第90章
I respected the feeling which caused the interval of silence, and found my own eyes moistened as I remembered how long it was since that friend of ours was sitting in the chair where I now sit, and what a tidal wave of change has swept over the world and more especially over this great land of ours, since he opened his lips and found so many kind listeners.
The Young Astronomer has read us another extract from his manuscript.
I ran my eye over it, and so far as I have noticed it is correct enough in its versification.I suppose we are getting gradually over our hemispherical provincialism, which allowed a set of monks to pull their hoods over our eyes and tell us there was no meaning in any religious symbolism but our own.If I am mistaken about this advance I am very glad to print the young man's somewhat outspoken lines to help us in that direction.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
VI
The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would only starve;But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts, Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold!
If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace, Have the fine words the marble-workers learn To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, And earn a fair obituary, dressed In all the many-colored robes of praise, Be deafer than the adder to the cry Of that same foundling truth, until it grows To seemly favor, and at length has won The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-upped dames, Then snatch it from its meagre nurse's breast, Fold it in silk and give it food from gold;So shalt thou share its glory when at last It drops its mortal vesture, and revealed In all the splendor of its heavenly form, Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!
Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save, Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old And limping in its march, its wings unplumed, Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream!
Here in this painted casket, just unsealed, Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine, Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride, That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, And all the mirrored glories of the Nile.
See how they toiled that all-consuming time Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb;Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums That still diffuse their sweetness through the air, And wound and wound with patient fold on fold The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn!
Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain Of the sad mourner's tear.
But what is this?
The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast Of the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize, Give it a place among thy treasured spoils Fossil and relic,--corals, encrinites, The fly in amber and the fish in stone, The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,--Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard!