THE PAGAN REVIEW
No. 1
August 15, 1892
THE
PAGAN REVIEW
Front Cover
Subscription Information . . .
[ii-iii]
The Editor: Foreword . . . 1
W.S. Fanshawe: The Black Madonna . . . 5
Geo. Gascoigne: The Coming of Love . . . 19
Willand Dreeme: The Pagans: a Romance . . . 20
Lionel Wingrave: An Untold Story . . . 29
James Marazion: The Rape of the Sabines . . . 30
Charles Verlayne: The Oread . . . 41
Wm. Windover: Dionysos in India . . . 48
S: Pastels in Prose [Review of Book by
Stuart Merrill] . . . 54
W. H. B[rooks]: Contemporary Record
[Reviews of new books and plays] . . . 59
W. H. Brooks, Assistant Editor:
The Pagan Review [Editorial] . . . 5
Advertisements . . . 65
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FOREWORD.
Editorial prefaces to new magazines
generally lay
great stress on the effort of the directorate, and
all
concerned, to make the forthcoming periodical
popular.
We have no such expectation: not even, it may be
added, any such intention. We aim at thorough-going
unpopularity: and
ther is every reason to believe
that, with the blessed who expect
little, we shall not be
disappointed.
⁂
In the first place, THE PAGAN REVIEW is frankly
pagan: pagan in sentiment, pagan in
convictions,
pagan in outlook. This being so, it is a magazine
only for those who, with Mr. George Meredith, can ex-
claim in all
sincerity—
“O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t in the skies,
Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours?
But O, the truth, the truth! . . . . “—
and at the same time, and with the same author, are
not
unready to admit that truth to life, external and
internal, very
often
“. . . . . . is not meat
For little people or for fools.”
To quote from Mr. Meredith once more:
“. . . . . these things are life:
And life, they say, is worthy of the Muse.”
But we are well aware that this is just what “they”
don’t
say. “They”, “the general public”, care very
little about the “Muse” at
all; and the one thing they
never advocate of wish is that the “Muse”
should be so
indiscreet as to really withdraw from life the approved
veils of Convention.
Nevertheless, we believe that there is a by no means
numerically insignificant public to whom THE PAGAN
REVIEW may appeal; though our paramount difficulty
will be to
reach those who, owing to various circum-
2 THE PAGAN REVIEW
stances, are out of the way of hearing aught concerning
the most recent developments in the world of letters.
⁂
THE PAGAN REVIEW conveys, or is meant to convey,
a good deal by its
title. The new paganism is a potent
leaven in the yeast of the “younger
generation”, without
as yet having gained due recognition, or even any
suffi-
ciently apt and modern name, any scientific designation.
The
“new paganism,” the “modern epicureanism,” and
kindred appellations, are
more or less misleading. Yet,
with most of us, there is a fairly definite
idea of what
we signify thereby. The religion of our forefathers has
not only ceased for us personally, but is no longer in
any vital and
general sense a sovereign power in the
realm. It is still fruitful of vast
good, but it is none
the less a poer that was rather than a power that
is.
The ideals of our forefathers are not our ideals, except
where
the accidents of time and change can work no
havoc. A new epoch is about
to be inaugurated, is,
indeed, in many respects, already begun; a new
epoch
in civil law, in international comity, in what, vast
and
complete though the issues be, may be called
Human Economy. The long
half-acknowledged, half-
denied duel between Man and Woman is to
cease,
neither through the victory of hereditary overlordship
nor the
triumph of the far more deft and subtle if
less potent weapons of the
weaker, but through a frank
recognition of copartnery. This new
comradeship will
be not less romantic, less inspiring, less worthy of
the
chivalrous extremes of life and death, than the old
system of
overlord and bondager, while it will open
perspectives of a new-rejoicing
humanity, the most
fleeting glimpses of which now make the hearts of
true men and women beat with gladness. Far from
wishing to disintegrate,
degrade, abolish marriage, the
“new paganism” with fain see that sexual
union
become the flower of human life But, first, the rubbish
must be
cleared away; the anomalies must be replaced
by just inter-relations; the
sacredness of the individual
must be recognized; and women no longer have
to look
upon men as usurpers, men lo longer to regard
women as
spiritual foreigners.
FOREWORD 3
⁂
These remarks, however, must not be taken too liter-
ally as indicative of the literary aspects of THE PAGAN
REVIEW.
Opinions are one thing, the expression of
them
another, and the transformation or reincarna-
tion of them through
indirect presentment another still.
This magazine is to be a purely literary, not a
philosophical, partisan, or propagandist periodical.
We are concerned
here with the new presentment of
things rather than with the phenomena
of change and
growth themselves. Our vocation, in a word, is to
give artistic expression to the artistic “inwardness”
of the new
paganism; and we voluntarily turn aside
here from such avocations as
chronicling every ebb
and flow of thought, speculating upon every fresh
sur-
prising derelict upon the ocean of man’s mind, or
expounding
well or ill on the new ethic. If those who
sneer at the rallying cry,
“Art for Art’s sake,” laugh
at our efforts, we are well content; for
even the lungs
of donkeys are strengthened by much braying. If, on
the other hand, those who, by vain pretensions and
paradoxical clamour,
degrade Art by making her
merely the more or less seductive panoply of
mental
poverty and spiritual barrenness, care to do a grievous
wrong by openly and blatantly siding with us, we are
still content; for
we recognise that spiritual byways
and mental sewers relieve the
Commonwealth of much
that is unseemly and might breed contagion.
THE
PAGAN REVIEW, in a word, is to be a
mouthpiece—we
are genuinely modest enough to disavow the definite
article–of the younger generation. In its
pages there will be found a
free exposition of the myriad
aspects of life, in each instance as
adequately as possible
reflective of the mind and literary temperament
of the
writer. The pass-phrase of the new paganism is ours:
Sic
transit gloria Grundi. The supreme interest of Man
is—Woman: and the
most profound and fascinating
problem to Woman is Man. This being so,
and quite
unquestionably so with all the male and female pagans
of
our acquaintance, it is natural that literature domi-
nated by the
various forces of the sexual emotion should
prevail. Yet, though
paramount in attraction, it is,
4 THE PAGAN REVIEW
after all, but one among the many motive forces of
life;
so we will hope not to fall into the error of some
of our French confreres
and be persistently and even
supernaturally awake to the functional
activity and
blind to the general life and interest of the common-
wealth of sould and body. It is LIFE that we preach,
if
perforce we must be taken as preachers at all; Life to
the full,
in all its manifestations, in its heights and
depths, precious to the
uttermost moment, not to be bar-
tered even when maimed and weary. For
here, at any
rate we are alive; and then, alas, after all—
“how few Junes
Will heat our pulses quicker. . . “
⁂
“Much cry for little wool”, some will exclaim. It
may
be so. Whenever did a first number of a new
magazine fulfil all its
editor’s dreams or even inten-
tions? “Well, we must make the best of
it, I suppose.
‘Tis nater after all, and what pleases God”, as
Mrs.
Durbeyfield says in “Tess of the Durbervilles.”
⁂
Have you read that charming roman à quatre, the
“Croix de Berny?” If so, you will recollect the
fol-
lowing words of Edgar de Meilhan (alias Théophile
Gautier), which I (“I” standing for editor, and asso-
ciates, and pagans in general) now quote for the delec-
tation of all
readers adversely minded or generously
inclined, or dubious as to our
real intent—with blithe
hopes that they may be the happier therefor:
“Frankly,
I am in earnest this time. Order me a dove-coloured
vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, a crook; in short
the entire
outfit of a Lignon Shepherd. I shall have a
lamb washed to complete the
pastoral.”
⁂
This is “the lamb.”
⁂ Readers are requested to note the administra-
tional remarks on
the inside of the cover (p. ii.), and the
Forecast and Editorial intimations
printed at the end
of the text.
THE BLACK MADONNA.
The blood-red sunset turns the dark fringes of the
forest into a wave of flame. A hot river of light streams
through the
aisles of the ancient trees, and, falling over the
shoulder of a vast,
smooth slab of stone that rises solitary
in this wilderness of dark growth
and sombre green, pours
in a flood across an open glade and upon the
broken columns
and inchoate ruins of what in immemorial time had been
a mighty temple, the fane of a perished god, or of many
gods. As the sun
rapidly descends, the stream of red
light narrows, till, quivering and
palpitating, it rests like
a bloody sword upon a colossal statue of black
marble,
facing due westward. The statue is that of a woman,
and is as
of the Titans of old-time.
A great majesty is upon the mighty face, with its
moveless yet seeing eyes, its faint inscrutable smile.
Upon the
triple-ledged pedestal, worn at the edges like
swords ground again and
again, lie masses of large white
flowers, whose heavy fragrances rise in a
faint blue
vapour drawn forth with the sudden suspiration of the
earth by the first twilight-chill.
In the great space betwixt the white slab of
stone—
hurled thither, or raised, none knoweth when or how-is
gathered
a dark multitude, silent, expectant. Many are
Arab tribesmen, the remnant
of a strange sect driven
southward; but most are Nubians, or that
unnamed
swarthy race to whom both Arab and Negro are as chil-
dren.
All, save the priests, of whom the elder are clad in
white robes and the
younger girt about by scarlet sashes,
are naked. Behind the men, at a
short distance apart, are
the women; each virgin with an ivory circlet
round the
neck, each mother or pregnant woman with a thin gold
band
round the left arm. Between the long double-line
of the priests and the
silent multitude stands a small
group of five youths and five maidens;
each crowned with
6 THE PAGAN REVIEW
heavy drooping white flowers; each motionless, morose;
all with eyes fixt
on the trodden earth at their feet.
The younger priests suddenly strike together square
brazen cymbals, deeply chased with signs and letters
of a perished tongue.
A shrill screaming cry goes
up from the people, followed by a prolonged
silence.
Not a man moves, not a woman sighs. Only a shiver
contracts
the skin of the foremost girl in the small
central group. Then the elder
priests advance slowly,
chanting monotonously,
CHORUS OF THE PRIESTS:
We are thy children, O mighty Mother!
We are the slain
of thy spoil, O Slayer!
We are thy thoughts that are fulfilled, O
Thinker!
Have pity upon us!
screaming voice:
Have pity upon us! Have pity upon us! Have pity
[upon us!
THE PRIESTS:
Thou wast, before the first child came through the dark
[gate of the womb!
Thou wast, before ever woman knew man!
Thou wast, before the
shadow of man moved athwart
[the grass!
Thou wast, and thou art!
THE MULTITUDE:
Have pity upon us! Have pity upon us! Have pity
[upon us!
THE PRIESTS:
Hail, thou who art more fair than the dawn, more dark
[than night!
Hail thou, white as ivory or veiled in shadow!
Hail,
thou of many names, and immortal!
Hail, Mother of God, Sister of the
Christ, Bride of the
[Prophet!
THE MULTITUDE:
Have pity upon us? Have pity upon us! Have pity
[upon us!
THE BLACK MADONNA 7
THE PRIESTS:
O moon of night, O morning star! Consoler! Slayer!
Thou, who lovest shadow, and fear, and sudden death!
Who art the smile
that looketh upon women and children!
Who hath the heart of man in thy
grip as in a vice;
Who hath his pride and strength in thy sigh of
yestereve;
Who hath his being in thy breath that goeth forth, and
[is not!
THE MULTITUDE:
Have pity upon us! Have pity upon us! Have pity
[upon us!
THE PRIESTS:
We knew thee not, nor the way of thee, O Queen!
But we
bring thee what thou loved’st of old, and for ever!
The white flowers
of our forests and the red flowers of
[our bodies!
Take them and slay not, O Slayer!
For we are thy
slaves, O Mother of Life,
We are the dust of thy tired feet, O Mother
of God!
As the white-robed priests advance slowly towards
the
Black Madonna, the younger tear off their scarlet
sashes, and seizing the
five maidens, bind them together,
left arm to right, and hand to hand.
Therewith the
victims move slowly forward till they pass through the
ranks of the priests, and stand upon the lowest edge of the
pedestal
of the great statue. Towards each steppeth, and
behind each standeth, a
naked priest, each holding a
narrow irregular sword of antique
fashion.
THE ELDER PRIESTS:
O Mother of God!
THE YOUNGER PRIESTS:
O Slayer, be pitiful!
THE VICTIMS:
O Mother of God! O Slayer! be merciful!
THE MULTITUDE (in a loud screaming voice):
Have pity upon us! Have pity upon us! Have pity
[upon us!
The last blood-red gleam fades from the Black
Ma-
donna, and flashes this way and that for a moment from
8 THE PAGAN REVIEW
the ten sword-knives that cut the air and plunge between
the shoulders and
to the heart of each victim. A wide
spirt of blood rains upon the white
flowers at the base of
the colossal figure; where also speedily lie, dark
amidst
welling crimson, the swarthy bodies of the slain.
THE PRIESTS:
Behold, O Mother of God,
The white flowers of our
forests and the red flowers of
[our bodies!
Have pity, O
Compassionate,
Be merciful, O Queen!
THE MULTITUDE:
Have pity upon us! Have pity upon us! Have pity
[upon us!
But at the swift coming of the darkness, the priests
hastily cover the dead with the masses of the white
flowers; and one by
one, and group by group, the mul-
titude melteth away. When all are gone
save the young
chief, Bihr, and a few of his following, the priests
pros-
trate themselves before the Black Madonna, and pray to
her to
vouchsafe a sign.
From the mouth of the carven figure cometh a hollow
voice, sombre as the reverberation of thunder among
barren hills.
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I hearken.
THE PRIESTS (prostrate):
Wilt thou slay, O Slayer?
THE BLACK MADONNA:
Yea, verily.
THE PRIESTS (in a rising chant):
Wilt thou save, O Mother of God?
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I save.
THE PRIESTS:
Can one see thee, and live?
THE BLACK MADONNA:
At the Gate of Death.
Whereafter, no sound cometh from the statue, already
dim in the darkness that seems to have crept from the
THE BLACK MADONNA 9
forest. The priests rise, and disappear in silent groups
under the trees.
The thin crescent moon slowly rises. A phosphorescent
glow from orchids and parasitic growths shimmers inter-
mittently in the
forest. A wavering beam of light falls
upon the right breast of the Black
Madonna; then
slowly downward to her feet; then upon the motionless
figure of Bihr, the warrior-chief. None saw him steal
thither: none
knoweth that he has braved the wrath of
the Slayer; for it is the sacred
time, when it is death to
enter the glade.
BIHR (in a low voice):
Speak, Spirit that dwelleth here from of old . . .
Speak, for I would
have speech with thee. I fear thee
not, O Mother of God, for the priests
of the Christ who
is thy son say that thou wert but a woman. . .
And
it may be—it may be—what say the children of
the Prophet: that there is
but one God, and he is Allah.
(Deep silence. From the desert beyond the forest
comes the hollow roaring of lions.)
BIHR (in a loud chant):
To the north and to the east I have seen many figures
like unto thine,
gods and goddesses: some mightier than
thee—vast sphinxes by the flood of
Nilus, gigantic faces
rising out of the sands of the desert. And none
spake,
for silence is come upon them; and none slays, for the
strength of the gods passes even as the strength of men.
come snarling cries, 1ong-drawn howls, and the
low moaning sigh of the wind.)
BIHR (mockingly):
For I will not be thrall to a woman, and the priests shall
not bend me to
their will as a slave unto the yoke. If
thou thyself art God, speak, and I
shall be thy slave to
do thy will . . . . Thrice have I come hither
at
the new moon, and thrice do I go hence uncomforted
. . . .What
voice was that that spoke ere the
victims died? I know not; but it hath
reached mine
ears never save when the priests are by. Nay (laughing
low), O Mother of God, I—
10 THE PAGAN REVIEW
(Suddenly he trembles all over and falls on his
knees,
for from the blackness above him cometh a
voice:)
THE BLACK MADONNA:
What would’st thou?
BIHR (hoarsely):
Have mercy upon me, O Queen!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
What would’st thou?
BIHR
I worship thee, Mother of God! Slayer and Saver!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
What would’st thou?
BIHR (tremulously):
Show me thyself, thyself, even for this one time, O
Strength and
Wisdom!
Deep silence.. The wind in the forest passes away
with a faint wailing sound. The dull roaring of lions
rises and falls in
the distance. A soft yellow light
illumes the statue, as though another
moon were rising
behind the temple.
A great terror comes upon Bihr the Chief, and he
falls prostrate at the base of the Black Madonna.
His eyes are open, but they see not, save the burnt
spikes of trodden grass, sere and stiff save where damp
with newly-shed
blood; and deaf are his ears, though
he waits for he knoweth not what
sound from above.
Suddenly he starts, and the sweat mats the hair on
his forehead when he feels a touch on his right shoulder.
Looking slowly
round he sees beside him a woman, tall,
and of a lithe and noble body. He
seeth that her skin
is dark, yet not of the blackness of the south.
Two
spheres of wrought gold cover her breasts, and from the
serpentine zone round her waist is looped a dusky veil
spangled with
shining points. In her eyes, large as
those of the desert-antelope, is the
loveliness and the
pathos and the pain of twilight.
BIHR (trembling):
Art thou—Art thou—
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I am she whom thou worshippest.
THE BLACK MADONNA 11
BIHR
(looking at the colossal statue, irradiated by thestrange light that cometh he knows not whence;
and then at the beautiful apparition by his side.)
Thou art the Black Madonna, the Mother of God?
THE BLACK MADONNA:
Thou sayest it.
BIHR
Thou hast heard my prayer, O Queen!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
Even so.
BIHR
(Taking heart because of the sweet and thrillinghumanity of the goddess.)
O Slayer and Saver, is the lightning thine and the fire
that is in the
earth? Canst thou whirl the stars as
from a sling, and light the
mountainous lands to the
south with falling meteors? O Queen, destroy me
not,
for I am thy slave, and weaker than thy breath: but
canst thou
stretch forth thine hand and say yea to the
lightning, and bid silence
unto the thunder ere it breeds
the bolts that smite? For if—
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I make and I unmake. This cometh and that goeth,
and I am—
BIHR
And thou art—
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I was Ashtaroth of old. Men have called me many
names. All things change,
but I change not. Know
me, O Slave! I am the Mother of God. I am the
Sister
of the Christ. I am the Bride of the Prophet.
BIHR (with awe):
And thou art the very Prophet, and the very Christ, and
the very God! Each
speaketh in thee, who art older
than they—
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I am the Prophet.
BIHR
Hail, O Lord of Deliverance!
12 THE PAGAN REVIEW
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I am the Christ, the Son of God.
BIHR
Hail, O most Patient, most Merciful!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I am the Lord thy God.
BIHR
Hail, Giver of Life and Death!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
Yet here none is; for each goeth or each cometh as I
will. I only am
eternal.
BIHR
(Crawling forward, and kissing her feet.)Behold, I am thy slave to do thy will: thy sword to slay:
thy spear to
follow: thy hound to track thine enemies.
I am dust beneath thy feet. Do
with me as thou wilt.
THE BLACK MADONNA:
(Slowly, and looking at him strangely.)Thou shalt be my High Priest. . . . .Come back
to-morrow an hour after the
setting of the sun.
As Bihr the Chief rises and goeth away into the
shadow she stareth steadily after him; and a deep fear
dwells in the
twilight of her eyes. Then, turning, she
standeth awhile by the slain
bodies of the victims of the
sacrifice; and having lightly brushed away
with her foot
the flowers above each face, looketh long on the
mystery
of death. And when at last she glides by the great
statue and
passes into the ruins beyond, there is no
longer any glow of light, and a
deep darkness covereth
the glade. From the deeper darkness beyond comes
the
howling of hyenas, the shrill screaming of a furious beast
of
prey, and the sudden bursting roar of lion answering
lion.
When the dawn breaks, and a pale, wavering light
glimmers athwart the great white slab of stone that,
on the farther verge
of the forest, faces the Black
Madonna, there is nought upon the pedestal
save a ruin
of bloodied trampled flowers, though the sere yellow
grass is stained in long trails across the open. The dawn
withdraws again,
but ere long suddenly wells forth, and
THE BLACK MADONNA 13
it is as though the light wind were bearing over the
forest a multitude of
soft grey feathers from the breasts
of doves. Then the dim concourse of
feathers is as
though innumerable leaves of wild-roses were falling,
falling, petal by petal uncurling into a rosy flame that
wafts upward and
onward. The stars have grown sud-
denly pale, and the fires of Phosphor
burn wanly green in
the midst of a palpitating haze of pink. With a
great
rush, the sun swings through the gates of the East, tossing
aside his golden, fiery mane as he fronts the new day.
And the going of the day is from morning silence
unto
noon silence, and from the silence of the afternoon
unto the silence of
the eve. Once more, towards the
setting of the sun, the multitude cometh
out of the
forest, from the east and from the west, and from the
north and from the south: once more the Priests sing the
sacred hymns:
once more the people supplicate as with
one shrill screaming voice, Have pity upon us! Have
pity upon us! Have pity upon
us! Once more the
victims are slain of little children who might
one day
shake the spear and slay, five; and of little children who
would one day bear and bring forth, five.
Yet again an hour passeth after the setting of the
sun. There is no moon to lighten the darkness and the
silence; but a soft
glow falleth from the temple, and
upon the mall who kneels before the
Black Madonna.
But when Bihr, having no sign vouchsafed, and hearing
no sound, and seeing nought upon the carven face,
neither tremour of the
lips nor life in the lifeless eyes,
suddenly seeth the goddess, glorious
in her beauty that
is as of the night, coming towards him from out of
the
ruins, his heart leapeth within him in strange joy and
dread.
Scarce knowing what he doth, he springeth to
his feet, trembling as a reed
that leaneth
against the flank of a lioness by the water-pool.
BIHR (yearningly, with supplicating arms):
Hail, God! . . . .Goddess, Most Beautiful!
She draws nigh to him, looking at him the while
out
of the deep twilight of her eyes.
THE BLACK MADONNA:
What would’st thou?
14 THE PAGAN REVIEW
BIHR
(Wildly, stepping close, but halting in dread.)Thou art no Mother of God, O Goddess, Queen, Most
Beautiful!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
What would’st thou, O blind fool that is so in love with
death?
BIHR (hoarsely):
Make me like unto thyself, for I love you!
Deep silence. From afar, on the desert, comes the
dull roaring of lions by the water-courses; from the
forest a murmurous
sound as of baffled winds snared
among the thick-branched ancient
trees.
BIHR
(Sobbing as one wounded in flight by an arrow.)For I love thee: I—love-thee! I—
Deep silence. A shrill screaming of a bird fascinated
by a snake comes from the forest. Beyond, from the
desert, a long,
desolate moaning and howling, where the
hyenas prowl.
THE BLACK MADONNA:
When . .did . . thy folly . .this madness
. . come upon thee . . O Fool?
BIHR (passionately):
O Most Beautiful! Most Beautiful! Thou—Thou—
will I worship!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
Go hence, lest I slay thee!
BIHR
Slay, O Slayer, for thou art Life and Death!
. . . But I go not hence. I
love thee! I love thee! I love
thee!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I am the Mother of God.
BIHR
I love thee!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
God dwelleth in me. I am thy God.
BIHR
I love thee!
THE BLACK MADONNA 15
THE BLACK MADONNA:
Go hence, lest I slay thee!
BIHR
Thou tremblest, O Mother of God! Thy lips twitch,
thy breasts heave, O
thou who callest thyself God!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
(raising her right arm menacingly.)Go hence, thou dog, lest thou look upon my face no more.
Then suddenly, with bowed head and shaking limbs,
Bihr the Chief turneth and passes into the forest. And
as he fades into
the darkness, the Black Madonna stareth
a long while after him, and a deep
fear broodeth in the
twilight of her eyes. But by the bodies of the
slain
children she passes at last, and with a shudder looks
not upon
their faces, but strews the heavy white flowers
more thickly upon
them.
The darkness cometh out of the darkness, billow
welling forth from spent billow on the tides of night.
On the obscure
waste of the glade nought moves, save
the gaunt shadow of a hyena that
crawls from column
to column. From the blackness beyond swells the
long
thunderous howl of a lioness, echoing the hollow blasting
roar
of a lion standing, with eyes of yellow flame, on the
summit of the great
slab of smooth rock that faces the
carven Madonna.
And when the dawn breaks, and long lines of
pearl-
grey wavelets ripple in a flood athwart the black-green
sweep
of the forest, there is nought upon the pedestal
but red flowers that once
were white, rent and scattered
this way and that. The cool wind moving
against the
east ruffles the opaline flood into a flying foam of
pink,
wherefrom mists and vapours rise on wings like rosy
flames, and
as they rise their crests shine as with
blazing gold, and they fare forth
after the Morn that
leads towards the Sun.
And the going of the day is from morning silence
unto
noon silence, and from the silence of the afternoon
unto the silence of
eve. Once more towards the setting
of the sun, the multitude cometh out of
the forest, from
the east and from the west, and from the north and
from
the south. Once more the priests sing the sacred
16 THE PAGAN REVIEW
hymns: once more the people supplicate as with one
shrill screaming voice,
Have pity upon us! Have pity
upon us! Have pity
upon us! Once more the vic-
tims are slain: five chiefs of
captives taken in war, and
unto each chief two warriors in the glory of
youth.
Yet an hour after the setting of the sun. Moonless
the silence and the dark, save for the soft yellow light
that falleth from
the temple, and upon the man who,
crested with an ostrich-plume bound by a
heavy circlet
of gold, with a tiger-skin about his shoulders, and
with
a great spear in his hand, standeth beyond the statue
and nigh
unto the ruins, where no man hath ventured
and lived.
BIHR (with loud triumphant voice):
Come forth, my Bride!
Deep silence, save for the sighing of the wind among
the upper branches of the trees, and the panting of the
flying deer beyond
the glade.
BIHR
(striking his spear against the marble steps.)Come forth, Glory of my eyes! Come forth, Body of
my Body.
Deep silence. Then there is a faint sound, and the
Black Madonna stands beside Bihr the Chief. And the
man is wrought to
madness by her beauty, and lusteth
after her, and possesseth her with the
passion of his eyes.
THE BLACK MADONNA:
(Trembling, and strangely troubled.)What would’st thou?
BIHR
Thou!
THE BLACK MADONNA (slowly):
Young art thou, Bihr, in thy comeliness and strength
to be so in love
with death.
BIHR
Who giveth life, and who death? It is not thou, nor I.
THE BLACK MADONNA (shuddering):
It cometh. None can stay it.
BIHR
Not thou? Thou can’st not stay it, even?
THE BLACK MADONNA 17
THE BLACK MADONNA (whisperingly):
Nay, Bihr; and this thing thou knowest in thy heart.
BIHR (mockingly):
O Mother of God! O Sister of Christ! O Bride of the Prophet!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
(putting her hand to her heart.)What would’st thou?
BIHR
Thou!
THE BLACK MADONNA:
I am the Slayer, the Terrible, the Black Madonna.
BIHR
And lo, thy God laugheth at thee, even as at me, and
mine. And lo, I have
come for thee; for I am become
His Prophet, and thou art to be my
Bride!
As he finisheth he turns towards the great Statue of
the
Black Madonna and, laughing, hurls his spear against its
breast,
whence the weapon rebounds with a loud clang.
Then, ere the woman knows
what he has done, he leaps
to her and seizes her in his grasp, and kisses
her upon
the lips, and grips her with his hands till the veins sting
in her arms. And all the sovereignty of her lonely
godhood passeth from
her like the dew before the hot
breath of the sun, and her heart throbs
against his side
so that his ears ring as with the clang of the gongs
of battle. He sobs low, as a man amidst baffling waves;
and in the hunger
of his desire she sinks as one who
drowns.
Together they go up the long flat marble steps:
together they pass into the darkness of the ruins.
From the deeper
darkness beyond cometh no sound, for
the forest is strangely still. Not a
beast of prey comes
nigh unto the slain victims of the sacrifice, not a
vulture
falleth like a cloud through the night. Only, from afar,
the
dull roaring of the lions cometh up from the water-
courses on the
desert.
And the wind that bloweth in the night cometh with
rain and storm, so that when the dawn breaks it is as a
sea of sullen
waves grey with sleet. But calm cometh
out of the blood red splendour of
the east.
18 THE PAGAN REVIEW
And on this, the morning of the fourth and last day
of
the Festival of the Black Madonna, the multitude of her
worshippers come forth from the forest, singing a glad
song. In front go
the warriors, the young men brandish-
ing spears, and with their knives in
their left hands slicing
the flesh upon their sides and upon their thighs:
the men
of the north clad in white garb and heavy burnous, the
tribesmen of the south naked save for their loin-girths,
but plumed as for
war.
But as the priests defile beyond them upon the glade,
a strange new song goeth up from their lips; and the
people tremble, for
they know that some dire thing hath
happened.
THE PRIESTS (chanting):
Lo, when the law of the Queen is fulfilled, she
passeth
from her people awhile. For the Mother of God loveth
the
world, and would go in sacrifice. So loveth us the
Mother of God that
she passeth in sacrifice. Behold,
she perisheth, who dieth not! Behold,
she dieth, who
is immortal !
Whereupon a great awe cometh on the multitude, as
they behold smoke, whirling and fulgurant, issuing from
the mouth and
nostrils of the Black Madonna. But this
awe passeth into horror, and
horror into wild fear, when
great tongues of flame shoot forth amidst the
wreaths
of smoke, and when from forth of the Black Madonna
come
strange and horrible cries, as though a mortal
woman were perishing by the
torture of fire.
With shrieks the women turn and fly; hurling their
spears from them, the men dash wildly to the forest,
heedless whither they
flee.
But those that leap to the westward, where the great
white rock standeth solitary, facing the Black Madonna,
see for a moment,
in the glare of sunrise, a swarthy,
naked figure, with a tiger-skin about
the shoulders,
crucified against the smooth white slope. Down from
the
outspread hands of Bihr the Chief trickle two long
wavering
streamlets of blood: two long streamlets of
blood drip, drip, down the
white glaring face of the
rock, from the pierced feet.
THE COMING OF LOVE.
In and out the osier beds, all along the
shallows
Lifts and laughs the soft south wind, or swoons
among
the grasses.
But ah, whose following feet are these that bend the
gold
marsh-mallows,
Who laughs so low and sweet? Who
sighs—and
passes?
Flower of my heart, my darling, why so slowly
Lift’st thou thine eyes to mine, deep wells of
gladness?
Too deep this new-found joy, and this new pain too
holy—
Or is there dread in thy heart of this
divinest mad-
ness?
Who sighs with longing there?—who laughs alow—
and passes?
Whose following feet are these that bend the gold
marsh-
mallows?
Who comes upon the wind that stirs the heavy seeding
grasses,
In and out the osier beds, and hither
through the
shallows?
Flower of my heart, my dream—who whispers near so
gladly?
Whose is the golden sunshine-net o’erspread for cap-
ture?
Lift, lift thine eyes to mine who love so wildly,
madly—
Those eyes of brave desire, deep wells
o’erbrimmed
with rapture!
THE PAGANS.
A MEMORY.
“Ma contrée de dilution n’existe pour aucun
touriste et jamais guide ou médecin ne la
recommandera.”
GEO. EECKHOUD. Kermesses.
“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the
fields; let us lodge in the villages.”
Song of Solomon.
“. . . . . lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance—
And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?”
OSCAR WILDE.
BOOK I.
I.
The wind and the sunshine. I think of them always
when I
whisper to myself her name—the name I loved
best to can her by. To others she
was Claire Auriol;
to a privileged few she was Sans-Souci. To myself, and
myself only, she was—ah, Sweet-Heart, no, the word is
ours, and ours only, for
ever.
We ought to have been born gipsies. Certainly we
both loved
the sunshine, and the blithe freedom
of nature, with a passion. It was under
the trees, under
the deep blue wind-swept sky, that we first realised
each
had won from the other a lifetime of joy. True, it
was still winter. The snow
lay deep by the hedges, and
we had to slip through many a drift before we
reached
the lonely woodland height whither we were bound.
But was there
ever snow so livingly white, so lit with
golden glow? Was ever summer sky more
gloriously
blue? Was ever spring music sweeter than that exqui-
site
midwinter hush, than that deep suspension of breath
before the flood of our
joy?
THE PAGANS 21
How poignantly bitter-sweet was our separation so
soon
thereafter! You had to rejoin your brother in
Paris, and resume your painting in
his studio; and I
had to go to the London I hated so much, there to
write
concerning things about which I cared not a straw,
while my heart was full of
you, and my eyes saw you
everywhere, and my ears were haunted day and night
by echoes of your voice.
And oh, what joy it was when at last I had enough
money in
hand to be independent of London, if not for
good, at least for a year or so;
and when once more I
found myself in Paris. What joy to meet you again:
to
find that we had not changed: that it was not all a
dream: that we loved each
other more than ever.
II.
What happy days those were in that bygone spring!
I wonder
if ever two people were happier? Yes; we
were, when we left Paris behind us, and
went away
together, as light-hearted as the April birds, as free as
the
wind itself. But even in Paris, what glad hours we
had! Ah, those Sunday
breakfasts at Suresnes, by the
riverside: those idle mornings on the sunlit
grass at
Longchamp, or amid the elms and chestnuts of St. Cloud:
those
happy days at Fontainebleau or Rambouillet:
those hours on the river when even
forlorn Ivry seemed
a lovely and desirable place: those hours, at twilight,
in the Luxembourg Gardens, when the thrush would
sing as, we were sure, never
nightingale sang in forest-
glade, or Wood of Broceliande: those hours in
the
galleries, above all before our beloved Venus in the
Louvre: ah,
beautiful hours, gone for ever, and yet im-
mortal, because of the joy that they
knew and whereby
they live and are even now fresh and young and sweet
with
their exquisite romance.
III.
And that day, that golden day, when we said that we
would
waste no more of the happy time of youth, but
go away together, and live our
life as seemed to us best!
Can I ever forget how I came round to the studio in
the
little Hôtel Soleil du Midi, shining white in the
22 THE PAGAN REVIEW
sunshine as a chalk cliff, but dappled and splashed all
over with bluish shadows
from the great chestnuts of
the Luxembourg Gardens: and how I found you
alone,
and in tears, before that too flattering portrait of me
which you
had painted so lovingly, through such joyous
hours, with beneath it, in
fantastic letters which you
would persist were Old German, but bore no
resemblance
to any known caligraphy, the blithe couplet—
“Douce nuit et joyeux jour,
O Chevalier de bel amour.”
How angry you were with your brother Raoul because he
had told you he did not
approve of your free Bohemian
life—because he had mocked your “douces nuits”
and
“joyeux jours”—and had told you at last that you
must choose between
him and your “chevalier de bel
amour:” the real, not the painted, one.
IV.
Is it all a dream? How well I remember how beauti-
ful she
looked, as she stood before the easel which held
my portrait, her palette and
brushes lying on a low
paint-daubed table beside her, her hands clasped as
they hung despondingly before her. Let me essay her
portrait, though there is no fear that I can flatter her,
dear heart, as she flattered me. Tall she was, and grace-
ful as a mountain-ash, or as a wild deer, or as a wave
upon the sea, or any
other beautiful thing that one
loves to look upon for its exquisiteness of poise
and
movement. It was this characteristic, I think, that first
made me liken
her in my mind to a flower; and that
was the origin of a name I often called her
by, and that
she loved to hear, White Flower. Not that, in a sense,
the
word “white” was literally apt. She was not blonde,
and her skin, though fair
and soft, was in keeping with
the rich dark of her hair and sweeping eyebrows
and
long lashes. Paler than ivory, it was touched with a
delicious brown,
the kiss of sunshine and fresh air; and
yet was so sensitive that it would
redden at a moment—
a flush so lovely and blossom-like that her beauty be-
came at once bewilderingly enhanced by it. White,
certainly, were the teeth that
gleamed like hawthorn-
THE PAGANS 23
buds behind the wild roses of her curved lips, and pink
and white the small
sensitive ears that clung like
swallows under the eaves of her shadowy hair:
but
lovely as dusk was she otherwise. Her lustrous dark
hair, that looked
quite black at night, had a crisp and
a wave in it that caught all manner of
wandering lights ;
so that, in full sunlight, and sometimes by firelight or
even lampiight, it seemed as though shot with bronze.
It rose in an upward wave
from her broad white brow,
and was gathered together in a bewitching mass
behind
in a way that I am sure was hers only. Her features
were more
southern than northern in their classic sweep
and cut, and yet, northerner that
I am, I loved them
the more for certain delicious inconsistencies and
irregu-
larities. Her face, indeed, might almost have been
thought too
square-set about the lower part but for
the loveliness of the general contour
and the redeeming
sweetness and beauty of the mouth. Her eyes—those
eyes
which have so often thrilled me beyond words,
those deep lustrous springs into
which I have gazed so
often, fascinated by the strange joy, the strange
longing,
a longing that was often pathos, and by the still stranger
melancholy that I could never quite divine, and of which
Claire herself was
mostly unconscious—her eyes are in-
describable. They varied from a rich velvety
darkness,
like the colour of midsummer twilight on cloudless eves,
when the
hour is still what in the north they call “the
edge o’ dark,” to a clear
brown-grey or grey-brown, of
that indeterminate light and sparkle one sees in
moun-
tain streams that wimple over sunny shallows of moss
and pebbles. In
certain lights they had that lustrous
green ray which has ever been beloved by
poets and
painters. Lovely, mysterious eyes they were at all times;
though
possibly none felt their mystery save myself, for
they were clear and fresh as
the sunlit sea, as daring
as a flashing sword, as dauntless as a martyr’s
before
the affront of death. Even in the drawing, even in
the photograph of
her that I have before me now, I
find this quality of mysterious
unfathomableness. It is,
indeed, more obvious there—in the photograph pre-
eminently—than it was in life. Even a stranger look-
ing upon this phantom-face
might wonder what manner
24 THE PAGAN REVIEW
of girl, or woman, the original actually was; whether a
bright or a sombre
spirit dwelt in those darkly reticent
eyes.
The poise of her head, the rhythmic sway and carriage
of
her body, every motion, every gesture, made a fresh
delight for all who looked
at her. I have travelled much,
and seen the peasant-women of Italy and Greece,
but
have never elsewhere so realised the poetry of human
motion. Claire
might have served a sculptor as an ideal
model of Youth. She was slight in
figure, and yet so
lithe and strong that she could outwalk and even out-
climb many a robust man. Whether we tramped many
miles together, or rambled
through woods or by river-
sides, we never seemed to tire, till all at once we
felt
the wish or need of rest. Certainly we never tired each
other. I think
this was due to our absolute fitness for
each other. All lovers say that each
was made for the
other, but in the nature of things there must be few
who
are such counterparts as Claire and I were. In
everything. from temperament to
height, she was to me
all that the eyes of the soul and the eyes of the
body
desired in deep comradeship and love.
Then the charm of her blithe, brave spirit! How
often have
I called her Sunshine; how often Dawn, and
Morning? For she was ever to me the
living symbol,
nay, the perfect incarnation of the joy and beauty of
life.
I have never met any woman so fearless; few so
self-reliant, so sunnily joyous
while so easily wrought to
intense feeling.
We were happy in our recognition of the fact that
we could
be, as we latterly were, all in all to each
other; that each was for the other
the supreme lure,
the summoning joy, in the maze of life.
V.
When I entered the little studio that day, in the for-
saken but sunny and charming old hotel where Claire
and Victor Auriol lived, I
knew at once that something
was far wrong; for Sans-Souci, as she was called
by
intimate acquaintances among her artist friends, was
the last person to
give way to tears on a slight excuse.
For tears there were in those beautiful
eyes, though
THE PAGANS 25
but one or two had fallen from the long lashes. In a
few words she told me
all.
Victor was tired of living with her, and had sought
many
excuses recently to justify his ill-mannered hints.
Though both were artists, no
two persons could be more
unlike. He was rigid, formal, conventional;
without
intellectual breadth or even sympathy; with coarse, if
not actually
depraved, tastes, which he possessed and
tantalised rather than gratified. When,
a year or two
before I first met them, during what I called my literary
apprenticeship in Paris (though I am afraid I haunted
the book-shelves on the
left bank of the Seine, and,
above all, the librairie
of Léon Vanier, that literary
sponsor of so many of les
jeunes, much more than more
academic resorts), their father had
followed to the grave
their Irish mother—and Marcel Auriol was himself, I
should add, half English, or rather Scottish, despite his
French name—and left
his two children a moderate
competency. But the conditions of the heritage
were
unfair; for while the annual income of six thousand
francs was to be
looked upon as equally between Victor
and Claire so long as they lived together,
Claire was to
have but two thousand if she married, and only one
thousand
if this marriage were not one approved of by
her brother, or if she voluntarily
lived apart trom him.
Now, as it happened, Victor had a lust of gold that
blunted his sense of honour, and he was eager to part
from his sister, in whose
company be was ever uneasy,
and to appropriate the lion’s share of the
inheritance.
To do him justice, he might have acted otherwise if
Claire had
been different from what he knew her. He
comforted his conscience with the
sophistries that
Claire’s drawings were more saleable than his own, and
that therefore she did not need the money so much
as he did; that she was
beautiful, and would certainly
make a good match; that he was really meeting
her
half-way, since her great craving was for independence.
Still, it was with a certain bitterness, perhaps even a
certain clinging regret, that Sans-Souci (a name, by the
way, her brother hated)
had listened to him that morn-
ing, when he had given his ultimatum. She was, he
demanded, to go with him to the little house
at Sceaux
26 THE PAGAN REVIEW
he thought of taking, and there to act as housekeeper;
to be content with this
life, and to give up once and for
all her Bohemian ways; and, above all, to see
no more,
and to have no further communication with, “that
arrogant and
offensive Scot, Wilfrid Traquair, kinsman
though he be”—in other words, the
present writer!
All this was but a mean way of forcing Claire’s hand.
Victor Auriol knew well that she would refuse to accede
to his demands; and
though she was not blind to his
intent she disdainfully refused to plead or
argue for
her rights.
And the end of it was that they had agreed to part.
Victor
had, with convenient suddenness, decided to give
up the Sceaux house and to
remain in the Hôtel Soleil
du Midi. With a promptness that betrayed how
calcu-
lated everything had been, he explained to his sister
that by her
own folly she would hencetorth be entitled
to but one thousand francs annually;
and that, in view
of all the circumstances, the separation must be a com-
plete one. In other words, Claire was to go; with the
consciousness that the
manner of her going, her imme-
diate destination, and her future movements were
alike
matters of indifferent moment to her brother.
It was then and there, in that sunny studio, with the
white
doves fluttering their wings on the wide green
sill beside the open window, that
Sans-Souci and I
decided to fulfil one of our happy dreams and go away
together.
It was on the morrow following this decision of ours
that
Sans-Souci said good-bye (and, as it happened, a
lifelong farewell) to her
brother. She had packed up
all her few belongings that she cared to keep, and
sent
them to the care of a friend in the Rue Grégoire de
Tours, that
narrow, inconspicuous byway from the great
Boulevard St. Germain, so well known
to the poorer stu-
dents and artists of the neighbourhood. When I reached
the court of the Hôtel Soleil du Midi I saw her standing
there, talking quietly
to the concierge as if she were
about to go forth only to return again, as of
yore.
I was too glad, too wildly elated, to express anything
of
the overmastering happiness that I felt in seeing her
there, alone, and ready to
go forth with me—in the
THE PAGANS 27
recognition that the past night, so interminable in its
sleepless anxiety, was
not a fantastic dream.
“Where are your things, Claire?” was all that I said,
in a
low and somewhat constrained voice: “I mean
your bag, or whatever you have.”
She looked at me half surprisedly with her clear,
steadfast
eyes, as she replied, quite simply and naturally,
and as though the concierge
were not beside us:
“Why, Will, dear, I did as we arranged, and sent them
to
Pierre Vicaire’s, near the Pont des Arts. You said
you would do the same, and
that we would call there on
our way to the hirondelle
for Charenton.”
“Of course, of course,” I muttered confusedly, and
half
turned as if eager to go—as indeed I was, particu-
larly as I had just caught
sight of Victor Auriol’s dark,
forbidding face behind a thin lace curtain at one
of the
windows.
With a low laugh, sweet as the sound of rain after a
drought, Sans-Souci slipped her hand into mine.
“At last—at last,” she breathed in a
thrilling whisper,
while her dear eyes shone with a strange light. Then,
turning, and waving her hand to the concierge, she bade
him a blithe
good-bye.
“Au revoir—adieu—adieu, M. Bonnard.
Do not wait
too long before thou takest that little inn in Barbizon
that
you dream of! Adieu!
“Aha!” cried the man, with a roguish smile: “mon-
sieur et madame contemplent une mariage au treizième
arrondissement!
But just as by a side glance I noticed the slight flush
in
Claire’s face, M. Bonnard’s wife handed me a note on
my passing her open
doorway. I guessed rather than
knew that it was from Victor Auriol. It was
addressed
in the following fantastic fashion:—
Á Monsieur Wilfrid Traquair,
Vagrant,
of God-knows-Where.
A hearty shout of laughter from Sans-Souci and my-
self
must have reached his ears. Just before we emerged
upon the street, I glanced
back and saw him abruptly
28 THE PAGAN REVIEW
withdraw his face from behind the lace curtain at the
open window. The contents
of the note ran thus:
“MONSIEUR: That my sister has chosen to unite
herself with
a beggarly Scot is her pitiable misfortune:
that she has done so without even
the decent veil of
marriage is her enormity and my disgrace. Henceforth
I
know as little of the one as of the other, and I beg
you to understand that
neither you nor the young
woman need ever expect the slightest tolerance,
much
less practical countenance, from me. You are both at
liberty to hold,
and carry out, the atrocious opinions (for
I will not flatter you by calling
them convictions) upon
marriage which you entertain or profess to entertain:
I,
equally, am at liberty to abstain from the contagion of
such unpleasant
company, and to insist henceforth upon
an insurmountable barrier between it and
myself.
“VICTOR MARIE
AURIOL.”
The next moment we had hailed and sprung into a
little open
voiture, and in another minute had lost sight
of the Hôtel Soleil du Midi.
Outcasts we were, but two
more joyous pagans never laughed in the sunlight,
two
happier waifs never more fearlessly and blithely went
forth into the
green world.
(To be continued.)
AN UNTOLD STORY.
I.
When the dark falls, and as a single star
The orient planets blend in one white ray
A-quiver through the violet shadows far
Where the rose-red still lingers mid the grey:
And when the moon, half-cirque arm around her
hollow,
Casts on the upland pastures shimmer of green:
And the marsh-meteors the frail lightnings follow,
And wave laps into wave with amber sheen—
O then my heart is full of thee, who never
From out thy beautiful mysterious eyes
Givest one glance at this my wild endeavour,
Who hast no heed, no heed, of all my sighs:
Is it so well with thee in thy high place
That thou canst mock me thus even to my face?
II.
Dull ash-grey frost upon the black-grey fields:
Thick wreaths of tortured smoke above the town:
The chill impervious fog no foothold yields,
But onward draws its shroud of yellow brown.
No star can pierce the gloom, no moon dispart:
And I am lonely here, and scarcely know
What mockery is “death from a broken heart'”
What tragic pity in the one word: Woe.
But I am free of thee, at least, yea free!
No more thy bondager ‘twixt heaven and hell!
No more there numbs, no more there shroudeth me
The paralysing horror of thy spell:
No more win’st thou this last frail worshipping
breath,
For twice dead he who dies this second death.
THE RAPE OF THE SABINES.
A flame of blood-red light streamed, a flying
banner,
from Monte Catillo, over the olive heights of Tivoli, to
Frascati and the flanks of the Albans. Westward, the
Campagna was
shrouded in violet gloom. The tallest
of the pines and cypresses in
Hadrian’s Villa, catching
the last of the sunset-glow, burned slowly to
their
summits, like torches extinguished by currents of air
from
below. Between Castel Arcione and the base of
the Sabines, where the
intermingling summits sweep
upward frolll the Montecelli to Palombara,
and thence
by giant Subiaco to the innumerable peaks and ranges
of
the mountain-land beyond, lay a white mist, wan as
the sheen of a new
moon on burnt grass—save in the
direction of the ancient Lago de’
Tartari, where it hung
heavy and darkly grey, dense as it was with the
sulphur-
fumes of the Acquae Albulae.
On the flat, before the upward swell to Tiveli
begins,
the hill-road curves to the left, the via
Palombara-
Marcellina. To the right there is a rough path,
striking
off waveringly betwixt the Palombara road and the
highway
from Rome to Tivoli: at first like a bridle-way,
then but a sheep-path
or dried-up course of a hill-torrent.
Following this, one enters the
wild and lonely Glen of
the Shepherds, though seldom does any shepherd
wander
there, and even the solitary goatherd rarely descends
from
the steep heights of Sterpara that overhang it from
the west.
The nightingales were in full song. One after
another
had called through the dusk with clear, thrilling notes:
one after another had swung a sudden lilt of music
across the myrtles,
through the thickets of wild rose and
honeysuckles, over the clustered
arbutus, and down by
the birch-hollows, where the narrow stream
crawled
suffocatingly through fern-clumps and tufted grasses.
Close to where some stunted, decrepit olives clung
THE RAPE OF THE SABINES 31
despairingly to a bank of fissured soil rose a wild mag-
nolia, whose
white blooms gleamed in the twilight like
ivory discs. Suddenly, from
where its topmost sprays still
retained a dusky green hue, a thrush
sprang violently
into the air and darted westward against the
crimson
light, clattering loudly and shrilly like a
heavily-feathered
arrow whistling towards the already blood-strewn
flanks
of a beast of prey. A nightingale among the myrtles
near
flew earthward, dipping his breast against the dewy
anemones that
clustered in the shadow; but ere the
spray whence he had slipt like a
rain-drop had ceased
its last tremulous vibration he was swinging, with
out-
spread wings, upon a branch of the deserted magnolia.
Then
came a loud summoning cry, a few low calls, and
all at once a burst of
ecstatic song. In a few moments
all was still around, save for the
shrilling of the locusts
and the distant croaking of frogs. But
suddenly, and
in the midst of his love-song, the nightingale
ceased,
gave a broken, dissonant cry, and with a rapid tilt and
poise of his wings was lost in the under-dark like a
blown leaf.
Something stirred under the lower boughs of the
mag-
nolia. A small, dark figure crept on out, and then a boy
of
some ten or twelve years rose to his feet, stretched
himself warily,
ran his hands through his shaggy black
hair, and began to mutter to
himself. All at once he
inclined his head and listened intently. Before
he could
sink back to his shelter, two young men stepped
noise-
lessly from behind the higher olives, the taller of the
two
coming rapidly forward.
“Do not be afraid, Guido,” he exclaimed, as he saw
the boy alert for flight; “it is I—Andrea Falcone.”
“And he?”
“Marco Vaccaro, of course. Who other, per Bacco?“
“You are late, elder-brothers.”
“We could not get here earlier, unobserved. There
is time enough. What is the message? “
While he was speaking his companion drew near.
Both
young men were singularly handsome, with clear-
cut features, dark,
eloquent eyes, and faces pale as
blanched ivory. Lithe and vigorous
mountaineers, they had
all the grace and dignity of the Roman
peasant;
32 THE PAGAN REVIEW
and though they had the Campagna melancholy in
their faces, each had
that alert look common to all the
Sabine muleteers. Everyone in the
Montecelli knew
the cousins Andrea Falcone and Marco Vaccaro; and
in
the hill-town of S. Angelo in Capoccia itself, there was no
question as to their pre-eminence in all things that,
locally,
constituted good fortune. Not only was the story
of their deep
friendship well known—a friendship so
close that one would never go far
without the other, to
the extent that if a rich forestiero wanted one of them
as a guide up Subiaco, he
would perforce have to engage
both—but, the gossips of the
hill-villages were each and
all aware of the love Andrea and Marco bore
for Vittoria
and Anita, the daughters of Giovan’ Antonio Della
Porta,
the vintner and ex-brigand of that remote and highest
hill-town of the Sabines, San Polo de’Cavalieri. Naturally,
it was
delightful food for these gossips when a feud broke
out between the
muleteers of San Polo and of Palombara
and San Angelo, in consequence
of which neither Andrea
nor Marco dare set foot in the vicinage of the
town—not
only because old Della Porta swore that, whether they
willed or no, his daughters should marry none but men
of pure Sabine
blood, and certainly no accurst Roman
contadini (for all their
hill-folk talk!), but also because
a league of San Polo youths and men,
headed by Simone
Gaetano and Gregorio da Forma, had sworn to
poniard
any” Angelinis” they found within the village boundaries.
It was quite natural that Gregorio da Forma and Gae-
tano should be the
active ministers in this league of hate,
for the former was desirous of
Anita Della Porta and
Simone lusted after the beautiful Vittoria. But
both
girls were closely watched, and though they had several
times
managed to meet their lovers in the woods, or amid
the copses of the
Glen of the Shepherds, such encounters
were no longer possible. The
girls had, indeed, but one
ally, but one emissary—their young
half-brother, Guido.
Guido loved his sisters; but he had another bond
of
fellowship—hatred of their morose and tyrannical father.
Twice
had Vittoria and Anita tried to evade those who
kept an eye on them:
once by attempted flight to
Vicovara and once across Ponte Rotto to
Castel Ma-
dama—for they had imagined success impossible by
THE RAPE OF THE SABINES 33
way of Palombara. It was after the last occasion that
old Della Porta
had publicly proclaimed the approaching
marriage of his daughters with
Simone Gaetano and
Gregorio da Forma.
The Sabine women can be as quick with their long,
thin hair-daggers as the Sabine men with their poniards.
A girl of the
Sabines, moreover, does not hesitate to use
her dagger in offence as
well as in self-defence; and,
when the blood-vow is once sworn, the
steel, as the
saying is, sweats with thirst.
It was at the risk of their lives, then, that
Andrea
Falcone and his friend and kinsman, Marco, were met
in the
Glen of the Shepherds, within an easy eagle’s-
flight of San Polo. If
any muleteer on Sterpara or
goatherd on the slopes should see them, the
cry would
go from coign to coign, and find a score of fierce
echoes
in the dark narrow streets of the mountain vilbge. As
for
Guido, he ran the chance of a flaying from his father,
or eyen a
knifing from cruel, treacherous Simone or from
sullen Gregorio.
“What is the message?” repeated Andrea,
impatiently,
while Marco eyed the neighbourhood like a hawk, and
Guido stood as taut and eager as a goat about to leap.
“There is none, elder brother. I could not see either
Vittoria or Anita. But this is their last night.”
“Their last night? How?” interjected Marco, in a
startled but suppressed voice.
“The last night of their virginity,” said Guido,
simply.
“To-morrow Vittoria will be wed to Simone and Anita
to
Gregorio.”
A silence fell upon the men: a frost of passion,
rather,
that seemed to paralyse even gesture or glance.
“Have they been true women?” said Andrea, at last,
in a thick, husky voice.
“True women?” repeated Guido, interrogatively, his
great black eyes flashing half-inquiringly, half-sus-
piciously.
“Ay, true women. Have they sworn the virgin-vow?”
“Yes: they swore it last night, and before me as
witness. It was in the moonlight, by the old fountain
I beyond the
church.”
“Upon both the blade and the hilt?”
34 THE PAGAN REVIEW
“Si, si, si: and upon their crucifixes also.”
Andrea turned and looked at Marco with a meaning
smile.
“Ecco, Marco: it will be a wet wedding.”
“It will be—and the wet as red as to-night’s
sunset.
But—per Cristo, Andrea mio, you know
the hill-saying:
When ’tis wet, who can say there shall be no
flood?”
“Ay: so. Their kinsfolk would not hold Vittoria and
Anita free of their blood-ban if once they be wedded.”
