Chapter III: Preface: To the Third English Edition

This has presumably to be called a new edition, rather than a new issue, seeing that there are revisions and alterations. But these are not numerous, and the only ones to which I need call special attention are the substituted verses on pp. 153-5.

I am indebted to Mr. Denys Bray for permission to include his daughter’s verses.

J. T. HACKETT.

Mentone, _December, 1920._

YOUTH AND AGE

_Verse, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying,_
_Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—_
_Both were mine! Life went a-maying_
_With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,_
_When I was young!_

_~When~ I was young?—Ah, woful When!_
_Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then!_
_This breathing house not built with hands,_
_This body that does me grievous wrong,_
_O’er aery cliffs and glittering sands_
_How lightly ~then~ it flashed along:—_
_Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,_
_On winding lakes and rivers wide,_
_That ask no aid of sail or oar,_
_That fear no spite of wind or tide!_
_Nought cared this body for wind or weather_
_When Youth and I lived in’t together._

_Flowers are lovely: Love is flower-like;_
_Friendship is a sheltering tree;_
_O! the joys, that came down shower-like,_
_Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,_
_Ere I was old!_

_~Ere~ I was old? Ah, woful Ere,_
_Which tells me, Youth’s no longer here!_
_O Youth! for years so many and sweet_
_’Tis known that Thou and I were one,_
_I’ll think it but a fond conceit—_
_It cannot be, that thou art gone!_
_Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll’d:—_
_And thou wert aye a masker bold!_
_What strange disguise hast now put on_
_To ~make believe~ that Thou art gone?_
_I see these locks in silvery slips,_
_This drooping gait, this alter’d size:_
_But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,_
_And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!_
_Life is but Thought: so think I will_
_That Youth and I are house-mates still._

_Dew-drops are the gems of morning,_
_But the tears of mournful eve!_
_Where no hope is, life’s a warning_
_That only serves to make us grieve_
_When we are old:_
_—That only serves to make us grieve_
_With oft and tedious taking-leave,_
_Like some poor nigh-related guest_
_That may not rudely be dismist,_
_Yet hath outstay’d his welcome while,_
_And tells the jest without the smile._

S. T. COLERIDGE.

My Commonplace Book

Our God and soldier we alike adore,
When at the brink of ruin, not before;
After deliverance both alike requited,
Our God forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.

FRANCIS QUARLES (1592-1644).

* * * * *

In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom’s fight?
...
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_,
The youth replies, _I can_.

R. W. EMERSON (_Voluntaries_).

* * * * *

ENGLAND

When I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student’s bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country—am I to be blamed?
Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart,
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark for the cause of men;
And I by my affection was beguiled:
What wonder if a Poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child!

WORDSWORTH (1803).

* * * * *

Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
One death struggle in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

J. R. LOWELL (_The Present Crisis_).

* * * * *

Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life’s dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her....
They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

J. R. LOWELL (_Ode at Harvard Commemoration,
1865_).

This Ode was written in memory of the Harvard University men
who had died in the Secession war. Our own brave men are also
fighting in the cause of Truth, against the hideous falsity of
German teaching and morals.

* * * * *

The future’s gain
Is certain as God’s truth; but, meanwhile, pain
Is bitter, and tears are salt: our voices take
A sober tone; our very household songs
Are heavy with a nation’s griefs and wrongs;
And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake
Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat.
The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet!

J. G. WHITTIER (_In War Time_).

* * * * *

PRIEST

“The glory of Man is his strength,
And the weak man must die,” said the Lord.

CHORUS

Hark to the Song of the Sword!

PRIEST

Uplift! let it gleam in the sun—
Uplift in the name of the Lord!

KAISER

Lo! how it gleams in the light,
Beautiful, bloody, and bright.
Yea, I uplift the Sword
Thus in the name of the Lord!

THE CHIEFS

Form ye a circle of fire
Around him, our King and our Sire—
While in the centre he stands,
Kneel with your swords in your hands,
Then with one voice deep and free
Echo like waves of the sea—
“In the name of the Lord!”

