Part 16
_According to the treatise called "Virtues Banner," a lover has four solaces in separation: first, looking at objects that remind him of her he loves_;
'I see thy limbs in graceful-creeping vines, Thy glances in the eyes of gentle deer, Thine eyebrows in the ripple's dancing lines, Thy locks in plumes, thy face in moonlight clear-- Ah, jealous! But the whole sweet image is not here.
XLII
_second, painting a picture of her_;
And when I paint that loving jealousy With chalk upon the rock, and my caress As at thy feet I lie, I cannot see Through tears that to mine eyes unbidden press-- So stern a fate denies a painted happiness.
XLIII
_third, dreaming of her_;
And when I toss mine arms to clasp thee tight, Mine own though but in visions of a dream-- They who behold the oft-repeated sight, The kind divinities of wood and stream, Let fall great pearly tears that on the blossoms gleam.
XLIV
_fourth, touching something which she has touched_.
Himalaya's breeze blows gently from the north, Unsheathing twigs upon the deodar And sweet with sap that it entices forth-- I embrace it lovingly; it came so far, Perhaps it touched thee first, my life's unchanging star!
XLV
Oh, might the long, long night seem short to me! Oh, might the day his hourly tortures hide! Such longings for the things that cannot be, Consume my helpless heart, sweet-glancing bride, In burning agonies of absence from thy side.
XLVI
_The bride is besought not to lose heart at hearing of her lover's wretchedness_,
Yet much reflection, dearest, makes me strong, Strong with an inner strength; nor shouldst thou feel Despair at what has come to us of wrong; Who has unending woe or lasting weal? Our fates move up and down upon a circling wheel.
XLVII
_and to remember that the curse has its appointed end, when the rainy season is over and the year of exile fulfilled. Vishnu spends the rainy months in sleep upon the back of the cosmic serpent Shesha_.
When Vishnu rises from his serpent bed The curse is ended; close thine eyelids tight And wait till only four months more are sped; Then we shall taste each long-desired delight Through nights that the full autumn moon illumines bright.
XLVIII
_Then is added a secret which, as it could not possibly be known to a third person, assures her that the cloud is a true messenger_.
And one thing more: thou layest once asleep, Clasping my neck, then wakening with a scream; And when I wondered why, thou couldst but weep A while, and then a smile began to beam: "Rogue! Rogue! I saw thee with another girl in dream."
XLIX
This memory shows me cheerful, gentle wife; Then let no gossip thy suspicions move: They say the affections strangely forfeit life In separation, but in truth they prove Toward the absent dear, a growing bulk of tenderest love.'"
L
_The Yaksha then begs the cloud to return with a message of comfort_.
Console her patient heart, to breaking full In our first separation; having spoken, Fly from the mountain ploughed by Shiva's bull; Make strong with message and with tender token My life, so easily, like morning jasmines, broken.
LI
I hope, sweet friend, thou grantest all my suit, Nor read refusal in thy solemn air; When thirsty birds complain, thou givest mute The rain from heaven: such simple hearts are rare, Whose only answer is fulfilment of the prayer.
LII
_and dismisses him, with a prayer for his welfare_.
Thus, though I pray unworthy, answer me For friendship's sake, or pity's, magnified By the sight of my distress; then wander free In rainy loveliness, and ne'er abide One moment's separation from thy lightning bride.
* * * * *
THE SEASONS
_The Seasons_ is an unpretentious poem, describing in six short cantos the six seasons into which the Hindus divide the year. The title is perhaps a little misleading, as the description is not objective, but deals with the feelings awakened by each season in a pair of young lovers. Indeed, the poem might be called a Lover's Calendar. Kalidasa's authorship has been doubted, without very cogent argument. The question is not of much interest, as _The Seasons_ would neither add greatly to his reputation nor subtract from it.
The whole poem contains one hundred and forty-four stanzas, or something less than six hundred lines of verse. There follow a few stanzas selected from each canto.
SUMMER
Pitiless heat from heaven pours By day, but nights are cool; Continual bathing gently lowers The water in the pool; The evening brings a charming peace: For summer-time is here When love that never knows surcease, Is less imperious, dear.
Yet love can never fall asleep; For he is waked to-day By songs that all their sweetness keep And lutes that softly play, By fans with sandal-water wet That bring us drowsy rest, By strings of pearls that gently fret Full many a lovely breast.
The sunbeams like the fires are hot That on the altar wake; The enmity is quite forgot Of peacock and of snake; The peacock spares his ancient foe, For pluck and hunger fail; He hides his burning head below The shadow of his tail.
Beneath the garland of the rays That leave no corner cool, The water vanishes in haze And leaves a muddy pool; The cobra does not hunt for food Nor heed the frog at all Who finds beneath the serpent's hood A sheltering parasol.
Dear maiden of the graceful song, To you may summer's power Bring moonbeams clear and garlands long And breath of trumpet-flower, Bring lakes that countless lilies dot, Refreshing water-sprays, Sweet friends at evening, and a spot Cool after burning days.
THE RAINS
The rain advances like a king In awful majesty; Hear, dearest, how his thunders ring Like royal drums, and see His lightning-banners wave; a cloud For elephant he rides, And finds his welcome from the crowd Of lovers and of brides.
The clouds, a mighty army, march With drumlike thundering And stretch upon the rainbow's arch The lightning's flashing string; The cruel arrows of the rain Smite them who love, apart From whom they love, with stinging pain, And pierce them to the heart.
The forest seems to show its glee In flowering nipa plants; In waving twigs of many a tree Wind-swept, it seems to dance; Its ketak-blossom's opening sheath Is like a smile put on To greet the rain's reviving breath, Now pain and heat are gone.
To you, dear, may the cloudy time Bring all that you desire, Bring every pleasure, perfect, prime, To set a bride on fire; May rain whereby life wakes and shines Where there is power of life, The unchanging friend of clinging vines, Shower blessings on my wife.
AUTUMN
The autumn comes, a maiden fair In slenderness and grace, With nodding rice-stems in her hair And lilies in her face. In flowers of grasses she is clad; And as she moves along, Birds greet her with their cooing glad Like bracelets' tinkling song.
A diadem adorns the night Of multitudinous stars; Her silken robe is white moonlight, Set free from cloudy bars; And on her face (the radiant moon) Bewitching smiles are shown: She seems a slender maid, who soon Will be a woman grown.
Over the rice-fields, laden plants Are shivering to the breeze; While in his brisk caresses dance The blossom-burdened trees; He ruffles every lily-pond Where blossoms kiss and part, And stirs with lover's fancies fond The young man's eager heart.
WINTER
The bloom of tenderer flowers is past And lilies droop forlorn, For winter-time is come at last, Rich with its ripened corn; Yet for the wealth of blossoms lost Some hardier flowers appear That bid defiance to the frost Of sterner days, my dear.
The vines, remembering summer, shiver In frosty winds, and gain A fuller life from mere endeavour To live through all that pain; Yet in the struggle and acquist They turn as pale and wan As lonely women who have missed Known love, now lost and gone.
Then may these winter days show forth To you each known delight, Bring all that women count as worth Pure happiness and bright; While villages, with bustling cry, Bring home the ripened corn, And herons wheel through wintry sky, Forget sad thoughts forlorn.
EARLY SPRING
Now, dearest, lend a heedful ear And listen while I sing Delights to every maiden dear, The charms of early spring: When earth is dotted with the heaps Of corn, when heron-scream Is rare but sweet, when passion leaps And paints a livelier dream.
When all must cheerfully applaud A blazing open fire; Or if they needs must go abroad, The sun is their desire; When everybody hopes to find The frosty chill allayed By garments warm, a window-blind Shut, and a sweet young maid.
Then may the days of early spring For you be rich and full With love's proud, soft philandering And many a candy-pull, With sweetest rice and sugar-cane: And may you float above The absent grieving and the pain Of separated love.
SPRING
A stalwart soldier comes, the spring, Who bears the bow of Love; And on that bow, the lustrous string Is made of bees, that move With malice as they speed the shaft Of blossoming mango-flower At us, dear, who have never laughed At love, nor scorned his power.
Their blossom-burden weights the trees; The winds in fragrance move; The lakes are bright with lotuses, The women bright with love; The days are soft, the evenings clear And charming; everything That moves and lives and blossoms, dear, Is sweeter in the spring.
The groves are beautifully bright For many and many a mile With jasmine-flowers that are as white As loving woman's smile: The resolution of a saint Might well be tried by this; Far more, young hearts that fancies paint With dreams of loving bliss.
