in the twenty-third
+Rune; there are altogether fifty Runes in the book. This appears to me
+likely to interest you, for it is written in relation to a family system
+not at all like the family system of the rest of Europe. I think you will
+find in it not a little that may remind you of Chinese teaching on the
+same subject--the conduct of the daughter-in-law. But there are of course
+many differences, and the most pleasing difference is the tone of great
+tenderness in which the instructions are given. Let us quote some of them:
+
+"O young bride, O my young sister, O my well beloved and beautiful young
+flower, listen to the words which I am going to speak to you, harken to
+the lesson which I am going to teach you. You are going now very far away
+from us, O beautiful flower!--you are going to take a long journey, O my
+wild-strawberry fruit! you are about to fly away from us, O most delicate
+down! you are about to leave us forever, O velvet tissue--far away from
+this habitation you must go, far away from this beautiful house, to enter
+another house, to enter into a strange family. And in that strange house
+your position will be very different. There you will have to walk about
+with care, to conduct yourself with prudence, to conduct yourself with
+thoughtfulness. There you will not be able, as in the house of your
+father, as in the dwelling of your mother, to run about where you please,
+to run singing through the valleys, to warhle out your songs upon the
+roadway.
+
+"New habits you must now learn, and forget all the old. You must abandon
+the love of your father and content yourself with the love of your
+father-in-law; you must bow very low, you must learn to be generous in the
+use of courteous words. You must give up old habits and form new ones; you
+must resign the love of your mother and content yourself with the love of
+your step-mother: lower must you bow, and you must learn to be lavish in
+the use of kindly words.
+
+"New habits you must learn and forget the old: you must leave behind you
+the friendship of your brother, and content yourself with the friendship
+of your brother-in-law; you must bow lower than you do now; you must learn
+to be lavish of kindly words.
+
+"New habits you must acquire and forget the old ones; you must leave
+behind you the friendship of your sister, and be satisfied with the
+friendship of your sister-in-law; you must learn to make humble reverence,
+to bow low, to be generous in kindly words.
+
+"If the old man in the corner be to you even like a wolf, if the old woman
+in her corner be to you even as a she-bear in the house, if the
+brother-in-law be to you even as a serpent upon the threshold, if the
+sister-in-law be to you even as a sharp nail, none the less you must show
+them each and all exactly the same respect and the same obedience that you
+have been accustomed to display to your father, to display to your mother,
+under the roof of your childhood home."
+
+Then follows a really terrible list of the duties that she must perform
+every day from early morning until late at night; to mention them all
+would take too long. I quote only a few, enough to show that the position
+of a Finnish wife was by no means an easy one.
+
+"So soon as the cock crows in the morning you must be quick to rise; you
+must keep your ears awake to hear the cry of the cock. And if there be no
+cock, or the cock does not crow, then let the moon be as a cock for you,
+let the constellation of the great Bear tell you when it is time to rise.
+Then you must quickly make the fire, skilfully removing the ashes, without
+sprinkling them upon the floor. Then quickly go to the stable, clean the
+stable, take food to the cattle, feed all the animals on the farm. For
+already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse
+of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your
+sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your
+brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose
+duty it is to give them hay, whose duty it is to give them food."
+
+Like instructions are given about feeding the younger animals and the
+fowls and the little pigs. But she must not forget the children of the
+house at the same time:
+
+"When you have fed the animals and cleaned the stables come back quickly,
+quickly as a snow-storm. For in the chamber the little child has awakened
+and has begun to cry in his cradle. He cannot speak, poor little one; he
+cannot tell you, if he be hungry or if he be cold, or if anything
+extraordinary has happened to him, before someone that he knows has come
+to care for him, before he hears the voice of his own mother."
+
+After enumerating and inculcating in the same manner all the duties of the
+day, the conduct to be observed toward every member of the
+family--father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister, and brother-in-law, and the
+children of them--we find a very minute code of conduct set forth in
+regard to neighbours and acquaintances. The young wife is especially
+warned against gossip, against listening to any stories about what happens
+in other people's houses, and against telling anybody what goes on within
+her own. One piece of advice is memorable. If the young wife is asked
+whether she is well fed, she should reply always that she has the best of
+everything which a house can afford, this even if she should have been
+left without any proper nourishment for several days. Evidently the
+condition of submission to which Finnish women were reduced by custom was
+something much less merciful than has ever been known in Eastern
+countries. Only a very generous nature could bear such discipline; and we
+have many glimpses in the poem of charming natures of this kind.
+
+You have seen that merely as a collection of wonderful stories the
+Kalevala is of extraordinary interest, that it is also of interest as
+describing the social ethics of a little known people--finally that it is
+of interest, of very remarkable interest, merely as natural poetry--poetry
+treating of wild nature, especially rivers and forests and mountains, of
+the life of the fisher and hunter and wood-cutter. Indeed, so far as this
+kind of poetry is concerned, the "Kalevala" stands alone among the older
+productions of European poetry. You do not find this love of nature in
+Scandinavian poetry, nor in Anglo-Saxon poetry, nor in old German poetry,
+much less in the earlier form of French, Italian, or Spanish poetry. The
+old Northern poetry comes nearest to it; for in Anglo-Saxon composition we
+can find at least wonderful descriptions of the sea, of stones, of the
+hard life of sailors. But the dominant tone in Northern poetry is war; it
+is in descriptions of battle, or in accounts of the death of heroes, that
+the ancient English or ancient Scandinavian poets excelled In Finnish
+poetry, on the other hand, there is little or nothing about war. These
+peaceful people never had any warlike history; their life was agricultural
+for the most part, with little or no violence except such as the
+excitement of hunting and fishing could produce. Therefore they had plenty
+of time to think about nature, to love nature and to describe it as no
+other people of the same period described it. Striking comparisons have
+been made between the Anglo-Saxon Runes, or charm songs, and Finnish songs
+of the same kind, which fully illustrate this difference. Like the Finns,
+the early English had magical songs to the gods of nature--songs for the
+healing of wounds and the banishing of sickness. But these are very
+commonplace. Not one of them can compare as poetry with the verses of the
+Finnish on the same subject. Here are examples in evidence. The first is a
+prayer said when offering food to the Spirit of the forest, that he might
+aid the hunter in his hunting.
+
+"Look, O Kuntar, a fat cake, a cake with honey, that I may propitiate the
+forest, that I may propitiate the forest, that I may entice the thick
+forest for the day of my hunting, when I go in search of prey. Accept my
+salt, O wood, accept my porridge, O Tapio, dear king of the wood with the
+hat of leaves, with the beard of moss."
+
+And here is a little prayer to the goddess of water repeated by a sick man
+taking water as a medicine.
+
+"O pure water, O Lady of the Water, now do thou make me whole, lovely as
+before! for this beg thee dearly, and in offering I give thee blood to
+appease thee, salt to propitiate thee!"
+
+Or this:
+
+"Goddess of the Sea, mistress of waters, Queen of a hundred caves, arouse
+the scaly flocks, urge on the fishy-crowds forth from their hiding places,
+forth from the muddy shrine, forth from the net-hauling, to the nets of a
+hundred fishers! Take now thy beauteous shield, shake the golden water,
+with which thou frightenest the fish, and direct them toward the net
+beneath the dark level, above the borders black."
+
+Yet another:
+
+"O vigorous mistress of the wild beasts, sweet lady of the earth, come
+with me, be with me, where I go. Come thou and good luck bring me, to
+happy fortune help me. Make thou to move the foliage, the fruit tree to be
+shaken, and the wild beasts drive thither, the largest and the smallest,
+with their snouts of every kind, with their paws of fur of all kinds!"
+
+Now when you look at these little prayers, when you read them over and
+observe how pretty they are, you will also observe that they make little
+pictures in the mind. Can not you see the fish gliding over the black
+border under the dark level of the water, to the net of a hundred fishers?
+Can you not see the "dear king of the wood," with his hat of leaves and
+his beard of moss? Can you not also see in imagination the wild creatures
+of the forest with their snouts of many shapes, with their fur of all
+kinds? But in Anglo-Saxon poetry you will not find anything like that.
+Anglo-Saxon Rune songs create no images. It is this picturesqueness, this
+actuality of imagery that is distinctive in Finnish poetry.
+
+In the foregoing part of the lecture I have chiefly tried to interest you
+in the "Kalevala." But aside from interesting you in the book itself as a
+story, as a poem, I hope to direct your attention to a particular feature
+in Finnish poetry which is most remote from Japanese poetry. I have spoken
+of resemblances as to structure and method; but it is just in that part of
+the method most opposed to Japanese tradition that the greatest interest
+lies. I do not mean only the use of natural imagery; I mean much more the
+use of parallelism to reinforce that imagery. That is the thing especially
+worthy of literary study. Indeed, I think that such study might greatly
+help towards a new development, a totally new departure in Japanese verse.
+In another lecture I spoke as sincerely as I could of the very high merit
+in the epigrammatic forms of Japanese poetry. These brief forms of poetry
+have been developed in Japan to perfection not equalled elsewhere in
+modern poetry, perhaps not surpassed, in some respects, even by Greek
+poetry of the same kind. But there can be no doubt of this fact, that a
+national literature requires many other forms of expression than the
+epigrammatic form. Nothing that is good should ever be despised or cast
+aside; but because of its excellences, we should not be blind to the
+possibility of other excellences. Now Japanese literature has other forms
+of poetry--forms in which it is possible to produce poems of immense
+length, but the spirit of epigrammatic poetry has really been controlling
+even these to a great degree.
+
+I mean that so far as I am able to understand the subject, the tendency of
+all Japanese poetry is to terse expression. Were it not well therefore to
+consider at least the possible result of a totally opposite
+tendency,--expansion of fancy, luxuriance of expression? Terseness of
+expression, pithiness, condensation, are of vast importance in prose, but
+poetry has other methods, and the "Kalevala" is one of the best possible
+object lessons in the study of such methods, because of the very
+simplicity and naturalness with which they are followed.
+
+Of course there was parallelism in Western poetry, and all arts of
+repetition, before anybody knew anything about the "Kalevala." The most
+poetical part of Bible English, as I said, whether in the Bible itself or
+in the Book of Common Prayer, depends almost entirely for its literary
+effect upon parallelism, because the old Hebrews, like the old Finns,
+practised this art of expression. Loosely and vaguely it was practised
+also by many poets almost unconsciously, who had been particularly
+influenced by the splendour of the scriptural translation. It had figured
+in prose-poetry as early as the time of Sir Thomas Browne. It had
+established quite a new idea of poetry even in America, where the great
+American poet Poe introduced it into his compositions before Longfellow
+studied the "Kalevala." I told you that the work of Poe, small as it is,
+had influenced almost every poet of the great epoch, including Tennyson
+and the Victorian masters. But the work even of Poe was rather instinctive
+than the result of any systematic idea. The systematic idea was best
+illustrated when the study of the "Kalevala" began.
+
+Let us see how Longfellow used the suggestion; but remember that he was
+only a beginner, dealing with something entirely new--that he did not have
+the strength of Tennyson nor the magical genius of Swinburne to help him.
+He worked very simply, and probably very rapidly. There is a good deal of
+his song of "Hiawatha" that is scarcely worthy of praise, and it is
+difficult to quote effectively from it, because the charm of the thing
+depends chiefly upon its reading as a whole. Nevertheless there are parts
+which so well show or imitate the Finnish spirit, that I must try to quote
+them. Take for instance the teaching of the little Indian child by his
+grandmother--such verses as these, where she talks to the little boy about
+the milky way in the sky:
+
+  Many things Nokomis taught him
+  Of the stars that shine in heaven;
+  Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
+  Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
+  Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
+  Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
+  Flaring far away to northward
+  In the frosty nights of Winter;
+  Showed the broad, white road in heaven,
+  Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
+  Running straight across the heavens,
+  Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
+
+Or take again the story of the origin of the flower commonly called
+"Dandelion":
+
+  In his life he had one shadow,
+  In his heart one sorrow had he.
