登陆注册
19903400000061

第61章 THE PARADISE OF POETS(2)

"'Then wherefore,' I interrupted, 'do I see Robert Burns loitering with that lady in a ruff,--Cassandra, I make no doubt--Ronsard's Cassandra? And why is the incomparable Clarinda inseparable from Petrarch; and Miss Patty Blount, Pope's flame, from the Syrian Meleager, while HIS Heliodore is manifestly devoted to Mr. Emerson, whom, by the way, I am delighted, if rather surprised, to see here?'

"'Ah,' said Catullus, 'you are a new-comer among us. Poets will be poets, and no sooner have they attained their desire, and dwelt in the company of their earthly Ideals, than they feel strangely, yet irresistibly drawn to Another. So it was in life, so it will ever be. No Ideal can survive a daily companionship, and fortunate is the poet who did not marry his first love!'

"'As far as that goes,' I answered, 'most of you were highly favoured; indeed, I do not remember any poet whose Ideal was his wife, or whose first love led him to the altar.'

"'I was not a marrying man myself,' answered the Veronese; 'few of us were. Myself, Horace, Virgil--we were all bachelors.'

"'And Lesbia!'

"I said this in a low voice, for Laura was weaving bay into a chaplet, and inattentive to our conversation.

"'Poor Lesbia!' said Catullus, with a suppressed sigh. 'How Imisjudged that girl! How cruel, how causeless were my reproaches,'

and wildly rending his curled locks and laurel crown, he fled into a thicket, whence there soon arose the melancholy notes of the Ausonian lyre.'

"'He is incorrigible,' said Laura, very coldly; and she deliberately began to tear and toss away the fragments of the chaplet she had been weaving. 'I shall never break him of that habit of versifying. But they are all alike.'

"'Is there nobody here,' said I, 'who is happy with his Ideal--nobody but has exchanged Ideals with some other poet?'

"'There is one,' she said. 'He comes of a northern tribe; and in his life-time he never rhymed upon his unattainable lady, or if rhyme he did, the accents never carried her name to the ears of the vulgar. Look there.'

"She pointed to the river at our feet, and I knew the mounted figure that was riding the ford, with a green-mantled lady beside him like the Fairy Queen.

"Surely I had read of her, and knew her -"'She whose blue eyes their secret told, Though shaded by her locks of gold.'

"'They are different; I know not why. They are constant,' said Laura, and rising with an air of chagrin, she disappeared among the boughs of the trees that bear her name.

"'Unhappy hearts of poets,' I mused. 'Light things and sacred they are, but even in their Paradise, and among their chosen, with every wish fulfilled, and united to their beloved, they cannot be at rest!'

"Thus moralising, I wended my way to a crag, whence there was a wide prospect. Certain poets were standing there, looking down into an abyss, and to them I joined myself.

"'Ah, I cannot bear it!' said a voice, and, as he turned away, his brow already clearing, his pain already forgotten, I beheld the august form of Shakespeare.

"Marking my curiosity before it was expressed, he answered the unuttered question.

"'That is a sight for Pagans,' he said, 'and may give them pleasure. But my Paradise were embittered if I had to watch the sorrows of others, and their torments, however well deserved. The others are gazing on the purgatory of critics and commentators.'

"He passed from me, and I joined the 'Ionian father of the rest'--Homer, who, with a countenance of unspeakable majesty, was seated on a throne of rock, between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel crown, Hugo, Sophocles, Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley.

"At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, many an honest critic, many an erudite commentator, an army of reviewers. Some were condemned to roll logs up insuperable heights, whence they descended thundering to the plain. Others were set to impositions, and I particularly observed that the Homeric commentators were obliged to write out the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" in their complete shape, and were always driven by fiends to the task when they prayed for the bare charity of being permitted to leave out the 'interpolations.' Others, fearful to narrate, were torn into as many fragments as they had made of these immortal epics. Others, such as Aristarchus, were spitted on their own critical signs of disapproval. Many reviewers were compelled to read the books which they had criticised without perusal, and it was terrible to watch the agonies of the worthy pressmen who were set to this unwonted task. 'May we not be let off with the preface?' they cried in piteous accents. 'May we not glance at the table of contents and be done with it?' But the presiding demons (who had been Examiners in the bodily life) drove them remorseless to their toils.

"Among the condemned I could not but witness, with sympathy, the punishment reserved for translators. The translators of Virgil, in particular, were a vast and motley assemblage of most respectable men. Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in their ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in all the tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the metre of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," the heroic couplet and similar devices can inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, though not wisely: and now their penance was to hear each other read their own translations.""That must have been more than they could bear," said Lady Violet "Yes," said Mr. Witham; "I should know, for down I fell into Tartarus with a crash, and writhed among the Translators.""Why?" asked Lady Violet.

"Because I have translated Theocritus!"

"Mr. Witham," said Lady Violet, "did you meet your ideal woman when you were in the Paradise of Poets?""She yet walks this earth," said the bard, with a too significant bow.

Lady Violet turned coldly away.

* * *

Mr. Witham was never invited to the Blues again--the name of Lord Azure's place in Kent.

The Poet is shut out of Paradise.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 芦荡金箭

    芦荡金箭

    1937年,日本帝国主义全面发动侵华战争,凇沪抗战爆发,常熟沦陷。抗战的局势变得异常艰苦复杂。到1939年5月,在阳澄湖地区坚持抗战的新四军为了策应整个抗战大局渡江北上,而一批新四军的伤员们则留在了阳澄湖地区养伤。金端阳是阳澄湖上的牧鸭少年,他崇拜武工队中的神枪手“水上飞”,一心想加入武工队,当一名水上飞式的英雄。在常熟城里端阳结识了三个流浪儿:胡顺,大米和小弟。他们都想成为真正的武工队员。他们怀着家仇国恨加入到抗日的战斗中。他们帮助武工队“飞鸭运药”、送情报、救交通员……端阳他们在战斗中一天天成长起来,演绎出一段可歌可泣的少年抗日英雄传奇。
  • 灵铃的妖魔鬼怪

    灵铃的妖魔鬼怪

    我叫灵铃,是天山派地二百八十八代掌门,我不知天山是否存在,只是从我与师傅相遇的那一刻起,我的世界就被改变了。
  • 远古古仙

    远古古仙

    一个远古的少年修仙强者,在一次仙劫中肉身破灭,千年过后又重现凡间,他将上演着非凡的重修旅程。
  • 佛说阿遬达经

    佛说阿遬达经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 美味江苏菜600款

    美味江苏菜600款

    本套菜谱共30本,汇集了南北方以及各种风味的菜系,每本600余种做法。本书介绍江苏菜的做法,简单好学易做,是符合大众口味的家居生活常备书籍。
  • 逍遥上古

    逍遥上古

    穿越到上古世纪,魔兽与魔法横飞的世界。种族的矛盾,原大陆的封印之谜,神之庭院里究竟是什么,十二位英雄的恩怨情仇,将一一为之打开。这个世界因他而改变!!
  • 浅夏笙安然

    浅夏笙安然

    那时候的青舂时期,那时候热血沸腾,那时候六个人的三个不同的爱情故事
  • 元始五老赤书玉篇真文天书经

    元始五老赤书玉篇真文天书经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 骨怨:《西游记》里的恐怖

    骨怨:《西游记》里的恐怖

    故事发生在一个动物园的猴子饲养员身上。因为一个神秘的女人,朱能从动物园管理处主任沦为猴子饲养员。随后,他被三个已经死去的人接到了西天影视度假村。这一切安排,难道是因为传说中的玄奘顶骨舍利?在路上,朱能曾经的仇人牛传统出现了,他的出现让事情变得更加扑朔迷离。到底……
  • 超越神国

    超越神国

    天雷神纹加身,金雷闪电练体,打造史上最强金身!