VOICES WITHOUT

Where is he?—he fades from our sight!
Where the Sword?—all is blacker than night.
Is it finish’d, that loudly ye cry?
Doth he sheathe the great Sword while we die?
O bury us deep, most deep;
Write o’er us, wherever we sleep,
“In the name of the Lord!”

KAISER

While I uplift the Sword,
Thus in the name of the Lord,
Why, with mine eyes full of tears,
Am I sick of the song in mine ears?
God of the Israelite, hear;
God of the Teuton, be near;
Strengthen my pulse lest I fail.
Shut out these slain while they wail—
For they come with the voice of the grave
On the glory they give me and gave.

CHORUS

In the name of the Lord? Of what Lord?
Where is He, this God of the Sword?
Unfold Him; where hath He His throne?
Is He Lord of the Teuton alone?
Doth He walk on the earth? Doth He tread
On the limbs of the dying and dead?
Unfold Him! We sicken, and long
To look on this God of the strong!

PRIEST

Hush! In the name of the Lord,
Kneel ye, and bless ye the Sword!

R. BUCHANAN (_The Apotheosis of the Sword,
Versailles, 1871_)

* * * * *

Short is mine errand to tell, and the end of my desire:
For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth,
Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth;
But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;
And the edge of the sword to the traitor and the flame to the slanderous
breath:
And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should
sleep,
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap.

W. MORRIS (_Sigurd the Volsung, Book III_).

* * * * *

SACRIFICE

Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,—
“’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.”

R. W. EMERSON.

* * * * *

GREEKS OR GERMANS?

Do not imagine that you are fighting about a single issue, freedom or slavery. You have an empire to lose, and are exposed to danger by reason of the hatred which your imperial rule has inspired in other states. And you cannot resign your power, although some timid or unambitious spirits want you to act justly. For now your empire has become a _despotism_, a thing which in the opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired yet cannot be safely relinquished. The men of whom I speak, if they could find followers, would soon ruin the state, and, if they were to found a state of their own, would just as soon ruin that.

(_Speech by Pericles._)

I have observed again and again that a democracy cannot govern an empire; and never more clearly than now, when I see you regretting the sentence you pronounced on the Mityleneans. Having no fear or suspicion of one another, you deal with your allies on the same principle. You do not realize that, whenever you yield to them out of pity, or are prevailed on by their pleas, you are guilty of a weakness dangerous to yourselves and receive no gratitude from them. You need to bear in mind that your empire is a _despotism_ exercised over unwilling subjects who are ever conspiring against you. They do not obey because of any kindness you show them: they obey just so far as you show yourselves their masters. They have no love for you, but are held down by force....

You must not be misled by pity, or eloquent pleading or by generosity. There are no three things more fatal to empire.

(_Speech by Cleon_) THUCYDIDES, II, 63; III, 37, 40.

It will be seen that these odious sentiments are attributed
by the impartial Thucydides to his hero Pericles as well as
to the demagogue Cleon. The Greeks were fervent supporters of
Democracy and Equality, but not when it came to dealing either
with foreign states or with their own _women or slaves_. (See
also Socrates and Aristotle, p. 367.)

* * * * *

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he, that stands it _now_, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives anything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

THOMAS PAINE (1776).

Outside the Bible and other books of religion, I think it
would be difficult to find any single passage in the world’s
literature that produced so wonderful a result as the above
passage of Tom Paine’s. It was the opening paragraph of the
first number of _The Crisis_, and was written by miserable,
flaring candle-light, when Paine was a private in Washington’s
ill-clad, worn-out army at Trenton. The soldiers, who were then
despairing from hardship and defeat, were roused by these words
to such enthusiasm that next day they rushed bravely in and won
the first American victory, which turned the tide of the war of
independence.