+  Once, as he was gazing northward,
+  Far away upon a prairie
+  He beheld a maiden standing,
+  Saw a tall and slender maiden
+  All alone upon a prairie;
+  Brightest green were all her garments
+  And her hair was like the sunshine.
+  Day by day he gazed upon her,
+  Day by day he sighed with passion,
+  Day by day his heart within him
+  Grew more hot with love and longing
+  For the maid with yellow tresses.
+
+Observe how the repetition served to represent the growing of the lover's
+admiration. The same repetition can be used much more effectively in
+describing weariness and pain, as In the lines about the winter famine:
+
+  Oh, the long and dreary Winter!
+  Oh, the cold and cruel Winter!
+  Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
+  Froze the ice on lake and river,
+  Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
+  Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
+  Fell the covering snow, and drifted
+  Through the forest, round the village.
+  Hardly from his buried wigwam
+  Could the hunter force a passage;
+  With his mittens and his snow-shoes
+  Vainly walked he through the forest,
+  Sought for bird or beast and found none,
+  Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
+  In the snow beheld no footprints,
+  In the ghastly, gleaming forest
+  Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
+  Perished there from cold and hunger.
+  Oh, the famine and the fever!
+  Oh, the wasting of the famine!
+  Oh, the blasting of the fever!
+  Oh, the wailing of the children!
+  Oh, the anguish of the women!
+  All the earth was sick and famished;
+  Hungry was the air around them,
+  Hungry was the sky above them,
+  And the hungry stars in heaven
+  Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!
+
+This is strong, emotionally strong, though it is not great poetry; but it
+makes the emotional effect of great poetry by the use of the same means
+which the Finnish poets used. The best part of the poem is the famine
+chapter, and the next best is the part entitled "The Ghosts." However, the
+charm of a composition can be fully felt only by those who understand
+something of the American Indian's life and the wild northwestern country
+described. That is not the immediate matter to be considered,
+notwithstanding. The matter to be considered is whether this method of
+using parallelism and repetition and alliteration can give new and great
+results. I believe that it can, and that a greater Longfellow would have
+brought such results into existence long ago. Of course, the form is
+primitive; it does not follow that an English poet or a Japanese poet
+should attempt only a return to primitive methods of poetry in detail. The
+detail is of small moment; the spirit is everything. Parallelism means
+simply the wish to present the same idea under a variety of aspects,
+instead of attempting to put it forward in one aspect only. Everything
+great in the way of thought, everything beautiful in the way of idea, has
+many sides. It is merely the superficial which we can see from the front
+only; the solid can be perceived from every possible direction, and
+changes shape according to the direction looked at.
+
+The great master of English verse, Swinburne is also a poet much given to
+parallelism; for he has found it of incomparable use to him in managing
+new forms of verse. He uses it in an immense variety of ways--ways
+impossible to Japanese poets or to Finnish poets; and the splendour of the
+results can not be imitated in another language. But his case is
+interesting. The most primitive methods of Finnish poetry, and of ancient
+poetry in general, coming into his hands, are reproduced into music. I
+propose to make a few quotations, in illustration. Here are some lines
+from "Atalanta in Calydon"; they are only parallelisms, but how
+magnificent they are!
+
+  When thou dravest the men
+    Of the chosen of Thrace,
+  None turned him again,
+    Nor endured he thy face
+  Close round with the blush of the battle, with light from a
+          terrible place.
+
+Look again at the following lines from "A Song in Time of Revolution":
+
+  There is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for
+          breath;
+  They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow
+          of death.
+
+  The wind is thwart in their feet; it is full of the shouting of mirth;
+  As one shaketh the sides of a sheet, so it shaketh the ends of the earth.
+
+  The sword, the sword is made keen; the iron has opened its mouth;
+  The corn is red that was green; it is bound for the sheaves of the south.
+
+  The sound of a word was shed, the sound of the wind as a breath,
+  In the ears of the souls that were dead, in the dust of the deepness
+          of death.
+
+  Where the face of the moon is taken, the ways of the stars undone,
+  The light of the whole sky shaken, the light of the face of the sun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Where the sword was covered and hidden, and dust had grown in its side,
+  A word came forth which was bidden, the crying of one that cried:
+
+  The sides of the two-edged sword shall be bare, and its mouth shall
+          be red,
+  For the breath of the face of the Lord that is felt in the bones of
+          the dead.
+
+All this is indeed very grand compared with anything in the "Kalevala" or
+in Longfellow's rendering; but do you not see that the grandeur is also
+the grandeur of parallelism? Here is proof of what a master can do with a
+method older than Western civilization. But what is the inference? Is it
+not that the old primitive poetry contains something of eternal value, a
+value ranging from the lowest even to the highest, a value that can lend
+beauty equally to the song of a little child or to the thunder of the
+grandest epic verse?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
+
+
+The value of romantic literature, which has been, so far as the Middle
+Ages are concerned, unjustly depreciated, does not depend upon beauty of
+words or beauty of fact. To-day the immense debt of modern literature to
+the literature of the Middle Ages is better understood; and we are
+generally beginning to recognize what we owe to the imagination of the
+Middle Ages, in spite of the ignorance, the superstition and the cruelty
+of that time. If the evils of the Middle Ages had really been universal,
+those ages could not have imparted to us lessons of beauty and lessons of
+nobility having nothing to do with literary form in themselves, yet
+profoundly affecting modern poetry of the highest class. No; there was
+very much of moral goodness as well as of moral badness in the Middle
+Ages; and what was good happened to be very good indeed. Commonly it used
+to be said (though I do not think any good critic would say it now) that
+the fervid faith of the time made the moral beauty. Unless we modify this
+statement a great deal, we can not now accept it at all. There was indeed
+a religious beauty, particularly mediaeval, but it was not that which
+created the romance of the period. Indeed, that romantic literature was
+something of a reaction against the religious restraint upon imagination.
+But if we mean by mediaeval faith only that which is very much older than
+any European civilization, and which does not belong to the West any more
+than to the East--the profound belief in human moral experience--then I
+think that the statement is true enough. At no time in European history
+were men more sincere believers in the value of certain virtues than
+during the Middle Ages--and the very best of the romances are just those
+romances which illustrate that belief, though not written for a merely
+ethical purpose.
+
+But I can not better illustrate what I mean than by telling a story, which
+has nothing to do with Europe, or the Middle Ages, or any particular form
+of religious belief. It is not a Christian story at all; and it could not
+be told you exactly as written, for there are some very curious pages in
+it. But it is a good example of the worth that may lie in a mere product
+of imagination.
+
+There was a king once, in Persia or Arabia, who, at the time of his
+accession to power, discovered a wonderful subterranean hall under the
+garden of his palace. In one chamber of that hall stood six marvellous
+statues of young girls, each statue being made out of a single diamond.
+The beauty as well as the cost of the work was beyond imagination. But in
+the midst of the statues, which stood in a circle, there was an empty
+pedestal, and on that pedestal was a precious casket containing a letter
+from the dead father of the king. The letter said:
+
+"O my son, though these statues of girls are indeed beyond all praise,
+there is yet a seventh statue incomparably more precious and beautiful
+which I could not obtain before I died. It is now your duty, O my son, to
+obtain that statue, that it may be placed upon the seventh pedestal. Go,
+therefore, and ask my favourite slave, who is still alive, how you are to
+obtain it." Then the young king went in all haste to that old slave, who
+had been his father's confidant, and showed him the letter. And the old
+man said, "Even now, O master, I will go with you to find that statue. But
+it is in one of the three islands in which the genii dwell; and it is
+necessary, above all things, that you do not fear, and that you obey my
+instructions in all things. Also, remember that if you make a promise to
+the Spirits of that land, the promise must be kept."
+
+And they proceeded upon their journey through a great wilderness, in which
+"nothing existed but grass and the presence of God." I can not try now to
+tell you about the wonderful things that happened to them, nor about the
+marvellous boat, rowed by a boatman having upon his shoulders the head of
+an elephant. Suffice it to say that at last they reached the palace of the
+king of the Spirits; and the king came to meet them in the form of a
+beautiful old man with a long white beard. And he said to the young king,
+"My son, I will gladly help you, as I helped your father; and I will give
+you that seventh statue of diamond which you desire. But I must ask for a
+gift in return. You must bring to me here a young girl of about sixteen
+years old; and she must be very intelligent; and she must be a true
+maiden, not only as to her body, but as to her soul, and heart, and all
+her thoughts." The young king thought that was a very easy thing to find,
+but the king of the Spirits assured him that it was not, and further told
+him this, "My son, no mortal man is wise enough to know by his own wisdom
+the purity that is in the heart of a young girl. Only by the help of this
+magical mirror, which I now lend you, will you be able to know. Look at
+the reflection of any maiden in this mirror, and then, if her heart is
+perfectly good and pure, the mirror will remain bright. But if there be
+any fault in her, the mirror will grow dim. Go now, and do my bidding."
+
+You can imagine, of course, what happened next. Returning to his kingdom,
+the young king had brought before him many beautiful girls, the daughters
+of the noblest and highest in all the cities of the land. But in no case
+did the mirror remain perfectly clear when the ghostly test was applied.
+For three years in vain the king sought; then in despair he for the first
+time turned his attention to the common people. And there came before him
+on the very first day a rude man of the desert, who said, "I know of just
+such a girl as you want." Then he went forth and presently returned with a
+simple girl from the desert, who had been brought up in the care of her
+father only, and had lived with no other companion than the members of her
+own family and the camels and horses of the encampment. And as she stood
+in her poor dress before the king, he saw that she was much more beautiful
+than any one whom he had seen before; and he questioned her, only to find
+that she was very intelligent; and she was not at all afraid or ashamed of
+standing before the king, but looked about her with large wondering eyes,
+like the eyes of a child; and whoever met that innocent gaze, felt a great
+joy in his heart, and could not tell why. And when the king had the mirror
+brought, and the reflection of the girl was thrown upon it, the mirror
+became much brighter than before, and shone like a great moon.
+
+There was the maid whom the Spirit-king wished for. The king easily
+obtained her from her parents; but he did not tell her what he intended to
+do with her. Now it was his duty to give her to the Spirits; but there was
+a condition he found very hard to fulfil. By the terms of his promise he
+was not allowed to kiss her, to caress her, or even to see her, except
+veiled after the manner of the country. Only by the mirror had he been
+able to know how fair she was. And the voyage was long; and on the way,
+the girl, who thought she was going to be this king's bride, became
+sincerely attached to him, after the manner of a child with a brother; and
+he also in his heart became much attached to her. But it was his duty to
+give her up. At last they reached the palace of the Spirit-king; and the
+figure of the old man came forth and said, "My son, you have done well and
+kept your promise. This maiden is all that I could have wished for; and I
+accept her. Now when you go back to your palace, you will find on the
+seventh pedestal the statue of the diamond which your father desired you
+to obtain." And, with these words, the Spirit-king vanished, taking with
+him the girl, who uttered a great and piercing cry to heaven at having
+been thus deceived. Very sorrowfully the young king then began his journey
+home. All along the way he kept regretting that girl, and regretting the
+cruelty which he had practised in deceiving her and her parents. And he
+began to say to himself, "Accursed be the gift of the king of the Spirits!
+Of what worth to me is a woman of diamond any more than a woman of stone?
+What is there in all the world half so beautiful or half so precious as a
+living girl such as I discovered? Fool that I was to give her up for the
+sake of a statue!" But he tried to console himself by remembering that he
+had obeyed his dead father's wish.
+
+Still, he could not console himself. Reaching his palace, he went to his
+secret chamber to weep alone, and he wept night and day, in spite of the
+efforts of his ministers to comfort him. But at last one of them said, "O
+my king, in the hall beneath your garden there has appeared a wonderful
+statue upon the seventh pedestal; perchance if you go to see it, your
+heart will become more joyful."