* * * * *
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
By Ernest Rhys
MADE AT THE TEMPLE
PRESS LETCHWORTH IN GREAT BRITAIN
Victor Hugo said a Library was "an act of faith," and some unknown essayist spoke of one so beautiful, so perfect, so harmonious in all its parts, that he who made it was smitten with a passion. In that faith the promoters of Everyman's Library planned it out originally on a large scale; and their idea in so doing was to make it conform as far as possible to a perfect scheme. However, perfection is a thing to be aimed at and not to be achieved in this difficult world; and since the first volumes appeared, now several years ago, there have been many interruptions. A great war has come and gone; and even the City of Books has felt something like a world commotion. Only in recent years is the series getting back into its old stride and looking forward to complete its original scheme of a Thousand Volumes. One of the practical expedients in that original plan was to divide the volumes into sections, as Biography, Fiction, History, Belles Lettres, Poetry, Romance, and so forth; with a compartment for young people, and last, and not least, one of Reference Books. Beside the dictionaries and encyclopædias to be expected in that section, there was a special set of literary and historical atlases. One of these atlases dealing with Europe, we may recall, was directly affected by the disturbance of frontiers during the war; and the maps had to be completely revised in consequence, so as to chart the New Europe which we hope will now preserve its peace under the auspices of the League of Nations set up at Geneva. That is only one small item, however, in a library list which runs already to the final centuries of the Thousand. The largest slice of this huge provision is, as a matter of course, given to the tyrannous demands of fiction. But in carrying out the scheme, publishers and editors contrived to keep in mind that books, like men and women, have their elective affinities. The present volume, for instance, will be found to have its companion books, both in the same section and even more significantly in other sections. With that idea too, novels like Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_ and _Fortunes of Nigel_, Lytton's _Harold_ and Dickens's _Tale of Two Cities_, have been used as pioneers of history and treated as a sort of holiday history books. For in our day history is tending to grow more documentary and less literary; and "the historian who is a stylist," as one of our contributors, the late Thomas Seccombe, said, "will soon be regarded as a kind of Phoenix." But in this special department of Everyman's Library we have been eclectic enough to choose our history men from every school in turn. We have Grote, Gibbon, Finlay, Macaulay, Motley, Frescott. We have among earlier books the Venerable Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, have completed a Livy in an admirable new translation by Canon Roberts, while Cæsar, Tacitus, Thucydides and Herodotus are not forgotten. "You only, O Books," said Richard de Bury, "are liberal and independent; you give to all who ask." The delightful variety, the wisdom and the wit which are at the disposal of Everyman in his own library may well, at times, seem to him a little embarrassing. He may turn to Dick Steele in _The Spectator_ and learn how Cleomira dances, when the elegance of her motion is unimaginable and "her eyes are chastised with the simplicity and innocence of her thoughts." He may turn to Plato's Phædrus and read how every soul is divided into three parts (like Cæsar's Gaul). He may turn to the finest critic of Victorian times, Matthew Arnold, and find in his essay on Maurice de Guerin the perfect key to what is there called the "magical power of poetry." It is Shakespeare, with his
"daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty;"
it is Wordsworth, with his
"voice ... heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides;"
or Keats, with his
".... moving waters at their priest-like task Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores."
William Hazlitt's "Table Talk," among the volumes of Essays, may help to show the relationship of one author to another, which is another form of the Friendship of Books. His incomparable essay in that volume, "On Going a Journey," forms a capital prelude to Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria" and to his and Wordsworth's poems. In the same way one may turn to the review of Moore's Life of Byron in Macaulay's _Essays_ as a prelude to the three volumes of Byron's own poems, remembering that the poet whom Europe loved more than England did was as Macaulay said: "the beginning, the middle and the end of all his own poetry." This brings us to the provoking reflection that it is the obvious authors and the books most easy to reprint which have been the signal successes out of the many hundreds in the series, for Everyman is distinctly proverbial in his tastes. He likes best of all an old author who has worn well or a comparatively new author who has gained something like newspaper notoriety. In attempting to lead him on from the good books that are known to those that are less known, the publishers may have at times been too adventurous. The late _Chief_ himself was much more than an ordinary book-producer in this critical enterprise. He threw himself into it with the zeal of a book-lover and indeed of one who, like Milton, thought that books might be as alive and productive as dragons' teeth, which, being "sown up and down the land, might chance to spring up armed men." Mr. Pepys in his _Diary_ writes about some of his books, "which are come home gilt on the backs, very handsome to the eye." The pleasure he took in them is that which Everyman may take in the gilt backs of his favourite books in his own Library, which after all he has helped to make good and lasting.
* * * * *
Abbott's Rollo at Work, etc., 275
Addison's Spectator, 164-167
Æschylus' Lyrical Dramas, 62
Æsop's and Other Fables, 657
Aimard's The Indian Scout, 428
Ainsworth's Tower of London, 400 " Old St. Paul's, 522 " Windsor Castle, 709 " The Admirable Crichton, 804
A'Kempis' Imitation of Christ, 484
Alcott's Little Women, and Good Wives, 248 " Little Men, 512
Alpine Club. Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, 778
Andersen's Fairy Tales, 4
Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 794
Anson's Voyages, 510
Aristophanes' The Acharnians, etc., 344 " The Frogs, etc., 516
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, 547 " Politics, 605
Arnold's (Matthew) Essays, 115 " Poems, 334 " Study of Celtic Literature, etc., 458
Augustine's (Saint) Confessions, 200
Aurelius' (Marcus) Golden Book, 9
Austen's (Jane) Sense and Sensibility, 21 " Pride and Prejudice, 22 " Mansfield Park, 23 " Emma, 24 " Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, 25
Bacon's Essays, 10 " Advancement of Learning, 719
Bagehot's Literary Studies, 520, 521
Baker's (Sir S.W.) Cast up by the Sea, 539
Ballantyne's Coral Island, 245 " Martin Rattler, 246 " Ungava, 276
Balzac's Wild Ass's Skin, 26 " Eugénie Grandet, 169 " Old Goriot, 170 " Atheist's Mass, etc., 229 " Christ in Flanders, etc., 284 " The Chouans, 285 " Quest of the Absolute, 286 " Cat and Racket, etc., 349 " Catherine de Medici, 419 " Cousin Pons, 463 " The Country Doctor, 530 " Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, 596 " Lost Illusions, 656 " The Country Parson, 686 " Ursule Mirouët, 733
Barbusse's Under Fire, 798
Barca's (Mme. C. de la) Life in Mexico, 664
Bates' Naturalist on the Amazons, 446
Beaumont and Fletcher's Select Plays, 506
Beaumont's (Mary) Joan Seaton, 597
Bede's Ecclesiastical History, etc., 479
Belt's The Naturalist in Nicaragua, 561
Berkeley's (Bishop) Principles of Human Knowledge, New Theory of Vision, etc., 483
Berlioz (Hector), Life of, 602
Binns' Life of Abraham Lincoln, 783
Björnson's Plays, 625, 696
Blackmore's Lorna Doone, 304 " Springhaven, 350
Blackwell's Pioneer Work for Women, 667
Blake's Poems and Prophecies, 792
Boehme's The Signature of All Things, etc., 569
Bonaventura's The Little Flowers, The Life of St. Francis, etc., 485
Borrow's Wild Wales, 49 " Lavengro, 119 " Romany Rye, 120 " Bible in Spain, 151 " Gypsies in Spain, 697
Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1, 2 " Tour in the Hebrides, etc., 387
Boult's Asgard and Norse Heroes, 689
Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist, 559
Bright's (John) Speeches, 252
Brontë's (A.) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 685
Brontë's (C.) Jane Eyre, 287 " Shirley, 288 " Villette, 351 " The Professor, 417
Brontë's (E.) Wuthering Heights, 243
Brooke's (Stopford A.) Theology in the English Poets, 493
Brown's (Dr. John) Rab and His Friends, etc., 116
Browne's (Frances) Grannie's Wonderful Chair, 112
Browne's (Sir Thos.) Religio Medici, etc., 92
Browning's Poems, 1833-1844, 41 " " 1844-1864, 42 " The Ring and the Book, 502
Buchanan's Life and Adventures of Audubon, 601
Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, 472 " Legends of Charlemagne, 556
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 204
Burke's American Speeches and Letters, 340 " Reflections on the French Revolution, etc., 460
Burnet's History of His Own Times, 85
Burney's Evelina, 352
Burns' Poems and Songs, 94
Burrell's Volume of Heroic Verse, 574
Burton's East Africa, 500
Butler's Analogy of Religion, 90
Buxton's Memoirs, 773
Byron's Complete Poetical and Dramatic Works, 486-488
Cæsar's Gallic War, etc., 702
Canton's Child's Book of Saints, 61 " Invisible Playmate, etc., 566
Carlyle's French Revolution, 31, 32 " Letters, etc., of Cromwell, 266-268 " Sartor Resartus, 278 " Past and Present, 608 " Essays, 703, 704
Cellini's Autobiography, 51
Cervantes' Don Quixote, 385, 386
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 307
Chrétien de Troyes' Eric and Enid, 698
Cibber's Apology for his Life, 668
Cicero's Select Letters and Orations, 345
Clarke's Tales from Chaucer, 537 " Shakespeare's Heroines, 109-111
Cobbett's Rural Rides, 638, 639
Coleridge's Biographia, 11 " Golden Book, 43 " Lectures on Shakespeare, 162
Collins' Woman in White, 464
Collodi's Pinocchio, 538
Converse's Long Will, 328
Cook's Voyages, 99
Cooper's The Deerslayer, 77 " The Pathfinder, 78 " Last of the Mohicans, 79 " The Pioneer, 171 " The Prairie, 172
Cousin's Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 449
Cowper's Letters, 774
Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece, 721
Craik's Manual of English Literature, 346
Craik (Mrs.). _See_ Mulock.
Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles, 300
Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, 640
Curtis's Prue and I, and Lotus, 418
Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, 588
Dante's Divine Comedy, 308
Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, 104
Dasent's The Story of Burnt Njal, 558
Daudet's Tartarin of Tarascon, 423
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 59 " Captain Singleton, 74 " Memoirs of a Cavalier, 283 " Journal of Plague, 289
De Joinville's Memoirs of the Crusades, 333
Demosthenes' Select Orations, 546
Dennis' Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 183, 184
De Quincey's Lake Poets, 163 " Opium-Eater, 223 " English Mail Coach, etc., 609
De Retz (Cardinal), Memoirs of, 735, 736
Descartes' Discourse on Method, 570
Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, 76 " Tale of Two Cities, 102 " Old Curiosity Shop, 173 " Oliver Twist, 233 " Great Expectations, 234 " Pickwick Papers, 235 " Bleak House, 236 " Sketches by Boz, 237 " Nicholas Nickleby, 238 " Christmas Books, 239 " Dombey & Son, 240 " Martin Chuzzlewit, 241 " David Copperfield, 242 " American Notes, 290 " Child's History of England, 291 " Hard Times, 292 " Little Dorrit, 293 " Our Mutual Friend, 294 " Christmas Stories, 414 " Uncommercial Traveller, 536 " Edwin Drood, 725 " Reprinted Pieces, 744
Disraeli's Coningsby, 635
Dixon's Fairy Tales from Arabian Nights, 249
Dodge's Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, 620
Dostoieffsky's Crime and Punishment, 501 " The House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia, 533 " Letters from the Underworld, etc., 654 " The Idiot, 682 " Poor Folk, and The Gambler, 711 " The Brothers Karamazov, 802, 803
Dowden's Life of R. Browning, 701
Dryden's Dramatic Essays, 568
Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, 499
Dumas' The Three Musketeers, 81 " The Black Tulip, 174
Dumas' Twenty Years After, 175 " Marguerite de Valois, 326 " The Count of Monte Cristo, 393, 394 " The Forty-Five, 420 " Chicot the Jester, 421 " Vicomte de Bragelonne, 593-595 " Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, 614
Duruy's History of France, 737, 738
Edgar's Cressy and Poictiers, 17 " Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 320 " Heroes of England, 471
Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, etc., 410
Edwardes' Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632
Eliot's Adam Bede, 27 " Silas Marner, 121 " Romola, 231 " Mill on the Floss, 325 " Felix Holt, 353 " Scenes of Clerical Life, 468
Elyot's Governour, 227
Emerson's Essays, 12 " Representative Men, 279 " Nature, Conduct of Life, etc., 322 " Society and Solitude, etc., 567 " Poems, 715
Epictetus' Moral Discourses, etc., 404
Erckmann--Chatrian's The Conscript and Waterloo, 354 " Story of a Peasant, 706, 707
Euripides' Plays, 63, 271
Evelyn's Diary, 220, 221
Ewing's (Mrs.) Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances, and other Stories, 730 " Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life, 731
Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, 576
Fielding's Tom Jones, 355, 356 " Joseph Andrews, 467
Finlay's Byzantine Empire, 33 " Greece under the Romans, 185
Fletcher's (Beaumont and) Select Plays, 506
Ford's Gatherings from Spain, 152
Forster's Life of Dickens, 781, 782
Fox's Journal, 754
Fox's Selected Speeches, 759
Franklin's Journey to Polar Sea, 447
Freeman's Old English History for Children, 540
Froissart's Chronicles, 57
Fronde's Short Studies, 13, 705 " Henry VIII., 372-374 " Edward VI., 375 " Mary Tudor, 477 " History of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, 583-587 " Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 666
Gait's Annals of the Parish, 427
Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty, 263