“Giovan’ Antonio—Holy Virgin, he would kill them
himself for it! “
Suddenly the boy Guido, slipping a rough wooden
cross from his neck, stepped close to the young men.
“Will you swear upon it, Andrea Falcone and Marco
Vaccaro. that henceforth I am your younger brother:
and that your home
in San Angelo in Capoccia shall be
my home: and your kin my kin: and we
be one ever-
more in the curse and in the blessing? Already you
are
my elder-brothers, but you have not sworn. Will
you swear now ?
“Why, Guido, my brother?”
“For I have that to say which being said makes me
no more of my father’s household or even of San Polo.”
“Thou art my brother for evermore, Guido Della
Porta,” said Andrea, solemnly, kissing the cross and
making the sacred
sign upon his forehead and upon his
breast.
When Marco had done likewise, Guido looked
fear-
fully around, and then with downcast eyes and trembling
hands
whispered that he was breaking a solemn vow
which he had perforce taken
that very day.
“Speak, boy,” muttered Marco, hoarsely.
Fear not,” said Andrea, more gently: “Father
Gian-
pietro will absolve thee to-morrow, or as soon as you can
come to San Angelo.”
“I heard—I heard—my father laughing with Simone
Gaetano. When I looked through the chink in the
great barn, I saw
that Gregorio da Forma was also there,
with his hand at his mouth
half-covering his black
beard. Simone’s smooth, fat face was agleam
with
sweat, and he rubbed his bald forehead again and again.
though his eyes narrowed and widened like a cat’s in
THE RAPE OF THE SABINES 35
the twilight. All the time I watched, Simone never
ceased to wipe his
brows, and never once did Gregorio
take away his hand from his
mouth.”
“The cursed traitor knows his weak member,”
mut-
tered Marco, savagely. “Aha! Signore Gregorio da
Forma. I know
that which would bring you to the
hangman in Rome, or the knife
anywhere where men
say Garibaldi and Italia in one breath!”
“Hush, Marco; don’t be a fool! The traitors’ death
is already arranged by God. The ink which was black
is turning red, and
the hour is at hand. Guido, say
what you have to say.”
“Ecco, my elder-brothers: I
heard this thing. My
father at first would have nought to say to
comfort
Simone and Gregorio when they told him of the rumour
that
Vittoria and Anita had sworn the virgin-vow against
them. But at last
Simone, miserly though he be, won
him over. He promised him”—
“Corpo di Cristo, Guido,”
broke in Andrea; “never
mind that. Tell us,
quick, what your father agreed to.”
“He said that, if he got what he wished, Simone and
Gregorio might laugh at the girls’ vows, for he
would
see that his good friends did not marry
virgins.”
Both Andrea and Marco started, and each
instinctively
clasped his knife.
“Yes, I swear it. My father, may God forgive him,
said that no one should be in the house to-night, after
the feast which
he is to give is over; and that Simone
and Gregorio might take that
which would be theirs by
law on the morrow. The virgin-vow would
thus
be made useless as old straw, as void as yesterday’s wind.
There would be none to interfere. If the girls
screamed “—
“Basto! Enough!” shouted
Andrea recklessly;
while Marco made a low, hissing noise like a
wind-eddy
upon ice. “Is this thing to be done to-night? Ay, so:
I
believe you. No, no: I want to hear no more. What
does anything else
matter. We must be there, too,
Marco—if we have to go to our death at
the same time.
“Come: there is no time to lose,” was all that
Marco
replied; though, after a moment’s hesitation, he stooped
36 THE PAGAN REVIEW
and whispered in his cousin’s ear. Andrea smiled grimly.
“What time was the supper to be, Guido?” he asked.
“As soon as the sun had set. And all are to go
to
their homes by nine at latest. There is to be a
sunrise-Sacrament
to-morrow, and everyone will be
abed early. Vittoria and Anita will not
sit long with
the men; but go to their room, where my father will
doubtless lock them in.”
“But you can get into the room by your attic?”
“Ay: and out easily enough by the window
over-
looking the Vicolo da Pozza.”
“Do your sisters know anything of this?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Then, Guido, make your way back as quickly and
secretly as you can. Tell Vittoria and Anita all you
know. Tell them we
are here”—
“And that they are to escape with me by the window
and join you in the wood,” broke in Guido, with eager
anticipation.
“No,” said Andrea, quietly; while Marco gave a low
laugh. “Tell them to wait in their room till we
come. Now, go. And
see: make us a sign when we
can slip in unperceived by the hole in the
wall at the
old Piazza del Giove. We can get into your house by
the empty palazzo next it. Then you will take us to
your sisters’
room.”
“It may be death for all of us, Andrea.”
“Even so. Now go, Guido; and the saints be with
you.”
The boy hesitated a moment, and then,
stooping,
leapt from thicket to thicket till he was out of sight
in
the undergrowth.
Andrea and Marco followed slowly, keeping in the
shadow as much as possible. They interchanged few
words, and then only
in whispers. An hour passed
thus; during which they reached the upper
end of the
Glen of the Shepherds and ascended the steep, wooded
heights of Monte di San Polo. From where they crouched
they could
see clearly the black mass of the western side
of the village rising
sheer, like a smooth cliff of basalt,
and without apparent inlet. But
they knew where the
hole in the ruinous wall was, close by the
deserted
THE RAPE OF THE SABINES 37
Piazza del Giove; and they kept their gaze upon the
spot, passionately
intent for the signal from Guido.
The great clock in the tower struck the second
quarter
after eight. The cousins looked at each other, but said
nothing for some minutes.
“If Guido should play us false—no, St. Mark forgive
me, he won’t do that” —muttered Marco, at last—”but
if he should have
been caught, or even unable to get
away alone”——
“Sst: look there!”
“Where? What?”
“There. See, it is the second time.”
As Andrea spoke, a small circle of flame again
swept
round the disc of the hole in the wall.
“That is the third time, Marco. It is Guido. Let
us
go. Remember—everything—our lives—depend
upon our discretion. I know
the way best. Follow me.”
As silently as foxes the twain crept from the last
skirt of undergrowth, and up the short stony ascent
that led apparently
against a blank precipice of stone
wall. For a moment, when close,
Andrea hesitated, but
a low whistle guided him aright; and in a few
minutes
he and Marco were in San Polo. A few seconds more,
and
they were in the old deserted house that adjoined
the Casa Della
Porta.
Again and again the door of Della Porta’s house
opened, and soon nearly all the guests were gone. At
last all had
bidden good-night except Simone Gaetano
and his friend Gregorio. With a
sullen curse, as though
half-ashamed of himself, Giovan’ Antonio threw
a key
on the table.
“There, take it, my merry sposi. What’s the odds!
‘Tis but a night here or a night
there! But, look you
—no undue violence, you know! For myself, I am
dead
beat with sleep, and don’t expect to hear a sound till
cock-crow.”
With that, and another malediction by way of
good-
night, the beetle-browed vintner flung himself into a
huge
rush-chair by the hearth-place. He had begun to
snore lustily, when,
just as his companions were moving
from the room, he called
angrily:
38 THE PAGAN REVIEW
“Don’t forget to lock and bar the door, you fools!
Do you want all San Polo to keep you company?”
Simone stepped forward, and saw to the fastenings.
Gregorio filled two tankards with wine, one with white,
one with
red.
“Here, camerado mio,” he whispered, as Simone
re-
joined him; “here’s vino bianco for you
to drink your
Vittoria’s health, lovely blonde that she is; and
here’s
my bumper of dark marino to the black hair and black
eyes
of my beautiful Anita!”
Then, softly and cautiously, like the cowards and
marauders they were, they stole upstairs. Each started
violently when
the silence was suddenly broken by the
tower-clock striking the first
quarter after nine.
“Aha! the little birds, they will think it is their
father,” whispered Simone, as Gregorio gently inserted
the key in the
lock, and noiselessly turned it.
When the door opened, they saw the two beds, as
white amidst the gloom as innocent childhood. A new
fear came upon
them. If one of the girls had laughed,
or even screamed, it would have
been a relief. Each
vaguely realised that he was doubly a coward, for
now
each was appalled by his own cowardice. When a
wavering shaft
of moonlight, that had been gilding the
stone-carving above the window,
stole into the room, a
dread came upon them that the girls slept, and
had
prayed, and that God watched them.
But just then something happened that made Simone’s
heart leap within him.
The moonbeam, wavering across the bed ill the left
cor-
ner of the room, passed across the face of Vittoria, making
her mass of blonde hair like a drift of melted amber. But
her eyes were
open, and looking straight at him.
“Vittoria! It is I—your
loving Simone—your
husband. Do not be afraid, my little one! I want
to
kiss you only—for the sake of good luck to-morrow.”
Silence, save for a quick breathing that, pulsated
through the room.
“Vittoria!“
“Anita!”
Two dark figures moved swiftly forward, Simone to
the left, Gregorio to the right.
THE RAPE OF THE SABINES 39
There was a. strange shuffiing sound for a moment.
Both men stopped abruptly, glanced towards each other,
took courage,
and moved on again.
“Vittoria!“
“Anita!“
Then all at once two hoarse screams rang through
the room, as Simone and Gregorio simultaneously felt
themselves seized
in a savage, relentless grip and
dragged on to the bed.
“What would’st thou with my wife-to-be, Simone
Gaetano?” cried Andrea, as with one arm he pinioned
his shivering
rival, and with the other pressed a knife
against his breast.
“What would’st thou with my bride-elect, Gregorio
da Forma?” snarled Marco savagely, as with his left
hand he pulled back
his foe’s head till he could look
into the staring eyes, and with his
right hand pressed
his poniard against his heaving side.
The next moment a suppressed scream, and, almost
at
the same time, a hoarse choking sob sounded horribly
through the
room.
It took Andrea and Marco a few minutes only to
prop
the dead men, one in one bed, one in the other,
with their dusky-white
faces visible in the gloom, pil-
lowed behind, and as though ready to
greet expected
incomers.
Egidio Gaetano, riding on his mule down the steep
bridle-path of La Scarpellata, from his tavern at high-
set San
Filippo, with intent to breakfast with his kins-
man Simone on the
morrow of his marriage, thought
he had never seen a lovelier night, a
more glorious
dawn. Far away, above the Campagna, hung the moon
like a vast yellow flower slowly sinking into blue depths.
Eastward,
beyond Soracte and above the Ciminian Forest,
the stars grew paler,
with more languid pulsations,
or icy steadfastness. In the woodlands
straight below
the nightingales sang bewilderingly, and in the
nearer
thickets a maze of fireflies made the dusk starred like
a
great city by night.
When the sudden fires of day flamed up behind the
shoulder of Subiaco, and fell upon the landscape before
40 THE PAGAN REVIEW
him in flowing amber and marvellous flushes, he was so
rapt by the great
beauty that he did not note, in an
ilex grove to his left, four
sleeping figures, two here,
and two there; Vittoria, white as a
windflower, in the
arms of Andrea; Anita, dark as a violet, pillowed
against
the breast of Marco.
A hundred yards further, at the joining of the
hill—
path from San Polo de’ Cavalieri, he came upon a boy,
so
steadfastly intent in his gaze southward that he heard
nothing.
“What news from San Polo, Guido mio?” cried the
good Egidio genially. But to his surprise the boy gave
him nought save
a flash from his dark eyes, and the
next moment was up and away,
leaping and running
like a young goat.
“What takes the young rascal! He’s on the way
to
San Angelo! Ha! Ha! What an idea. Some marriage
prank he’s up to, I’ll
be bound. Ah, Dio mio, that I
was twenty
years younger, and in Simone’s place! I
wouldn’t even mind being in
worthy Signor Gregorio’s
for that matter! Cristo, these lovely Sabine women
of ours! No wonder tho
men came out of Rome and
stole them long ago before the good Popes
heard about
it! Aha, Signori Andrea and Marco, good cousins,
brave
cavaliers, dauntless knights-errant, where are you
now? You may
whistle, my lads! No carrying off
the Sabine women nowadays, ha,
ha!”
The wind, rising from the ferns and leaping through
the long grass, blew a foam of white blossoms upon the
rider and his
mule. High up in the golden sunlight
the sweet penetrating flute-notes
of the boy-shepherds
called blithely from steep to steep.
“God be thanked,” exclaimed Egidio as he came in
sight of San Polo, still coldly white, like an unopened
flower; “God be
thanked, though I be old and fat, love
is a good thing. Ah, Simone, you
rogue! Eh? what,
Gregorio?”
THE OREAD.
A FRAGMENT.*
When the Oread awoke by the hill-tarn the
great heat
of the noon was over. The sweet fresh
mountain-air,
fragrant with thyme and gale and
blossoming heather,
balsamic with odours of pine and
fir, blew softly across
the leagues of ling. The sky
was of a deep, lustrous,
wind-washed azure, with a
vast heart of sapphire, tur-
quoise-tinct where it
caught the sun-flood southerly and
westerly. A few
wisps of thin white vapour appeared
here and there,
curled like fantastic sleighs or sweeping
aloft like
tails of wild horses; then quickly became
atten-
uated, or even all at once and mysteriously
disappeared.
Far and near the grouse called, or rose
from hollows in
the heather in abrupt flurries of
flight, beating the hot
air with their wings with the
echoing whirr of a steamer’s
paddles. The curlews
wheeled above the water-courses,
crying plaintively;
whence also came ever and again
the harsh resonance
of the heron’s scream. Echoing
along the heights that
rose sheer above the tarn rang
the vanishing
whistling voice of the whaup, and, faint
but
haunting-sweet as remote chimes, rose and fell in
the
mountain-hollows the belling of the deer. A myriad
life thrilled the vast purple upland. Not a yard of
heather that was not as much alive, as wonderful and
mysterious, as a continent. The air palpitated with
the innumerable suspirations of plant and flower,
insect
and bird and beast. Deep in the tarn the
speckled
trout caught the glint of the wandering
sunray; far
⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼
* “The Oread” is a
fragment of a similarly-named section from a
forthcoming volume by Mr.