Previously to this, it was through Paine’s pamphlet, _Common
Sense_, that the Americans first saw that separation was the
only remedy for their grievances. Conway tells an amusing story
about _Common Sense_ and _The Rights of Man_. When the Bolton
town crier was sent round to seize these prohibited books, he
reported that he could not find any Rights of Man or Common
Sense anywhere!

For trying to save the life of Louis XVI during the revolution,
Paine was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a
curious accident. It was customary for chalk-marks to be made
on the cell-doors of those to be guillotined the following
morning, and these doors opened outwards. When Paine’s door
was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark was made on
the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not
visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have
been described in those days as a wonderful interposition of
Providence!

Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When
Paine, whose services to America, and to Washington himself,
had been so magnificent, was thrown into the Bastille,
Washington could have saved him by a word—but remained silent!
This was no doubt the reason why Paine, after his liberation,
was led to make an unjust attack on Washington’s military and
Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington
and the bigotry of the time against the author of _The Age of
Reason_, that Paine fell utterly into disrepute.

When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by
an Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to
the city by his admirers, but was promptly declined! And yet
Conway says that on the day, whose centenary was then being
celebrated, Paine was idolized in America above all other men,
Washington included.

The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by
Moncure D. Conway in _The Fortnightly_, March, 1879. I think
the fact mentioned in the last paragraph and the town-crier
story do not appear in Conway’s subsequent _Life of Paine_.

Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper
recognition of Paine’s fine character and important work.
(The unpleasant flippancy[5] with which he dealt with serious
religious questions is no doubt partly the cause of this.) I
find very inadequate appreciation of him in _The Americana_
and _The Biographical Dictionary of America_—and also in our
own _Dictionary of National Biography_. The general impression
among the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist;
as a matter of fact, he was a Theist, and his will ends with
the words, “I die in perfect composure and resignation to the
will of my Creator, God.”

Carlyle’s reference to Paine is amusing: “Nor is our England
without her missionaries. She has her Paine: rebellious
staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single needleman, did,
by his _Common-Sense_ Pamphlet, free America—that he can and
will free all this World; perhaps even the other.” (_French
Revolution._)

* * * * *

Buy my English posies!
You that will not turn—
Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond o’ fern
Gather’d where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lorne—
Buy my Christmas creeper
And I’ll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin—
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn—
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main—
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!
Ye that have your own
Buy them for a brother’s sake
Overseas, alone.
Weed ye trample underfoot
Floods his heart abrim—
Bird ye never heeded,
O, she calls his dead to him!
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land—
Masters of the Seven Seas, O, love and understand!

RUDYARD KIPLING (_The Flowers_).

Of the verses in this fine poem which speak for the various
British Dominions I take only the one that represents my own
country. At the time Kipling wrote, the inhabitants of our
beloved mother-country did not seem to fully realize that we
were their kindred—that our fern and clematis made _English
posies_—but no doubt their feeling has altered since we have
fought side by side in mutual defence. However, to us England
was always “home,” and when Kipling wrote this poem he entered
straight into our hearts.

* * * * *

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

RUFINUS

Here lilies, here the rosebud, and here too
The windflower with her petals drenched in dew,
And daffodillies cool, and violets blue.

MELEAGER

It’s oh! to be a wild wind—when my lady’s in the sun—
She’d just unbind her neckerchief and take me breathing in,
It’s oh! to be a red rose—just a faintly blushing one—
So she’d pull me with her hand and to her snowy breast I’d win.

PLATO TO ASTER

Thou gazest on the stars—a star to me
Thou[6] art—but oh! that I the heavens might be
And with a thousand eyes still gaze on thee!

PALLADAS

Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we
Live, and a little space the sunlight see—
Even all that live—each being an instrument
To which the generous air its life has lent.
If with the hand one quench our draught of breath,
He sends the stark soul shuddering down to death.
We, that are nothing on our pride are fed,
Seeing, but for a little air, we are as dead.

AESOPUS

Is there no help from life save only death?
“Life that such myriad sorrows harboureth
I dare not break, I cannot bear”—one saith.

“Sweet are stars, sun, and moon, and sea, and earth,
For service and for beauty these had birth,
But all the rest of life is little worth—

“Yea, all the rest is pain and grief” saith he
“For if it hap some good thing come to me
An evil end befalls it speedily!”[7]

PHILODEMUS

I loved—and you. I played—who hath not been
Steeped in such play? If I was mad, I ween
’Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.

Hence with it all! Then dark my youthful head,
Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead,
Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.

I gathered roses while the roses blew,
Playtime is past, my play is ended too.
Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue.

W. M. HARDINGE (_Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1878).

My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the
“Leslie” in Mallock’s _New Republic_. Another version of
Plato’s beautiful epigram (which was addressed to “Aster,” or
“Star”) is the following by Professor Darnley Naylor:

Thou gazest on the stars, my Star;
Oh! might I be
The starry sky with myriad eyes
To gaze on thee!

The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4,500 short poems
by about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one
thousand seven hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D.
At first these poems were epigrams—using the word “epigram”
in its original sense, as a verse intended to be inscribed on
a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead person or important
event. Later they included poems on any subject, so long as
they contained one fine thought couched in concise language.
Still later any short lyric was included.

This wonderful collection forms a great treasure-house of
poetry, which gives much insight into the Greek life of the
time, and it also largely influenced English and European
literature. For instance, the first verse of Ben Jonson’s
“Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is taken direct from the
Anthology (Agathias, _Anth. Pal._, V., 261). I may add that
the second verse, in which the poet sends the wreath, not as
a compliment to the lady but as a kindness to the roses which
could not wither if worn by her, is also borrowed from a Greek
source. (Philostratus, _Epistolai Erotikai_.)

Numberless English and European scholars have attempted the
difficult task of translating or paraphrasing these little
poetic gems into correspondingly poetic and concise language,
but the beauty of the original can never be fully retained.

* * * * *

PLATO TO STELLA

Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled:—
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.

SHELLEY’S VERSION.

* * * * *

PTOLEMY

I know that we are mortal, the children of a day;
But when I scan the circling spires, the serried stars’ array,
I tread the earth no longer and soar where none hath trod,
To feast in Heaven’s banquet-hall and drink the wine of God.

H. DARNLEY NAYLOR’S VERSION.

Although there cannot be absolute certainty, this Ptolemy is no
doubt the great Greek astronomer; and the epigram would date
from about 140 A.D.

* * * * *

HERACLEITUS.

They told me, Heracleitus, 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.

WILLIAM (JOHNSON) CORY (1823-1892).

This is a paraphrase of verses written by Callimachus on
hearing of the death of his friend, the poet Heracleitus (not
the philosopher of that name).

Francis Thompson (_Sister Songs_) hoped that his “nightingales”
would continue to sing after his death, just as light would
come from a star long after it had ceased to exist:

Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,
Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,
Set with a towering press of fantasies,
Drop safely down the time,
Leaving mine islèd self behind it far
Soon to be sunk in the abysm of seas,
(As down the years the splendour voyages
From some long ruined and night-submergèd star).

* * * * *

When I consider the shortness of my life, lost in an eternity before and behind, “passing away as the remembrance of a guest who tarrieth but a day,” the little space I fill or behold in the infinite immensity of spaces, of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me—when I reflect this, I am filled with terror, and wonder why I am _here_ and not _there_, for there was no reason why it should be the one rather than the other; why _now_ rather than _then_. Who set me here? By whose command and rule were this time and place appointed me? How many kingdoms know nothing of us! The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.

PASCAL (_Pensées_).

* * * * *

Ye weep for those who weep? she said,
Ah, fools! I bid you pass them by.
Go weep for those whose hearts have bled
What time their eyes were dry.
Whom sadder can I say? she said.

E. B. BROWNING (_The Mask_).

See also Seneca (_Hipp._), _Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes
stupent_, “Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb.”

* * * * *

Star unto star speaks light.

P. J. BAILEY (_Festus, Scene 1, Heaven_).

* * * * *

O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing!