Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

With flower-enwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.'

"1

Many a poet has lamented the change. For even if the head did profit, for a time, by the revolt against the divine prerogative of nature, it is more than possible that the heart lost in due proportion. Indeed, it is only a false Christianity that fails to recognize God's presence in the birds of the air and the lilies of the field as well as in man. True Christianity is not selfish.

His sorrow at this loss of imaginative sympathy among the moderns, Wordsworth expresses in the sonnet, already cited, beginning, "The world is too much with us."2 Schiller, also, by his poem, The Gods of Greece, has immortalized his sorrow for the decadence of the ancient mythology. It was this poem that provoked the well-known reply of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, contained in "The Dead Pan." Her argument may be gathered from the following stanzas:

[blocks in formation]

True enough from the philosophical point of view, but hardly from the poetic. Phoebus' chariot course shall not be finished so long as there is a sun, or a poet to gaze upon it. And that Pan

1 Milton, Hymn to the Nativity.

2 § 54.

is not yet dead, but alive even in the practical atmosphere of our western world, the exquisite poem here appended would indicate:

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

§ 117. Of the company of the lesser gods of earth, beside Pan, were the Sileni, the Sylvans, the Fauns, and the Satyrs, all male; the Oreads and the Dryads or Hamadryads, female. To these may be added the Naiads, for, although they dwelt in the streams, their association with the deities of earth was intimate. Of the nymphs, the Oreads and the Naiads were immortal. The love of Pan for Syrinx has already been mentioned, and his musical contest with Apollo. Of Silenus we have seen something in the adventures of Bacchus. What kind of existence the Satyr enjoyed is conveyed in the following soliloquy :

"The trunk of this tree,2

Dusky-leaved, shaggy-rooted,
Is a pillow well suited
To a hybrid like me,

Goat-bearded, goat-footed;

1 §§ 47, 59, 83.

2 From the Satyr, by Robert Buchanan.

[graphic][merged small]
« НазадПродовжити »