Part 24

Wise ruling this of life: but yet again Perchance too rigid diet is not well; He lives not best who dreads the coming pain And shunneth each delight desirable: Flee thou extremes, this word alone is plain, Of all that God hath given to Man to spell!

AMARYLLIS.

(Theocritus, Idyll, iii.)

FAIR Amaryllis, wilt thou never peep From forth the cave, and call me, and be mine? Lo, apples ten I bear thee from the steep, These didst thou long for, and all these are thine. Ah, would I were a honey-bee to sweep Through ivy, and the bracken, and woodbine; To watch thee waken, Love, and watch thee sleep, Within thy grot below the shadowy pine. Now know I Love, a cruel god is he, The wild beast bare him in the wild wood drear; And truly to the bone he burneth me. But, black-browed Amaryllis, ne’er a tear, Nor sigh, nor blush, nor aught have I from thee; Nay, nor a kiss, a little gift and dear.

THE CANNIBAL ZEUS.

A.D. 160.

Καὶ ἔθυσε τὸ βρέφος, καὶ ἔσπεισεν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τὸ αἶμα—έπὶ τούτου βωμοῦ τῷ Δὺ θύoυσιν ἐv ἀπoῤῥήτῳ.—Paus. viii. 38.

NONE elder city doth the Sun behold Than ancient Lycosura; ’twas begun Ere Zeus the meat of mortals learned to shun, And here hath he a grove whose haunted fold The driven deer seek and huntsmen dread: ’tis told That whoso fares within that forest dun Thenceforth shall cast no shadow in the Sun, Ay, and within the year his life is cold!

Hard by dwelt he {232} who, while the Gods deigned eat At good men’s tables, gave them dreadful meat, A child he slew:—his mountain altar green Here still hath Zeus, with rites untold of me, Piteous, but as they are let these things be, And as from the beginning they have been!

INVOCATION OF ISIS.

(Apuleius, Metamorph. XI.)

THOU that art sandalled on immortal feet With leaves of palm, the prize of Victory; Thou that art crowned with snakes and blossoms sweet, Queen of the silver dews and shadowy sky, I pray thee by all names men name thee by! Demeter, come, and leave the yellow wheat! Or Aphrodite, let thy lovers sigh! Or Dian, from thine Asian temple fleet!

Or, yet more dread, divine Persephone From worlds of wailing spectres, ah, draw near; Approach, Selene, from thy subject sea; Come, Artemis, and this night spare the deer: By all thy names and rites I summon thee; By all thy rites and names, Our Lady, hear!

THE COMING OF ISIS.

SO Lucius prayed, and sudden, from afar, Floated the locks of Isis, shone the bright Crown that is tressed with berry, snake, and star; She came in deep blue raiment of the night, Above her robes that now were snowy white, Now golden as the moons of harvest are, Now red, now flecked with many a cloudy bar, Now stained with all the lustre of the light.

Then he who saw her knew her, and he knew The awful symbols borne in either hand; The golden urn that laves Demeter’s dew, The handles wreathed with asps, the mystic wand; The shaken seistron’s music, tinkling through The temples of that old Osirian land.

THE SPINET.

MY heart’s an old Spinet with strings To laughter chiefly tuned, but some That Fate has practised hard on, dumb, They answer not whoever sings. The ghosts of half-forgotten things Will touch the keys with fingers numb, The little mocking spirits come And thrill it with their fairy wings.

A jingling harmony it makes My heart, my lyre, my old Spinet, And now a memory it wakes, And now the music means “forget,” And little heed the player takes Howe’er the thoughtful critic fret.

NOTES.

Page 127. The Fortunate Islands. This piece is a rhymed loose version of a passage in the Vera Historia of Lucian. The humorist was unable to resist the temptation to introduce passages of mockery, which are here omitted. Part of his description of the Isles of the Blest has a close and singular resemblance to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. The clear River of Life and the prodigality of gold and of precious stones may especially be noticed.

Page 133. Whoso doth taste the Dead Men’s bread, &c. This belief that the living may visit, on occasion, the dwellings of the dead, but can never return to earth if they taste the food of the departed, is expressed in myths of worldwide distribution. Because she ate the pomegranate seed, Persephone became subject to the spell of Hades. In Apuleius, Psyche, when she visits the place of souls, is advised to abstain from food. Kohl found the myth among the Ojibbeways, Mr. Codrington among the Solomon Islanders; it occurs in Samoa, in the Finnish Kalewala (where Wainamoinen, in Pohjola, refrains from touching meat or drink), and the belief has left its mark on the mediæval ballad of Thomas of Ercildoune. When he is in Fairy Land, the Fairy Queen supplies him with the bread and wine of earth, and will not suffer him to touch the fruits which grow “in this countrie.” See also “Wandering Willie” in Redgauntlet.

Page 152. The latest minstrel. “The sound of all others dearest to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vii., 394.

Page 161. Ronsard’s Grave. This version ventures to condense the original which, like most of the works of the Pleiad, is unnecessarily long.

Page 162. The snow, and wind, and hail. Ronsard’s rendering of the famous passage in Odyssey, vi., about the dwellings of the Olympians. The vision of a Paradise of learned lovers and poets constantly recurs in the poetry of Joachim du Bellay, and of Ronsard.

Page 166. Romance. Suggested by a passage in La Faustin, by M. E. de Goncourt, a curious moment of poetry in a repulsive piece of naturalisme.

Page 171. M. Boulmier, author of Les Villanelles, died shortly after this villanelle was written; he had not published a larger collection on which he had been at work.

Page 177. Edmund Gorliot. The bibliophile will not easily procure Gorliot’s book, which is not in the catalogues. Throughout The Last Maying there is reference to the Pervigilium Veneris.