+
+Then with great reluctance the king properly dressed himself, and went to
+the subterranean hall.
+
+There indeed was the statue, the gift of the Spirit-king; and very
+beautiful it was. But it was not made of diamond, and it looked so
+strangely like the girl whom he had lost, that the king's heart leapt in
+his breast for astonishment. He put out his hand and touched the statue,
+and found it warm with life and youth. And a sweet voice said to him,
+"Yes, it is really I--have you forgotten?"
+
+Thus she was given back to him; and the Spirit-king came to their wedding,
+and thus addressed the bridegroom, "O my son, for your dead father's sake
+I did this thing. For it was meant to teach you that the worth of a really
+pure and perfect woman is more than the price of any diamond or any
+treasure that the earth can yield."
+
+Now you can see at once the beauty of this story; and the moral of it is
+exactly the same as that of the famous verse, in the Book of Proverbs,
+"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies." But it
+is simply a story from the "Arabian Nights"--one of those stories which
+you will not find in the ordinary European translations, because it is
+written in such a way that no English translator except Burton would have
+dared to translate it quite literally. The obscenity of parts of the
+original does not really detract in the least from the beauty and
+tenderness of the motive of the story; and we must remember that what we
+call moral or immoral in style depends very much upon the fashion of an
+age and time.
+
+Now it is exactly the same kind of moral charm that distinguishes the best
+of the old English romances--a charm which has nothing to do with the
+style, but everything to do with the feeling and suggestion of the
+composition. But in some of the old romances, the style too has a very
+great charm of quaintness and simplicity and sincerity not to be imitated
+to-day. In this respect the older French romances, from which the English
+made their renderings, are much the best. And the best of all is said to
+be "Amis and Amile," which the English rendered as "Amicus and Amelius."
+Something of the story ought to interest you.
+
+The whole subject of this romance is the virtue of friendship, though this
+of course involves a number of other virtues quite as distinguished. Amis
+and Amile, that is to say Amicus and Amelius, are two young knights who at
+the beginning of their career become profoundly attached to each other.
+Not content with the duties of this natural affection, they imposed upon
+themselves all the duties which chivalry also attached to the office of
+friend. The romance tells of how they triumphed over every conceivable
+test to which their friendship was subjected. Often and often the
+witchcraft of woman worked to separate them, but could not. Both married,
+yet after marriage their friendship was just as strong as before. Each has
+to fight many times on account of the other, and suffer all things which
+it is most hard for a proud and brave man to bear. But everything is
+suffered cheerfully, and the friends are such true knights that, in all
+their trials, neither does anything wrong, or commits the slightest fault
+against truth--until a certain sad day. On that day it is the duty of Amis
+to fight in a trial by battle. But he is sick, and can not fight; then to
+save his honour his friend Amile puts on the armour and helmet of Amis,
+and so pretending to be Amis, goes to the meeting place, and wins the
+fight gloriously. But this was an act of untruthfulness; he had gone into
+battle under a false name, and to do anything false even for a good motive
+is bad. So heaven punishes him by afflicting him with the horrible disease
+of leprosy.
+
+The conditions of leprosy in the Middle Ages were of a peculiar kind. The
+disease seems to have been introduced into Europe from Asia--perhaps by
+the Crusaders. Michelet suggests that it may have resulted from the
+European want of cleanliness, brought about by ascetic teachings--for the
+old Greek and Roman public bath-houses were held in horror by the mediaeval
+Church. But this is not at all certain. What is certain is that in the
+thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries leprosy became very
+prevalent. The disease was not then at all understood; it was supposed to
+be extremely contagious, and the man afflicted by it was immediately
+separated from society, and not allowed to live in any community under
+such conditions as could bring him into contact with other inhabitants.
+His wife or children could accompany him only on the terrible condition of
+being considered lepers. Every leper wore a kind of monk's dress, with a
+hood covering the face; and he had to carry a bell and ring it constantly
+to give notice of his approach. Special leper-houses were built near every
+town, where such unfortunates might obtain accommodation. They were
+allowed to beg, but it was considered dangerous to go very near them, so
+that in most cases alms or food would be thrown to them only, instead of
+being put into their hands.
+
+Now when the victim of leprosy in this romance is first afflicted by the
+disease, he happens to be far away from his good friend. And none of his
+own family is willing to help him; he is regarded with superstitious as
+well as with physical horror. There is nothing left for him to do but to
+yield up his knighthood and his welfare and his family, to put on the
+leper's robe, and to go begging along the roads, carrying a leper's bell.
+And this he does. For long, long months he goes begging from town to town,
+till at last, by mere chance, he finds his way to the gate of the great
+castle where his good friend is living--now a great prince, and married to
+the daughter of the king. And he asks at the castle gate for charity and
+for food.
+
+Now the porter at the gate observes that the leper has a very beautiful
+cup, exactly resembling a drinking cup belonging to his master, and he
+thinks it his duty to tell these things to the lord of the castle. And the
+lord of the castle remembers that very long ago he and his friend each had
+a cup of this kind, given to them by the bishop of Rome. So, hearing the
+porter's story, he knew that the leper at the gate was the friend who "had
+delivered him from death, and won for him the daughter of the King of
+France to be his wife." Here I had better quote from the French version of
+the story, in which the names of the friends are changed, but without
+changing the beauty of the tale itself:
+
+"And straightway he fell upon him, and began to weep greatly, and kissed
+him. And when his wife heard that, she ran out with her hair in disarray,
+weeping and distressed exceedingly--for she remembered that it was he who
+had slain the false Ardres. And thereupon they placed him in a fair bed,
+and said to him, 'Abide with us until God's will be accomplished in thee,
+for all that we have is at thy service.' So he abode with them."
+
+You must understand, by the allusion to "God's will," that leprosy was in
+the Middle Ages really considered to be a punishment from heaven--so that
+in taking a leper into his castle, the good friend was not only offending
+against the law of the land, but risking celestial punishment as well,
+according to the notions of that age. His charity, therefore, was true
+charity indeed, and his friendship without fear. But it was going to be
+put to a test more terrible than any ever endured before. To comprehend
+what followed, you must know that there was one horrible superstition of
+the Middle Ages--the belief that by bathing in human blood the disease of
+leprosy might be cured. Murders were often committed under the influence
+of that superstition. I believe you will remember that the "Golden Legend"
+of Longfellow is founded upon a mediaeval story in which a young girl
+voluntarily offers up her life in order that her blood may cure the
+leprosy of her king. In the present romance there is much more tragedy.
+One night while sleeping in his friend's castle, the leper was awakened by
+an angel from God--Raphael--who said to him:
+
+"I am Raphael, the angel of the Lord, and I am come to tell thee how thou
+mayst be healed. Thou shalt bid Amile thy comrade that he slay his two
+children and wash thee in their blood, and so thy body shall be made
+whole." And Amis said to him, "Let not this thing be, that my comrade
+should become a murderer for my sake." But the angel said, "It is
+convenient that he do this." And thereupon the angel departed.
+
+The phrase, "it is convenient," must be understood as meaning, "it is
+ordered." For the mediaeval lord used such gentle expressions when issuing
+his commands; and the angel talked like a feudal messenger. But in spite
+of the command, the sick man does not tell his friend about the angel's
+visit, until Amile, who has overheard the voice, forces him to acknowledge
+whom he had been talking with during the night. And the emotion of the
+lord may be imagined, though he utters it only in the following gentle
+words--"I would have given to thee my man servants and my maid servants
+and all my goods--and thou feignest that an angel hath spoken to thee that
+I should slay my two children. But I conjure thee by the faith which there
+is between me and thee and by our comradeship, and by the baptism we
+received together, that thou tell me whether it was man or angel said that
+to thee."
+
+Amis declares that it was really an angel, and Amile never thinks of
+doubting his friend's word. It would be a pity to tell you the sequel in
+my own words; let me quote again from the text, translated by Walter
+Pater. I think you will find it beautiful and touching:
+
+"Then Amile began to weep in secret, and thought within himself, 'If this
+man was ready to die before the King for me, shall I not for him slay my
+children? Shall I not keep faith with him who was faithful to me even unto
+death?' And Amile tarried no longer, but departed to the chamber of his
+wife, and bade her go to hear the Sacred Office. And he took a sword, and
+went to the bed where the children were lying, and found them asleep. And
+he lay down over them and began to weep bitterly and said, 'Has any man
+yet heard of a father who of his own will slew his children? Alas, my
+children! I am no longer your father, but your cruel murderer.'
+
+"And the children awoke at the tears of their father, which fell upon
+them; and they looked up into his face and began to laugh. And as they
+were of age about three years, he said, 'Your laughing will be turned into
+tears, for your innocent blood must now be shed'; and therewith he cut off
+their heads. Then he laid them back in the bed, and put the heads upon the
+bodies, and covered them as though they slept; and with the blood which he
+had taken he washed his comrade, and said, 'Lord Jesus Christ! who hast
+commanded men to keep faith on earth, and didst heal the leper by Thy
+word! cleanse now my comrade, for whose love I have shed the blood of my
+children.'" And of course the leper is immediately and completely cured.
+But the mother did not know anything about the killing of the children; we
+have to hear something about her share in the tragedy. Let me again quote,
+this time giving the real and very beautiful conclusion--
+
+"Now neither the father nor the mother had yet entered where the children
+were, but the father sighed heavily because they were dead, and the mother
+asked for them, that they might rejoice together; but Amile said, 'Dame!
+let the children sleep.' And it was already the hour of Tierce. And going
+in alone to the children to weep over them, he found them at play in the
+bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about their throats was, as it
+were, a thread of crimson. And he took them in his arms and carried them
+to his wife and said, 'Rejoice greatly! For thy children whom I had slain
+by the commandment of the angel, are alive, and by their blood is Amis
+healed.'"
+
+I think you will all see how fine a story this is, and feel the emotional
+force of the grand moral idea behind it. There is nothing more to tell
+you, except the curious fact that during the Middle Ages, when it was
+believed that the story was really true, Amis and Amile--or Amicus and
+Amelius--were actually considered by the Church as saints, and people used
+to pray to them. When anybody was anxious for his friend, or feared that
+he might lose the love of his friend, or was afraid that he might not have
+strength to perform his duty as friend--then he would go to church to
+implore help from the good saints Amicus and Amelius. But of course it was
+all a mistake--a mistake which lasted until the end of the seventeenth
+century! Then somebody called the attention of the Church to the
+unmistakable fact that Amicus and Amelius were merely inventions of some
+mediaeval romancer. Then the Church made investigation, and greatly
+shocked, withdrew from the list of its saints those long-loved names of
+Amicus and Amelius--a reform in which I cannot help thinking the Church
+made a very serious mistake. What matter whether those shadowy figures
+represented original human lives or only human dreams? They were
+beautiful, and belief in them made men think beautiful thoughts, and the
+imagined help from them had comforted many thousands of hearts. It would
+have been better to have left them alone; for that matter, how many of the
+existent lives of saints are really true? Nevertheless the friends are not
+dead, though expelled from the heaven of the Church. They still live in
+romance; and everybody who reads about them feels a little better for
+their acquaintance.
+
+What I read to you was from the French version--that is much the more
+beautiful of the two. You will find some extracts from the English version
+in the pages of Ten Brink. But as that great German scholar pointed out,
+the English story is much rougher than the French. For example, in the
+English story, the knight rushes out of his castle to beat the leper at
+the gate, and to accuse him of having stolen the cup. And he does beat him
+ferociously, and abuses him with very violent terms. In fact, the English
+writer reflected too much of mediaeval English character, in trying to
+cover, or to improve upon, the French story, which was the first. In the
+French story all is knightly smooth, refined as well as simple and strong.
+And where did the mediaeval imagination get its material for the story?
+Partly, perhaps, from the story of Joseph in the Bible, partly from the
+story of Abraham; but the scriptural material is so admirably worked over
+that the whole thing appears deliciously original. That was the great art
+of the Middle Ages--to make old, old things quite new by the magic of
+spiritual imagination. Men then lived in a world of dreams. And that world
+still attracts us, for the simple reason that happiness chiefly consists
+in dreams. Exact science may help us a great deal no doubt, but
+mathematics do not make us any happier. Dreams do, if we can believe them.
+The Middle Ages could believe them; we, at the best, can only try.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"IONICA"
+
+
+I am going now to talk about a very rare kind of poetry in a very rare
+little book, like fine wine in a small and precious flask. The author
+never put his name to the book--indeed for many years it was not known who
+wrote the volume. We now know that the author was a school teacher called
+William Johnson who, later in life, coming into a small fortune, changed
+his name to William Cory. He was born sometime about 1823, and died in
+1892. He was, I believe, an Oxford man and was assistant master of Eton
+College for a number of years. Judging from his poems, he must have found
+pleasure in his profession as well as pain. There is a strange sadness
+nearly always, but this sadness is mixed with expressions of love for the
+educational establishment which he directed, and for the students whose
+minds he helped to form. He must have been otherwise a very shy man.
+Scarcely anything seems to be known about him after his departure from
+educational circles, although everybody of taste now knows his poems. I
+wish to speak of them because I think that literary graduates of this
+university ought to be at least familiar with the name "Ionica." At all
+events you should know something about the man and about the best of his
+poems. If you should ask why so little has yet been said about him in
+books on English literature, I would answer that in the first place he was
+a very small poet writing in the time of giants, having for competitors
+Tennyson, Browning and others. He could scarcely make his small pipe heard
+in the thunder of those great organ tones. In the second place his verses
+were never written to please the public at all. They were written only for
+fine scholars, and even the titles of many of them cannot be explained by
+a person devoid of some Greek culture. So the little book, which appeared
+quite early in the Victorian Age, was soon forgotten. Being forgotten it
+ran out of print and disappeared. Then somebody remembered that it had
+existed. I have told you that it was like the tone of a little pipe or
+flute as compared with the organ music of the larger poets. But the little
+pipe happened to be a Greek pipe--the melody was very sweet and very
+strange and old, and people who had heard it once soon wanted to hear it
+again. But they could not get it. Copies of the first edition fetched
+extraordinary sums. Some few years ago a new edition appeared, but this
+too is now out of print and is fetching fancy prices. However, you must
+not expect anything too wonderful from this way of introducing the
+subject. The facts only show that the poems are liked by persons of
+refinement and wealth. I hope to make you like some of them, but the
+difficulties of so doing are considerable, because of the extremely
+English character of some pieces and the extremely Greek tone of others.
+There is also some uneven work. The poet is not in all cases successful.
+Sometimes he tried to write society verse, and his society verse must be
+considered a failure. The best pieces are his Greek pieces and some
+compositions on love subjects of a most delicate and bewitching kind.
+
+Of course the very name "Ionica" suggests Greek work, a collection of
+pieces in Ionic style. But you must not think that this means only
+repetitions of ancient subjects. This author brings the Greek feeling back
+again into the very heart of English life sometimes, or makes an English
+fact illustrate a Greek fable. Some delightful translations from the Greek
+there are, but less than half a dozen in all.
+
+I scarcely know how to begin--what piece to quote first. But perhaps the
+little fancy called "Mimnermus in Church" is the best known, and the one
+which will best serve to introduce us to the character of Cory. Before
+quoting it, however, I must explain the title briefly. Mimnermus was an
+old Greek philosopher and poet who thought that all things in the world
+are temporary, that all hope of a future life is vain, that there is
+nothing worth existing for except love, and that without affection one
+were better dead. There are, no doubt, various modern thinkers who tell
+you much the same thing, and this little poem exhibits such modern feeling
+in a Greek dress. I mean that we have here a picture of a young man, a
+young English scholar, listening in church to Christian teaching, but
+answering that teaching with the thought of the old Greeks. There is of
+course one slight difference; the modern conception of love is perhaps a
+little wider in range than that of the old Greeks. There is more of the
+ideal in it.
+
+
+MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH
+
+  You promise heavens free from strife,
+    Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
+  But sweet, sweet is this human life,
+    So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;
+  Your chilly stars I can forego,
+  This warm kind world is all I know.
+
+  You say there is no substance here,
+    One great reality above:
+  Back from that void I shrink in fear
+    And child-like hide myself in love;
+  Show me what angels feel. Till then
+  I cling, a mere weak man, to men.
+
+  You bid me lift my mean desires
+    From faltering lips and fitful veins
+  To sexless souls, ideal choirs,
+    Unwearied voices, wordless strains;
+  My mind with fonder welcome owns
+  One dear dead friend's remembered tones.
+
+  Forsooth the present we must give
+    To that which cannot pass away;
+  All beauteous things for which we live
+    By laws of time and space decay.
+  But oh, the very reason why
+  I clasp them, is because they die.
+
+The preacher has been talking to his congregation about the joys of
+Heaven. There, he says, there will be no quarrelling, no contest, no
+falsehood, and all evil dispositions will be entirely changed to good. The
+poet answers, "This world and this life are full of beauty and of joy for
+me. I do not want to die, I want to live. I do not wish to go to that cold
+region of stars about which you teach. I only know this world and I find
+in it warm hearts and precious affection. You say that this world is a
+phantom, unsubstantial, unreal, and that the only reality is above, in
+Heaven. To me that Heaven appears but as an awful emptiness. I shrink from
+it in terror, and like a child seek for consolation in human love. It is
+no use to talk to me about angels until you can prove to me that angels
+can feel happier than men. I prefer to remain with human beings. You say
+that I ought to wish for higher things than this world can give, that here
+minds are unsteady and weak, hearts fickle and selfish, and you talk of
+souls without sex, imaginary concerts of perfect music, tireless singing
+in Heaven, and the pleasure of conversation without speech. But all the
+happiness that we know is received from our fellow beings. I remember the
+voice of one dead friend with deeper love and pleasure than any images of
+Heaven could ever excite in my mind."
+
+The last stanza needs no paraphrasing, but it deserves some comment, for
+it is the expression of one great difference between the old Greek feeling
+in regard to life and death, and all modern religious feeling on the same
+subject. You can read through hundreds of beautiful inscriptions which
+were placed over the Greek tombs. They are contained in the Greek
+Anthology. You will find there almost nothing about hope of a future life,
+or about Heaven. They are not for the most part sad; they are actually
+joyous in many cases. You would say that the Greek mind thought thus about
+death--"I have had my share of the beauty and the love of this world, and
+I am grateful for this enjoyment, and now it is time to go to sleep."
+There is actually an inscription to the effect, "I have supped well of the
+banquet of life." The Eastern religions, including Christianity, taught
+that because everything in the world is uncertain, impermanent,
+perishable, therefore we ought not to allow our minds to love worldly
+things. But the Greek mind, as expressed by the old epigraphy in the
+cemeteries, not less than by the teaching of Mimnermus, took exactly the
+opposite view. "O children of men, it is because beauty and pleasure and
+love and light can last only for a little while, it is exactly because of
+this that you should love them. Why refuse to enjoy the present because it
+can not last for ever?" And at a much later day the Persian poet Omar
+took, you will remember, precisely the same view. You need not think that
+it would be wise to accept such teaching for a rule of life, but it has a
+certain value as a balance to the other extreme view, that we should make
+ourselves miserable in this world with the idea of being rewarded in
+another, concerning which we have no positive knowledge. The lines with
+which the poem concludes at least deserve to be thought about--
+
+  But oh, the very reason why
+  I clasp them, is because they die.
+
+We shall later on take some of the purely Greek work of Cory for study,
+but I want now to interest you in the more modern part of it. The charm of
+the following passage you will better feel by remembering that the writer
+was then a schoolmaster at Eton, and that the verses particularly express
+the love which he felt for his students--a love the more profound,
+perhaps, because the circumstances of the teacher's position obliged him
+to appear cold and severe, obliged him to suppress natural impulses of
+affection and generosity. The discipline of the masters in English public
+schools is much more severe than the discipline to which the students are
+subjected. The boys enjoy a great deal of liberty. The masters may be said
+to have none. Yet there are men so constituted that they learn to greatly
+love the profession. The title of this poem is "Reparabo," which means "I
+will atone."
+
+  The world will rob me of my friends,
+    For time with her conspires;
+  But they shall both, to make amends,
+    Relight my slumbering fires.
+
+  For while my comrades pass away
+    To bow and smirk and gloze,
+  Come others, for as short a stay;
+    And dear are these as those.
+
+  And who was this? they ask; and then
+    The loved and lost I praise:
+  "Like you they frolicked; they are men;
+    Bless ye my later days."
+
+  Why fret? The hawks I trained are flown;
+    'Twas nature bade them range;
+  I could not keep their wings half-grown,
+    I could not bar the change.
+
+  With lattice opened wide I stand
+    To watch their eager flight;
+  With broken jesses in my hand
+    I muse on their delight.
+
+  And oh! if one with sullied plume
+    Should droop in mid career,
+  My love makes signals,--"There is room,
+    O bleeding wanderer, here."
+
+This comparison of the educator to a falconer, and of the students to
+young hawks eager to break their jesses seems to an Englishman
+particularly happy in reference to Eton, from which so many youths pass
+into the ranks of the army and navy. The line about bowing, smirking and
+glozing, refers to the comparative insincerity of the higher society into
+which so many of the scholars must eventually pass. "Smirking" suggests
+insincere smiles, "glozing" implies tolerating or lightly passing over
+faults or wrongs or serious matters that should not be considered lightly.
+Society is essentially insincere and artificial in all countries, but
+especially so in England. The old Eton master thinks, however, that he
+knows the moral character of the boys, the strong principles which make
+its foundation, and he trusts that they will be able in a general way to
+do only what is right, in spite of conventions and humbug.
+
+As I told you before, we know very little about the personal life of Cory,
+who must have been a very reserved man; but a poet puts his heart into his
+verses as a general rule, and there are many little poems in this book
+that suggest to us an unhappy love episode. These are extremely pretty and
+touching, the writer in most cases confessing himself unworthy of the
+person who charmed him; but the finest thing of the kind is a composition
+which he suggestively entitled "A Fable"--that is to say, a fable in the
+Greek sense, an emblem or symbol of truth.
+
+  An eager girl, whose father buys
+    Some ruined thane's forsaken hall,
+  Explores the new domain and tries
+    Before the rest to view it all.
+
+I think you have often noted the fact here related; when a family moves to
+a new house, it is the child, or the youngest daughter, who is the first
+to explore all the secrets of the new residence, and whose young eyes
+discover things which the older folks had not noticed.
+
+  Alone she lifts the latch, and glides,
+    Through many a sadly curtained room,
+  As daylight through the doorway slides
+    And struggles with the muffled gloom.
+
+  With mimicries of dance she wakes
+    The lordly gallery's silent floor,
+  And climbing up on tiptoe, makes
+    The old-world mirror smile once more.
+
+  With tankards dry she chills her lips,
+    With yellowing laces veils the head,
+  And leaps in pride of ownership
+    Upon the faded marriage bed.
+
+  A harp in some dark nook she sees
+    Long left a prey to heat and frost,
+  She smites it; can such tinklings please?
+    Is not all worth, all beauty, lost?
+
+  Ah, who'd have thought such sweetness clung
+    To loose neglected strings like those?
+  They answered to whate'er was sung,
+    And sounded as a lady chose.
+
+  Her pitying finger hurried by
+    Each vacant space, each slackened chord;
+  Nor would her wayward zeal let die
+    The music-spirit she restored.
+
+  The fashion quaint, the timeworn flaws,
+    The narrow range, the doubtful tone,
+  All was excused awhile, because
+    It seemed a creature of her own.
+
+  Perfection tires; the new in old,
+    The mended wrecks that need her skill,
+  Amuse her. If the truth be told,
+    She loves the triumph of her will.
+
+  With this, she dares herself persuade,
+    She'll be for many a month content,
+  Quite sure no duchess ever played
+    Upon a sweeter instrument.
+
+  And thus in sooth she can beguile
+    Girlhood's romantic hours, but soon
+  She yields to taste and mood and style,
+    A siren of the gay saloon.
+
+  And wonders how she once could like
+    Those drooping wires, those failing notes,
+  And leaves her toy for bats to strike
+    Amongst the cobwebs and the motes.
+
+  But enter in, thou freezing wind,
+    And snap the harp-strings, one by one;
+  It was a maiden blithe and kind:
+    They felt her touch; their task is done.
+
+In this charming little study we know that the harp described is not a
+harp; it is the loving heart of an old man, at least of a man beyond the
+usual age of lovers. He has described and perhaps adored some beautiful
+person who seemed to care for him, and who played upon his heart, with her
+whims, caresses, smiles, much as one would play upon the strings of a
+harp. She did not mean to be cruel at all, nor even insincere. It is even
+probable that she really in those times thought that she loved the man,
+and under the charms of the girl the man became a different being; the
+old-fashioned mind brightened, the old-fashioned heart exposed its hidden
+treasures of tenderness and wisdom and sympathy. Very much like playing
+upon a long forgotten instrument, was the relation between the maiden and
+the man--not only because he resembled such an instrument in the fact of
+belonging emotionally and intellectually to another generation, but also
+because his was a heart whose true music had long been silent, unheard by
+the world. Undoubtedly the maiden meant no harm, but she caused a great
+deal of pain, for at a later day, becoming a great lady of society, she
+forgot all about this old friendship, or perhaps wondered why she ever
+wasted her time in talking to such a strange old-fashioned professor. Then
+the affectionate heart is condemned to silence again, to silence and
+oblivion, like the harp thrown away in some garret to be covered with
+cobwebs and visited only by bats. "Is it not time," the old man thinks,
+"that the strings should be broken, the strings of the heart? Let the cold
+wind of death now come and snap them." Yet, after all, why should he
+complain? Did he not have the beautiful experience of loving, and was she
+not in that time at least well worthy of the love that she called forth
+like music?
+
+There are several other poems referring to what would seem to be the same
+experience, and all are beautiful, but one seems to me nobler than the
+rest, expressing as it does a generous resignation. It is called
+"Deteriora," a Latin word signifying lesser, inferior, or deteriorated
+things--not easy to translate. Nor would you find the poem easy to
+understand, referring as it does to conditions of society foreign to
+anything in Japanese experience. But some verses which I may quote you
+will like.
+
+  If fate and nature screen from me
+    The sovran front I bowed before,
+  And set the glorious creature free,
+    Whom I would clasp, detain, adore,--
+  If I forego that strange delight,
+  Must all be lost? Not quite, not quite.
+
+  _Die, Little Love, without complaint,
+    Whom honour standeth by to shrive:
+  Assoiled from all selfish taint,
+    Die, Love, whom Friendship will survive.
+  Not hate nor folly gave thee birth;
+  And briefness does but raise thy worth._
+
+This is the same thought which Tennyson expressed in his famous lines,
+
+  'Tis better to have loved and lost
+  Than never to have loved at all.
+
+But it is still more finely expressed to meet a particular personal mood.
+One must not think the world lost because a woman has been lost, he says,
+and such a love is not a thing for any man to be ashamed of, in spite of
+the fact that it has been disappointed. It was honourable, unselfish, not
+inspired by any passion or any folly, and the very brevity of the
+experience only serves to make it more precious. Observe the use of the
+words "shrive" and "assoiled." These refer to the old religious custom of
+confession; to "shrive" signifies to forgive, to free from sin, as a
+priest is supposed to do, and "assoiled" means "purified."
+
+If this was a personal experience, it must have been an experience of
+advanced life. Elsewhere the story of a boyish love is told very prettily,
+under the title of "Two Fragments of Childhood." This is the first
+fragment:
+
+  When these locks were yellow as gold,
+  When past days were easily told,
+  Well I knew the voice of the sea,
+  Once he spake as a friend to me.
+  Thunder-rollings carelessly heard,
+  Once that poor little heart they stirred,
+    Why, Oh, why?
+    Memory, memory!
+  She that I wished to be with was by.
+
+  Sick was I in those misanthrope days
+  Of soft caresses, womanly ways;
+  Once that maid on the stair I met
+  Lip on brow she suddenly set.
+  Then flushed up my chivalrous blood,
+  Like Swiss streams in a mid-summer flood.
+    Then, Oh, then,
+    Imogen, Imogen!
+  Hadst thou a lover, whose years were ten.
+
+This is evidently the charming memory of a little sick boy sent to the
+seaside for his health, according to the English custom, and unhappy
+there, unable to play about like stronger children, and obliged to remain
+under the constant care of nurses and female relatives. But in the same
+house there is another family with a beautiful young daughter, probably
+sixteen or eighteen years old. The little boy wishes, wishes so much that
+the beautiful lady would speak to him and play with him, but he is shy,
+afraid to approach her--only looks at her with great admiring loving eyes.
+But one day she meets him on the stairs, and stoops down and kisses him on
+the forehead. Then he is in Heaven. Afterward no doubt she played with
+him, and they walked up and down by the shore of the sea together, and
+now, though an old man, whenever he hears the roar of the sea he remembers
+the beautiful lady who played with him and caressed him, when he was a
+little sick child. How much he loved her! But she was a woman, and he was
+only ten years old. The reference to "chivalrous blood" signifies just
+this, that at the moment when she kissed him he would have given his life
+for her, would have dared anything or done anything to show his devotion
+to her. No prettier memory of a child could be told.
+
+We can learn a good deal about even the shyest of the poets through a
+close understanding of his poetry. From the foregoing we know that Cory
+must have been a sickly child; and from other poems referring to school
+life we can not escape the supposition that he was not a strong lad. In
+one of his verses he speaks of being unable to join in the hearty play of
+his comrades; and in the poem which touches on the life of the mature man
+we find him acknowledging that he believed his life a failure--a failure
+through want of strength. I am going to quote this poem for other reasons.
+It is a beautiful address either to some favourite student or to a beloved
+son--it is impossible to decide which. But that does not matter. The title
+is "A New Year's Day."
+
+  Our planet runs through liquid space,
+  And sweeps us with her in the race;
+  And wrinkles gather on my face,
+    And Hebe bloom on thine:
+  Our sun with his encircling spheres
+  Around the central sun careers;
+  And unto thee with mustering years
+    Come hopes which I resign.
+
+  'Twere sweet for me to keep thee still
+  Reclining halfway up the hill;
+  But time will not obey the will,
+    And onward thou must climb:
+  'Twere sweet to pause on this descent,
+  To wait for thee and pitch my tent,
+  But march I must with shoulders bent,
+    Yet further from my prime.
+
+  _I shall not tread thy battlefield,
+  Nor see the blazon on thy shield;
+  Take thou the sword I could not wield,
+    And leave me, and forget.
+  Be fairer, braver, more admired;
+  So win what feeble hearts desired;
+  Then leave thine arms, when thou art tired,
+    To some one nobler yet._
+
+How beautiful this is, and how profoundly sad!
+
+I shall return to the personal poetry of Cory later on, but I want now to
+give you some examples of his Greek work. Perhaps the best of this is
+little more than a rendering of Greek into English; some of the work is
+pure translation. But it is the translation of a very great master, the
+perfect rendering of Greek feeling as well as of Greek thought. Here is an
+example of pure translation:
+
+  They told me, Heraclitus, 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.
+
+What are "thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales"? They are the songs which
+the dear dead poet made, still sung in his native country, though his body
+was burned to ashes long ago--has been changed into a mere handful of grey
+ashes, which, doubtless, have been placed in an urn, as is done with such
+ashes to-day in Japan. Death takes away all things from man, but not his
+poems, his songs, the beautiful thoughts which he puts into musical verse.
+These will always be heard like nightingales. The fourth line in the first
+stanza contains an idiom which may not be familiar to you. It means only
+that the two friends talked all day until the sun set in the West, and
+still talked on after that. Tennyson has used the same Greek thought in a
+verse of his poem, "A Dream of Fair Women," where Cleopatra says,
+
+  "We drank the Libyan sun to sleep."
+
+The Greek author of the above poem was the great poet Callimachus, and the
+English translator does not think it necessary even to give the name, as
+he wrote only for folk well acquainted with the classics. He has another
+short translation which he accompanies with the original Greek text; it is
+very pretty, but of an entirely different kind, a kind that may remind you
+of some Japanese poems. It is only about a cicada and a peasant girl, and
+perhaps it is twenty-four or twenty-five hundred years old.
+
+  A dry cicale chirps to a lass making hay,
+  "Why creak'st thou, Tithonus?" quoth she. "I don't play;
+  It doubles my toil, your importunate lay,
+  I've earned a sweet pillow, lo! Hesper is nigh;
+  I clasp a good wisp and in fragrance I lie;
+  But thou art unwearied, and empty, and dry."
+
+How very human this little thing is--how actually it brings before us the
+figure of the girl, who must have become dust some time between two and
+three thousand years ago! She is working hard in the field, and the
+constant singing of the insect prompts her to make a comical protest. "Oh,
+Tithonus, what are you making that creaking noise for? You old dry thing,
+I have no time to play with you, or to idle in any way, but you do nothing
+but complain. Why don't you work, as I do? Soon I shall have leave to
+sleep, because I have worked well. There is the evening star, and I shall
+have a good bed of hay, sweet-smelling fresh hay, to lie upon. How well I
+shall sleep. But you, you idle noisy thing, you do not deserve to sleep.
+You have done nothing to tire you. And you are empty, dry and thirsty.
+Serves you right!" Of course you recognize the allusion to the story of
+Tithonus, so beautifully told by Tennyson. The girl's jest has a double
+meaning. The word "importunate" has the signification of a wearisome
+repetition of a request, a constant asking, impossible to satisfy.
+Tithonus was supposed to complain because he was obliged to live although
+he wanted to die. That young girl does not want to die at all. And she
+says that the noise of the insect, supposed to repeat the complaint of
+Tithonus, only makes it more tiresome for her to work. She was feeling, no
+doubt, much as a Japanese student would feel when troubled by the singing
+of _semi_ on some very hot afternoon while he is trying to master some
+difficult problem.
+
+That is pure Greek--pure as another mingling of the Greek feeling with the
+modern scholarly spirit, entitled "An Invocation." Before quoting from it
+I must explain somewhat; otherwise you might not be able to imagine what
+it means, because it was written to be read by those only who are
+acquainted with Theocritus and the Greek idylists. Perhaps I had better
+say something too, about the word idyl, for the use of the word by
+Tennyson is not the Greek use at all, except in the mere fact that the
+word signifies a picturing, a shadowing or an imagining of things.
+Tennyson's pictures are of a purely imaginative kind in the "Idyls of the
+King." But the Greek poets who first invented the poetry called idyllic
+did not attempt the heroic works of imagination at all; they only
+endeavoured to make perfectly true pictures of the common life of peasants
+in the country. They wrote about the young men and young girls working on
+the farms, about the way they quarrelled or rejoiced or made love, about
+their dances and their songs, about their religious festivals and their
+sacrifices to the gods at the parish temple. Imagine a Japanese scholar of
+to-day who, after leaving the university, instead of busying himself with
+the fashionable studies of the time, should go out into the remoter
+districts or islands of Japan, and devote his life to studying the
+existence of the commoner people there, and making poems about it. This
+was exactly what the Greek idylists did,--that is, the best of them. They
+were great scholars and became friends of kings, but they wrote poetry
+chiefly about peasant life, and they gave all their genius to the work.
+The result was so beautiful that everybody is still charmed by the
+pictures or idyls which they made.
+
+Well, after this disgression, to return to the subject of Theocritus, the
+greatest of the idylists. He has often introduced into his idyls the name
+of Comatas. Who was Comatas? Comatas was a Greek shepherd boy, or more
+strictly speaking a goatherd, who kept the flocks of a rich man. It was
+his duty to sacrifice to the gods none of his master's animals, without
+permission; but as his master was a very avaricious person, Comatas knew
+that it would be of little use to ask him. Now this Comatas was a very
+good singer of peasant songs, and he made many beautiful poems for the
+people to sing, and he believed that it was the gods who had given him
+power to make the songs, and the Muses had inspired him with the capacity
+to make good verse. In spite of his master's will, Comatas therefore
+thought it was not very bad to take the young kids and sacrifice to the
+gods and the Muses. When his master found out what had been done with the
+animals, naturally he became very angry, and he put Comatas into a great
+box of cedar-wood in order to starve him to death--saying, as he closed
+and locked the lid, "Now, Comatas, let us see whether the gods will feed
+you!" In that box Comatas was left for a year without food or drink, and
+when the master, at the end of the year, opened the box, he expected to
+find nothing but the bones of the goatherd. But Comatas was alive and
+well, singing sweet songs, because during the year the Muses had sent bees
+to feed him with honey. The bees had been able to enter the box through a
+very little hole. I suppose you know that bees were held sacred to the
+Muses, and that there is in Greek legend a symbolic relation between bees
+and poetry.
+
+If you want to know what kind of songs Comatas sang and what kind of life
+he represented, you will find all this exquisitely told by Theocritus; and
+there is a beautiful little translation in prose of Theocritus, Bion and
+Moschus, made by Andrew Lang, which should delight you to read. Another
+day I shall give you examples of such translations. Then you will see what
+true idyllic poetry originally signified. These Greeks, although trained
+scholars and philosophers, understood not only that human nature in itself
+is a beautiful thing, but also that the best way to study human nature is
+to study the life of the peasants and the common people. It is not to the
+rich and leisurely, not to rank and society, that a poet must go for
+inspiration. He will not find it there. What is called society is a world
+in which nobody is happy, and in which pure human nature is afraid to show
+itself. Life among the higher classes in all countries is formal,
+artificial, theatrical; poetry is not there. Of course no kind of human
+community is perfectly happy, but it is among the simple folk, the country
+folk, who do not know much about evil and deceit, that the greater
+proportion of happiness can be found. Among the youths of the country
+especially, combining the charm of childhood with the strength of adult
+maturity, the best possible subjects for fine pure studies of human nature
+can be found. May I not here express the hope that some young Japanese
+poet, some graduate of this very university, will eventually attempt to do
+in Japan what Theocritus and Bion did in ancient Sicily? A great deal of
+the very same kind of poetry exists in our own rural districts, and
+parallels can be found in the daily life of the Japanese peasants for
+everything beautifully described in Theocritus. At all events I am quite
+sure of one thing, that no great new literature can possibly arise in this
+country until some scholarly minds discover that the real force and truth
+and beauty and poetry of life is to be found only in studies of the common
+people--not in the life of the rich and the noble, not in the shadowy life
+of books.
+
+Well, our English poet felt with the Greek idylists, and in the poem
+called "An Invocation" he beautifully expresses this sympathy. All of us,
+he says, should like to see and hear something of the ancient past if it
+were possible. We should like, some of us, to call back the vanished gods
+and goddesses of the beautiful Greek world, or to talk to the great souls
+of that world who had the experience of life as men--to Socrates, for
+example, to Plato, to Phidias the sculptor, to Pericles the statesman.
+But, as a poet, my wish would not be for the return of the old gods nor of
+the old heroes so much as for the return to us of some common men who
+lived in the Greek world. It is Comatas, he says, that he would most like
+to see, and to see in some English park--in the neighbourhood of Cambridge
+University, or of Eton College. And thus he addresses the spirit of
+Comatas:
+
+  O dear divine Comatas, I would that thou and I
+  Beneath this broken sunlight this leisure day might lie;
+  Where trees from distant forests, whose names were strange to thee,
+  Should bend their amorous branches within thy reach to be,
+  And flowers thine Hellas knew not, which art hath made more fair,
+  Should shed their shining petals upon thy fragrant hair.
+
+  Then thou shouldst calmly listen with ever-changing looks
+  To songs of younger minstrels and plots of modern books,
+  And wonder at the daring of poets later born,
+  Whose thoughts are unto thy thoughts as noontide is to morn;
+  And little shouldst them grudge them their greater strength of soul,
+  Thy partners in the torch-race, though nearer to the goal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Or in thy cedarn prison thou waitest for the bee:
+  Ah, leave that simple honey and take thy food from me.
+  My sun is stooping westward. Entranced dreamer, haste;
+  There's fruitage in my garden that I would have thee taste.
+  Now lift the lid a moment; now, Dorian shepherd, speak;
+  Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek.
+
+A few phrases of these beautiful stanzas need explanation. "Broken
+sunlight" refers, of course, to the imperfect shade thrown by the trees
+under which the poet is lying. The shadow is broken by the light passing
+through leaves, or conversely, the light is broken by the interposition of
+the leaves. The reference to trees from distant forests no doubt intimates
+that the poet is in some botanical garden, a private park, in which
+foreign trees are carefully cultivated. The "torch race" is a simile for
+the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Greek thinkers compare the
+transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, to the passing
+of a lighted torch from hand to hand, as in the case of messengers
+carrying signals or athletes running a mighty race. As a runner runs until
+he is tired, or until he reaches the next station, and then passes the
+torch which he has been carrying to another runner waiting to receive it,
+so does each generation pass on its wisdom to the succeeding generation,
+and disappear. "My sun is stooping westward" is only a beautiful way of
+saying, "I am becoming very old; be quick, so that we may see each other
+before I die." And the poet suggests that it is because of his age and his
+experience and his wisdom that he could hope to be of service to the dear
+divine Comatas. The expression, "there is fruitage in my garden," refers
+to no material garden, but to the cultivated mind of the scholar; he is
+only saying, "I have strange knowledge that I should like to impart to
+you." How delightful, indeed, it would be, could some university scholar
+really converse with a living Greek of the old days!
+
+There is another little Greek study of great and simple beauty entitled
+"The Daughter of Cleomenes." It is only an historical incident, but it is
+so related for the pleasure of suggesting a profound truth about the
+instinct of childhood. Long ago, when the Persians were about to make an
+attack upon the Greeks, there was an attempt to buy off the Spartan
+resistance, and the messenger to the Spartan general found him playing
+with his little daughter, a child of six or seven. The conference was
+carried on in whispers, and the child could not hear what was being said;
+but she broke up the whole plot by a single word. I shall quote a few
+lines from the close of the poem, which contain its moral lessons. The
+emissary has tried to tempt him with promises of wealth and power.
+
+  He falters; for the waves he fears,
+    The roads he cannot measure;
+  But rates full high the gleam of spears
+    And dreams of yellow treasure.
+  He listens; he is yielding now;
+    Outspoke the fearless child:
+  "Oh, Father, come away, lest thou
+    Be by this man beguiled."
+  Her lowly judgment barred the plea,
+    So low, it could not reach her.
+  _The man knows more of land and sea,
+    But she's the truer teacher._
+
+All the little girl could know about the matter was instinctive; she only
+saw the cunning face of the stranger, and felt sure that he was trying to
+deceive her father for a bad purpose--so she cried out, "Father, come away
+with me, or else that man will deceive you." And she spoke truth, as her
+father immediately recognized.
+
+There are several more classical studies of extraordinary beauty; but your
+interest in them would depend upon something more than interest in Greek
+and Roman history, and we can not study all the poems. So I prefer to go
+back to the meditative lyrics, and to give a few splendid examples of
+these more personal compositions. The following stanzas are from a poem
+whose Latin title signifies that Love conquers death. In this poem the
+author becomes the equal of Tennyson as a master of language.
+
+  The plunging rocks, whose ravenous throats
+    The sea in wrath and mockery fills,
+  The smoke that up the valley floats,
+    The girlhood of the growing hills;
+
+  The thunderings from the miners' ledge,
+    The wild assaults on nature's hoard,
+  The peak that stormward bares an edge
+    Ground sharp in days when Titans warred;
+
+  Grim heights, by wandering clouds embraced
+    Where lightning's ministers conspire,
+  Grey glens, with tarns and streamlet laced,
+    Stark forgeries of primeval fire.
+
+  These scenes may gladden many a mind
+    Awhile from homelier thoughts released,
+  And here my fellow men may find
+    A Sabbath and a vision-feast.
+
+  _I bless them in the good they feel;
+    And yet I bless them with a sigh;
+  On me this grandeur stamps the seal
+    Of tyrannous mortality._
+
+  _The pitiless mountain stands so sure.
+    The human breast so weakly heaves,
+  That brains decay while rocks endure.
+    At this the insatiate spirit grieves._
+
+  But hither, oh ideal bride!
+    For whom this heart in silence aches,
+  Love is unwearied as the tide,
+    Love is perennial as the lakes.
+
+  Come thou. The spiky crags will seem
+    One harvest of one heavenly year,
+  And fear of death, like childish dream,
+    Will pass and flee, when thou art here.
+
+Very possibly this charming meditation was written on the Welsh coast;
+there is just such scenery as the poem describes, and the grand peak of
+Snowdon would well realize the imagination of the line about the girlhood
+of the growing hills. The melancholy of the latter part of the composition
+is the same melancholy to be found in "Mimnermus in Church," the first of
+Cory's poems which we read together. It is the Greek teaching that there
+is nothing to console us for the great doubt and mystery of existence
+except unselfish affection. All through the book we find the same
+philosophy, even in the beautiful studies of student life and the memories
+of childhood. So it is quite a melancholy book, though the sadness be
+beautiful. I have given you examples of the sadness of doubt and of the
+sadness of love; but there is yet a third kind of sadness--the sadness of
+a childless man, wishing that he could have a child of his own. It is a
+very pretty thing, simply entitled "Scheveningen Avenue"--probably the
+name of the avenue where the incident occurred. The poet does not tell us
+how it occurred, but we can very well guess. He was riding in a street
+car, probably, and a little girl next to him, while sitting upon her
+nurse's lap, fell asleep, and as she slept let her head fall upon his
+shoulder. This is a very simple thing to make a poem about, but what a
+poem it is!
+
+  Oh, that the road were longer
+    A mile, or two, or three!
+  So might the thought grow stronger
+    That flows from touch of thee.
+
+  _Oh little slumbering maid,
+    If thou wert five years older,
+  Thine head would not be laid
+    So simply on my shoulder!_
+
+  _Oh, would that I were younger,
+    Oh, were I more like thee,
+  I should not faintly hunger
+    For love that cannot be._
+
+  A girl might be caressed
+    Beside me freely sitting;
+  A child on knee might rest,
+    And not like thee, unwitting.
+
+  Such honour is thy mother's,
+    Who smileth on thy sleep,
+  Or for the nurse who smothers
+    Thy cheek in kisses deep.
+
+  And but for parting day,
+    And but for forest shady,
+  From me they'd take away
+    The burden of their lady.
+
+  Ah thus to feel thee leaning
+    Above the nursemaid's hand,
+  Is like a stranger's gleaning
+    Where rich men own the land;
+
+  Chance gains, and humble thrift,
+    With shyness much like thieving,
+  No notice with the gift,
+    No thanks with the receiving.
+
+  Oh peasant, when thou starvest
+    Outside the fair domain,
+  Imagine there's a harvest
+    In every treasured grain.
+
+  Make with thy thoughts high cheer,
+    Say grace for others dining,
+  And keep thy pittance clear
+    From poison of repining.
+
+There is an almost intolerable acuity of sadness in the last two mocking
+verses, but how pretty and how tender the whole thing is, and how
+gentle-hearted must have been the man who wrote it! The same tenderness
+reappears in references to children of a larger growth, the boys of his
+school. Sometimes he very much regrets the necessity of discipline, and
+advocates a wiser method of dealing with the young. How very pretty is
+this little verse about the boy he loves.
+
+  Sweet eyes, that aim a level shaft,
+    At pleasure flying from afar,
+  Sweet lips, just parted for a draught
+    Of Hebe's nectar, shall I mar
+  By stress of disciplinal craft
+    The joys that in your freedom are?
+
+But a little reflection further on in the same poem reminds us how
+necessary the discipline must be for the battle of life, inasmuch as each
+of those charming boys will have to fight against evil--
+
+          yet shall ye cope
+  With worlding wrapped in silken lies,
+    With pedant, hypocrite, and pope.
+
+One might easily lecture about this little volume for many more days, so
+beautiful are the things which fill it. But enough has been cited to
+exemplify its unique value. If you reread these quotations, I think you
+will find each time new beauty in them. And the beauty is quite peculiar.
+Such poetry could have been written only under two conditions. The first
+is that the poet be a consummate scholar. The second is that he must have
+suffered, as only a great mind and heart could suffer, from want of
+affection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+OLD GREEK FRAGMENTS
+
+
+The other day when we were reading some of the poems in "Ionica," I
+promised to speak in another short essay of Theocritus and his songs or
+idyls of Greek peasant life, but in speaking of him it will be well also
+to speak of others who equally illustrate the fact that everywhere there
+is truth and beauty for the mind that can see. I spoke last week about
+what I thought the highest possible kind of literary art might become. But
+the possible becoming is yet far away; and in speaking of some old Greek
+writers I want only to emphasize the fact that modern literary art as well
+as ancient literary art produced their best results from a close study of
+human nature.
+
+Although Theocritus and others who wrote idyls found their chief
+inspiration in the life of the peasants, they sometimes also wrote about
+the life of cities. Human nature may be studied in the city as well as in
+the country, provided that a man knows how to look for it. It is not in
+the courts of princes nor the houses of nobles nor the residences of the
+wealthy that such study can be made. These superior classes have found it
+necessary to show themselves to the world very cautiously; they live by
+rule, they conceal their emotions, they move theatrically. But the
+ordinary, everyday people of cities are very different; they speak their
+thoughts, they keep their hearts open, and they let us see, just as
+children do, the good or the evil side of their characters. So a good poet
+and a good observer can find in the life of cities subjects of study
+almost as easily as in the country. Theocritus has done this in his
+fifteenth idyl. This idyl is very famous, and it has been translated
+hundreds of times into various languages. Perhaps you may have seen one
+version of it which was made by Matthew Arnold. But I think that the
+version made by Lang is even better.
+
+The scene is laid in Alexandria, probably some two thousand years ago, and
+the occasion is a religious holiday--a _matsuri_, as we call it in Japan.
+Two women have made an appointment to go together to the temple, to see
+the festival and to see the people. The poet begins his study by
+introducing us to the chamber of one of the women.
+
+GORGO. "Is Praxinoe at home?"
+
+PRAXINOE. "Dear Gorgo, how long is it since you have been here! She is at
+home. The wonder is that you have got here at last! Eunoe, come and see
+that she has a chair and put a cushion on it!"
+
+G. "It does most charmingly as it is."
+
+P. "Do sit down."
+
+How natural this is. There is nothing Greek about it any more than there
+is Japanese; it is simply human. It is something that happens in Tokyo
+every day, certainly in houses where there are chairs and where it is a
+custom to put a cushion on the chair for the visitor. But remember, this
+was two thousand years ago. Now listen to what the visitor has to say.
+
+"I have scarcely got to you at all, Praxinoe! What a huge crowd, what
+hosts of carriages! Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform!
+And the road is endless; yes, you really live too far away!"
+
+Praxinoe answers:
+
+"It is all for that mad man of mine. Here he came to the ends of the earth
+and took a hall, not a house, and all that we might not be neighbours. The
+jealous wretch, always the same, ever for spite."
+
+She is speaking half in jest, half in earnest; but she forgets that her
+little boy is present, and the visitor reminds her of the fact:
+
+"Don't talk of your husband like that, my dear girl, before the little
+boy,--look how he is staring at you!--Never mind, Zaphyrion, sweet child,
+she is not speaking about papa."
+
+P. "Our Lady! (Persephone) The child takes notice!"
+
+Then the visitor to comfort the child says "Nice papa," and the
+conversation proceeds. The two talk about their husbands, about their
+dresses, about the cost of things in the shops; but in order to see the
+festival Praxinoe must dress herself quickly, and woman, two thousand
+years ago, just as now, takes a long time to dress. Hear Praxinoe talking
+to her maid-servant while she hurries to get ready:
+
+"Eunoe, bring the water and put it down in the middle of the room,--lazy
+creature that you are. Cat-like, always trying to sleep soft! Come,
+bustle, bring the water; quicker! I want water first,--and how she carries
+it! Give it me all the same;--don't pour out so much, you extravagant
+thing! Stupid girl! Why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have
+washed my hands as heaven would have it. Where is the key of the big
+chest? Bring it here."
+
+This is life, natural and true; we can see those three together, the
+girlish young wife hurrying and scolding and chattering naturally and half
+childishly, the patient servant girl smiling at the hurry of her mistress,
+and the visitor looking at her friend's new dress, wondering how much it
+cost and presently asking her the price. At last all is ready. But the
+little boy sees his mother go out and he wants to go out too, though it
+has been decided not to take him, because the crowd is too rough and he
+might be hurt. Here the mother first explains, then speaks firmly:
+
+"No, child, I don't mean to take you. Boo! Bogies! There is a horse that
+bites! Cry as much as you please, but I cannot have you maimed."
+
+They go out, Praxinoe and Gorgo and the maid-servant Eunoe. The crowd is
+tremendous, and they find it very hard to advance. Sometimes there are
+horses in the way, sometimes wagons, occasionally a legion of cavalry. We
+know all this, because we hear the chatter of the women as they make their
+way through the press.
+
+"Give me your hand, and you, Eunoe, catch hold of Eutychis,--for fear lest
+you get lost.... Here come the kings on horses! My dear man, don't trample
+on me. Eunoe, you fool-hardy girl, will you never keep out of the way? Oh!
+How tiresome, Gorgo, my muslin veil is torn in two already.... For
+heaven's sake, sir, if you ever wish to be fortunate, take care of my
+shawl!"
+
+STRANGER. "I can hardly help myself, but for all that I will be as helpful
+as I can."
+
+The strange man helps the women and children through the pushing crowd,
+and they thank him very prettily, praying that he may have good fortune
+all his life. But not all the strangers who come in contact with them
+happen to be so kind. They come at last into that part of the temple
+ground where the image of Adonis is displayed; the beauty of the statue
+moves them, and they utter exclamations of delight. This does not please
+some of the male spectators, one of whom exclaims, "You tiresome women, do
+cease your endless cooing talk! They bore one to death with their eternal
+broad vowels!"
+
+They are country women, and their critic is probably a purist--somebody
+who has studied Greek as it is pronounced and spoken in Athens. But the
+women bravely resent this interference with their rights.
+
+GORGO. "Indeed! And where may this person come from? What is it to you if
+we are chatterboxes? Give orders to your own servants, sir. Do you pretend
+to command the ladies of Syracuse? If you must know, we are Corinthians by
+descent, like Bellerophon himself, and we speak Peloponnesian. Dorian
+women may lawfully speak Doric, I presume."
+
+This is enough to silence the critic, but the other young woman also turns
+upon him, and we may suppose that he is glad to escape from their tongues.
+And then everybody becomes silent, for the religious services begin. The
+priestess, a comely girl, chants the psalm of Adonis, the beautiful old
+pagan hymn, more beautiful and more sensuous than anything uttered by the
+later religious poets of the West; and all listen in delighted stillness.
+As the hymn ends, Gorgo bursts out in exclamation of praise:
+
+"Praxinoe! The woman is cleverer than we fancied! Happy woman to know so
+much!--Thrice happy to have so sweet a voice! Well, all the same, it is
+time to be making for home; Diocleides has not had his dinner, and the man
+is all vinegar,--don't venture near him when he is kept waiting for
+dinner. Farewell, beloved Adonis--may you find us glad at your next
+coming."
+
+And with this natural mingling of the sentimental and the commonplace the
+little composition ends. It is as though we were looking through some
+window into the life of two thousand years ago. Read the whole thing over
+to yourselves when you have time to find the book in the library, and see
+how true to human nature it is. There is nothing in it except the
+wonderful hymn, which does not belong to to-day as much as to the long
+ago, to modern Tokyo as much as to ancient Greece. That is what makes the
+immortality of any literary production--not simply truth to the life of
+one time, but truth to the life of every time and place.
+
+Not many years ago there was discovered a book by Herodas, a Greek writer
+of about the same period. It is called the "Mimes," a series of little
+dramatic studies picturing the life of the time. One of these is well
+worthy of rank with the idyl of Theocritus above mentioned. It is the
+study of a conversation between a young woman and an old woman. The young
+woman has a husband, who left her to join a military expedition and has
+not been heard of for several years. The old woman is a go-between, and
+she comes to see the young person on behalf of another young man, who
+admires her. But as soon as she states the nature of her errand, the young
+lady becomes very angry and feigns much virtuous indignation. There is a
+quarrel. Then the two become friends, and we know that the old woman's
+coming is likely to bring about the result desired. Now the wonder of this
+little study also is the play of emotion which it reveals. Such emotions
+are common to all ages of humanity; we feel the freshness of this
+reflection as we read, to such a degree that we cannot think of the matter
+as having happened long ago. Yet even the city in which these episodes
+took place has vanished from the face of the earth.
+
+In the case of the studies of peasant life, there is also value of another
+kind. Here we have not only studies of human nature, but studies of
+particular social conditions. The quarrels of peasants, half good natured
+and nearly always happily ending; their account of their sorrows; their
+gossip about their work in the fields--all this might happen almost
+anywhere and at almost any time. But the song contest, the prize given for
+the best composition upon a chosen subject, this is particularly Greek,
+and has never perhaps existed outside of some place among the peasant
+folk. It was the poetical side of this Greek life of the peasants, as
+recorded by Theocritus, which so much influenced the literatures of the
+seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France and in England. But neither
+in France nor in England has there ever really been, at any time, any life
+resembling that portrayed by Theocritus; to-day nothing appears to us more
+absurd than the eighteenth century habit of picturing the Greek shepherd
+life in English or French landscapes. What really may have existed among
+the shepherds of the antique world could not possibly exist in modern
+times. But how pretty it is! I think that the tenth idyl of Theocritus is
+perhaps the prettiest example of the whole series, thirty in number, which
+have been preserved for us. The plan is of the simplest. Two young
+peasants, respectively named Battus and Milon, meeting together in the
+field, talk about their sweethearts. One of them works lazily and is
+jeered by the other in consequence. The subject of the jeering
+acknowledges that he works badly because his mind is disturbed--he has
+fallen in love. Then the other expresses sympathy for him, and tells him
+that the best thing he can do to cheer himself up will be to make a song
+about the girl, and to sing it as he works. Then he makes a song, which
+has been the admiration of the world for twenty centuries and lifts been
+translated into almost every language possessing a literature.
+
+"They all call thee a gipsy, gracious Bombyca, and lean, and
+sunburnt;--'tis only I that call thee honey-pale.
+
+"Yea, and the violet is swart and swart the lettered hyacinth; but yet
+these flowers are chosen the first in garlands.
+
+"The goat runs after cytisus, the wolf pursues the goat, the crane follows
+the plough,--but I am wild for love of thee.
+
+"Would it were mine, all the wealth whereof Croesus was lord, as men tell!
+Then images of us, all in gold, should be dedicated to Aphrodite, thou
+with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and I in fair attire and new
+shoon of Amyclae on both my feet.
+
+"Ah, gracious Bombyca, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice
+is drowsy sweet, and thy ways--I can not tell of them."
+
+Even through the disguise of an English prose translation, you will see
+how pretty and how simple this little song must have been in the Greek,
+and how very natural is the language of it. Our young peasant has fallen
+in love with the girl who is employed to play the flute for the reapers,
+as the peasants like to work to the sound of music. His comrades do not
+much admire Bombyca; one calls her "a long grasshopper of a girl"; another
+finds her too thin; a third calls her a gipsy, such a dark brown her skin
+has become by constant exposure to the summer sun. And the lover, looking
+at her, is obliged to acknowledge in his own mind that she is long and
+lean and dark and like a gipsy; but he finds beauty in all these
+characteristics, nevertheless. What if she is dark? The sweetest honey is
+darkish, like amber, and so are beautiful flowers, the best of all
+flowers, flowers given to Aphrodite; and the sacred hyacinth on whose
+leaves appear the letters of the word of lamentation "Ai! Ai!"--that is
+also dark like Bombyca. Her darkness is that of honey and flowers. What a
+charming apology! He cannot deny that she is long and lean, and he remains
+silent on these points, but here we must all sympathize with him. He shows
+good taste. It is the tall slender girl that is really the most beautiful
+and the most graceful, not the large-limbed, strong-bodied peasant type
+that his companions would prefer. Without knowing it, he has fallen in
+love like an artist. And he is not blind to the, grace of slenderness and
+of form, though he cannot express it in artistic language. He can only
+compare the shape of the girl's feet to the ivory feet of the divinities
+in the temples--perhaps he is thinking of some ivory image of Aphrodite
+which he has seen. But how charming an image does he make to arise before
+us! Beautiful is the description of the girl's voice as "drowsy sweet."
+But the most exquisite thing in the whole song is the final despairing
+admission that he can not describe her at all--"and thy ways, I can not
+tell of them"! This is one of the most beautiful expressions in any poem
+ancient or modern, because of its supreme truth. What mortal ever could
+describe the charm of manner, voice, smile, address, in mere words? Such
+things are felt, they can not be described; and the peasant boy reaches
+the highest height of true lyrical poetry when he cries out "I can not
+tell of them." The great French critic Sainte-Beuve attempted to render
+this line as follows--"_Quant a ta maniere, je ne puis la rendre!"_ This
+is very good; and you can take your choice between it and any English
+translation. But good judges say that nothing in English of French equals
+the charm of the original.
+
+You will find three different classes of idyls in Theocritus; the idyl
+which is a simple song of peasant life, a pure lyric expressing only a
+single emotion; the idyl which is a little story, usually a story about
+the gods or heroes; and lastly, the idyl which is presented in the form of
+a dialogue, or even of a conversation between three or four persons. All
+these forms of idyl, but especially the first and the third, were
+afterward beautifully imitated by the Roman poets; then very imperfectly
+imitated by modern poets. The imitation still goes on, but the very best
+English poets have never really been able to give us anything worthy of
+Theocritus himself.
+
+However, this study of the Greek model has given some terms to English
+literature which every student ought to know. One of these terms is
+amoebaean,--amoebaean poetry being dialogue poetry composed in the form of
+question and reply. The original Greek signification was that of alternate
+speaking. Please do not forget the word. You may often find it in critical
+studies in essays upon contemporary literature; and when you see it again,
+remember Theocritus and the school of Greek poets who first introduced the
+charm of amoebaean poetry. I hope that this little lecture will interest
+some of you in Theocritus sufficiently to induce you to read him carefully
+through and through. But remember that you can not get the value of even a
+single poem of his at a single reading. We have become so much accustomed
+to conventional forms of literature that the simple art of poetry like
+this quite escapes us at first sight. We have to read it over and over
+again many times, and to think about it; then only we feel the wonderful
+charm.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+    [Transcriber's note: Page numbers have been converted to chapter
+    numbers in this index.]
+
+    "A dry cicale chirps to a lass making hay," 14
+    Aicard, Jean, 11
+    Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 4
+    "Along the garden ways just now," 2
+    "Amaturus," 3
+    "A Ma Future," 3
+    "Amelia," 2
+    "Amis and Amile," Introduction, 13
+    "Amphibian," 10
+    Andrews, Bishop Lancelot, 6
+    "Angel in the House, The," 2
+    "An Invocation," 14
+    "Appreciations of Poetry," Introduction
+    "Arabian Nights, The," 13
+    "Arachne," 10
+    Arnold, Sir Edwin, 3
+    Arnold, Matthew, 7, 15
+    "Art of Worldly Wisdom, The," 7
+    Ashe, Thomas, 3
+    "A simple ring with a simple stone," 3
+    "Atalanta in Calydon," 12
+    "Atalanta's Race," 2
+
+    "Bhagavad-Gita, The," 6
+    Bible, The, Introduction, 3, 6, 12, 13
+    Bion, 14
+    Blake, William, 6, 10
+    Book of Common Prayer, The, 12
+    Breton, Jules, 11
+    "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art," 2
+    Browning, Robert, 2, 3, 10, 14
+    "Burly, dozing humble bee," 10
+    "Busy, curious thirsty fly," 10
+    Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 2, 3
+
+    Carew, Thomas, 3
+    Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 6
+    Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of, 7
+    Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 2
+    Coleridge, Hartley, 3
+    Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 2, 6, 10
+    "Conservative, A," 10
+    Cooke, Rose Terry, 10
+    Cory, William, Introduction, 3, 14
+    Crashaw, Richard, 3
+
+    Dante Alighieri, 2
+    "Daughter of Cleomenes, The," 14
+    Descartes, Rene, 10
+    "Deteriora," 14
+    Dickens, Charles, Introduction
+    "Djins, Les," 4
+    "Dream of Fair Women, A," 14
+
+    "Emaux et Camees," 11
+    Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 4, 10
+    "Epigramme Funeraire," 11
+    "Evelyn Hope," 3
+
+    "Fable, A," 14
+    "Fifine at the Fair," 10
+    Francis of Assisi, Saint, 10
+    Freneau, Philip, 10
+
+    Gautier, Theophile, 11
+    "Gazing on stars, my star?" 2
+    Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 4
+    "Golden Legend, The," 13
+    Gracian, Baltasar, 7
+    "Grasshopper, The," 11
+    Gray, Thomas, 10
+    "Greater Memory," 2
+    Greek Anthology, Introduction, 4, 14
+    "Grillon solitaire," 11
+
+    "Havamal, The," Introduction, 6
+    Hearn, Lafcadio, Introduction
+    Heredia, Jose, Maria de, Introduction, 5, 11
+    Herodas, 15
+    Herrick, Robert, 4
+    "He that loves a rosy cheek," 3
+    Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 10
+    Hood, Thomas, 3
+    Hugo, Victor, 2, 2, 4, 5, 11
+
+    "Idyls of the King," 14
+    "I love to hear thine earnest voice," 10
+    "In a branch of willow hid," 10
+    "Interpretations of Literature," Introduction
+    "Ionica," Introduction, 3
+    "I strove with none, for none was worth my strife," 4
+    "It is a golden morning of the spring," 2
+
+    Jonson, Ben, 3, 4
+
+    "Kalevala, The," Introduction, 12
+    Keats, John, Introduction, 2, 6, 10
+    "King Solomon and the Ants," 10
+
+    "La Demoiselle," 11
+    "Lady of Shalott, The," 11
+    Landor, Walter Savage, 4
+    Lang, Andrew, Introduction, 15
+    Lamartine, 11
+    Lamb, Charles, 10
+    "Le Daimio," 5
+    Lemerre, Alphonse, 10
+    "Le Samourai," 5
+    "Les Cigales," 11
+    "Life and Literature," Introduction
+    de Lisle, Leconte, 87
+    "Lives there whom pain has evermore passed by," 4
+    Locker-Lampson, Frederic, 3, 10
+    "Locksley Hall," 2
+    Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13
+    Loennrot, 12
+    Lovelace, Richard, 11
+    Lubbock, Sir John, 8
+
+    Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 10
+    "Ma Libellule," 11
+    "Maud," 2
+    Meredith, George, Introduction, 7
+    "Mimes," 15
+    "Mimnermus in church," 14
+    Moschus, 14
+
+    "Nay but you, who do not love her," 3
+    "Never the time and the place," 2
+    "New Ethics, The," Introduction
+    "New Year's Day, A," 14
+    Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 8
+    "Njal-Saga, The." 1
+
+    "Ode on the Spring," 10
+    Oldys, William, 10
+    O'Shaughnessy, Arthur, 2
+
+    "Pansie," 3
+    "Patchwork," 3
+    Pater, Walter, Introduction, 13
+    Patmore, Coventry, 2, 10
+    "Pause, A," 2
+    Plato, 2
+    Poe, Edgar Allan, 12
+    "Poems of Places," 5
+    Porson, Richard, 10
+    Powell, Frederick York, 7
+    "Princess, The," Introduction
+
+    Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas, 10
+
+    "Reparabo," 14
+    Rossetti, Christina, 2, 3
+    Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 2, 11
+    Ruskin, John, 6, 9
+    "Ruth," 3
+
+    "Saga of King Olaf, The," 7
+    Sainte-Beuve, 15
+    Saintsbury, Professor George, 6
+    "Scheveningen Avenue," 14
+    Scott, Sir Walter, 7
+    Shakespeare, William, 11
+    Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 2
+    "She walks in beauty, like the night," 3
+    "She was a phantom of delight," 3
+    "Solitary-Hearted, The," 3
+    "Somewhere or other," 3
+    "Song in time of Revolution, A," 12
+    "Song of Hiawatha, The," 12
+    "Song of Songs," 10
+    Spencer, Herbert, 2, 7, 8
+    "Stay near me, do not take thy flight" 10
+    Stetson, Charlotte Perkins, 10
+    Stevenson, Robert Louis, 2
+    "Story of Burnt Njal, The," 1
+    "Studies in Greek Poets," 4
+    "Such Kings of shreds have wooed and won her," 4
+    "Sudden Light," 2
+    Sully-Prudhomme, Rene, Francois Armande, 5
+    "Summum Bonum," 3
+    Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 12
+    Symonds, John Addington, 2, 4
+
+    Ten Brink, Bernhard Egidius Konrad, 13
+    Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, Introduction, 2, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14
+    Tennyson, Frederick, 2
+    Thackeray, William Makepeace, Introduction
+    "The butterfly the ancient Grecians made," 10
+    Theocritus, Introduction, 14, 15
+    "The poetry of earth is never dead," 10
+    "The thousand painful steps at last are trod," 4
+    "The trembling arm I pressed," 2
+    "They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead," 14
+    "Think not thy wisdom can illume away," 4
+    Thompson, Maurice, 2
+    "Thou canst not wave thy staff in air," 4
+    "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars," 11
+    "Two Fragments of Childhood," 14
+    "Two Voices, The," 10
+
+    "Unknown Eros, The," 2
+
+    Vigfusson, Gudbrandt, 7
+    "Voice of the summer wind," 10
+
+    Watson, William, 4, 10
+    "When spring grows old," 2
+    "White Moth, The," 10
+    Whittier, John Greenleaf, 10
+    "Wishes to the Supposed Mistress
+    Wordsworth, William, 2, 3, 6, 10
+    Wycliffe, John, 6
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Habits from the Lectures of
+Lafcadio Hearn, by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND HABITS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 14338.txt or 14338.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/3/3/14338/
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Barbara Tozier and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.