Charles Verlayne, entitled “LA MORT
S’AMUSE,” which, with a fantastic connecting thread
of narrative, con-
sists of a series of
“Barbaric Studies,” in each of which a recreation
of
an antique type is attempted, but in
striking contrast with and direct
relation to
the life of today. Mr. Verlayne’s motive is at
least original,
if, possibly in its treatment,
as Paul Verlaine said of a certain piéce
de fantasie by
Rimbaud, un peu posterièure à
cette époque.
ED. The Pagan Review.
42 THE PAGAN REVIEW
upon the heights the fleeces of the small hill-sheep
seemed like patches of snow in the sunlight: remote,
on the barren scaur beyond the highest pines, the
eagle,
as he stared unwaveringly upon the wilderness
beneath
him, shone resplendent as though compact of
molten
gold inlaid with gems.
Every sound, every sight, was part of the
very life of
the Oread. All was beautiful: all was
real. The high,
thin, almost inaudible scream of the
eagle: the cluck
of the low-flying grouse: the
floating note of the yellow-
hammer: the wind
whistling through the gorse or whis-
pering among the
canna and gale. and through the
honey-laden spires of
heather: the myriad murmur from
the leagues of suns
wept ling and from the dim grassy
savannahs that
underlay that purple roof: each and all
were to her
as innate voices.
For a long time she lay in a happy
suspension of all
thought or activity. Her gaze was
fascinated by the
reflection of herself in the tarn.
Lovely was the image.
The soft, delicately-rounded,
white limbs, the flower-like
body, seemed doubly
white against the wine-dark purple
of the
bell-heather and the pale amethyst of the ling.
The
large dark eyes dreamed upward from the white
face in
the water like purple-blue pansies. Beautiful
as was
the sunshine in the wind-lifted golden hair, that
was
about her head as a glory of morning, eyen more
beautiful was the shimmer of gold and fleeting amber
shot through the rippled surface and clear-brown
under-
calm of the tarn; where also was mirrored, with
a subtler
beauty than above, the large
sulphur-butterfly that
poised upon its yellow wings
as it clung to her left
breast, ivory-white, small,
and firm, immaculately curved
as the pale globed
shells of Orient seas.
Dim inarticulate thoughts passed through
the mind
of the Oread as she lay visionarily intent
by the moun-
tain-pool. Down what remote avenues of
life she seemed
to look: from what immemorial past
seemed to arise,
like flying shadows at dawn,
recollections of the fires
of sunrise kindling along
the mountain-summits, of the
flames of sunset burning
from the beech-forests to the
last straggling pines
aud thence to the rose-coloured
snows of the remotest
peaks, of the long splendid
THE OREAD 43
pageant of day and night, of the voicing of the undying
wind, and the surpassing wonder of the interchange
and
outgrowth of the seasons, from equinoctial
clamour of
the spring to autumnal Euroclydon. Yet
ever and again
drifted through her mind vague
suggestions of life still
nearer to herself: white
figures, seen in vanishing
glimpses of unpondered
all-unconscious reverie, that
slipt from tree to tree
in the high hill-groves, or leapt
before the wind
upon the heights, with flying banners
of sunlit hair,
or stooped to drink from the mountain-
pools which the
deer forsook not at their approach.
Who, what, was
this white shape, upon whose milky
skin the ruddy
light shone as he stood on a high boulder
at sundown
and looked meditatively upon the twilit
valleys and
darksome underworld far below? Who were
these
unremembered yet familiar sisters, so flowerlike
in
their naked beauty, gathering moon flowers for
gar-
lands, while their straying feet amid the dewy
grass
made a silver shimmer as of gossamer-webs by
the
waterfalls? Who was the lovely vision, so like
that
mirrored in the tarn before her, who, stooping
in the
evergreen-glade to drink the moonshine-dew,
suddenly
lifted her head, listened intently, and
smiled with such
wild shy joy?
What meant those vague half-glimpses,
those haunt-
ing illusive reminiscences of a past that
was yet un-
rememberable?
Troubled, though she knew it not,
unconsciously per-
plexed, vaguely yearning with that
nostalgia for her
ancestral kind which bad been born
afresh and deeply
by the contemplation of her second
self in the mountain-
pool, the Oread slowly rose,
stretched her white arms,
with her hands spraying out
her golden hair, and gazed
longingly into the blue
haze at the hills.
Suddenly she started, at the irruption of
an unfamiliar
sound that was as it were caught up by
the wind and
flung from corrie to corrie. It was not
like the fall of
a stone, and it sounded strangely
near. Stooping, she
plucked a sprig of gale: then,
idly twisting it to and
fro, walked slowly till where
a mountain-ash, ablaze with
scarlet berries, leant
forward trom a high heathery bank
overlooking a wide
hollow in the moors. A great dragon-
44 THE PAGAN REVIEW
fly spun past her like an elf’s javelin. The small
yellow-
brown bees circled round her and brushed
against her
hair, excited by this new and strange
flower that moved
about like the hill-sheep or the
red deer. As she stood
under the shadow of the rowan
and leant against its
gnarled trunk, two small blue
butterflies wavered up
from the heather and danced
fantastically above the
wind-sprent gold of her hair.
She laughed, but frowned
as a swift swept past and
snapt up one of the azure
dancers. With a quick
gesture she broke off a branch
of the rowan, but by
this time the other little blue
butterfly had wavered
off into the sunlight.
Holding the branch downward she smiled as
she
saw the whiteness of her limbs beneath the
tremulous
arrowy leaves and the thick clusters of
scarlet and
vermilion berries. When the gnats,
whirling in aerial
maze, came too near she raised the
rowan-branch and
slowly waved them back: but suddenly
her arm stiffened,
and she stood motionless, rigid,
intent.
On the moor-swell beneath her, a few
hundred yards
away, browsed a majestically antlered
stag and three or
four hinds: on the ridge beyond,
quite visible from
where she stood, half crouched
half lay an animal she
had never seen before. Her
heart leapt within her:
for lo, here was another such
as herself. No longer was
there but one Oread among
the high hills. And yet—
and yet—there was some
difference. It—he—
But here she saw her fellow Oread lift a
stick to his
shoulder: the next moment there was a
flash, a little
cloud of smoke. and a terrifying
explosive sound. With
mingled curiosity and dread she
sprang aside from the
tree, and stood upon the verge
of the slope. But now
a new terror came upon her, for
almost simultaneously
she saw the stag stumble, throw
back its head, recover,
and then, with a piercing
bleating cry, roll over on the
heather, dead.
Much she could not understand: who or
what this
creature like herself was: why he too was
not white-
skinned, but furred like a fox or the wild
cattle: or
why and how he dealt death with noise and
flame by
means of a stick. But suddenly all the
passion of love
for the wild things of which she was
one overcame her
THE OREAD 45
—a fury of resentment against this wanton slayer of
the
beautiful deer who did no harm, this stealthy
murderer who seemed unable to leap or run. With a
shrill protesting cry she leapt down the slope, and
darted towards the spot where a young man, dazed
with
bewilderment, stood staring at the extraordinary
apparition which the slaying of the stag seemed to
have
called up.
Strange thoughts flashed through the
young man’s
mind. Was this lovely vision of womanhood
a creation
of his perverted brain: was she some lost
wanderer
upon the hills, bereft of her wits: was she,
indeed, as
she looked, some supernatural creature, to
consort with
whom, or even parley with, would be
certain death?
She stopped when she was about twenty
paces from
him, suddenly abashed by a new fear, a
profound amaze-
ment. He seemed, truly, an Oread like
herself. Dark
though he was, with dark hair and dark
eyes, and fair
and glad and welcome to look upon as
was his face—
such a face as she vaguely realised she
had been re-
calling, or dreaming of, when she lay by
the tarn—
yet was he so extraordinary otherwise. A fur
or shaggy
hide appeared to cover him from the neck
downwards:
nevertheless it was as though it hung
loosely upon his
body. Certainly he was better worth
looking at, she
thought, than her own image in the
mountain-pool:
and if only—
As for him, his wild amazement gradually
passed into
realisation that the beautiful naked girl
before him was
a real creature of flesh and blood.
With this recog-
nition came a surge of passionate
admiration for her
loveliness.
Dropping his gun, the young sportsman
slowly ad-
vanced. The Oread looked at him
mistrustfully, but at
the same time instinctively
noted that he moved with
infinitely less ease and
freedom than she did. Slowly
raising the
rowan-branch, she waved to him to come
nearer; but
when suddenly he broke into a run she
turned and
fled.
Almost immediately she was out of sight.
The young
man stopped, stared, rubbed his eyes, and
then with a
muttered exclamation, sprang forward in
pursuit.
46 THE PAGAN REVIEW
As soon as he gained the slope where grew
the rowan-
tree, he caught a glimpse of the Oread
again. as she
stood motionless amidst a little sea of
tall bracken. He
approached more cautiously this
time, so as not to alarm
her; and as he drew nearer
tried to allure her by
awkward signs of good-will.
She greeted his entice-
ments with low, sweet, mocking
laughter, and he could
see by the mischievous light
in her beautiful eyes that
she fully realised her
ability to evade him, and that she
enjoyed his
discomfiture.
Then he did a foolish thing. Overcome
with heat
and excitement, and determined to capture
at all hazards
this beautiful apparition, whether
mortal woman or fay,
he rapidly unfastened and threw
off his thick tweed
shooting coat.
With a shrill cry of terror she took a
step or two
backward, her lovely body quivering with
fear at this
awful sight of a creature depriving
itself of its hide. The
next moment she was off like
the wind, her long hair
streaming behind her, all
ashine in the sunglow.
With panting breath and shaking limbs her
pursuer
fled after her in vain chase. From slope to
slope and
corrie to corrie he raced as though for his
life; but at
last nature could no longer stand the
strain, and he fell
forward exhausted. When,
stumbling and breathing
hard like a driven deer
narrowly escaped from the
hounds, he looked eagerly
beyond and about him, not a
sign was there of the
lovely vision he had so madly
followed. Yet for
leagues in front of him and to either
side was
nothing but the purple moor! He could scarce
believe
that she could absolutely disappear therein!
Still,
nowhere was she visible.
Then it was that a great fear came upon
him that he
had gone mad. Shaking and trembling, he
once more
scanned the whole reach of his vision, but,
seeing nought,
turned and made his way downward
again. Once, twice
indeed, he thought he heard a
rumour as of someone
following him, and even a sound
as of low, mocking
laughter. But he would not look
behind. Already he
feared this thing, this phantasm of his brain.
It was not till he came upon his
discarded coat that
some measure of reasonableness
reassured him. He
THE OREAD 47
knew he was not mad: he knew he had seen and
pur-
sued a real woman; and yet—
Just then he caught sight of the tarn
beside which
the Oread had rested during the noon
heats. With a
cry of relief he went towards it, and
then, having given
one backward glance, threw off all
his clothes and sprang
into the cool, deep water.
What a delight it was, after
his fever-heat and
weariness: how absurd the idea of
madness, as with
strong strokes he swam to and fro!
At last, refreshed, and in his right
mind, he emerged,
and stood, with outstretched arms,
among the heather,
so that he might the more readily
dry in the sunlight
and soft wind. So heedless was he
that he failed to
perceive the slow advance, close
behind him, of his
flying vision.
With utmost ease the Oread had evaded
him: with
equal ease she had followed him unobserved
during his
ignominious retreat, and had watched him
from a fern-
clump not more than a few score yards
away. When
he suddenly threw off his clothes, a fresh
access of fear
had almost made her fly again; but she
had controlled
herself, as much from contempt of the
inferior creature
as from passionate curiosity. But
when he plunged
into the water, and swam like an
otter, and came out
once more gleaming white as
herself, she realised that
here was the true Oread. He had
been ridiculously
disguised, that was all; had tried,
mayhap, to ape some
other animal. All fear left
her.
She knew nothing now but a glad,
welcoming joy,
a rapture of companionship. With
outstretched arms,
and a sweet, loving look in her
eyes, she went forward
to greet her longed-for
mate.
Warmed by the sun, and with a low, glad
laugh
of sheer content, the young man turned to where
his
clothes lay.
He was face to face with the Oread.
* * * * *
DIONYSOS IN INDIA.
(Opening
Fragment of a Lyrical Drama)
BY
WM. WINDOVER
Verge of an upland glade among the Himalayas
Time, Sunrise.
First Faun.
. . . . . . . . . Hark! I
hear
Aerial voices—
Second Faun.
Whist!
First Faun.
It is the wind
Leaping against the sunrise, on the heights.
Second Faun.
No, no, yon mountain-springs—
First Faun.
Hark, Hark, O Hark!-
Second Faun.
Are budding into foam-flowers: see, they fall
Laughing before the
dawn—
DIONYSOS IN INDIA 49
First Faun.
O the sweet music!
Child-Faun.
(Timidly peeping over a cistus, uncurling into
blooms.)
Dear brother, say oh say what fills the air!
The leaves whisper, yet
is not any wind:
I am afraid.
First Faun.
Be not afraid, dear child:
There is no gloom.
Child-Faun.
But silence: and—and—then,
The birds have suddenly ceased: and see, alow
The gossamer
quivers where my startled hare—
Slipt from my leash—cow’rs ‘mid the
foxglove-
His eyes like pansies in a lonely wood! [bells,
O I
am afraid—afraid—though glad:—
Second Faun.
Why glad?
Child-Faun.
I know not.
First Faun.
Never yet an evil God
Forsook the dusk. Lo, all our vales are filled
With light:
the darkest shimmers in pale blue:
Nought is forlorn: no evil
thing goeth by.
Second Faun.
They say—
50 THE PAGAN REVIEW
First Faun.
What? who?
Second Faun.
They of the hills: they say
That a lost God—
First Faun.
Hush, Hush: beware!
Second Faun.
And why?
There is no god in the blue empty air?
Where else?
First Faun.
There is a lifting up of joy:
The morning moves in ecstasy. Never!
O never fairer morning
dawned than this.
Somewhat is nigh!
Second Faun.
May be: and yet I hear
Nought, save day’s familiar sounds, nought see
But the sweet
concourse of familiar things.
First Faun.
Speak on, though never a single leaf but hears,
And, like the hollow
shells o’ the twisted nuts
That fall in autumn, aye murmuringly
holds
The breath of bygone sound. We know not when—
To
whom—these little wavering tongues betray
Our heedless words, wild
wanderers though we be.
What say the mountain-lords?
DIONYSOS IN INDIA 51
Second Faun.
That a lost God
Fares hither through the
dark, ever the dark.
First Faun.
What dark?
Second Faun.
Not the blank hollows of the night:
Blind is he, though a God: forgotten graves
The cavernous
depths of his oblivious eyes.
His face is as the desert, blanched
with ruins.
His voice none ever heard, though whispers say
That in the dead of icy winters far
Beyond the utmost peaks we ever
clomb
It hath gone forth—a deep, an awful woe.
First Faun.
What seeks he?
Second Faun.
No one knoweth.
First Faun.
Yet a God,
And blind!
Second Faun.
Ai so: and I have heard beside
That he is not
as other Gods; but from vast age—
So vast, that in his youth those
hills were wet
With the tossed spume of each returning tide—
He hath lost knowledge of the things that are,
All memory of what
was, in that dim Past
Which was old time for him: and knoweth
nought,
Nought feels, but inextinguishable pain,
52 THE PAGAN REVIEW
Titanic woe and burden of long aeons
Of unrequited quest.
First Faun.
But if he be
Of the Immortal Brotherhood,
though blind,
How lost to them ?
Second Faun.
I know not, I. ‘Tis said—
Lython the Centaur told me, in those days
When he had pity on
me in his cave
Far up among the hills-that the Lost God
Is
curs’d of all his kin, and that his curse
Lies like a cloud about
their golden home:
So evermore he goeth to and fro—
The
shadow of their
glory. . . . . . .
Ai, he knows
The lost beginnings of the things that are:
We are but
morning-dreams to him, and Man
But a fantastic shadow of the dawn:
The very Gods seem children to his age,
Who reigned before
their birth-throes filled the sky
With the myriad shattered lights
that are the stars.
First Faun.
Where reigned this ancient God?
Second Faun.
Old Lython said
His kingdom was the Void, where evermore
Silence sits throned
upon Oblivion.
DIONYSOS IN INDIA 53
First Faun.
What wants he here?
Second Faun.
He hateth Helios,
And dogs his steps. None knoweth more.
First Faun.
Aha! I heed no dotard god! Behold,
behold
My ears betrayed me not: O hearken now!
Child-Faun.
Brother, O brother, all the birds are wild
With song, and through
the sun-splashed wood
[there goes
A sound as of a multitude of wings.
Second Faun.
The sun, the sun! the flowers in the grass!
Oh, the white glory!
First Faun.
‘Tis the Virgin God!
Hark, hear the hymns that thrill the winds of morn,
Wild
paeans to the light! The white processionals!
They come! They
come! . . . . . . .
“PASTELS IN PROSE.”*
Notwithstanding the fact that, as Mr. W. D. Howells
has
stated in the charming and too brief note which
stands as preface to this
volume of prose poems, modern
invention has found a way of fixing the chalks so
that
the graceful and beautiful crayon-drawings known as
pastels need no
longer be perilollsly iragile possessions,
the” pastel” will no doubt always
remain the type of
the most delicate form of art. It has a charm all its
own. The oil-painting may have a depth and solidity far
beyond it, the drawing
in water-colours a lucid brilliancy
which it cannot match, the etching a
subtlety of tone un-
surpassable; but the pastel can combine something of
the
special qualities of the etching, the water-colour drawing,
and the
painting, and has at the same time a wayward
fascination,a kind of virginal
beauty, all its own. No better
name than “Pastels,” therefore, could be given to
those
short studies of poetic impression expressed in prose, which
are
already a new “form” in contemporary literature.
One must not examine a pastel
too closely, nor must one
look to it for more than a swift and fortunate
impression-
istic portrayal; for the artist who knows his medium
will not
attempt to do with it what Lucas Cranach or
Van Eyck, for instance, did with
their medium, what in
in our own day the “Preraphaelites” professed to do
as
a matter of principle. Suggestion, not imitation, is the
aim of the
pastel-artist, who must, in any hazard, be what
is somewhat too vaguely called
an impressionist. He is
not to be a novelist or an essayist in paint, but to be
content to reproduce as truly as he can by suggestion a
poignant artistic
emotion, leaving to others to educe
from it any story, lesson, or meaning they
choose to find
in it. The thrush flinging his music joyously upon the
eddies of the spring-wind, without thought of who may
⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼
PASTELS IN PROSE 55
hear or how it may be judged, is a true artist-type. It
is when the painter or
writer, like the needy street-
musician who increases or moderates the tone of
his
barrel-organ according to the supposed taste of his
audience, produces
for the sake of others, and in accord-
ance with their and not his own
standards, that he
disproves himself an artist and becomes the mere manu-
facturer. The cant of altruism in art is at once ludicrous
and mischievous. The
artist must produce for himself;
not for others. The others benefit—as those do
who
listen to the thrush’s song, though the singer may be
unconscions of
or indifferent to their presence, his song
being not the less sweet though there
be none to applaud.
In France, the prose-poem, which, it is perhaps neces-
sary to say, is quite distinct from what is ordinarily
known as poetical prose,
is now a literary species as
definable and recognisable as the sonnet, or the
rondeau,
or the villanelle. It existed in a haphazard, vagrant
sort till
Baudelaire, whose example inspired many of the
writers who came after him,
though it is probable that
to the incomparable “Prose-Poems” of Turgenieff is
due
the fulness and variety of the tide of this new poetry
which has
advanced so rapidly of late. No doubt we may
find herein the fundamental reason
of the present vogue
of Walt Whitman among the Parisian writers and cul-
tured public. He is translated in part only, and what
with wise selection and
thoroughly artistic rendering,
much of his work takes on a refined and delicate
beauty
which is apt to surprise even the most thorough admirers
of “the
good grey poet.” No one has surpassed the
greatest of the Russian novelists in
the production of
the prose-poem. The very essence of this species is, so
to say, its irresponsibility. Its significance may be pro-
found, but must not
be obtruded. To “adorn” a poem-
in-prose with a “moral” would be as barbaric as
the act
of the individual who painted gaudy hues and immense
spots on the
superb flawless tail of a white peacock. It
must be brief: otherwise the
impression is apt to be
confused. It must be complete in itself: for the
quoted
specimen of poetic-prose is seldom a prose-poem, though
examples
could be culled from Ruskin, De Quincey, and
other writers, of course. But the
true prose-poem is not
56 THE PAGAN REVIEW
merely a happy passage in an environment of unemo-
tional prose: it is a
consciously-conceived and definitely-
executed poetic form. There may even be in
it, there
are often, in fact, variations and repetitions of effect,
multiplications of identical lines, corresponding to the
repetitive effects in
the villanelle and all poems of the
rondeau-kind: as, for instance, in the
following “Noc-
turne”:—
“I stood on a lonely promontory when the dusk
had dreamed itself
into a starless gloom: and as gazed the moonshine stole
across the sea.
From under a dark cloud it wavered, and then passed
stealthily away
into the deeper darkness beyond the headland. The moonlight
that
stole out of the dark into the dark was as a smile apon the face of a
beautiful daughter of Egypt asleep by the lotus-covered shallows of
Nilus. And as I watched the moonshine steal across the sea, I heard
the
voice of the unseen tide crying faintly afar off, wave to wave, though
the
crests lapsed into the moving hollows with as little sound as the
breathing
of a dusky maid adream by the lotus-covered shallows of Nilus.
“In my dreams I see oftentimes that beautiful
daughter of Egypt
asleep by the lotus-covered shallows of Nilus; and the
sound of her
breathing is faint as when the wave-crests lapse into the moving
hollows
beneath them, far out on the solitary seas covered with the
darkness.
Sometimes a faint cry passes like a wounded bird from the shadow of
her
lips: is it a faint cry from her shadowy lips, or the voice of the unseen
tide, thin and shrill, afar off? And sometimes she smiles. Then once
more I stand on a lonely promontory when the dusk has dreamed itself
into a starless gloom, and the moonshine steals dimly athwart remote
gulfs of darkness. From under vast glooms it wavers slow, and then
passes stealthily away, as I—as she—shall pass: Whither?”
To select a still shorter example, this time from
“Pastels
in Prose;” one of Mlle. Judith Gauthier’s
Chinese renderings:—
THE SAGES’
DANCE
(After
Li-Tai.Pe.)
“On my flute, tipped with jade, I sang a song
to mortals; but the
mortals did not understand.
“Then I lifted my flute to the heavens, and I
sang my song to the
Sages. The Sages rejoiced together, they danced on the
glistening
clouds. And now mortals understand me, when I sing to the
accom-
paniment of my flute tipped with jade.”
But, of course, as ill all poetry, the first essential is
the
faculty of rarified expression. The motive may or may
not be romantic
or picturesque ill itself: the expression
of it will be a poem if the author’s
impression be keen
to poignancy, and if hiR faculty of utterauce correspond
to his sensitiveness. Thus, the life of the streets, of
crowds, the
common-places of our ordinary existence,
afford motives as well as do Vales of
Tempe or Ronces-
PASTELS IN PROSE 57
valles. To the artist, it is not what he sees, but how he
sees, how he feels,
how he expresses his sudden wayward
fancy or new thought borne upward on strange
spiritual
or mental tides. There may even be no “picture” of
any kind: all
may depend upon the charm of words,
surrounding, like the Doves of Venus, a
beautiful thing
in their midst. I may give two instances of this rare
and
most difficult prose-poem, though the space at my
command prevents either from
being quoted in full.
Both are by the late Emile Hennequin:—
WORDS.
“In our crazed brains words are visions,
ideals rather than images,
desires rather than reminiscences. How distant
these ideals, how painful
these desires!
“There is no woman who gives us the radiant
dream that lurks behind
the word Woman; there is no wine that realises the
intoxication imagined
in the word Wine; there is no gold, pale gold or dusky
gold, that gives
out the tawny fulguration of the word Gold; there is no
perfume that
our deceived nostrils find equal to the word Perfume; no blue,
no red
that figures the tints with which our imaginations are coloured; all
is
too little for the word All; and no nothingness is an empty enough
vacuity as to be that arch-terrorist word, Nothing.
“What is to be done, O my mind, with these
diminished realities,
reduced and dim images of our thonghts, sticks of which
we have made
thyrses, banjos of which we have made citherns, aquarelles that
we have
anilinized, dreams opiated by us?”
From the strange and powerful poem, “The Earth,”
the first
portion may be quoted, though the remainder
is in some respects even finer:—
THE EARTH.
“Eddying through the blue or black heavens of
nights and of days, full
in her deep hollows of the tumultuous water of the
seas, turgid and flat,
the earth curves, sinuates and rises, dry under the
fresh air, firm and
mobile, jutting forth in mountains, falling away in
plains, brown and
all woven with the silver woof of rivers and lakes, green
and all bristling
with trees, with plants, with grass.”
But, after all, perhaps these are the exceptions that
prove
the rule: the rule that a complete vision, a com-
plete emotion, however
momentary and even uncertain,
be definitely conveyed in suggestion. As Mr.
Howells
says in the charming little preface already alluded to,
“the poet
fashions his pretty fancy on his lonely inspira-
tion; sets it well on the
ground, poises it, goes and
leaves it. The thing cannot have been easy to learn,
and it must always be most difficult to do; for it implies
the most
courageous faith in art, the finest respect for
others, the wisest
self-denial.”
58 THE PAGAN REVIEW
The selection in this volume is made from the writings
of
Louis Bertrand, Paul Leclercq, Theodore de Banville,
Alphonse Daudet, Villiers
de L’Isle-Adam, George Auriol,
Judith Gauthier, J. K. Huysmans, Ephraim Mikhael,
Pierre Quillard, Rodolphe Darzens, Beaudelaire, Achille
Delaroche, Stephane
Mallarmé, Emile Hennequin, Adrien
Rémacle, Maurice de Guérin, Paul Masy, Catulle
Mendès,
Henri de Regnner, and one or two others. Several of
the poems were
written specially for this book: those
of MM. Catulle Mendès and Stephane
Malarmé are
versions from the final proof sheets of new volumes by
the two
poets: and the six by Emile Hennequin were
specially selected for the
translators by Madame Henne-
quin from among hitherto unpublished MSS. by
that
most brilliant and remarkable poet and critic. A word
of emphatic
praise must be given to the translator, Mr.
Stuart Merrill—himself (he is a
Franco-American) a
French poet of standing, having won high regard by his
first volume of poetry, “Les Gammes.” Needless to say,
none but a thorough
artist could have rendered these
prose-poems adequately. His translations are
works of
rare and delicate art; the work of a poet inspired by
poets.
One word more from Mr. Howells. The prose-poem,
as written
in France. has, he says, come to stay. “It is
a form which other languages must
naturalise: and we
can only hope that criticisms will carefully guard the
process, and see that it is not vulgarised or coarsened
in it. The very life of
the form is its aerial delicacy: its
soul is that perfume of thought, of
emotion, which these
masters here have never suffered to become an
argu-
ment. They must be approached with sympathy by
whoever would get all
their lovely grace, their charm
that comes and goes like the light in beautiful
eyes.”
CONTEMPORARY RECORD.
ME JUDICE.
The publishing season of 1892 is memorable for the
commercial success of a biographical and philosophical
book, The History of David Grieve: for the reluctantly
allowed literary and library success of a great work
of fiction, Tess of the D’ Urbervilles: and for the disastrous
failure of the latest production of a great poet, The
Sisters. Of these, Mrs. Humphry Ward’s novel is
indeed, as has
been claimed, monumental. In this
country monuments are erected to the memory
of the
departed only. The powerful and beautiful and emi-
nently
significant romance by Mr. Thomas Hardy has one
drawback—for the mentally and
spiritually anaemic:
it is sane, vigorous, full-blooded, robust, with the
pulse
of indomitable youth. It is a book to read, to re-read,
to ponder,
to be proud of. Its author has at last won
the bâton of a Field-Marshal in
the army of contem-
porary novelists. Mr. Swinburne,
on the other hand,
has given a further and now serious impetus to the
retrograde movement of his great reputation. He is
a poet of, at his
best, so rare and high a genius that
many readers, during perusal of The Sisters, will be
tempted to believe in the
Doppelganger legend. Who
is Mr. Swinburne’s double? It is an undesirable
co-
partnery. The lesser man, who had already satisfied
us of his
inability to sustain the honour done him,
should now retire. Mr. Swinburne
has played double-
dummy with him long enough.
⁂
The Sisters is the production of a
tamed Elizabethan.
It has fine things that might almost be written by
Webster, or at least by Cyril Tourneur, if one or other
of these dramatists
be thought of as a contemporary,
and maugre that special quality of spiritual
audacity
and intellectual bravura so characteristic of each, and
that
Mr. Swinburne himself at one time possessed. On
the other hand, it has pages
of drawing-room realism,
of “Friendship’s-Offering” sentiment, of a dulness
un-
equalled by anything in “the new humour.” It has
passages that would
make love impossible of continu-
60 THE PAGAN REVIEW
ance: lovers can understand “speaking silence” but
not diction where
cherished commonplaces are choked
in struggling rhetoric. There are other
passages that
I recommend to the tender mercies of the University
Extension-Lecturer. He can then lay horrid pitfalls
for the unwary, for
who among them will be able to
say if the given excerpts be execrable verse
or villainous
prose? There are lines, alas, which excruciate the ear:
lines worthy of Byron at his worst, of a fibrelessness so
perverse, of
so maladroit a turn, that the ear of the
metricist revolts. And yet Mr.
Swinburne is a prince
of his craft in knowledge and skill! No: it is the
mysterious double who hath done this thing. It is a
bitter thing to tell a
poet that we prefer his prose, but
even a recantatory essay on Byron or
Whitman—the two
magnificent derelict comets of modern poetry whose tails
have been so carefully pulled by Mr. Swinburne while
under the
impression. that he was grappling with the
luminaries in front—would be
preferable to The Sisters.
For no one need read
Mr. Swinburne the critic of modern
men, but everyone must read Mr. Swinburne
the poet.
⁂
If The Sisters be a poor play it
contains, besides
many beautiful passages, lyrical interludes of surpassing
grace. To read the lyric “Love and Sorrow met in
May” is to rejoice that
we have a great poet still
among us. When this drama itself is known only
of
rust and the moth, the flawless lyric it enshrines shall
have put on
immortality as a garment.
⁂
The half-year that is over has been further note-
worthy
for two new books by Mr. George Meredith: if,
indeed, the reprint of his
superb Modern Love, with
later additions, can
be called a new book. His novel,
One of Our Conquerors, has sown discord among the
faithful. Enthusiasts call it manna: the cavillers will
have it that it
is a St. John’s feast with a multiplicity
of hard locusts to a small benefice
of wild honey. One
can certainly discern in it George Meredith at his
best:
it is easier, however, to find him in his least winsome
aspect. He
is the electric light among contemporary
illuminators of our darkness.
CONTEMPORARY RECORD 61
⁂
The Poet Laureate is what no other like dignitary
has
been: the most consummate poetic artist of his
time. He is Sovereign of the
Victorians. But he is not
a dramatist, though he can sometimes write
dramatically.
His Foresters is a lovely pastoral,
with some happy
songs; but the England of Robin Hood is just what we
do
not find reflected in its exqusitely polished mirror.
This drama is even more
a Court-of-Victoria-fin-de-
siecle rendering of the wild life it nominally
represents
than the “Idyls of the King” are of the Arthurian past.
As a
stage play The Foresters is eminently suited to
please British and American audiences, having neither
intensity of vision,
overmastery of passion, vigour of dia-
logue, nor convincing
verisimilitude.
⁂
Lord Lytton, who lisped in his father’s fiction, died a
writer of verse. He was a worthy private citizen; as a
public man, an
ornamental Imperialist; as a diplomatist,
a sign-post to warn new-comers to
take the other way.
He was saved from being a bad Oriental by being an
unconventional Occidental.
As a poet, he was . . . . . . a worthy son of his father.
⁂
A greater than many Lyttons passed away in
the person of
Walt Whitman. This great pioneer of a
new literature has so many faults in
the view of
most of his contemporaries that they cannot discern the
volcano
beneath the scoriæ. Let us defy mixt metaphors, and
add that we
believe those who come after us will
look upon him as the Janitor of the New
House Beautiful.
Meanwhile all Whitmaniacs (the courteous appellation
is
not ours) must rejoice in the convincing, if unconscious,
tribute paid with
so much delicacy and graciousness
by the writer of a certain famous Athenœum critique.
⁂
Mr. Hall Caine has written The
Scapegoat. He has also
re-written it. The experiment reflects
credit on him as a
conscientious workman, but is in other respects an
awful
example to set to the young. Horrible possibilities are
suggested.
Burke and Hare will be outdone in the resur-
recting business. Mudie will have
to start duplicate shelves,
62 THE PAGAN REVIEW
the upper marked As they Were, the lower As they Are.
The dead will arise and walk in a new
ghastliness.
⁂
The Naulahka proves that two clever men can
legally
procure an abortion.
⁂
Mr. Mallock’s Human Document
should be filed at
once. It can then be put away.
⁂
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s new books, Across the
Plains and The Wrecker,
there are wells of pure delight.
The sunshine of genius is in both, though
the former is
but a series of collected papers and the latter a romance
of adventure. The delight of these books cancels the
deep disappointment of
the “South-Sea Letters.” There
are pages of “The Lantern-Bearers” and
“Fontaine-
bleau” which ought to be committed to memory by
every aspirant
in the literary life.
⁂
The novel of the year, in France—a year given over
to
strange aberrations from the well-defined “stream of
tendency” of the French
mind, from a lurid colour-study
by the Flemish-Parisian Huysmans to the
serene cold-
bloodedness of Maurice Barrès, or the scientific romancing
of J. H. Rosny—is Zola’s recently published La
Débâcle.
It should be read not only as perhaps the most mature
and splendid effort of a great writer—a great writer who
has reached the
Temple of Fame through seas of mud,
and, unfortunately, has brought a good
deal with him,
even to the white steps of the portico; but also as a
work
likely to have a remarkable effect on the political temper
and
ideals of the French people. La Débâcle may prove
to be a factor of supreme international significance, in
the relations of
France and Germany. In this country,
even, it will attract almost as much
attention as the
marriage of a duke or the misdemeanour of an actress.
⁂
Maurice Maeterlinck—who stabbed himself with a bod-
kin
in Les Sept Princesses—has, in Pelle-as et Melisande,
opened a vein. There is just a chance it is
not an artery.
⁂
Next month a word to les jeunes here.
THE PAGAN REVIEW.
In the next number of The Pagan
Review there will be an
article entitled, “The New Paganism,” by H.
P. Siwäarmill,
which will have not only a general purport but will, in all
essen-
tial respects, reflect the principles of which this magazine is
the
indirect literary exponent.
⁂
In the immediately succeeding numbers will also appear
Poems
by several of the younger men, known and unknown; including,
it is
hoped, a continuation of Mr. Wm. Windover‘s ” Dionysos
in India.”
⁂
One or two short stories dealing with striking and
actual
episodes of contemporary Italian and Greek life, are promised
by
Mr. James Marazion, whose “Rape of the Sabines”
appears
in this number. The first will probably be a strange Greek
story, entitled, “The Last of the Mysti.” Another contributor
to the current
issue, Mr. Charles Verlayne, will be represented
by
a further instalment of his Barbaric Studies, from his forth-
coming romance,
“LA MORT S’AMUSE.” If VISTAS be still
unpublished on the appearance of our
second number, Mr.
W. S. Fanshawe may contribute another “dramatic
interlude”
from that volume, akin in method, if not in subject or
manner,
to his “Black Madonna.” From the pen of Mr. John Lafarge
readers
will have, in due course, some novel sketches and strange
experiences of
“Foreign London.”
⁂
“THE PAGANS”—for which, as motto, we fancy, rather than
the quotations given by Mr. Willand Dreeme, the words
of
Pistol: “A foutra (or the world, and worldlings base!
I speak
of Africa, and golden joys!”—will be continued.
⁂
Although there will be few translations in The Pagan Review—
for it is intended that it will be,
above all else, national, and not
a French bastard, or mixt-breed of any
kind—there will be occa-
sional foreign contributors. In particular there will
appear,
either next number or in the third, the first part of a
singularly
unconventional psychological romance—a romance, that is, in
externals, for it is understood to be essentially an autobiography.
Although
written by one who is of the younger generation only
64 THE PAGAN REVIEW
in heart and mind, readers will find in this revelation of a
woman’s life by
Mme. Rose Désirée Myrthil both true paganism
of spirit and modernity of
temperament. There will also appear
at intervals in The
Pagan Review studies of the most noteworthy
among the younger
writers of other countries; and the collabo-
ration of some of the most
typical poets and romancists of the
new movement in France and Belgium has
been secured. In
the monthly “Contemporary Record” it is intended to
give
suggestive if succinct summaries of what is being done here
and
abroad by les jeunes, a term which, it may again be
pointed out,
does not necessarily imply mere youthfulness in years.
⁂
The Editor has been promised stories, episodes,
studies—some
of which, in part or complete, he has already considered—by
several known and unknown writers, besides the above named
authors; but he is
prepared to consider proposals as to MSS.
other than those from writers who
have already mustered
under the banner of The Pagan
Review or from authors who
have been invited to contribute. Stamps for repostage if
necessary and addressed cover
must be sent with all MSS. The
following stipulations should also be borne in
mind: (1.) No
fiction can be considered, except short stories characterised
by
distinct actuality, whether” romantic” or “realistic”; and in no
instance must these exceed 3.000 words, while 2,000, or even
1,000 constitute
a preferable length. (2.) Contributions must
not have appeared elsewhere; or,
if this rule be broken, it must
be with the cognizance and approval of the
Editor. (3.) No
translations are wished, as the limited space for
translations is
already pledged in advance for an indefinite period. (4.)
Con-
troversial and political matter will not be considered; nor
such
articles as “A Study of Robert Elsmen“, “The
Poetry
of Mr. Lewis Morris “, “Art at the Royal Academy”, et hoc
genus omne. It will be well, in a word, for the sake of
all
concerned, for would-be contributors to understand that this
magazine does not aim to be a popular monthly on familiar
lines,
and that by far the greater part of what is currently
submitted
to the consideration of magazine-editors is at once unsuitable
for and undesired by The Pagan Review.
⁂
All communications to be addressed to Mr. W. H. Brooks
(Assistant-Editor, The Pagan Review); but those
which deal
with literary suggestions, or are concerned with literary
contri-
butions, invited or voluntarily submitted, should be marked
“Editorial.” Letters, MSS., &c., to be addressed
simply:—
Mr. W. H. Brooks,
Buck’s Green,
Rudgwick,
Sussex.
THE PAGAN REVIEW.
PUBLISHED BY W.H. BROOKS, RUDGWICK, SUSSEX.
Subscription: Twelve Months, Post-paid, 12-/
Six Months, „ „ 6-/
Three
Months, „ „ 3-/
* Subscribed copies MAY be the only
obtainable copies. In
any case, they will be send to subscribers in advance
of all other
copies.
⁂ FOREIGN orders may be despatched, if more
convenient,
through M. Léon Vanier, Libraire-Editeur, 19, Quai St. Michel,
PARIS.
AMERICAN: through Messrs. Chas. Webster & Co, 67, Fifth
Avenue, New York.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗
In Preparation.
THE TOWER OF SILENCE:
A Drama, in Prose
By GEORGE GASCOIGNE.
“Of deeds most dreadful none greater than this
which thou hast done.”
EURIPEDES (Electra).
⁂ As this Drama, which deals with a very terrible
central
incident and with a strange psychical problem, may be issued
only
privately, there may be some readers of The Pagan Review
who may care to have their names put on record in advance as
subscribers
on publication. Only a few copies will be disposable
in any
case. (Price, Five Shillings.)
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗
VISTAS
BY
W.S. FANSHAWE
(see
over.)
[To be issued privately.]
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗
VISTAS.
DRAMATIC INTERLUDES,
BY
W.S. FANSHAWE.
I. The Passion of Pere Hilarion.
II. The Birth of a Soul.
III. The Coming of the Prince.
IV. A Northern Night.
V. The Black Madonna.
VI. Finis.
VII. The Fallen God.
VIII. The Last Quest.
IX. The Lute Player
and
The
Passing of Lilith.
Some of these pieces are “dramatic interludes” of the outer
life, others
of the life of the soul (NOS. II, VI, VII, and VIII). With the
latter should
be included “The Lute Player” and “The Passing of Lilith,”
though
less dramatic in form. “The Black Madonna,” a study in contemporary
barbarism, appears in this number of The Pagan Review.
⁂The Edition (which will be ready for subscribers in a few
weeks)
is limited to 200 copies. Numbered copies, price 5-/ post-paid, are to
be
had ONLY FROM THE AUTHOR, Mr. W.S. FANSHAWE, c/o Mr. W.H. Brooks,
Buck’s
Green, Rudgwick, Sussex. Lest any miscarriage or delay occur,
owing to Mr.
Fanshawe’s absence abroad, Mr. Brooks has kindly under-
taken to attend to any
correspondence. W.S.F.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗
NEW BOOKS IN PREPARATION.
PROSE.
La Mort s’Amuse
(Barbaric Studies)
by Charles Verlayne
The Hazard of Love
A Romance,
by JAMES MARAZION.
POETRY.
English Poems.
by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.
Dionysos in India:
A Lyrical Drama,
by WM. WINDOVER.
Living Scottish Poets:
An Anthology
(including Mr. Robert Buchanan, Mr. Andrew
Lang, Mr. R.L.
Stevenson, Mr. William Sharp,
Dr. Walter C. Smith
&, &.)
by Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.
MLA citation:
The Pagan Review, vol. 1, August 1892. The Pagan Review Digital Edition, edited by Dennis Denisoff and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2010. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2021. https://1890s.ca/tpr-all/