Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE PLEA OF PAN
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 NEIGHBOURS OF OURS : STORIES OF SHADWELL. 
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF TOPHET : STORIES OF THE 
 BLACK COUNTRY. 
 
 THE THIRTY DAYS* WAR : SCENES IN THE WAR 
 BETWEEN GREECE AND TURKEY. 
 
 LADYSMITH : THE DIARY OF A SIEGE. 
 
 CLASSIC GREEK LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE: 
 NOTES TO JOHN FULLEYLOVE's PICTURES IN 
 GREECE.
 
 THE PLEA OF PAN 
 
 HENRY W. NEVINSON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 1901
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty
 
 DEDICATED TO 
 
 THE EARTH-MOTHER 
 
 To Earth, who bore the dragon broods, 
 
 Spawning beside the unnavigated waves 
 
 Devouring lizards with bats' wings ; 
 
 Who housed a terror deep in woods, 
 
 And down the gulf ofjiery caves 
 
 Wrought mammoths and plate-armoured things 
 
 Who glories in the tiger s might, 
 Andjeeds the snake, sin's counterpart ; 
 Who drinks the blood of clanging wars, 
 And bears through the silences of night 
 The melody of a lover s heart 
 Among the unchanged, untrodden stars. 
 
 937426
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ...... ix 
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES ..... 1 
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO .... 43 
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS . . . . 85 
 
 VERTICORDIA . . . . . .129
 
 NOTE 
 
 Two of these Essays have appeared in the 
 
 Contemporary Review, and are republished 
 
 here by the Editor's kind permission
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ON THE SAVAGE SOUL 
 
 IT may seem as though there were hardly 
 room in the modern world for the few 
 simple savages that still exist. They are 
 survivals from an age not far remote in 
 time, but irretrievable as the dinornis. 
 Amid the drab security of civilisation 
 they wander like captive Indians on 
 parole. Present creeds and ideals do not 
 greatly concern them. They have never 
 been wholly dipt in urbanity, but are like 
 the Celts of early days when British 
 Christianity was at odds with heathen- 
 dom, and high-hearted mothers left the 
 right arms of their babies unchristened, 
 so that they might strike the stronger 
 blow. They long for the sun, the moon,
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 the stars, and the desert air. In the 
 midst of daily life, in sober streets where 
 policemen rot at ease, in committee- 
 rooms and on boards of education, in 
 quiet rectories and legislative assemblies, 
 a breath of the wilderness comes sud- 
 denly, and whispers in their ears. At 
 once the dull horror of all this sedentary 
 world is borne in upon them. The old 
 spirit wakes and cries for the wings of 
 the morning that it may fly away and 
 bid sewage and civilisation go hang. 
 
 Some strive, and not in vain, to still 
 the cry of that wild desire with sports 
 and literature. They gallop after foxes, 
 or spend a fortune to kill one stag. The 
 poorer of them shoot pigeons from traps, 
 or give the rat five leaps for his life on 
 Wormwood Scrubbs. Some souse them- 
 selves in tales of rapiers and the heather 
 oozing red ; or by the cushioned fireside 
 they haunt the incense-laden ages, when 
 the pennon fluttered from the castle wall, 
 and cheery decorators were occupied with
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 handicrafts in the cheaping-stead below. 
 Some go back to fairyland, and drive the 
 brazen cars with Fergus, or with Niam 
 of the golden hair cross the ocean to 
 reach that unchanging land : 
 
 ' Which lies far off in the golden west, 
 On the verge of a golden sea.' 
 
 Happy are they. But for those who 
 lack this enviable gift of illusion for 
 those whose imagination is not strong 
 enough to encase them as in an enchanted 
 and many-coloured shrine, holding them 
 uncontaminated and undistressed amid 
 the common dulness or glare of to-day 
 what remains for them ? They are not 
 poetic enough to be put off with culti- 
 vated stags within reach of comfortable 
 shooting-boxes. To them the largest 
 caged rat never appears like a lion in 
 the wild, nor are the ruins of the past 
 to be revived by lingering with tender 
 regret over their stones and bones. It is 
 true they love the romantic visions of
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 old days quite as much as the poets can. 
 How gladly would they have sailed with 
 Drake, searching the Spaniard among 
 dim-discovered islands. They love the 
 jewelled twilight of knightly quests and 
 demon rocks and the lonely chapel bell. 
 To them it would not seem strange to 
 worship at Stonehenge, to hunt and fight 
 through life among forms vanishing in 
 the forest and voices calling from stormy 
 headlands amid the rain. It is as 
 though they had themselves come from 
 a country full of such scenes, and a 
 regretful spirit were always crying to 
 them to return. But perhaps it is that 
 their life is not sufficiently spiritual to 
 wrap them round in an atmosphere of 
 an affectionately imagined past, such as 
 poets and theologians breathe. Draw 
 down the blinds of make-believe as they 
 may, they cannot shut out the reality of 
 this present and civilised world. And so 
 they remain uncomforted and distraught 
 clipped cranes beside an ornamental
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 water, huntsmen in an exhibition, wor- 
 shippers who have outlived their god. 
 
 At times in Ireland a red wind sweeps 
 up from the sea. It bears the sorrowful 
 dust of all the exiles whose bones first 
 grew under the heart of that sad land. 
 In death they are returning from their 
 innumerable banishments, that their dust 
 may rest again upon her lap. To them 
 that sorrowful peace is not forbidden. 
 But us the red wind might bear in vain 
 round the earth's girdle, following the 
 sun. That wild star which was our 
 mother, is vanishing from under heaven. 
 She is harried and burnt ; her streams are 
 fouled, her forests cut down. Her wild 
 beasts are slaughtered for pleasure, her 
 heroic cities converted into communities 
 of mice. She has lost the incalculable 
 variety, the careless incertitude which 
 made the life of her sons so dangerous 
 and so sweet. From birth to death each 
 man and woman seems to twist one 
 tiny thread as in a clanking loom, and,
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 compared to our rugged ancestry, the 
 indistinguishable and misshapen swarms 
 of to-day would appear unendurably 
 unhappy, did they but know their 
 wretchedness. But a few know it, and 
 like the girl in the old Connaught song 
 they may cry : ' A thousand farewells to 
 last night ! It is my grief that it was 
 not to-night which came first.' 
 
 Too long have we been in exile. In- 
 crease of wealth, mechanical inventions, 
 clubs, upholstery, waterworks, schools, 
 medicine, madhouses, reformatories, 
 orphan-asylums, law-courts, prisons, and 
 all the other varieties of moral soap- 
 how irrelevant they seem to the simple 
 savage ! The desperate widow in Demo- 
 cracy doubted if it were worth while to 
 make two blades of grass grow where 
 one grew before, and certainly to set two 
 bulging, flap-footed gentlemen to stand 
 on a flagstone instead of one, seems an 
 unworthy aim for evolution after all its 
 labours. The more the worse, says the
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 savage when he sees them ; the more 
 the worse, he says as he watches the 
 lines of ignoble streets blotting out 
 the fields with hutches for the suburban 
 species ; the more the worse, as he hears 
 the mill-hands scurrying to the factory 
 while the hooter screams. Forlorn in 
 exile, he takes his staff and goes to find 
 some scattered traces of his country. He 
 seeks her under the long night of the 
 poles, or in the ancient valleys of Asia, 
 or beside rivers where old behemoth still 
 lurks in the covert of the reed. He 
 often sees her mirage just in front. 
 Sometimes he imagines he has crossed 
 the borders into her wilds, and for a 
 moment he is full of joy. But he finds 
 that the land knows him no more. Her 
 life is no longer his. She seems to ask 
 why he is changed. Or she regards him 
 with polite and slightly contemptuous 
 suspicion. In the midst of the few poor 
 ruins of his home, he stands as a spec- 
 tator, a tourist, an extraneous patron,
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 a curious investigator, a Saturday- to - 
 Monday guest. He is in danger of 
 writing -a book. 
 
 It remains for him to inhabit the ' Red- 
 skins' Reserve,' the ' Indian Territory ' 
 of the soul ; not a bad substitute, for it 
 is very large and his freehold for exist- 
 ence. Without for a moment quitting 
 the reality of modern life, he lives within 
 that spiritual territory, untrammelled, 
 unlegalised, and unstaled in thought or 
 deed. There he may hunt for all that 
 is quick with life, and there may find the 
 quality of the wild and ancient earth, so 
 spontaneous, prodigal, and unconscious 
 of offence. On the other side of custom's 
 thick-set hedge, we may still see the eyes 
 of wild spirits gleaming, and if we watch 
 in silence they will draw near. It is 
 only in the air of golden mediocrity that 
 they cannot breathe, for they are keen 
 and finely tempered as a blue sword. 
 With them the savage soul has his 
 dwelling, lying in wait for any point
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 where extremity is reached. He lives 
 by danger, hardship, and uncalculating 
 extravagance of self. He may live in 
 serried orchestras, in Dantean devotion, 
 and Hannibalic invasions ; but no less 
 he lives among the scattered lumps that 
 strew a battlefield, or the unknown 
 women lamenting them at home ; and 
 he may be inspired by the three suc- 
 cessive notes of a pierced reed. 
 
 Only within the limits of this Indian 
 Territory can the savage soul maintain the 
 savage and first-hand excellence which 
 acts from its own unconscious and in- 
 exorable nature. Only here he really 
 exists, and for love of this land, his 
 native country, he is always searching for 
 those moments of existence when danger 
 is most dangerous, and difficulty most 
 severe. With sinews steeled as a cow- 
 boy's, he will go questing through life, 
 rejoicing in the contest's peril, and en- 
 couraged by the discovery of any comrade 
 who will share his warfare. For he will 
 b
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 never cease from war, and it was not 
 without reason that the poet sang of the 
 Happy Warrior, and not of the Happy 
 Bagman, the Happy Landlord, the 
 Happy Member of Parliament, or the 
 Happy Priest. Against the mediocre, 
 the average, the good-enough, the savage 
 soul wages war without quarter, and dis- 
 dains, as Montaigne said, in the catalogue 
 of his true duties, all easy, faint, ordinary, 
 and provincial rules. 
 
 Having entered upon this unsurveyed 
 territory, in which every step is as truly 
 a discovery as the exploration of Erebus, 
 he may pass through the outer world 
 with a wandering but friendly heart, 
 assured of comradeship, not only in 
 wharfs and coal-pits, but even in respect- 
 able houses. If it be his happy fortune 
 to haunt the earthly sea, wild mountains, 
 and such desert as remains, his knowledge 
 of that still wilder land will cause him to 
 hear finer voices on the wind, and to see 
 more brilliant hues within the rainbow.
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 In the commonest hovel of the bog he 
 may discover that extreme and untamed 
 spirit which is akin to goats and gods. 
 He is shy, that blended soul of earth and 
 ether. He loves to hide by moorland 
 streams, to labour in folded valleys, or 
 hang from cliffs that face the sunset. 
 Yet at times we may catch sight of 
 him in drawing-rooms or lurking under 
 a judge's throne, and then we rejoice 
 to find him still alive and quite on 
 speaking terms with all who are a little 
 like himself.
 
 I 
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 IT happened once that I was in Greece 
 at a time when the country was not 
 so familiar to us as it became during 
 the Turkish invasion. In spite of its 
 beauty and associations, it was not a 
 very attractive place to the average 
 Englishman. There was good bathing 
 in the JEigaean, and pretty fair climbing 
 on Olympus, but no fishing to speak of, 
 and hardly any sport at all. The Duke 
 of Sparta had some moderate shooting 
 in Elis. There was talk of boars and 
 wolves upon Cithasron still, but I could 
 not get a sight of any. The brigands 
 were very nearly exterminated, and 
 in fact I saw no game, beyond a few 
 hares at Sunium, and some snipe on 
 the Alpheus. Plenty of eagles, of
 
 2 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 course ; and at Mycenae I watched a 
 Greek native practising at one with an 
 old muzzle-loader ; but the real local 
 sport is to fire pistols into old temple 
 columns at twelve paces. For there 
 are any number of ruins and things 
 about, though to the ordinary English- 
 man they are rather like our grand- 
 mothers' love-scenes pretty in their 
 day, but no special concern of ours. 
 
 And yet, as I dawdled through the 
 country on one pony or another, I saw 
 a few queer things, and perhaps the 
 queerest of all was a god. Of course 
 there was nothing remarkable in the 
 mere fact of encountering such a being ; 
 many people have seen a god before 
 now, and there was no reason why I 
 should not see one, too, if he happened 
 to be about. But the peculiarity of 
 the event lay in the god's personality. 
 He was not much to look at, poor 
 old boy, but a rare fellow to talk, and 
 he said some unusual things, which I
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 3 
 
 cannot remember completely ; for indeed 
 he was not talking actually to me, but 
 to a fellow named Gordon, whom I 
 had met the evening before at a little 
 town high up in the mountains in 
 Arcadia. 1 took him for a don at first, 
 because he was so detestably polite, 
 and kept calling my pony a mule, and 
 knew his way about Greece without a 
 ' Baedeker.' We slept in one room on 
 a fairly clean rug, and he woke me at 
 half-past four, and from the window 
 I saw Erymanthus, a long range of 
 square-topped mountains, just beginning 
 to look grey with their snows against 
 the sky of night. In Greece they save 
 you a lot of time by not giving you 
 anything to wash in. So, before five we 
 were out in the dirty street with two 
 little ponies and a guide. We were 
 going to see a famous old temple, and 
 the country round was certainly very 
 beautiful. The stony track went straight 
 into the hills directly we left the little
 
 4 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 town, and we crossed two high passes, 
 and made our way through uninhabited 
 valleys, and round the heads of water- 
 courses, and through woods of a bushy 
 kind of fir, and over stretches of green, 
 covered with all manner of flowers and 
 shrubs, where some early nightingales 
 were trying to get their notes in tune, 
 and hoopoes went flitting about like 
 woodpeckers pretending to be butter- 
 flies. After some three hours' climbing 
 we came to the top of the highest spur 
 from the central range, and there, just 
 in front of us, two or three hundred 
 yards down, we saw the grey columns 
 of the temple itself. Nearly all are still 
 standing, and I think nearly every one 
 would have thought them rather fine, 
 all alone out there in the hills. We 
 lay down on a lot of thyme and other 
 plants close outside the temple, having 
 a view of the sea in two places, on each 
 side the Messenian promontory; and, 
 far away in the south, the mountains
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 5 
 
 of Taygetus, down by Sparta, ran up 
 into sharp peaks like the Alps, covered 
 with snow. The guide sat behind us 
 with the ponies, and began playing with 
 his string of beads the only intellectual 
 exercise of a modern Greek. Then I asked 
 Gordon if he wouldn't tell me something 
 about the temple. 
 
 ' I know nothing particular about 
 it,' he said ; ' not half so much as 
 " Baedeker." ' 
 
 So I told him not to pretend to be a 
 worse prig than heaven made him. And 
 I thought I heard some one laugh behind 
 us, but I could only see the Greek staring 
 sleepily at his beads. 
 
 'Well,' said Gordon, 'the temple was 
 built as a thankoffering to Apollo the 
 Giver of Health, and was designed by 
 the same architect as the temple of 
 Apollo's sister at Athens. It stands on 
 the site of an old shrine of Pan, who, 
 of course, was worshipped in all this 
 pastoral district.'
 
 6 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 'Yes,' I said, 'but I want to know 
 who Pan really was, and why one god 
 could drive out the worship of another ; 
 and what the priests thought of their 
 god, and how they served him, out on 
 the mountains here.' 
 
 ' I 'm sorry,' said Gordon, ' but I know 
 nothing about the priests, and next to 
 nothing about Pan. Only, it doesn't 
 seem strange that a half-brutish con- 
 ception like him the rude god of an 
 innocent but distinctly provincial Arcadia 
 should be superseded by the worship 
 of Apollo in his purest and kindliest 
 form the Destroyer turned to Healer, 
 the scorching fire tempered and diffused 
 into the genial light of such a morning 
 as this. He is indeed the god of my 
 idolatry. It is his priest that I would 
 always be.' 
 
 ' Bless my soul ! ' I said, looking round 
 at him, and seeing that his eyes were 
 fixed on the distance. 
 
 * Even now,' he went on, ' in such a
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 7 
 
 place as this, one may be conscious of 
 a sense of healing, of purification, in the 
 cool air and the freshness of the moun- 
 tains. The current of life again runs 
 clear, and the power of the eye is 
 restored. The mind itself is pervaded 
 with a purity as of sunrise. The human 
 passions then appear to it gross and 
 almost inconceivable, like the grotesque 
 monsters of creation's early slime. It 
 is not to be believed that they should 
 dominate or allure a thing so fine and 
 shapely as the spirit has then become. 
 Envy, ambition, and desire then appear 
 to us ridiculous, distorted, and in the 
 truest sense obscene. Guided by an 
 increasing discernment, the soul becomes 
 rigorous in selection of her proper food, 
 and rejects all that is unclean, or tainted 
 with commonplace, or spoilt by super- 
 fluity. It is no drug which is thus 
 given by the god ; for the gift is health 
 itself, and health needs no healing. To 
 his service the soul willingly bows, that
 
 in it she may attain to freedom. There- 
 fore she lays on herself the limits which 
 are the doors into space, and girding 
 herself with restraints, she hastens to 
 the fruition of the brief but high rewards 
 which open upon her rigorous course. 
 At every step her delicacy of choice 
 increases ; her demand for purity and 
 decorous beauty becomes more exacting. 
 But at every step also her frame becomes 
 more tightly strung, and her purpose 
 more strenuous. Then in the heart is 
 built up, stone by stone, a temple such 
 as this, fit house for a male god, a home 
 of grave liberty, such as springs from laws 
 self-imposed and self -justified. That is 
 the Apollo whose priest I would be, here 
 on the site of his ancient shrine. You 
 see how stern the country is for all its 
 beauty, how manlike in contrast with 
 the feminine rapture of such lands as 
 Italy. I would have myself of a nature 
 to match this land.' 
 
 * What 's all that ? ' I said, for I was
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 9 
 
 getting rather sleepy, and only caught a 
 few more sentences here and there. 
 
 ' Our old master,' he went on, ' used 
 to say, "Not what I have, but what 
 I do, is my kingdom." But now we 
 have taken one further step towards our 
 redemption from vulgarity. Not what 
 we have, nor what we do, but what we 
 are that is our kingdom now. And 
 what we are depends upon a long series 
 of choice those brief but eternal acts 
 of choice self-imposed limits which are 
 the assurance of man's strength and of 
 his ultimate spiritual emancipation.' 
 
 After that, his voice was mixed up 
 with the bees and the calling of birds, 
 and all the other quiet noises of a calm 
 day, and they were united in my head 
 into a kind of orchestra played by fairies, 
 only that now and then I seemed to hear 
 a low clear note of a flute coming nearer 
 and nearer. And after a time I was 
 slowly awakened by a vague feeling that 
 we were not alone. So at last 1 looked
 
 10 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 round to where Gordon had been sit- 
 ting, rather behind me on the right, and 
 between me and him I saw the great hind- 
 quarters of some dark and shaggy beast. 
 
 ' Talk about the Father of the Goats, 
 indeed ! ' I thought, and, drawing my 
 gun towards me without moving a leaf, 
 I raised myself on my elbows till, inch 
 by inch, I exposed his hairy side. The 
 whole thing seemed queer, of course, but 
 I was too excited to think, and was on 
 the point of jumping up to bring him 
 down as he ran clear, when I heard a 
 deep, low voice, with a kind of laugh 
 in it, speaking. 
 
 ' I 'm afraid, sir,' it said, ' you wouldn't 
 approve of me, for it 's hard to find any 
 limit on my poor old body.' 
 
 Down went my gun. No doubt most 
 sportsmen will think me a fool to lose a 
 chance of bagging a god. I might have 
 taken his skin home, done up in my 
 rugs ; and have hung his head in my 
 ancestral hall, stuffed.
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 11 
 
 But I didn't fire. To shoot a beast that 
 could talk seemed too much like firing 
 on a mob. He was stretched on the 
 ground deep in flowers, with his head 
 propped between his hands. His face 
 was like the bust of Socrates in our old 
 headmaster's room at school ; and there 
 was the queerest look of amusement on 
 it, mixed with a kind of melancholy too, 
 as though he were a little tired with all he 
 had seen. The Greek had disappeared. 
 Gordon was talking as though nothing 
 unusual had happened. For myself, I 
 felt like Balaam. 
 
 ' Even if you don't approve of me,' 
 the god went on, * it 's a comfort to see 
 you 're not frightened.' 
 
 ' We moderns,' said Gordon, * are never 
 frightened only infinitely curious.' 
 
 ' Infinite is a dangerous word, you 
 know,' said the god. 'But my poor 
 mother wasn't at all modern, for when 
 I was born, she ran away at sight of 
 me, and my supposed father had to get
 
 12 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 a rabbit's skin to wrap his furry baby 
 in, and carry me up to the gods, who 
 at once began that sad habit of making 
 puns on my name. But that has always 
 been the way with me ; a terror one 
 moment, a joke the next, I am like the 
 People's Vote.' 
 
 ' Your presence was better than a vote 
 in battle,' said Gordon. 
 
 ' Ah, sir,' said the god, with a modest 
 sigh, 'that's a very long time ago.' 
 
 'Forgive my saying so,' said Gordon 
 after a pause, ' but it 's very strange to 
 find you still alive. We have been told 
 so very often of your death, both by 
 fishermen and poets.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the god, smiling. ' I 'm 
 afraid it was a wicked story of mine- 
 that voice of lamentation heard over the 
 evening sea round Paxos. You see, it 
 is better to give up certain things than 
 wait till they give you up. At least, 
 I 've heard lovers say it is so with love. 
 And may it not be the same with life ? '
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 13 
 
 * He that loseth his life shall find it,' 
 said Gordon. 
 
 * It is a true saying,' said the god. 
 ' Think of poor old Zeus a deity of 
 some real importance in his day. But 
 when his old way of life began to 
 moulder, he clung to it with such brutal 
 avidity that he was rotten long before 
 he was buried, and is now only remem- 
 bered by jokes on his domestic relations, 
 as a kind of Henry vni. whose first wife 
 was unfortunately immortal.' 
 
 * Good Heavens ! ' said Gordon, ' what 
 do you know of Henry vui. ? ' 
 
 ' Ah, sir,' said the god sadly, * I see 
 that, like the rest, you always forget I 
 am still alive. Or do you suppose I have 
 slept all these years, like the Seven of 
 Ephesus ? ' 
 
 * I beg your pardon, I 'm sure,' said 
 Gordon, * but you must own it 's a little 
 hard to connect you with modern life.' 
 
 * Hard for the citizens of your great 
 towns, no doubt,' said the god. ' How
 
 14 A NEW PHEIDIPriDES 
 
 should they find room for the sun-burnt 
 god of the hymn in my praise, the 
 god who loves soft rivers and deep 
 woods : 
 
 and at fall of night 
 
 Returning, bids the valleys in their sleep 
 Listen to strains surpassing all the might 
 Of that sad bird who, tortured by the spring, 
 Her yearning lamentation honey-sweet doth 
 sing? 
 
 Yes, in modern cities no doubt it is hard, 
 but here in Arcadia surely you might 
 suppose even my old pastoral form to 
 survive.' 
 
 ' It is very refreshing to find it so,' 
 said Gordon ; ' but this new railway 
 round your own Mount Parthenion must 
 be rather intrusive on your solitude.' 
 
 ' Oh, I don't so much mind,' said the 
 god, ' except that it kills my special 
 breed of tortoises there. The train can't 
 help going faster than they, and it over- 
 takes them as they bask along the lines. 
 Still, I like to revisit Arcady for a holi- 
 day now and then, and as it is holiday-
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 15 
 
 time, 1 11 go my way, bidding you a 
 triple farewell. 1 
 
 * Oh, please don't go,' said Gordon, 
 laying his hand on the shaggy side. 
 
 ' Nay,' said the god, ' you '11 soon 
 forget me. Even Athens forgot me, 
 you know. You clever people always 
 do.' 
 
 ' But if one could be your second 
 Pheidippides ? ' said Gordon. 
 
 'No, really I'd rather go,' answered 
 the god. ' I 'm afraid I 'm hardly modern 
 enough to talk about nothing but myself 
 with grace. I Ve always been behind 
 the times.' 
 
 ' At least,' said Gordon, ' tell me where 
 you are to be found again.' 
 
 'I go to and fro upon the earth,' said 
 the god, 'like him who has long caused 
 my form and attributes to be blas- 
 phemed. And I have many outward 
 semblances, and yet but one true form. 
 The Egyptians knew it, though, as the 
 historian says, they figured me under
 
 16 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 this pastoral shape as a matter of pious 
 convenience. Also they knew that I 
 was of the elder gods, compared to 
 whom this Apollo here and his blue- 
 stockinged sister are but upstarts of 
 yesterday, separated from that early 
 creation by clean-cut limits such as seem 
 so greatly to delight you.' 
 
 ' It was mental limit of which I spoke,' 
 said Gordon 'a certain definiteness of 
 mood and vision.' 
 
 * Mental limit, no doubt,' said the god ; 
 ' but may not such limit be signified in 
 the outward form ? These purified gods 
 of yours were cut off from our old crea- 
 tion, and bore no remembrance of the 
 pleasant furry animals upon their marble 
 limbs. Eyes peered at them shyly from 
 the thickets, wondering what those white 
 and naked shapes might be. Before they 
 came, we were a merry crew together, 
 Centaurs and Sphinxes and Titans, Gor- 
 gons and Hydras and Chimeras dire 
 a wanton pack of cross-bred cousins. It
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 17 
 
 was then often hard to tell where the 
 beast left off and the god began : as hard 
 as it still is on my poor body, if I guess 
 your thought aright. In those days 
 lions and wolves held equal converse 
 with gods, and in men's ears the birds 
 sang the words as well as the music of 
 all their pretty tales of love and fairy 
 travel. Then came the change, which 
 I myself should not have escaped, had I 
 not hidden myself away with the shep- 
 herds here, hedged in by barriers of 
 mountains from that cold and inhuman 
 thing, the sea, which is always on the 
 side of change. 
 
 ' When at last I ventured to emerge, 
 stealing down the river-beds at night 
 into rich Elis, or along the broad hollow 
 of Lacedgemon, all was over. The com- 
 rades of earth's prime were gone, and I 
 was left like an orphan of another race. 
 The new gods did not even pay me the 
 compliment of fear, but in educated scorn 
 they laughed at my homely appearance.
 
 18 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 I let them have it their own way, per- 
 ceiving that the fashion of laughter is 
 the most fleeting of things. And for 
 service I attached myself to the Great 
 Mother, a solemn goddess, whom I chose 
 because, when first she looked on me, 
 I perceived kindly rain and sunshine 
 mingled in her face. Her I served so 
 faithfully that some Olympian wit called 
 me the Mother's dog-of-all-work, and I 
 proudly bore the name. In her praise 
 I sang with bands of mountain girls in 
 front of the Theban poet's door all night 
 long. Those summer nights of music, 
 when Cithseron looked dreamy and lower 
 than his height under the moon, are far 
 behind me now. The Mother is almost 
 forgotten. The poet's words are scarcely 
 understood, and Thebes is for the tenth 
 time in ruins. Yet I am here, still living 
 on, though rather fallen from my estate, 
 which I admit was never high.' 
 
 The god laughed cheerfully, and 
 Gordon said : ' I do not wish to seem
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 19 
 
 at all impolite, but it is certainly a little 
 strange that you, of all others, should be 
 the only survivor.' 
 
 ' I don't wonder at your surprise,' 
 said the god. * The worshippers of 
 Apollo are able to rise to an airy height 
 which I can hardly conceive ; and, like 
 the man who went up to heaven on a 
 beetle, they think that we poor children 
 of earth look very small from that dis- 
 tance. Nevertheless, it almost seems as 
 if there must be some everlasting quality 
 about my worshippers and me. For I 
 am certainly alive, and a god lives only 
 so long as he has worshippers.' 
 
 ' And who are his worshippers ? ' asked 
 Gordon. 
 
 ' Those who are like him,' said the god. 
 
 'But what, then, is the everlasting 
 quality of which you spoke ? ' 
 
 The god sat silent for a time, with the 
 puzzled look of a ploughboy when the 
 parson inquires after his spiritual condition. 
 
 * Can you imagine,' he answered at
 
 20 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 length, <a quality which is common to 
 wild animals and children and the poor ? 
 shall we add women, too ? perhaps it 
 were wiser not.' 
 
 ' I can indeed dimly apprehend some 
 such quality,' said Gordon, 'but I could 
 give it no name.' 
 
 'Neither can I give it a name,' said 
 the god, 'any more than you can give 
 a name to your own soul. I can but 
 repeat what once the Great Mother told 
 me. There are, she said, certain classes 
 of beings which seem to stand at the 
 meeting - place of many far-reaching 
 and divergent powers. They appear to 
 be haunted by dim associations, uncon- 
 scious relationships. The fibres of their 
 roots seem still to spring from the womb 
 of earth, and with her breasts they are 
 fed. But on another side they are no 
 less full of promises of something beyond 
 the rest of nature, as though they were 
 always reaching out towards mysterious 
 powers which may never be realised.
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 21 
 
 As a reasonable fact we know there are 
 certain things they will not and cannot 
 do. But if they did them, it would be 
 absurd to feel much surprise. Those 
 two ponies on which you and your friend 
 rode up from the village how full of 
 zeal and rivalry the younger of them 
 was ! trembling with energy, maddened 
 by reproof, exalted by praise, dashing 
 hot-blooded into every difficulty, and 
 struggling through it with tempestuous 
 impatience. How small was the differ- 
 ence between him and a boy warrior, the 
 glory of his men, whom his passionate 
 mistakes so often lead into death ! And 
 the old mare, so wise and humble, trust- 
 worthy at every step was she not a 
 nurse of ninety years ? That shepherd, 
 too, whom you met on the way ; night 
 and day he lives with his flock ; did he 
 not seem to be one with the winds and 
 hills ? It would not have seemed strange 
 if his sheep had said, Good morning, and 
 he had bleated.'
 
 22 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 * It is an old conceit of satirists,' said 
 Gordon, 'that many men would more 
 fully express their emotions by neighing, 
 or howling, or braying.' 
 
 ' Ah, yes, those satirists ! ' said the 
 god ; * they were always much too clever 
 for humble people like me. But let me 
 rather tell you of a sight I once saw when 
 the Great Mother suffered me to look 
 into the inmost recess of her strange old 
 workshop. She was standing, with a 
 large apron on, before a kind of knead- 
 ing-trough, and was fashioning mortal 
 things. On one side of her, quicker than 
 thought, flew a current of a brilliant blue 
 element, hardly denser than air. On the 
 other moved a sluggish and heavy stream 
 of dark-red mud. And from it issued the 
 fragrance of a fresh-ploughed field after 
 rain. Into these two streams the Mother 
 kept dipping a hand on each side, and 
 clutching up random quantities ; but the 
 greater part of both went by unused, 
 and what became of it I could not see.
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 23 
 
 After each dip the Mother brought her 
 hands sharply together, and the two 
 substances rushed into each other with 
 a cry of joy, and became joined 
 oh, more closely than ever lovers were ! 
 She then began to mould them into 
 shape in her trough. But they, in their 
 passionate desire for living, continually 
 thwarted her skill, so that in despair she 
 often let them have it their own way. 
 For she was in much haste, grudging 
 every wave of the streams that passed 
 unused. I saw her making a second 
 Achilles, but his struggles to begin life 
 so delayed her that she just finished him 
 off as a wolf-hound, keen of eye and 
 swift of foot. Another Cleopatra, too, 
 was almost moulded, when she writhed 
 away without her legs and arms, and 
 lived alone in an island jungle as a magi- 
 cal white snake. The legs and arms 
 were used for another woman, who drove 
 men mad, and nobody knew why. And 
 sometimes, after the Mother had begun
 
 24 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 upon an animal, the humour would take 
 her to convert it into a man, whence 
 come those people whom we naturally 
 call bearish, or swinish, or apish, or 
 proud as peacocks. But as for those 
 whom, according to her intent, she suc- 
 ceeded in making into men in spite of 
 their wrigglings, I observed that at times 
 she appeared especially pleased with her 
 results, like a dyer when he has hit just 
 the right proportions for his dye. For 
 then the two substances in their passion- 
 ate union were converted into a kind of 
 warm-blooded marble, and out of that 
 she made the most excellent sorts of 
 man.' 
 
 * Such as the poets, I suppose ? ' said 
 Gordon. 
 
 * One or two of them, perhaps, were 
 poets,' answered the god : ' but there 
 were others, nor were they uncommon, 
 though often they slipt away unnoticed 
 into some unexplored recess of time. 
 Whether or not they did anything
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 25 
 
 memorable appeared to be merely a 
 matter of circumstance ; for all that 
 they did sprang from the very compo- 
 sition of their nature, so that their 
 greatest achievements were in fact no 
 less natural than their eating and 
 drinking. About them hung a sense of 
 security and assurance, as of a sunshiny 
 day, and they acted not in compliance 
 with maxims but under an impulse 
 derived from the wholesome admixture 
 of their own being, like the divine 
 instinct which guides a dog or pigeon 
 home without the aid of finger-posts or 
 governmental charts.' 
 
 ' If all were like that,' said Gordon, 
 'we should be a community of saints 
 indeed ! ' 
 
 * Oh, don't be too sure ! ' said the god, 
 smiling. ' One or two saints were cer- 
 tainly of this kind, but all were not saints. 
 Only, whether their deeds were good or 
 evil, there was something inevitable and 
 simple about them, as about the powers
 
 26 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 of nature, whether destructive or benign. 
 However, it was not of them I wished 
 to speak, but of two other kinds in whom 
 I perceived every degree and variety of 
 being, except that all fell short of that 
 ultimate grace. For it would often 
 happen that, when the Mother clutched 
 a handful of the flowing mud, some 
 would ooze through her fingers and be 
 lost. Then she would sigh over the 
 resulting forms, though they were of a 
 strange and fantastic beauty, and seemed 
 even to shine with a delicate light of 
 their own, like sea-things two or three 
 days dead. Indeed, I was quite over- 
 come by their elegance and charm, for 
 they tripped away into the world with 
 an airy step, and every moment I ex- 
 pected to see them take flight and hover 
 down the path like butterflies. So in 
 my wonder I asked the Mother why she 
 sighed over them. But she was trying 
 to squeeze some heavy lumps of mud 
 into shape, and answered : " I can hardly
 
 27 
 
 tell you now, for I 'm busy knocking a 
 little decency into these silly monsters. 
 But if you look at those pretty creatures 
 a little closer you will find they are like 
 bricks made without straw, having little 
 constancy and endurance. And though 
 they are now as gay as gossamers, and 
 congratulate themselves aloud on their 
 superiority to these other queer beings 
 of mine, their fate is not really envi- 
 able." 
 
 ' So I watched a while, and found that 
 her words came true. For on reaching 
 the harsh atmosphere of the upper world 
 these delicate figures appeared like people 
 who have ventured abroad in the cold 
 too thinly clad. They shivered at every 
 breath, and smarted even when nothing 
 touched them. The common sights and 
 sounds of earth appeared to them all too 
 rude and crude. Over some, indeed, 
 poverty extended a covering of its own, 
 and the encrusting mire of daily necessity 
 served as skin and cloak. But the most
 
 28 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 were able to avoid poverty, and if 
 common dirt touched them they care- 
 fully scraped it off, leaving their flesh 
 quivering and sore. And some were so 
 deluded as confidently to maintain their 
 own super -excellence, and to publish 
 guides whereby others might strive to 
 approach it. Like the fox which had 
 lost its tail, they proclaimed it the duty 
 of everybody to become like themselves, 
 and they dared to pity those who had 
 not reached that state. Therefore they 
 called themselves friends of man, but 
 took care to retain a scrupulous distance 
 between themselves and the objects of 
 their friendship. Others, standing more 
 decidedly aloof, choked up the vulgar 
 channels of sense by delicious artifices, 
 like the crew of Ulysses, though it was 
 not Sirens that they feared. They de- 
 voted themselves mainly to the practice 
 of a quality called Intellectuality, about 
 which people like me may hardly venture 
 to speak. Indeed, their solemnity much
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 29 
 
 impressed me, and, like the initiated, 
 they seemed to possess some inner secret 
 which gave a value to their words and 
 ways ; for it is impious to suppose them 
 created in vain. 
 
 ' But in the end, even in their case, I 
 learnt the reason of the Mother's sighs, 
 seeing that, for want of due admixture 
 with the earthy loam, the glimmering 
 blue substance itself began to grow thin 
 and pale, being lost in air, or fading 
 like a dyed cloth too often washed. The 
 best and unhappiest among them, con- 
 scious of the native beauty of their souls, 
 but shrinking from this boisterous world, 
 turned to contemplation of themselves 
 and criticism of their own growth or 
 decay. Thus the soul was diverted to 
 devour its own substance with a kind 
 of lustful appetite, amidst unimaginable 
 suffering, and the day of death alone put 
 an end to the torment. So self-centred 
 and subtle did they become that in face 
 of choice they could hesitate for ever.
 
 30 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 Many a one have I seen, at the meeting 
 of two suburban roads, bewailing his lot 
 and crying : " Here I stand. I can do 
 either. The devil damn me ! " No poison 
 of Colchis or Median torture was ever so 
 cruel as the suffering of such hesitation, 
 and the sharpness of the pain did not 
 deaden the gnawings of a vanity un- 
 appeased as the eagle of Prometheus. 
 Nevertheless, unlike the cheery crowd 
 which flings away life for a straw, the 
 victims clung to it with pitiless anxiety, 
 shuddering at hardship or danger. And 
 so, with pain and disgust they trod their 
 own blood in the wine-press, and prayed 
 that their torment might never cease.' 
 
 ' It is surely,' said Gordon, * some circle 
 of hell you describe, and not a race of 
 the living.' 
 
 * I describe what I saw,' answered the 
 god ; * and yet it is perhaps hard for me 
 to be kindly towards them ; for between 
 them and my worshippers there is war 
 without herald.'
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 31 
 
 * Again I ask you,' said Gordon, ' who 
 these worshippers of yours may be ? ' 
 
 The god smiled to himself, and gently 
 rubbed his shaggy legs together. 
 
 ' Ah/ he said, ' I have told you that 
 my worshippers are like myself; but 
 indeed I do not know whether I ought 
 not rather to call myself the worshipper 
 of them. In love, you know, it is hard 
 to say which is the lover and which the 
 beloved. And so it is with the gods and 
 their worshippers. And, as a lover pines 
 when his mistress is far away, or is de- 
 barred from him by some separable spite, 
 so that he can hardly be said to live till 
 he can again touch the hem of her gar- 
 ment, so should I pine and wither with- 
 out those quaint lovers of mine ; and if 
 they were to cease altogether, I should 
 necessarily die. But it is impious to 
 have such fears, though to some people 
 my fears are hopes.' 
 
 ' What fears or what hopes ? ' asked 
 Gordon.
 
 32 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 ' Let us go back,' said the god, ' to the 
 Great Mother at her kneading-trough. 
 You remember, we left her laughing 
 over some lumps of mud, into which she 
 was trying to knock a little decency. 
 In their making it appeared that part of 
 the blue etherial substance had streamed 
 away like smoke, and vanished before 
 the union was complete. Grotesque and 
 ungainly creatures they were, moving 
 heavily along, very close to the ground, 
 from which, in fact, they seldom dared 
 to look up for fear of missing their sus- 
 tenance. Mingled with them swarmed 
 the insects and water-things and birds, 
 and wild beasts innumerable. All had 
 a share in the etherial substance, but in 
 some, as in slugs and shellfish, it was 
 almost hidden, whereas in the others it 
 burnt and shone with a kind of longing, 
 like a prisoner behind bars. And when- 
 ever I saw that look, whether in the eye 
 of rat or bird or lion, a strange affection 
 possessed me, as though the creatures
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 33 
 
 were parts of myself, and had been 
 separated from me recently and by 
 accident. And I could have taken them 
 to my heart, as a girl takes her baby, 
 only that I feared the laughter of the 
 superior gods. But the Great Mother 
 smiled, and said : " My dear Pan, if you 
 would do me a service, continue to watch 
 over these wild things. You see how 
 sweet and excellently fashioned they 
 are. Nevertheless, this will not be your 
 greatest task." 
 
 ' And so, as the poets say, it is I who 
 hear the shrill cries of the eagles robbed 
 of their brood. I help the goat in her 
 labour, and teach her to lick the kid 
 all over with her blue tongue. I lurk 
 in the forest when the tigers are full of 
 love. I am in the look of the dog whom 
 his master kicks. I count all the sorrows 
 of the over- driven horse.' 
 
 ' One would suppose,' said Gordon, 
 'that this charge alone gave you plenty 
 
 to do.' 
 
 c
 
 34 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 * Yes,' said the god ; * but you forget 
 that I am both a god and a dog-of-all- 
 work. This charge is but a small part 
 of my labours. For, as I told you, I 
 stand at the meeting of many ways, and 
 each of them stretches to an invisible 
 distance, like the high roads from Delphi, 
 which is the navel of the earth. The 
 same is true of my worshippers, who, as 
 you remember, must necessarily be like 
 me. It is as hard to find the limits on 
 them as on my form, or to say which 
 part is beast, which is man, and which 
 is god. For into my especial care the 
 Mother also delivered all those strange 
 human figures which looked so brutish 
 nay, more brutish than the brutes. All 
 of them are my working charge, and the 
 poets were right in not limiting my 
 lovingkindness to the shepherds of these 
 hills alone. I sit beside the fisher all 
 night, far out at sea in his lonely boat. 
 He is rough and heavy, twisted with wet 
 and cold ; he smells of nets and fishes'
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 35 
 
 scales ; to me he is more beautiful than 
 the great marble Poseidon of Melos. 
 I stand with the hunter, waiting in the 
 snow till the furry creatures pass. I know 
 their swift pains and his joys, both. 
 Grizzled, and dried like leather, in his 
 old blue coat and bits of skins, he is 
 fairer to me than naked Artemis. I am 
 with the miner, hewing in his gallery 
 under the earth ; when the roof falls in, 
 I hold his battered head. His mates 
 say : " He wasn't a bad sort of man ; now 
 he must be buried." His wife and 
 children cry, and I cry with them, more 
 than for dead Zeus or an assassinated 
 king. I hold the ploughshare with the 
 ploughman, rejoicing in the damp earth 
 and in the man who is so like it ; no 
 perfumed Dionysus smells so sweet. 
 I teach queer tunes to the blind piper 
 who raises a feeble whistle in your 
 streets; trim Apollo, for all his lyre, 
 never woke such music. I bathe with 
 the boys in your brown river. The
 
 36 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 police carry off their scrappy shirts and 
 trousers. They run naked over the 
 slimy stones, more alert than Hermes, 
 and more eloquent. I am with the 
 soldier on the cool morning of battle, 
 when he eats and drinks and curses, all 
 for the last time. Beside him, Ares was 
 a theatrical poser. I am with the tanned 
 woman in the field, when she makes 
 haste to feed her child, and cannot be 
 quick enough, till suddenly it is still. 
 Her eyes are softer than a cow's or 
 Here's. But really you will think my 
 worshippers a most disreputable and 
 vulgar lot, quite incapable of under- 
 standing those joys of contemplation 
 and the rigid selection of emotions by 
 which you set so much store.' 
 
 'That's unfair,' said Gordon; 'none 
 but the vulgar would accuse such people 
 of vulgarity.' 
 
 'Nay, my son,' said the god, looking 
 kindly on him, 'if I mock you, it is 
 in self-defence. I care not, it is true,
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 37 
 
 for the disdain with which your refined 
 friends would regard me. With them 
 I take delight in thrusting out my hoofs 
 and displaying my goatish side. But 
 alone, or among my worshippers, do 
 you suppose I do not rejoice over our 
 gleams of inexplicable reason, our con- 
 sciousness of a yearning for we know 
 not what, our moments of transforming 
 passion, elevating us to the infinity of 
 gods? Those translucent regions at 
 which you aim may well have beauties 
 and joys that we can hardly picture. 
 I only ask to be remembered. It was 
 the petition I sent to the old Athenians 
 in their most pellucid air. Be not of 
 those who from their sphere of white 
 ideas cannot spare a glance into my 
 world of sombre colours flecked with 
 crimson. Is there no cause for marvel 
 in that warm obscurity where I with 
 my poor charges dwell amid the dust 
 and slime of old earth ? Like a torch - 
 lit cave, it is illumined with half-lights
 
 38 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 shed from rare sparkles of the eternal 
 fire. Is it no cause for worship that, 
 unprotected in our gloom and squalor, 
 from the midst of the daily efforts to 
 stave off death by a little food and 
 warmth, we who have been so long 
 called ignoble, insensate, brutal, and 
 depraved, should still for the most part 
 find time for kindliness and laughter 
 for a sort of decency, if not beauty 
 and for a thing you might almost call 
 virtue ? O my son, keep your ear close 
 against the ground, and you may still 
 hear strange music. As in old days, 
 when these Arcadians said I danced and 
 sang in the valleys, you may still hear 
 intermingled sounds of trampling and 
 song echoing from all parts of the earth 
 the cries of birth and death, the rush 
 of panic, and at times a sweet piping, 
 ringing clear above the dirge of confused 
 wailings and the alarms of drums. It is 
 the wild and unpremeditated music of 
 my children which you hear the melody
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 39 
 
 and recitative of old earth's opera, per- 
 formed from age to age by an unconscious 
 orchestra and choir, clustered around me 
 at that meeting-place of profound and 
 untraceable powers which lead far back- 
 ward and far onward, repellent and op- 
 posite to all seeming, but ever striving to 
 unite into a harmony of joy and sorrow.' 
 
 'Great is the power of opposites 
 combined,' said Gordon. 'Love him- 
 self, we know, is the child of plenty 
 and poverty.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the god ; ' and you have but 
 to look at my body to understand what 
 a strange union of spiritual opposites 
 went to its begetting. Nor must you 
 think me in the least ashamed of it, red 
 and brown and mingled as it is. The 
 moon the naked moon herself one 
 
 thin, white curve of loveliness O, 
 
 you remember the tale : 
 
 " Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon ! " 
 
 She scorned me not, she who scorned
 
 40 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 others. Have I not reason to be 
 proud ? ' 
 
 'Reason indeed,' said Gordon, 'to 
 dream on that night through an im- 
 mortal life.' 
 
 ' And the Philosopher, too,' continued 
 the god, 'do you suppose that he did 
 not know what he was saying when he 
 chose me of all the gods to whom to 
 address his prayer for beauty in the 
 inward soul ? And he added, " May the 
 outward and the inward man be at one?'" 
 
 ' That was a prayer indeed ! ' said 
 Gordon. 
 
 ' And he would not have addressed it 
 to me,' said the god, ' unless he had 
 known that I possessed such unity of 
 body and soul myself, and so could 
 give it. So then, my dear fellow, when 
 certain people make light of me and 
 my worshippers, and call us low and 
 brutish, I think upon the Moon and that 
 Philosopher, and in those thoughts I find 
 a consolation better than satire.
 
 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 41 
 
 ' But the sun just stands at noon, and 
 you know what the poet says : 
 
 " Shepherd, 'tis not allowed when noon is high 
 To pipe as shepherds, for there 's Pan to fear ; 
 He, wearied with his hunting, turns to sleep, 
 And if we rouse him O, the bitter rage ! " 
 
 So, to maintain the poetic tradition, I 
 must sleep now. It would never do to 
 betray the poets, when they have said so 
 many nice things about me. Therefore, 
 farewell now, and, as the ghost says, 
 remember me. ' 
 
 He put a hand on Gordon's shoulder 
 and was gone. Suddenly the air became 
 still and heavy. The wind sighed, and 
 sank. The sun himself seemed to halt 
 and brood. The dogs barked no more 
 in the valleys, and I did not hear the 
 long, melancholy cry of the shepherds. 
 Only a bee went on humming at a purple 
 flower for a while, and then suddenly it 
 ceased. I slept the sleep of the just 
 even more sweetly than usual. When 
 at last I woke, it must have been past
 
 42 A NEW PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 two. The Greek was sitting beside the 
 ponies again, playing with his beads. I 
 looked for Gordon, but there was no 
 trace of him, except that the grass where 
 he had been was pressed down. When 
 we got back to the little town, nobody 
 had seen him, and I have never heard 
 of him since. 
 
 For a moment I thought he was 
 possibly Apollo himself, reduced to the 
 position of a latter-day man of culture. 
 But he wore trousers, and even Pan had 
 not come to that. Though, to be sure, 
 there is no saying what a god might 
 not come to under a County Council.
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 43 
 
 II 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 ' There was a city once as sick as ours ; 
 Restless she lay upon her sea-washed throne, 
 Surmising evils. For the gods were gone, 
 Their white homes shut ; no victim gay with flowers 
 Gladden'd her altars, but on all the towers 
 Vague terror sat, and women made their moan 
 From street to street, foreboding ; save alone 
 Where he who knew the mind of heavenly powers 
 Implored Apollo. ' 
 
 But what Cretan old 
 Shall teach the lustral rite, and purify 
 Our country's slough, where pleasure coils with hate, 
 And hunger watches ? Who shall be so bold 
 As raise the healing prayer before she die ? 
 And to what god shall she be dedicate ? ' 
 
 THESE lines by an unknown writer, re- 
 ferring, probably, to the purification of 
 Athens by Epimenides, the Cretan, after 
 the Cylonian crime, were lately recalled 
 to my mind by a pleasant interview with 
 which I was unexpectedly honoured. 
 For on a clear day in early September
 
 44 
 
 I was fortunate enough to meet again 
 one of those ancient gods who, as is well 
 known, still haunt this ancient world, 
 and are recognised from time to time by 
 the most unlikely people. The only 
 strange thing about our meeting was 
 its place. I was wandering upon mere 
 English ground among Northumbrian 
 moors, and instead of pursuing wisdom 
 and the arts I was but poaching the 
 habits of curlew and vipers, or whatever 
 else I might pick up without unduly 
 enraging the owners of earth. Making 
 my way towards a line of hills which rose 
 gradually from the wastes and fronted 
 the north in sharp basalt cliffs, I crossed 
 a long, straight road, green from disuse, 
 and after wading through a bog of rushes 
 and the Parnassus grass, began to climb 
 the rising ground where a few mountain 
 sheep with speckled faces and long 
 yellow eyes were feeding among loose 
 heaps of rock. 
 
 Suddenly I became aware that those
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 45 
 
 grey ruins of a mountain were not piled 
 at random, but had been set in regular 
 forms and angles, like the foundation 
 walls of ancient buildings. And in- 
 credible old tales of history came into 
 my mind, how that somewhere in this 
 barbarous North, on the verge of Empire, 
 severed from all the world, Rome had 
 built a road and planted a wall, guarded 
 at intervals by towns where dwelt the 
 legions and generals far from the City. 
 Could it be that those stony haunts of 
 wheatears were relics left by the eagles ? 
 There stood the bases of the gates, round 
 stone columns still rising two or three 
 feet above the hawk-weed and brown 
 partridge-grass. The pavement between 
 them still showed the deep grooves worn 
 by cart-wheels in days when horses 
 understood the Roman tongue which 
 cursed them as they bumped through 
 the narrow entrance. I could trace the 
 little streets, and the doors of the tiny 
 houses, and the heating chambers for
 
 46 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 the baths, and the bakers' ovens. Near 
 the middle lay the foundations of the 
 Prefect's house, from which shivering 
 senators had watched the sun go early 
 down behind the grey bulwark of Cross 
 Fell. And under the tufts of grass I 
 tripped upon a stone which proved to be 
 a short column still left lying on its side. 
 Rolling it out of its trough in the reddish 
 earth, where centipedes and innumerable 
 ants and beetles scurried about like 
 women in a revolution, alarmed at the 
 light and air suddenly let in upon their 
 immemorial habits and habitations, I 
 discovered what appeared to be an in- 
 scription very rudely cut; and scraping 
 off the soil I slowly spelt out the two 
 words, Dibus viteribus. 'To the gods 
 of old,' I was forced to translate it, in 
 spite of the shock to my dim memories 
 of grammar, and it was a comfort to 
 reflect that the faithful and believing 
 soldier who had scratched that dedication 
 on the stone had escaped the smarting
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 47 
 
 penalty he would have received if he had 
 shown up such a specimen of Latin in 
 one of our public schools. 
 
 A little further up the hillside I was 
 confronted by a wall which from its solid 
 breadth and the regularity of its squared 
 stones I knew must be that hedge of 
 Empire, the great barrier itself. Like 
 the Great Wall of China, it could be 
 seen far away running up hill and down, 
 and at the dangerous gaps it was marked 
 by square fortresses. At this spot it 
 had been built within a few yards of the 
 very edge of the cliff, and climbing over 
 its broad and grass-grown top, I could 
 look far below through tufts of fern and 
 holly and mountain ash, barely rooted 
 in crannies of the precipitous rock, right 
 down upon a reedy lake, over the clear 
 centre of which coots were bobbing their 
 white-shielded heads, and expressing 
 their satisfaction with things as they are 
 in cries like the creaking of cart wheels. 
 Northward, the moorland lay stretched
 
 48 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 out, still and untenanted under the im- 
 mense air, like a brown and heaving sea, 
 with broken crests against the horizon's 
 rim. Behind me the autumn sun drove 
 slowly down the west, and now and then 
 a great bee or purple beetle lumbered 
 comfortably over the Wall, booming his 
 'cello note, to find himself next moment 
 hanging high in empty space above the 
 inhospitable water, perturbed as an alder- 
 man who has blundered eastward of 
 Aldgate Pump at the hour of lunch. 
 
 No human thing was in sight, except 
 that far away up the straight old road 
 I could just make out two little figures, 
 like laborious ants, dragging some heavy 
 burden along. It looked like a barrel- 
 organ, and I vaguely wondered what 
 they might be doing with it so far from 
 the dancing slums. But soon forgetting 
 them, I fell to imagining the day when 
 at last Rome drew in her shortened arm, 
 and the legions left their watch-fires to 
 smoulder out upon that cliff, and across
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 49 
 
 the moor in front the savages came 
 creeping until they climbed the wall 
 and cautiously entered the deserted forts 
 and peered along the empty streets of 
 that very town, gazing upon the statues 
 of gods with the awe of those who found 
 the senators silent in the Forum. In 
 marble's language they would read the 
 dedications of altars to the Arcadian 
 Pan and to the Apollo of Delphi. They 
 felt no qualms about the grammar of 
 Dibus viteribus. They felt no pity if 
 they deciphered the little tombstone of 
 Aurelia Quartilla, whose only history 
 was that she lived thirteen years, five 
 months, and twenty-two days, as I had 
 myself read in the Newcastle museum. 
 And now the abyss of time had swal- 
 lowed savages and gods, together with 
 the love which so carefully reckoned 
 Aurelia's life, and nothing of them all 
 was left but those few stones for anti- 
 quarians to germanise over. 
 
 Such ineffectual musings were sud- 
 D
 
 50 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 denly scattered by the sweet minor of 
 the popular song, beginning, * Again the 
 cricket wakes to sing.' Turning my 
 head quickly, I beheld a sight strangely 
 out of keeping with the surroundings. 
 Near the eastern gate of that old Roman 
 town an Italian organ-grinder was rolling 
 out the tune with an air of concentrated 
 fervour very different from the aristo- 
 cratic unconcern of his class : and on a 
 level space in front of him a slender girl, 
 very poorly clad, was dancing in time to 
 the regular beat of the music. At first 
 I thought she danced the London mode, 
 which, being Semitic in origin, is per- 
 haps the same as pleased King Herod. 
 But I saw that in her was more restraint 
 and art, and that at definite pauses her 
 upturned palms were raised towards the 
 sun. Nine times the tune was repeated, 
 and nine times, without variation, the 
 girl went through her dance. Then the 
 music stopped, and together they dragged 
 the organ close up to the wall beside me.
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 51 
 
 ' I don't know why it is, dear,' I heard 
 her say, ' but it seems as if I could go on 
 dancing for ever out here ; only we must 
 be careful of the instrument, and ;your 
 time is not quite perfect.' 
 
 ' Do not fret, sweet emblem of eternity,' 
 answered the man. ' I hope to learn the 
 organ's ways in the course of years. 
 They can hardly be more difficult than 
 woman's, I suppose. And, as the wise 
 man said, I would fain grow old learning 
 many things.' 
 
 I looked and saw the wild god's eyes, 
 sad and appealing as a dog's, and over 
 all his half-brutish features the sweet 
 human smile, illumining sorrow, or defy- 
 ing it. 
 
 ' Dear Pan, you are far from your 
 Arcadian home,' I said, when they had 
 climbed the wall and sat down to rest 
 beside me. 
 
 ' As far/ he replied, * as a lover's heart 
 from his far-off mistress, and no further. 
 But in recognising me you pay yourself
 
 52 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 a fine compliment ; for the poet says it 
 is hard for a man to know the gods by 
 sight, but the gods are known to each 
 other.' 
 
 * Will you tell me,' I asked, ' why it is 
 that you are here ? ' 
 
 'You see,' he answered, 'there is as 
 yet no Pauper Immigration Act to ex- 
 clude gods who have come down a little 
 in the world ; so that I was able to visit 
 these regions in obedience to a command. 
 You will think me very old-fashioned 
 for practising obedience instead of prais- 
 ing it as an excellent thing for others, 
 especially for the poor. But I 'm afraid 
 I was born a little old-fashioned, and I 
 find obedience the only virtue pleasant 
 in itself to practise. Every lover, at all 
 events, declares that he would rather be 
 a slave than free, if the beloved were his 
 mistress.' 
 
 ' But in obedience to what command,' 
 I asked, ' do you bring a piano-organ out 
 into the moors ? '
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 53 
 
 * A voice,' he replied, ' kept repeating 
 in my ears the warning " Do not forget 
 the god." Now, I myself at one time 
 sent a similar message to the Athenians, 
 and being still mindful of the pain of 
 neglect, I was sorry to think that the 
 god should be suffering from any neglect 
 of mine, especially as he had always been 
 so much my superior both in intellect 
 and character. So for a long time I 
 wondered how best I could comfort him 
 by assurance of my piety, till at last I 
 remembered that the Philosopher also 
 kept hearing a warning voice, which 
 commanded him to cultivate the Muses ; 
 and after he was sentenced to death, 
 rather than leave the world without 
 having obeyed the voice, he set to and 
 made poetry, turning ^Bsop into verse, 
 though he had but a day or so more to 
 live, and most people would have thought 
 it hardly worth while just before their 
 execution to begin the practice of an 
 art upon which the poets are said to
 
 54 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 spend a good deal of time, and not 
 always to very good purpose. Anxious, 
 therefore, not to be surpassed in piety 
 even by a philosopher, I cast about 
 whether I might not serve the god in 
 some similar manner. For I had heard 
 that service is strength, and were I weak 
 as water I would rather be poured into 
 a serviceable cup than slopped about at 
 random.' 
 
 'But what form of service,' I asked, 
 ' is possible with a barrel-organ in the 
 desert?' 
 
 * In towns,' he answered, * where people 
 are so clever and so ready to exercise their 
 gifts for the improvement of others, I 
 feared that my homely strains would be 
 scorned. But just as a man can always 
 get plenty of love by paying his court 
 to women whom no one else will notice, 
 I thought I could best serve the god 
 among people for whose welfare there 
 is little artistic or philanthropic com- 
 petition. And it seemed to me possible
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 55 
 
 that in this solitude I might perhaps find 
 some one who had escaped having good 
 done to him, and so would be ready to 
 welcome me. As to the organ, I hoped 
 the god would consider it an advance 
 from my own reedy pipings towards the 
 music of the harp, by which the poets 
 tell us he introduces peaceful law into 
 the soul ; and certainly the harp used 
 to be of real service as medicine in the 
 olden time. This piano-organ, at any 
 rate, is the nearest approach to it which 
 I can master if indeed I may call my- 
 self master of it and there is no know- 
 ing what its effect might be upon mental 
 invalids. But I will not deny that at 
 first the task appeared to me distasteful. 
 Educated persons have bestowed much 
 pity upon Apollo for having to tend 
 flocks for the shepherd-king Admetus. 
 But no one reflects how much more 
 pitiful it would have been for Admetus 
 to have to serve Apollo, fooling his 
 time away on music and things of the
 
 56 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 mind when he wanted to be following 
 the ewes great with young. Might it 
 not in this sense be true that, as one of 
 your own priests said, religion is a good 
 servant but a bad master ? ' 
 
 ' Then why, beloved god,' I said, ' did 
 you take up the service at all ? ' 
 
 ' Nay,' he answered, smiling ; ' never 
 ask me for reasons. A watched pot 
 never boils, you know ; and it was a 
 wise law in Sparta which compelled even 
 married lovers to see each other only by 
 stealth. And so, keeping a warm and 
 secret heart, I will bid you now farewell.' 
 
 ' Oh, don't go yet,' said the girl sleepily, 
 for she had stretched herself full length 
 upon the tufted grass between us. * To 
 be here with you is the divine deliverance 
 you speak of so often. And I think the 
 mountains were at some time my home, 
 for each looks as though he knew me and 
 wondered what had happened to me all 
 these years.' 
 
 ' Let sleeping women lie,' said the god,
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 57 
 
 smiling again; 'and to that end, I will 
 tell you a sleepy vision which was in 
 a manner the direct cause of my pre- 
 sence here. When first those warning: 
 
 o 
 
 voices came, I was sullen as a lover who 
 is not jealous indeed, but is humbled at 
 the thought that in some respect his 
 service must have fallen short, since his 
 mistress needs the aid or converse of 
 others than himself. Why should my 
 worshippers wish for any help but mine ? 
 In what, I thought to myself, is the 
 hand of the harp-player more skilled 
 than the hand of the sower who 
 delicately scatters his grain ? Did not 
 Xenophon himself say that kneading 
 dough and shaking up beds and arrang- 
 ing pots and pans were movements as 
 beautiful as a religious or cultivated 
 dance, and that the inside of a Phoenician 
 ship showed method and order more 
 truly musical than the works of recent 
 musicians ? The Spartan king would 
 not turn aside to hear a man imitate
 
 58 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 a nightingale to perfection, for he had 
 heard the nightingale herself. The 
 ploughboy, at whose coming the old 
 cart-horse pricks his ears and breathes 
 delight down his nostrils, knows more 
 about the horse than all the artists, 
 poets, and professors. To speak of such 
 a man as uneducated is as absurd as to 
 instruct a savage by means of stuffed 
 specimens of his country's beasts in a 
 museum. Seeing, therefore, that many 
 were engaged in such arts, and more 
 in talking upon them with airs of great 
 solemnity, I turned in wrath from man 
 as being a dull and frivolous creature, 
 like all grown-up people in the eyes of 
 children, and I took refuge with mice 
 and little birds and unseen lilies, which 
 belong to a nobler order of existence 
 than man; for they do not whine over 
 unreal fictions and lament surroundings 
 too harsh for their sensitive souls, but 
 live in self-sufficient joy and struggle, 
 and die without obituary notices.
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 59 
 
 ' But as I roamed, full of injured rage, 
 the shade of the Great Mother herself 
 stood before me, and she smiled through 
 sadness, as when she sat in sorrow by the 
 well at Eleusis, and smiled at lambe's 
 merry words ; for the girl, you remember, 
 was bright as a young doe in the fields, 
 and her hair danced like daffodils upon 
 the wind. Then she stroked me with 
 her hand, and said, "Dear and trusty 
 Dog-of- all- work, like the Pythagoreans 
 I would bid you neither eat your heart 
 nor poke the fire with your sword. Be 
 not righteous overmuch, but condescend 
 to consider yet again those humble souls 
 over whom I gave you charge if, in- 
 deed, we may be allowed to call them 
 souls at all. You will find in nearly all 
 of them one very strange desire and 
 delight, reaching far back to those 
 remote wells of being from which you 
 yourself are sprung. For you surely 
 remember the somewhat primitive mon- 
 sters which were your childhood's play
 
 60 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 mates winged crocodiles and serpen- 
 tining kangaroos and elephants with fins 
 and plashing feet. Did they not solace 
 a yearning in their hearts with dragon 
 cat-calls and trumpetings from giraffe- 
 like necks, resounding merrily over the 
 sluggish ooze where now they lie coldly 
 embedded, and give no sign of all that 
 wild desire for something they hardly 
 knew what something hardly com- 
 patible, one would have supposed, with 
 their grotesque and earthly forms ? And 
 in these present days, when the world 
 has grown gentle and mature, the spider 
 yet takes a pleasure in tapping his tail 
 hour after hour upon a patch of hollow 
 wood. The death-watch beetle, active 
 leaper though he be, stands still a whole 
 night through just for the joy of listen- 
 ing to the click of his jerking neck ; for 
 it seems he gets no extra pleasure from 
 the terrors of maids and lubber hinds 
 upon their straw. For his own delight 
 the cricket with repeated chirp makes
 
 A TRIESTESS TO APOLLO 61 
 
 night companionable to the wanderer 
 from farm to farm. The bittern and 
 the snipe drum and boom from the 
 darkening fen. At supreme moments 
 of a lover's night the night-jar sounds 
 a higher and tenderer note, and claps 
 his soft wings like muffled cymbals above 
 his back. The slug-eating savage drubs 
 his tom-tom till he faints in unim- 
 agined ecstasy. At the thud and rumble 
 of a stick on a dried skin every brave 
 heart throbs with double valour. And 
 even ^Eschylus, who fought by your side 
 at Marathon, and rightly ordered that 
 his presence in the battle should be the 
 only fact engraved upon his tomb, spent 
 much of his life in making poetry. If, 
 then, in all these charges of yours there 
 is found some common desire, some 
 common delight, it must be impossible 
 for you to remain indifferent to it, or 
 contemptuous." 
 
 ' " Impossible, certainly, dear lady," I 
 answered, "for I may be called a lover
 
 62 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 of my worshippers, and lovers say that to 
 them the whole of the beloved's nature 
 is entirely lovable, nor can anything in 
 it be thought of as common or unclean." 
 ' " But this strange quality of which I 
 speak," she continued, " is said to be due 
 to the promptings of the god, and with- 
 out it those charges of ours might, 
 perhaps, too readily fall under the 
 tyranny of inert flesh, like the Cyclops 
 who sacrificed only to himself and to 
 his belly, which was in his opinion the 
 greatest of the gods. If, therefore, the 
 gift of the god helps to save them from 
 a swinish ease, lest the brief generations 
 of living things should die in their own 
 fat, like the flame of overladen candles, 
 and pass into their long sleep before they 
 are well awake, I entreat you to listen 
 to the warning voice, and not to blas- 
 pheme, but serve. For I would that 
 all my creatures were quick in spirit, 
 tempered like deer-hounds straining at 
 the start. If the god's power, then, can
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 63 
 
 help to this end, let us beseech his favour 
 that the words and deeds of our worship- 
 pers may be arranged as the notes of the 
 true Dorian mood, that raises men to 
 the better part of discretion, which, as 
 you know, is valour ; and being Dorian, 
 the mood, no doubt, is Apollo's own." 
 
 ' That is what my mistress, the Great 
 Mother, said,' continued the sunburnt 
 deity; 'and now whenever I meet the 
 express followers of the god passing 
 through life with that solemn aloofness 
 of theirs, like cranes stalking through a 
 poultry-yard, so that I am overcome by 
 the grandeur of their words and appear- 
 ance, I find a reassuring comfort in the 
 thought that even common and innocent 
 creatures of my own, such as spiders, 
 beetles, and crickets, are touched by a 
 similar spirit, being, as it seems, in some 
 degree inspired also by the god. To my 
 ignorance, of course, many mysteries 
 remain impenetrable mysteries of the 
 sphere in which critics and philosophers
 
 64 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 and poets and musicians habitually 
 move ; but being unwilling to blaspheme 
 like an ill-bred dog which goes sniffing 
 about a sanctuary, I have determined 
 to do what best service I could with 
 this humble instrument. So, taking this 
 strange girl to bear me company, I came 
 first to the place where you saw her 
 dancing just now. For it was the site 
 of a shrine to the god, erected by a 
 Roman cohort in obedience to Apollo 
 himself, speaking from Claros on the 
 Ephesian bay. And perhaps the god's 
 divinity still lingers there, though his 
 service was early corrupted into the 
 mystical worship of Mithras by one of 
 those clouds of insanity which from age 
 to age sweep up from the bewildered 
 East, confusing the mind till it sees the 
 god's power in signs and miracles rather 
 than in the daily glory of light and joy. 
 But indeed, sir, upon such dim themes 
 you must suffer me to be silent. My 
 concern is with this ancient little world,
 
 65 
 
 and a world in the hand is worth two 
 in the nebula. Besides, as you know, I 
 never could make a long speech without 
 putting on a veil like a politician, except 
 that I wear the veil visibly over my face.' 
 
 We sat silent for a time, looking to- 
 wards the haunted Borderland, whilst 
 the girl slept upon the grass. 
 
 'Dear beast and god,' I said at last, 
 * I fear that in professing obedience to 
 Apollo you are but beguiling me. For 
 he died long ago, and his temples are 
 ruined. I have read that one of the 
 latest of the Pythian prophetesses was 
 a poor peasant's daughter, pure and 
 beautiful, but unlearned as your com- 
 panion there. And when she was set 
 upon the tripod, and the pilgrims stood 
 outside awaiting her responses, she re- 
 fused to prophesy to them, but remained 
 dumb as a statue. When at last she 
 spoke, her voice was wild and incompre- 
 hensible, and her body writhed like a 
 ship tormented by the wind. Then, to 
 E
 
 66 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 the terror of priests and pilgrims alike, 
 she shrieked and fell, and when they 
 ventured to return they found her pros- 
 trate as the dead. A few days after, it 
 was given out that she had actually died, 
 being too frail to bear the inrush of the 
 god. But others said that Apollo had 
 made her an immortal wanderer for ever, 
 like that earliest Pythian, whose face is 
 still seen upon the wandering moon. 
 That peasant girl, at any rate, was one 
 of the last priestesses of whom we have 
 a definite account ; and when, a few 
 generations later, the Apostate sent 
 Oribasius, his physician and quaestor, to 
 restore the temple, it was no priestess, 
 but the dying voice of the god himself 
 which was heard then for the last time 
 in all this world crying with calm 
 lamentation : 
 
 " Go, tell the king, to earth the daedal house 
 Has fallen, and no longer Phoebus owns 
 His hidden cell or his prophetic bays 
 Or murmuring spring ; the murmuring spring is 
 hush'd." '
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 67 
 
 I had hardly finished the well-known 
 lines when the girl moved in her sleep, 
 smiling like one who slowly wakes and 
 feels he has a hidden joy at heart, but 
 does not yet remember what it is. 
 * Apollo ! King Apollo ! ' she cried. Full 
 of astonishment, I saw her eyes open and 
 become fixed upon the blue above her. 
 Under the soiled and worn points of 
 her cotton bodice her breasts heaved like 
 the Sibyl's. 'Apollo! King Apollo!' 
 came the old Greek cry again, and then 
 like a dim memory which unexpectedly 
 flits across the mind and is gone, fol- 
 lowed her sudden story of the past. 
 
 * It was early morning,' she said, * and 
 the air was cold. High up above me 
 the twin peaks of the mountain only just 
 glimmered with snow under the rising 
 light. The night was still dark in the 
 laurels at the mountain's foot, where the 
 gorge divides the cliff, and the cypress 
 at the turn of the road coming up from 
 the plain could hardly yet be seen. But
 
 68 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 the smoke of myrrh was already rising 
 from the temple itself, and the god's 
 servants moved about like shades among 
 the columns, sprinkling water from the 
 holy stream, and sweeping off the dust 
 of yesterday with olive boughs. Others 
 scared the birds from the roof with cries 
 and arrows. I stood by the entrance- 
 door and waited, looking towards my 
 father's farm, where the cows would now 
 be calling from the byre. It was only 
 three days since the priest came while I 
 was milking, and summoned me to be the 
 priestess to the god. But unwillingly I 
 changed my clothes and went with them, 
 crying along the road at the thought of 
 leaving my father and mother and the 
 cattle and goats, who all unwillingly saw 
 me go. Therefore now I looked to- 
 wards my home till the light crept down 
 the waterfalls of the Gleaming Crags, 
 and soon I could see the divine forms 
 fixed upon the temple the strong man 
 ridding the world of monsters, and Pallas
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 69 
 
 laying the giants low, and King Apollo 
 himself. And the shields hanging above 
 the columns sounded faintly, like bronze 
 bells in the morning wind. But the 
 inner shrine was covered up with cur- 
 tains, and Heaven was woven upon 
 them, gathering all his stars. There was 
 Night, and the Pleiades, and the Sailors' 
 Guides, and Orion with his sword, and 
 Arctus twisting the sky round the Pole. 
 And on the ground in the midst of the 
 sanctuary lay the great white stone, 
 the centre of the earth, crowned with 
 flowers, and Gorgons watch over it for 
 ever. The sacred roads from all the 
 ends of the world lead to it, and they 
 are at peace for ever. 
 
 ' Then I saw a band of sacred envoys 
 coming down the road cleft through the 
 mountains from the east, for Athens 
 had sent them, since watchers on the 
 Acropolis had seen the summer light- 
 ning give the sign above Mount Parnes. 
 Pilgrims were coming, too, up from the
 
 70 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 sea, making their way into the moun- 
 tains across the consecrated plain, where 
 they had put to shore after long voyages 
 from islands and unknown promontories. 
 On the temple's altar the sacrifices of 
 frankincense and corn and mallows were 
 now made ready, and in my hands were 
 placed the laurel-leaves and barley, and 
 water from the sacred spring. Then I 
 was made to eat and drink of them, 
 standing beside the entrance of the deep 
 chasm where the vapour issues from the 
 heart of the prophetic Earth. And out- 
 side I could hear the pilgrims talking 
 together, and telling each other the 
 reasons why they had come. Most of 
 them were poor country people like us, 
 shepherds who had paid a lamb for the 
 journey and fishermen who had sailed 
 to the god in their own little boats. 
 And their questions were about the 
 barren wife or the erring son, or the 
 oppression of the rich. For the god 
 could strike, but was pitiful, and could
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 71 
 
 heal. From age to age he had governed 
 kings and taught wisdom to the wise, 
 and yet in this very temple he had said 
 that he knew the number of the sand 
 and the measure of the sea, and under- 
 stood the dumb, and gave ear to him 
 that speaketh not. Surely, then, he, if 
 any, would listen to the silent crying of 
 the poor. So they spoke among them- 
 selves, telling the reasons why they had 
 come, and the answer to all their fears 
 and doubts was to be uttered by me. 
 
 * Suddenly I heard new footsteps, and 
 the inmost recess was opened and I was 
 led in, full of fear. I saw the bottomless 
 chasm and the breath of the prophetic 
 Earth rising from it. A seat of bronze 
 stood over the chasm, half covered in 
 the smoke, and I was set upon it and 
 left alone to wait for the coming of the 
 god. Still I heard the questions and 
 prayers for guidance ringing in my ears, 
 but, covering my face with my hands, 
 I waited, for I was afraid. And how
 
 72 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 should I speak wisdom to the poor, I 
 who was a poor maid and nothing ? So 
 astonishment held me silent, and I 
 waited for the god. 
 
 ' Long I waited and there was no sign, 
 but the outlines of the columns around 
 me began to shiver and fade, as though 
 a grey darkness were stealing in. I shut 
 my eyes in terror that something would 
 befall, and waited in such silence that I 
 heard my blood leaping with expecta- 
 tion. Suddenly on the silence came a 
 low wail of sorrow, and I knew it 
 for what it was the cry of a mother 
 over the erring son, when she saw him 
 netted and transfixed upon the arena 
 of a far-off city, while row upon row 
 of spectators shouted applause. Quickly 
 there came another cry, as of mingled 
 joy and anguish, and I knew that a 
 woman in a mountain hut of Lace- 
 dasmon had borne a son, so fruitful had 
 been the shepherd's visit to the god. 
 After that cry, a gasp, hardly audible
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 73 
 
 upon the air, shivered through the sanc- 
 tuary, and I saw the rich oppressor 
 lying upon his bed, his legs drawn up 
 in pain beneath the lion's skin ; the 
 purple hangings of the door just moved, 
 and some one was creeping out. Then 
 came the voice of the lover wandering 
 far away unsatisfied, but ever drawing 
 closer, and the whispered supplications 
 of the beloved, longing no less than he, 
 till with hardly time for one low sound 
 heart lay on heart. I heard the shout of 
 fighting men, the clash of their swords, 
 the short, hard breathing of things upon 
 the edge of life, and the low sob like a 
 child's as the iron plunged into their 
 flesh. And afterwards came the voice 
 of a shepherd calling to his flock up the 
 deep gorge of Pindus where the black 
 ilex grows. With his cries the sound of 
 a pipe was mingled ; it had but three 
 notes, but ah ! with what sweetness its 
 music filled the air, telling of peace and 
 sunny weather. But joy was broken by
 
 74 
 
 the thud of drums, and I beheld the 
 hosts of Ethiopia beating the ground 
 with black and naked feet. In the face 
 of the moon they shook the lance, and 
 the ground was staked out with the 
 heads of their enemies. Again I heard 
 the sound of dancing, and saw a cleared 
 circle among pines beside a northern sea ; 
 and on it danced a girl, her black hair 
 whirling like a driven cloud ; the brass 
 and silver of her armlets jangled together; 
 from the onlookers, swaying with her 
 form, the jangle of innumerable brass 
 and silver arose, and above it shrilled the 
 panting and long-drawn sighs of many 
 lutes. Quicker and quicker grew the 
 dance; the spotted furs rose and fell 
 around the wild girl's limbs ; the blaze of 
 wooden logs turned her to crimson ; she 
 flickered like a tongue of flame upon the 
 ground. Then the grey mists fell, and 
 I beheld long lines of speechless men, 
 moving solemnly through a land like 
 thin grey snakes; they came from vie-
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 75 
 
 torious war, but on a broad iron shield 
 in front of them they carried their leader 
 dead. With horns and muffled drums 
 they told their deep-toned sorrow to the 
 clouds. Then rose the triumph of long 
 trumpets sounding together, note after 
 note, and all with one blare of glory ; 
 and I saw long processions of white- 
 robed priests moving towards a white 
 temple upon a promontory, and praising 
 the god with song and music as they 
 went. But after the trumpets I heard 
 the sighing of a free but vanquished 
 people, and their low cries of anguish 
 and defiance as the conqueror stamped 
 them into the burnt and bloodstained 
 ground, while now and then one among 
 them would raise the thin echo of the 
 songs they used to sing when freedom 
 was theirs. 
 
 * So I listened and gazed, while scene 
 after scene upon the world's face passed 
 before me, and I seemed to understand 
 the voice of all joy and sorrow, from the
 
 76 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 singing of the little child who follows 
 the cows down hill, to the lamentations 
 of Asia over the Great King dead. Like 
 strands in the interwoven work of the 
 loom the voices of men and women 
 sounded amid the cries of birds and 
 beasts, the wailing of the wind, the 
 rustle of trees, and the gulp and reitera- 
 tion of the sea. So that the whole earth 
 seemed to utter a music of pleasure and 
 pain, as she swung beneath the bridge of 
 the Milky Way. Whether that music 
 is heard at all by the moon and nearer 
 stars, or whether the earth appears to 
 them dumb as a dolphin, which loves 
 melody indeed, but cannot sing what 
 prophet is wise enough to tell ? But I 
 could hear it, for the god granted me 
 power ; and at the sound of all that sad- 
 ness and desire I was overcome as by 
 the voice of Destiny, which Zeus himself 
 obeys. And as the music grew I heard 
 the far-off footsteps of the god, so that 
 in wonder I cried aloud, and falling
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 77 
 
 prone upon the steps of the shrine I 
 saw the temple and the inrushing people 
 but for a moment, nor ever again there- 
 after, for the god took me to himself 
 that I might be his handmaid in many 
 lands.' 
 
 Her voice suddenly ceased, and her 
 eyes were closed again. For a while the 
 cross-bred god and I watched her as she 
 lay between us. 
 
 'It seems,' he said at last, 'that the 
 god has again borne her from the world, 
 like a dream on wings which follow down 
 the ways of sleep. But her presence 
 here proves it was rather rash of you to 
 speak of the god as dead. For we must 
 suppose him at least as long-lived as a 
 being to whom he gave immortality. 
 And you will remember besides that a 
 god lives exactly as long as he has wor- 
 shippers; nor can we refuse the title of 
 worshipper to the priestess, though she 
 was but a peasant girl. If, then, he be 
 still alive, may we without impiety in-
 
 78 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 quire what would be his abiding function 
 in this our time ? ' 
 
 * To you the search would be of special 
 interest,' I replied ; ' for I remember an 
 old, old story that you yourself were 
 Apollo's first teacher in music on the 
 plains where Troy was afterwards to 
 stand. It is a significant tale.' 
 
 * Oh, sir,' said the god modestly, ' spare 
 me the schoolmaster's reflected glory a 
 sad consolation at the best, especially 
 when he has been so far surpassed by his 
 pupil. But let us rather resume the 
 god's attributes in brief, so that we may 
 the more easily recognise him, should we 
 meet with any trace of his power. He 
 was born late in time, you remember, 
 and after long throes of anguish, fore- 
 shadowing the toil of the wise. The 
 unmoving world would not receive him, 
 but a floating island of adventure was his 
 cradle. Delos was its name among men, 
 but the poet heard the gods call it the 
 shining star on earth's black round. For,
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 79 
 
 from his birth up, the god, like rising 
 light, did battle against the shadows and 
 spectres which crowd the poor bewildered 
 mind with false shapes of hope and fear. 
 And because he was the enemy of all 
 that is vague and distorted, it was to his 
 radiance that the maddened penitent 
 turned, when dogged by the shapeless 
 phantoms of memory and remorse, child- 
 less children of the night, which sit 
 beside the wakeful pillow ; and to him 
 the Cretan prophet prayed, summoned 
 to dispel the unreal terrors which brooded 
 over Athens, when her gods had turned 
 away because of her cruel sin. 
 
 'And it appears that Apollo's mode 
 of reassuring the mind and purging it of 
 its self-created tormentors, was an exer- 
 cise of mind and body by which the 
 senses became awake to the definite 
 forms of beauty, rejecting all that is 
 chaotic and vague. And by this art of 
 his he converted the shocks and blows 
 of earth into a music of song and march,
 
 80 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 which to the hearing ear brought with 
 it the inestimable benefit of happiness. 
 For he who caught the sound of that 
 harmony in word or music, though it 
 might be the sorrowful utterance of some 
 voice crying in the wilderness of a city's 
 wealth, was at once pervaded with joy 
 and went forward with fresh courage, 
 like a soldier who hears his comrade 
 calling to him far off among the enemy. 
 His sight was renewed, and to him the 
 world was transfigured with truth, so 
 that he perceived what had hitherto lain 
 unseen before his eyes, and the earth 
 looked fresh again like the new moon, 
 or, as the Italians say, like a mouth that 
 is kissed. I suppose it is because they 
 sometimes have a share in this divine 
 power of renewing and revealing the old 
 world that poets and writers and people 
 of that sort have often been tolerated 
 among serious, warlike, and hard-working 
 people. Do you not think that may be 
 the reason ?
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 81 
 
 'At any rate, I have been told that 
 he who really heard the god's word was 
 raised to a higher state than his nature 
 seemed to promise ; just as real lovers 
 are much better people when they are 
 together, being full of unwonted gener- 
 osity and a courage that will go through 
 fire. From such a man's soul the word 
 of the god drove the dull passions which 
 go to their satisfaction half-hearted and 
 sleepy, like tame and hireling animals, 
 and, instead of watching at each turn for 
 the guide-posts of conduct, he strenu- 
 ously followed those inner counsels of 
 perfection which are the god's tables of 
 commandments. Nations, even from a 
 distance, have been drawn by the ap- 
 parition of those rare flames in the dark, 
 and have been encouraged by the very 
 thought of their presence in the common 
 life. They have listened to them as to 
 the oracles of the god himself, for by 
 word and deed such followers of his pre- 
 sented to the soul a world which seemed
 
 82 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 like its native home. They revealed to 
 the heart its forgotten secrets, as music 
 sometimes may, and gave it the peace of 
 energy fulfilled. Communing with them, 
 man rose to an unaccustomed but 
 natural height, from which the true 
 value of things was manifest, so that, 
 like the god himself, he could enter, 
 lightly but securely armed, into the 
 contest with the Pythons and other 
 dreary spirits which cried and ravaged 
 around the mountain's base. 
 
 * If then,' the pastoral deity continued, 
 in a very cheerful tone, ' the power of 
 the god has really been of this nature in 
 the past ; and if, as seems likely, he is 
 still able to give succour, perhaps I was 
 right in listening to the voice which 
 warned me not to forget him. At 
 any rate, I would willingly serve him 
 to the best of my skill, in the spirit 
 of that blind old Spartan who com- 
 pelled his friends to lead him into the 
 thick of the battle, exclaiming, "At
 
 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 83 
 
 least I shall do to blunt an enemy's 
 sword ! " 
 
 * And for such service,' I said, * your 
 barrel-organ is no doubt sufficient.' 
 
 'More than sufficient,' he answered, 
 * if only I could play it really well. But 
 as we are so close to the god's altar here, 
 perhaps you would allow me to offer up 
 a brief prayer before we go. With your 
 permission, then, I would pray the god 
 to keep my mind from phantoms and 
 from hesitation and from half-desires. 
 A god of such high powers is surely able 
 to grant such simple petitions as those. 
 But for me they would be quite enough 
 to ask, and so I may be silent now. 
 Words on horseback, you know, were 
 always far beyond my power. 
 
 * But awake, my beloved of the kindred 
 earth ! Your knowledge of the god is 
 surely greater than mine. Once more 
 allow the organ's handle to kiss the 
 tender inward of your hand, that having 
 played another tune to his honour we
 
 84 A PRIESTESS TO APOLLO 
 
 may set out upon our way. For indeed 
 I am as hungry as the grasshoppers when 
 they starved themselves to death in their 
 delight at listening to the Muses' song.' 
 
 The air she played was another simple 
 music-hall melody, such vulgar and 
 tavern music as, in Sir Thomas Browne's 
 words, makes one man merry, another 
 mad, but struck in him a deep fit of 
 devotion and a profound contemplation 
 of the first composer. When it was 
 finished they turned westward, bidding 
 me farewell, and the edge of the horizon, 
 as the earth revolved, hid them and 
 the sun together. Then the ways were 
 darkened, and all the stars shone out, so 
 that the shepherd's heart was glad.
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 85 
 
 III 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 THROUGH the long noon, while the sun 
 marched as usual across the enormous 
 sky through the dead hours of the 
 day, when thunder fell upon us like 
 blows, and the lightning's white arm 
 could hardly pierce the shrieking 
 columns of the rain, I lay upon the 
 mountain-side among the soldiers of a 
 large army. In war, as in extreme grief, 
 a numbness overcomes the spirit; the 
 mind swoons under the stress of anxiety 
 or pain ; it can feel no more, and can 
 realise no more. Situations which at 
 other times would appear to it incredible 
 and dreamlike with terror, are then 
 quite natural, as though they came in 
 the ordinary course. Horror, astonish-
 
 86 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 ment, the realisation of the truth these 
 are things that grow up afterwards, but 
 for the time, perception and even fear 
 are stifled by something, which is per- 
 haps their own excess. My chief thought 
 was a weary longing for the night. 
 When would the night come to shelter 
 us from that other shrieking storm which 
 swept across the woof of drenching 
 water ? When would it come to lull 
 that other thunder which rattled and 
 paused and was renewed and died away 
 and roared again with quickened rage 
 as though in mortal haste for our de- 
 struction ? Hour after hour I lay, peering 
 vainly into the chaos of rain and lightning 
 and invisible peril, while around me the 
 air sang and growled with lead, and men 
 died. The fate of an army, the issue of 
 a war, depended on the mountain ridge 
 where I was lying, and of such advan- 
 tages as an attacking force can hold, the 
 enemy had all. Yet I no more con- 
 sidered defeat than did the gods when
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 87 
 
 the Titans set about their assault upon 
 heaven, and the men around me seemed 
 to realise no more than myself either the 
 importance of the struggle or its meaning 
 to themselves. 
 
 Food, drink, and the coming night 
 that would end our danger those were 
 the things we thought of; and among 
 the coarse grass and rocks on which we 
 lay, beetles and ants were hurrying up 
 and down, seeking escape from the 
 stormy rivulets of the rain. 
 
 Night came at last. Somewhere be- 
 hind that whirling curtain of storm and 
 war, the sun departed to light the tinkling 
 lines of muleteers up quiet gorges of the 
 Andes. Renewed now and again in 
 spitting outbursts like the end of angry 
 words, the firing slackened. In the 
 gathering darkness, forms of unusual 
 size began to move about. Men got up 
 from invisible hiding-places and shook 
 themselves, as though shaking off the 
 fear of death. With just the same
 
 88 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 interest they tried to rub the slime from 
 their knees. They spat, and turned 
 their heads, and looked at each other. 
 One or two whispered something, as 
 people whisper in church or at a funeral. 
 An officer came by, trying to walk as 
 usual. He contrived to speak aloud 
 after a few attempts, and fire and thunder 
 mixed never fell on us with so strange a 
 shock as the sound of his voice. The 
 men watched him go as ghosts might 
 watch a fellow-ghost in limbo, and his 
 word of command was passed almost 
 silently from mouth to mouth. 
 
 Tormented by thirst, I turned and 
 scrambled down the hill to the narrow 
 road which in peace time had led from 
 one little village to another far away 
 across the position we were defending. 
 A mere track of loose stones and mud, 
 it was now choked from end to end by 
 all the chaos which eddies behind the 
 course of battle : the wounded on 
 stretchers dripping red, the wounded in
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 89 
 
 carts, the wounded tottering back on 
 their own feet, sobbing as they went; 
 ammunition wagons with terrified and 
 screaming mules ; batteries taking posi- 
 tion in reserve ; dying horses being urged 
 out of the way with whips and bayonets ; 
 broken-down limbers ; reinforcements in 
 companies threading their way to the 
 front ; orderlies trying in vain to gallop 
 through the muddle of it all. Splashing 
 along the gutter which the rain had 
 washed beside the road, I got among the 
 scattered houses at last. Nearly all were 
 dark and empty, but from the main 
 church as I passed it came the cries of 
 the wounded and the quiet hum of 
 surgeons and attendants at their work. 
 It had been suddenly turned into a 
 hospital. Lights were burning inside, 
 and cast the crimsons and golds of the 
 stained windows upon the steaming, 
 misty air. I don't know why the sight 
 of those colours affected me so strangely 
 then. Hunger and exhaustion may have
 
 given distinctness to the vision they 
 called up, but to most people the out- 
 side of a lighted church at night is full 
 of half-forgotten associations, and one of 
 a child's first mysteries is the enchanted 
 brilliance of the windows as he leaves 
 the porch to the sound of the organ's 
 voluntary. 
 
 In the midst of all the pain and 
 wretchedness, there came to me the 
 smell of an evening in early spring ; and 
 instead of the crowded and slushy track 
 between the bare rock and the starveling 
 houses appeared a gentle, gravelly road, 
 guided by clipped hedgerows through 
 plough and pasture from which a god 
 could have scraped the fatted soil as 
 a thrifty nurse scrapes off the children's 
 butter. The horses waiting with the 
 squire's carriage were like the land, their 
 shining quarters all coated over with laps 
 and folds of fatness. So were the con- 
 gregation, who, having sung ' A few more 
 years shall roll,' and prayed to be led
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 91 
 
 through the desert here, came out of the 
 church door, well clothed, well washed, 
 well fed. Like the Ancient Mariner 
 watching the water-snakes at play, I 
 blessed them unaware. All had come 
 to the service warmed and enlivened by 
 their tea, and were now returning to 
 supper with Sunday night's exhilaration 
 of duty performed and tongues released 
 from religious silence, whilst the collec- 
 tion-plate tinkled at the door. Issuing 
 into blue air from the bright orange of 
 the porch, lover signalled to lover under 
 a silver star. So the ghostly but sub- 
 stantial procession passed out into a land 
 of bread and flesh and milk and drink- 
 able water, secure of the morrow, and 
 rooted in a past of uninterrupted days. 
 As I watched them move comfortably 
 down the poignant ways of memory, I 
 knew that an exactly similar procession 
 would be crossing that ancient porch 
 to-night (for it was Sunday) ; lovers 
 would signal their meetings in the
 
 92 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 darkened lanes, the smell of violets 
 would swim like dreams through the air, 
 and from the fields the lambs cry sleepily. 
 I wondered how it was possible for those 
 people ever to be unhappy in their nest- 
 ling homes. No misery seemed to count 
 beside the wretchedness of war, and a 
 longing for peace and all that peace 
 means came over me. I longed for the 
 tranquillity of the country lanes and the 
 purple woods of spring ; I longed for 
 the spacious and quiet homes, for the 
 silver smiling on the tablecloth and on 
 the darkly gleaming sideboards, for the 
 soft stir of women in the room and the 
 faint smell of their hair and dresses, for 
 the talking and quick laughter, for the 
 clean sheets on wholesome beds, and the 
 glad calling of the rooks when morning 
 came above the elms. 
 
 In a dark and empty shed which was 
 now my home, I drank deep of a bucket 
 into which the rain was dripping through 
 the roof, and began eating my half
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 93 
 
 biscuit, very slowly, to make it last. I 
 was full of vague and bitter rage rage 
 at the grit and sand in the biscuit, at 
 the slimy floor and the sopping rug 
 under which I had to sleep rage at the 
 risk of death, which might prevent me 
 seeing anything I loved again. I prayed 
 to witness the enemy's quick and entire 
 overthrow, to watch them scattered over 
 the hills and swept from the plains by 
 our pursuing guns. Only over their dead 
 could we win the road to happiness, and 
 now they were actually attacking us, 
 and on the rocks our dead lay almost 
 as thick as theirs. It seemed as though 
 a natural law had gone crazy. Full of 
 irritation and angry fears of what the 
 night would bring to succeed so horrible 
 a day, I fell asleep with exhaustion, 
 while a thin dust of water kept stealing 
 down on me through the chinks of the 
 boarding. 
 
 Hours passed before I woke, and then 
 the rain had stopped and there was no
 
 94 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 more noise of wagons on the road. 
 * Now is the time they '11 renew the 
 attack,' I said wearily to myself; and 
 getting up from the filthy ground I went 
 out again into the night and wandered 
 back towards a part of the front where 
 I had not been before, though it was a 
 continuation of the same ridge which 
 we had been defending. All was quiet 
 now. Here and there I came upon little 
 groups of our men along the line, 
 stretched in sleep or huddled together 
 for warmth, though the night was hot. 
 Late and red the waning moon had risen, 
 and it now gave an uncertain light, 
 crossed by mists and films of moving 
 cloud, the rear - guard of the storm. 
 Stumbling over the rocks, I reached the 
 further crest of the hill, where sentries 
 were posted at intervals, and from there 
 I could see down into the misty valley 
 along which the enemy had come. Ridge 
 after ridge of mountain stretched before 
 me just discernible in the moonlight, and
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 95 
 
 all looked so free and peaceful that war 
 seemed an absurdity, and with the mere 
 desire of escape, as from an iron ring, 
 I began to creep down the steep hill- 
 side. The dead ground soon concealed 
 me from above, and I there sat down 
 to brood and to await what might happen 
 before the dawn. 
 
 I waited long in the silence, and then 
 I suddenly heard something like the 
 gentle movement of a shy animal, and 
 looking to the side I saw a figure stoop- 
 ing down over a dark object lying upon 
 the ground. The figure appeared to be 
 shaking a man by the shoulder as though 
 to wake him up. I got my revolver 
 ready in my hand, but uncertain whether 
 it might not be one of our own sentries, 
 I first said in a low voice, ' Hullo, there ! 
 Why can't you let the poor fellow 
 sleep ? ' 
 
 * I 'm afraid I must,' said the other 
 without looking up : * yet it is but ten 
 pulses of the blood since he was awake,'
 
 96 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 Sitting down, he raised the man's head 
 and supported it on his knees, as gently 
 as a woman moves her sleeping lover. I 
 went and peered into the motionless 
 face. Under the dim moon it was a 
 blur of greenish white, like the moon 
 herself. 
 
 ' Why, he 's one of the enemy ! ' I said, 
 seeing the badge on his cap. 
 
 * No,' the other answered ; * he is dead.' 
 He took the man's hand, and one by 
 one undid the tightly clenched fingers, 
 stretching them out and watching them 
 slowly curl together again. 
 
 'Look,' he said, 'touch this queer 
 thing, and you will find it still warmish 
 and limp. Only sixty pulses of the blood 
 ago it was awake with life. See what 
 peculiar stuff it is, solid and yet full of 
 red and blue waters which have only just 
 stopped running backwards and for- 
 wards oh, far quicker than the waves 
 upon a shore ; a network substance of 
 tender cords and jellies, finer than the
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 97 
 
 loom, covered with a porous coating, 
 more pliant than silk, and fitting closer 
 than a light lady's robe. Five hooks, 
 you see, with props and sticks of hollowed 
 lime, pulleys and hinges complete, and 
 tipped with horn. And all alive "all 
 but alive " still, as the honest fishmongers 
 say only three minutes ago quivering 
 with the last beat of life. Only this 
 morning it buttoned this jacket, or 
 carried food to this poor mouth, just 
 as the life devised, and far better than 
 any contrivance man has ever made. 
 But now nothing can set it moving ever 
 again. I tried to hold in the life and 
 keep it mingled with the body, I tried 
 to catch it by the throat and prevent its 
 escape. But while I clutched it tight, it 
 was gone through my fingers. To feel it 
 go was worse than a lover's longing which 
 vanishes in waking. For the life had 
 been there, and now it was not anywhere 
 at all.' 
 
 'Many things are sad, but death is 
 G
 
 98 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 not the saddest, and the poor fellow is 
 only dead/ I said, speaking like the 
 chorus of a play. 
 
 * You are young compared to me, and 
 therefore wise,' he answered. ' But this 
 rough hand, now more perishable than a 
 stone what astonishing things it has 
 done since it was pink and small, pressing 
 against some mother's breast. Now it 
 is lined and twisted and embrowned, just 
 like a wild hawk's claw. Year after year 
 it has harnessed the horse and ox, and 
 scraped the mud from their coated fur. 
 It has cloven the woods for fire and dug 
 trenches where water should run. Inside 
 it is hard and knotted with the plough 
 and spade. It has shorn the wool from 
 sheep, and flung the seeds of corn trust- 
 fully upon the earth. It has shovelled 
 snow from the cottage door. It has 
 heaped a road across the swampy fen. 
 Steeped in filth, and caked with dust 
 that clave to its sweat, it has seemed but 
 a clod of earth, more insensible than the
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 99 
 
 cloven feet of oxen. Yet it has known 
 pleasure better than the marble hands of 
 gods. At the fire it has warmed itself, 
 and after the heat of the day it has held 
 the wine. It has touched the hands of 
 other men, and stroked the lamb's-wool 
 hair of children, and carried them along 
 the weary road. Do you not suppose 
 that it too has very likely throbbed with 
 ecstasy at the touch of the beloved ? Has 
 it not embraced her, and been laid upon 
 her heart, feeling the bell of her life ring 
 muffled in her softness ? What has the 
 King of Babylon's hand done more or 
 better than this poor bit of cold and 
 greenish stuff which already is falling 
 back into the earth it knew so well ? 
 Yet all such things he cast behind him, 
 and in the assault was with the first, 
 although the last to die. As he lay 
 unnoticed in this cranny of the rocks, 
 scorched by the sun and sodden by the 
 rain, he knew all day long that he should 
 never see his little farm again, or wake
 
 100 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 at dawn, or hear the voice of any 
 woman.' 
 
 ' If he so valued his life/ I said, ' he 
 should not have come out to battle.' 
 
 * Do you not value your life ? ' he 
 answered. ' To him it was as sweet as 
 to you. Do you wish never to see 
 again the things and people you are fond 
 of, or never again to do what most you 
 like ? It was for love of him that this 
 coloured rag about his neck was made. 
 He was among my worshippers; oh, 
 why was he not content in all the good 
 things I can give in rising up and lying 
 down, in love and pleasant food and all 
 the deep laughter of the world ? Now 
 he lies here quenched. His beard and 
 hair are matted with blood and water 
 mixed, his clothes are rent into holes 
 and coated with mud, his toes stick out 
 through the fragments of his boots. 
 What was it drove him on to leave his 
 home and flocks and all he loved beside ? 
 In his heart there burned a raging fire.
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 101 
 
 The Titans possessed him, and now like 
 a Titan he lies prone.' 
 
 ' Poor fellow,' I said, ' he has met with 
 a strange epitaph, who all his life was 
 insignificant and unknown now to be 
 called a Titan when he is dead, and 
 more insignificant still.' 
 
 4 1 admit,' he said, laughing, with a 
 far-off look as though he were calling up 
 scenes long hidden ; ' I admit the out- 
 ward resemblance is not very great. 
 Dear and savage sons of earth, gigantic 
 and uncouth, they wallowed in ocean, 
 making it boil like a pot, and in their 
 wrath or jollity they hurled mountains 
 with all their trees from land to land. 
 Black and red they were, and their fiery 
 hair streamed upon the clouds as the sun 
 went down in storm. With the sides 
 of precipices they built their homes, 
 and on beds of flat-topped hills they 
 stretched their coiling limbs to rest, 
 shaking their fists in exultation among 
 the clouds when morning woke them.
 
 102 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 The joints of behemoth were their food, 
 and with pails of foaming milk they 
 washed down the slices of leviathan. 
 The passion of their love shook the earth 
 like earthquakes of the prime. 
 
 ' Suddenly fate came fate with the 
 limits that conquer all things but the 
 thoughts and desires of the soul. High 
 in heaven, above the topmost mountains, 
 the trim, white gods appeared, and 
 against their fastidious pride those earth- 
 born monsters raged in vain, breathing 
 out defiance, lifting their wild arms 
 against the sky, piling* up their moun- 
 tains that the height of heaven might 
 be scaled. The lightning blazed. On 
 sea and land their bodies writhed. Before 
 they could say "What is it?" the light- 
 ning blazed. Bolts of fire hissed in their 
 fiery blood. Shrieking they lay as the 
 tempest shrieks upon the cliffs when 
 speeding over the sea it smites the 
 armoured and creviced rocks with blow 
 on blow, and to the thunder of the poles
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 103 
 
 their roarings made answer. Precipices 
 fell to cover them, and the weight of 
 mountains hardly stilled the twistings 
 of their pain. Solid beds of granite were 
 molten with their rage. The crust of 
 the world was turned to jelly. It rent 
 and split, and through its chinks their 
 nostrils breathed the sulphurous smoke 
 of their anguish. Up from deep chasms 
 they spat their boiling spittle against 
 the sky. With their sighs they shot the 
 depths of the sea aloft, so that weak water 
 stood up straight upon a watery floor like 
 the columns of the gods. Through their 
 prisons of broad-based mountains their 
 torturing fires burst the breathing-holes 
 whence issued flame mixed with crags 
 and fervent boulders and the melted 
 water of adamantine ores. Day and 
 night for ever the smoke of their misery 
 hung upon the mountain-tops. Their 
 crimson indignation scorched the cool 
 grey clouds that fluttered past, and 
 brought them to earth like birds trans-
 
 104 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 fixed. As often as they turned their 
 weary sides, the world shook and the 
 crystal pinnacles of the hills toppled into 
 ruin. So sprawled across the face of 
 earth they lay in lengths of bleeding 
 cinder. ' 
 
 He ceased, and drew the limbs of 
 the dead man straight, removing some 
 rough stones from beneath him, as 
 though they could hurt him still. Then 
 leaning over him, he sighed and said : 
 'The outward resemblance indeed is 
 small; but though he is so far greater 
 than all the Titans, his fate is much 
 the same, and he has won a crown like 
 theirs.' 
 
 j ' Your speech,' I said, 'is ever a journey 
 varied by collisions.' 
 
 Looking up like simplicity surprised, 
 he answered : ' But is it not a glorious 
 crown to be well lamented ? And the 
 Titans, you know, had that advantage. 
 Why, the whole circle of the world 
 joined in lamentation for their ancient
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 105 
 
 sovereignty the days when things went 
 merrily, though with some pleasing dis- 
 order. The dear Earth mourned over 
 them, beweeping with bitter tears the 
 pangs of children whose bones her young 
 womb had formed. And did not the 
 poet tell us that all who loved the wild 
 young Earth mourned too the wan- 
 derers of Asia, and those who pitch 
 beside the lake at the world's edge, and 
 the spearmen watching like eagles from 
 the peaks above the gulf of nothingness. 
 Was it not a crown of triumph to touch 
 the hearts which none could tame the 
 breastless girls who lay the bow and not 
 the baby to their side, and sweep across 
 the desert, horse and limbs beclouded 
 in their whirling hair ? Or think of 
 Atlas, upon whom fell the bitterest 
 doom that can befall the damned the 
 doom of usefulness. Bound in steel, he 
 propped the turning dome of heaven, 
 and but for him the hosts of stars 
 would have fluttered down upon the
 
 106 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 earth like twinkling snow. Yet the 
 poet says : 
 
 " For him the waves of the sea are heard 
 Moaning in cadence, and the precipitous gulf 
 Groans, and the black chasm of the unseen 
 
 world 
 
 Mutters its deep-hid woe ; 
 Yea, from the holy streams a pitying voice 
 Whispers of sorrow as they brightly go." 
 
 Would you choose the acclamations of 
 victory rather than be mourned like 
 that? Crowns are of many kinds, and 
 there are gods who linger with the 
 weaker side. Let us therefore lament 
 this man, as the Titans were lamented.' 
 
 'With all my heart,' I answered. 
 ' But, after all, the Titans were ignorant 
 and mistaken. The gods were against 
 them.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, I know,' he sighed ; ' any one 
 can see that now. There was one of 
 them saw it at the time, and being 
 neither ignorant nor mistaken himself, 
 he even helped the gods. Yet in the 
 end he fared no better for his foresight.
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 107 
 
 There is a cliff in Caucasus. At its 
 foot the innumerable waves are smiling. 
 Above it moves the scorching sun, and 
 darkness warps it with the frost. An 
 eagle tears the heart that so loved man- 
 kind.' 
 
 As he spoke, he undid the dead man's 
 filthy and torn shirt, and smoothed the 
 dark hair on his chest, down which the 
 blood had trickled. 
 
 ' Here, indeed,' he said, ' the fire of 
 Prometheus has gone out. But have 
 you never thought of fire how strange 
 it is, how it multiplies itself more quickly 
 than lovers, more quickly than the jelly 
 of the sea, which splits and is two ? 
 With even greater similitude to itself 
 it produces its young ; for in a moment 
 a hundred flames may spring, yet each 
 will be the same flame as the first and 
 as every other. Even if the first goes 
 out, it lives identical and unappeased 
 in all the rest. Of the same nature is 
 the fire of Prometheus. Here it has
 
 108 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 gone out, but who knows how many 
 flames may already have sprung from 
 it ? each the same as itself, or differing 
 only in brightness or colour according 
 to the heart in which it dwells.' 
 
 'I have heard,' I said, 'how the one 
 intelligent Titan brought fire down from 
 heaven to men, carrying it in a fennel- 
 stalk, of all strange warming-pans, and 
 how wofully he suffered for his philan- 
 thropic ways. But I suppose the fire 
 you now speak of is something different ? ' 
 
 ' I am hardly sure,' he answered, with 
 his puzzled air. 'For I have seen this 
 inner fire make the inside of a face 
 reflect its flame, just as a blazing log 
 reddens the outside. And when the 
 inner fire dies away, the face turns to 
 dull ashes, like burnt love-tokens. I 
 have felt that if a heart in which this 
 fire kindled, could suddenly be laid bare, 
 bright tongues of flame would leap from 
 it as from a forge blown by the bellows ; 
 and sometimes I have seen the very
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 109 
 
 depths of human eyes turn crimson with 
 little points of fire more crimson than 
 a hare's eye when you catch it sideways 
 in the sun. So that I am inclined to 
 think the inner and outer fires may 
 originally have been the same, and now 
 only differ in the stuff on which they 
 feed. But if I am wrong, please laugh 
 at my simplicity.' 
 
 ' I think you yourself,' I said, ' are 
 never far from laughter ; but I cannot 
 laugh to-night, being sorrowful.' 
 
 'Nay,' he answered, 'if you will not 
 laugh, and are sorrowful enough for 
 understanding, I might tell you a story, 
 almost as short as strange, about that 
 selfsame fire. 
 
 'You remember what the poet tells 
 us about the race of poor little mortal 
 men and women when first they began 
 to venture out upon the scum which 
 gathered over the boiling star of earth. 
 It was still warm in parts and every- 
 where flexible, so that what to-day was
 
 110 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 a plain might to-morrow be tossed up 
 into a snow-capped mountain, or sunk to 
 a lake, full of bitumen and biting salts. 
 That condition of things was enough by 
 itself to give great uncertainty to exist- 
 ence, and upon this bewildering surface 
 men crept about, astonished and at ran- 
 dom, never knowing what might happen 
 next, or in what altitude and surround- 
 ings they might wake in the morning. 
 Understanding no guidance of stars or 
 of seasons, they lived in shocks, as when 
 we slide in sleep from catastrophe to 
 catastrophe. So the poet, describing 
 their condition, says : 
 
 " Seeing they saw not, in those ancient days, 
 And hearing heard not, but like shapes of dreams, 
 Their life was one long whirl of inconsequence." 
 
 * Of course they enjoyed no comforts 
 of expensive simplicity such as you love. 
 They did not even build sunny little 
 houses, but for shelter from rain and 
 heat they grubbed holes with their claws 
 like phantom ants, or lay huddled to-
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 111 
 
 gether in slimy caverns where the roof 
 dripped upon them till they steamed. 
 In cold and damp and misery they lived, 
 uncertain of the morrow, and they stayed 
 their hunger by swallowing seeds and 
 berries, or if they saw a four-footed 
 animal sick and dying they crowded 
 round him pelting him with stones, and 
 then leapt upon his body with gluttonous 
 howls, tearing his limbs asunder and 
 gnawing them like lions ; for they were 
 not at all refined. 
 
 ' But Prometheus, being only half a 
 god, pitied their wretchedness, as he 
 went among them to and fro from heaven. 
 You know what strange services he did 
 the poor creatures, for he himself de- 
 scribed it all to those dear girls of the 
 sea who came to cheer his lonely suffer- 
 ing with the sighs of their little bosoms 
 and with commonplace as tender as their 
 own caresses. Birds know the coming 
 seasons, but poor man had to be taught 
 their order by the punctual stars, which,
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 as perhaps you may have heard, do not 
 run about anyhow as they like, but have 
 their risings and settings fitted with 
 extreme nicety. Stars are, no doubt, 
 the best guides to the future, but the 
 Titan taught men other signs also by 
 which to make a pretty fair guess at 
 what was likely to happen : such as the 
 difference between false dreams and true, 
 the meaning of haunting sounds at night 
 or dawn, and of the flight and habits of 
 birds. He taught them too the more 
 difficult art of calculating probabilities 
 by the shape and colour of the insides 
 of sacrificed animals, and by the general 
 appearance of a sirloin at dinner. By 
 such means he saved many mighty 
 armies, giving the enemy over to destruc- 
 tion instead. Further, he told men what 
 herbs to drink or chew in sickness a 
 matter in which dogs had some know- 
 ledge, but man none whether helibore 
 was best, or mandragora, or mint, or 
 poppy-seed, or fox-glove, or garlic which
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 113 
 
 gives heroic heart ; and what was good 
 as a soothing plaster for wounds, whether 
 pounded nipple-wort or grated cheese 
 mingled with honey. Then he taught 
 them the use of the wheel, and how 
 saving it was to harness other animals 
 than themselves to their carts. More 
 wonderful still, he made the white- 
 winged wagons that flit across the sea. 
 In crystal he showed them thin veins 
 of rustless gold, and from lumps of un- 
 couth rock he hammered out the sword. 
 
 * One singularly beautiful gift of a very 
 different kind he also gave them, though 
 the poets have not made much of it, 
 perhaps because, having it in abund- 
 ance themselves, they hardly realised its 
 beauty. You remember how the Titan 
 said : 
 
 " I stopped man looking at the truth of fate, 
 And in his heart I lodged the blinding hopes." 
 
 ' That is the golden gift which casts a 
 golden gleam about the world, making 
 H
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 the sun appear more glorious than he is, 
 and giving deeper blues and blacks and 
 greens to the sea ; making the sea, in- 
 deed, appear to be a beautiful or terrific 
 being, though we know it is only so many 
 jugsful of salted water, and to a dog or 
 horse it is dangerous and nasty to drink, 
 but no more. For the dog and horse 
 see the truth of fate ; they see the bare 
 facts of things, and when they come to 
 a stream they drink of it, but do not 
 worship. Man alone is blinded by the 
 Promethean gift, and passing over reality 
 with indifference, he fixes his vision on 
 things which are not there. In the 
 translucent pools of the stream he alone 
 can see the beautiful spirit sitting with 
 amber hair, just as the lover beholds 
 something beatified and divine in his 
 maiden, who very likely is only a poor 
 unwashed and witless thing, not in the 
 least nobler than himself. In his own 
 heart also man is blinded to grim fate, 
 and sees a finer spirit than exists. No
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 115 
 
 one appears to himself quite so bad as 
 he really is. When he had to die, the 
 matricide lamented what an artist was 
 dying, and in his own judgment Phalaris 
 would have deserved the hemlock almost 
 as little as the Philosopher. Wherever 
 he moves through the world, man sees 
 around him the fool, the knave, the 
 scoundrel, the murderer, the swindler, 
 the luster, the drunkard, the glutton, 
 the coward, the traitor, the hypocrite, 
 the braggart, the idiot, the gossip, the 
 weakling, the mean and crawling soul. 
 Yet in mankind, which is a combination 
 of all these indifferent creatures, he sees 
 something great and admirable ; in the 
 midst of unnatural cruelty he speaks of 
 humanity as though it were the common 
 possession of the human race, and of 
 virtue as the proper quality of man. 
 Some indeed are so richly endowed with 
 these blinding and beneficent hopes, that 
 they move through the world as though 
 they had but one step to reach the
 
 116 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 Blessed Isles, of which they see the 
 assurance in the colours of sunset clouds, 
 or in the riding moon, or in the gleams of 
 loveliness that flit across men's hearts like 
 sunshine on dark mountains. By such 
 men evil things are speedily forgotten, 
 and a radiance of joy dances before their 
 eyes. To them the common scenes of 
 earth are illuminated by a glamour of 
 sweet or heroic associations, and even 
 through the ceilings of domestic archi- 
 tecture they ever behold the stars. Sad 
 and impatient they may well be, over- 
 come by a wild yearning for something 
 which even their hearts can hardly 
 imagine, yet they are surrounded by a 
 glory which exists but for them, and is 
 nowhere found. Or may we perhaps 
 say that in a sense it actually exists by 
 their means, and that their passionate 
 conception has indeed the power to 
 create the things they seek ; just as 
 lovers create something that is them- 
 selves and yet separate and substantial ?
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 117 
 
 Or if that thought appears to you too 
 beautiful even for hope, let us remember 
 what the Iberians say ; for they dwell 
 upon the verge of Ocean, and ever 
 watching westward for the Blessed Isles 
 with illimitable desire, about once every 
 seven years they actually behold those 
 islands far away, quivering with beauty 
 on the horizon's rim. And thereupon 
 they all set out in coracles, canoes, and 
 boats of hide, with fire in their hearts 
 and hands, for they know very well that 
 if they can once fling fire on that en- 
 chanted land, it will abide with them 
 for ever and be their home. Ah, son 
 of mine,' he went on, stroking the dead 
 man's head, * on what land of desire did 
 you seek to fling the fire of your soul ? 
 And what haven is this that you have 
 found ? ' 
 
 As he seemed lost in thought, I said : 
 ' There it is again. You speak of the 
 fire of the soul ; but I only know that 
 Prometheus brought fire to man in a
 
 118 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 fennel-stalk, and when you said that in 
 this poor fellow here the fire of Pro- 
 metheus had gone out, you were not 
 speaking of the same fire as the kitchen 
 grate, I suppose, excellent and comfort- 
 ing as that is.' 
 
 He smiled shyly and rubbed his hairy 
 face between his hands, on which the 
 blood lay black. 
 
 * How you drive me on,' he said, ' worse 
 than the gadfly ! Did we not agree that 
 the outer and inner fires were probably 
 of the same nature, their manifestations 
 being so closely alike ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, if you are going to talk in 
 symbols,' I said, 'it is hopeless for an 
 ordinary man like me.' 
 
 ' And yet,' he answered, * you yourself 
 are but a symbol of the fighting soul 
 upon her perilous way. Well, I can 
 only repeat the things I myself heard 
 long ago and in a different place to this. 
 
 * It was late twilight when I crept 
 down the mountain cliffs to where the
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 119 
 
 Titan lay. For in the daytime many 
 strange beings came to see him not 
 only the tender mermaids, but that poor 
 cow-headed thing, and Ocean with a 
 shopman's reverence for success and his 
 suspicion of people who have come down 
 in the world. So I waited till his other 
 visitors had gone, and then I crept along 
 the edge to where he lay, indistinguish- 
 able from rock, save for the heaving of 
 his breath. I stood beside him in silence, 
 for there was nothing to say, and I saw 
 his great limbs, how wearily they hung, 
 being tortured and clamped with spikes 
 and metal bands. But as midnight 
 passed, and I watched Orion and the 
 Pleiades and all the chilly stars going 
 on their way without a sign of care, I 
 touched his arm where it was pinned to 
 the rock, and said : " Son of Earth, I 
 too am here." But he made no more 
 answer than the rock. Then I lay down 
 beside him, warding off the frost with 
 my nice furry skin, and all night long
 
 120 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 he hung there silent. But when first a 
 glimmer of white stole into the eastern 
 sky, I spoke again : " Son of Earth, I 
 too am here, for a flame consumes me." 
 And at the word he moved, as the rock 
 of Caucasus stirs beside the streams of 
 ice. Then a voice came, low and proud : 
 " It was I brought flame to man, when 
 before he was colder than dumb fishes." 
 
 ' Again he was silent, and as the white 
 dawn slowly grew, I said : "Son of 
 Earth, a flame consumes me, seeing 
 what injustice a god suffers at the hands 
 of gods." 
 
 * Then he answered : " It was I 
 brought flame to man, the flame for his 
 hearth and his frozen hands. And as I 
 bore it swiftly to earth the sparks kept 
 streaming behind me like a comet's hair, 
 and they mingled with the shivering 
 spirits of unborn men. Into their very 
 hearts the fire entered, and was made one 
 with their blood. There it smoulders for 
 ever, and at a breath it kindles, nor can
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 121 
 
 it ever be quenched, for it is passed on 
 from life to life. In the soul of the men 
 I loved, the fire is kindled which shall 
 avenge me. At the blast of its fury the 
 gods themselves shall wither, and long 
 ages after they have shrivelled like 
 beaten lead in the melting-pot, the fire 
 of my gift shall glow and quicken in the 
 heart of man, nor shall Ocean himself 
 avail to quench it. They into whose 
 blood one spark of it has entered shall 
 never rest from their defiance. Titans 
 of mankind, pity and wrath shall not 
 suffer them to be at peace. At the 
 breath of injustice they shall blaze into 
 fury, so that before them the proclama- 
 tions of heaven and earth shall shrink 
 into nothingness, and statutes of stone 
 be burnt like withered leaves. All the 
 wealth and power of the world shall ally 
 themselves with the thunders of the gods 
 to tread them down, but defeated in 
 every battle they shall never doubt of 
 victory, for the conflict is their reward,
 
 122 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 and in the blood of their suffering they 
 shall win their desire. Lean and dis- 
 quiet they shall be, and nothing shall 
 tempt them from their wrath. No 
 paradise of delight shall give them 
 comfort, nor can their indignation be 
 appeased by all the promises of heaven. 
 Pinned and clamped immovably to the 
 rocks of fate, scorched by derision, frozen 
 by the indifferent stars, torn at heart 
 by the winged ministers of power, they 
 shall not temper their defiance, though 
 the world were one chrysolite, to be 
 theirs in exchange. For these are they 
 who dare to be sad, and have the courage 
 to mate with sorrow. Unobserved they 
 shall toil in the fields or pass up and 
 down the streets of cities, but their souls 
 are wild as the desert where lions tread 
 it only. Therefore let the gods send 
 all the aviary of heaven to devour my 
 heart, let them split my flesh with spikes 
 of steel, or spurn me down the crags of 
 the abyss to roll with earthquakes in the
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 123 
 
 furnaces of hell wherever that little 
 spark shall glimmer in man's soul, there 
 my avenger goes. O children of men, 
 on whom I had pity, I charge you never 
 suffer the flame of my indignation to 
 die ! In your soul from age to age it 
 shall kindle, it shall work. When most 
 it seems to sleep, it shall but gather rage 
 to blaze anew, giving you no peace till 
 the fury of its wrath is satisfied, and 
 consuming with its flickering tongue 
 the fortresses where injustice like the 
 injustice of the gods had thought to 
 dwell everlastingly at ease behind its 
 battlements." 
 
 * So he spoke, and the sun's edge shot 
 above the line of the sea, for day had 
 come and the gods were at ease in 
 heaven. Then I departed to tend my 
 goats, and as I went I heard upon the 
 air the rustling of terrible feathers, and 
 a shadow of wings swooped over the 
 reddening ground. That day my flocks 
 went wandering far, for I paid them
 
 124 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 little heed, so hot a fire burned in my 
 own heart, as though kindled by the 
 breath of the son of Earth. From that 
 time on how often it has blazed anew, 
 driving me into the very trough of war, 
 one of the queerest places for a shepherd! 
 For though I am but an old god from 
 the country, awe-struck and speechless 
 before the glitter and threatening atti- 
 tude of all military men, yet I have 
 taken some part, as you know, in many 
 battles, as on that far-off day when I 
 walked up and down the front at Mara- 
 thon cleaving skulls with a ploughshare, 
 so that the fatted ranks of wealth and 
 slavery shivered before my rustic battle- 
 axe.' 
 
 He was silent for a time, and I could 
 see his eyes gleaming with splendid 
 memories. For now the filmy moon 
 had crossed the top of heaven, and faced 
 us from the west. 
 
 * Forgive the neighing of an old war- 
 horse,' he said, with a sudden smile.
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 125 
 
 * Every one forgives that, and really it 
 seems so long ago I can scarcely believe 
 I am the same god. But it is still longer 
 since the rage of the Titans was sent 
 sprawling over the world, and the son 
 of Earth was nailed to his cliff; and yet 
 I suppose something less than two 
 hundred pairs of lovers have sufficed to 
 hand on life from that time down to 
 you. Or even if the right number were 
 four hundred, that would not be very 
 many not nearly half as many as the 
 men lying dead on this hill to-night 
 and is it not pleasant to think of all the 
 lovers dear who have been happy in 
 conveying to you so charming a gift as 
 life ? To this poor peasant here it was 
 conveyed in like manner, though by a 
 more numerous succession, for the gene- 
 rations of the poor are short. And with 
 his blood they handed on that spark of 
 Promethean fire, imparted with greater 
 similitude than life itself. In the hearts 
 of his creators it smouldered and glowed,
 
 126 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 
 
 till at last the flame was fanned and sped 
 him on so that here he lies, blasted as by 
 the thunderbolt of Zeus.' 
 
 * Dear son,' he said, pushing his fingers 
 through the dead man's hair, 'like me 
 you loved the light and rain and the 
 sheep upon the hills. You loved the 
 ploughing ox and the ripening vines. 
 You were happy eating and drinking, 
 and one woman at least liked to have 
 you near her. What was it so filled 
 your soul with rage, that you counted all 
 those things as nothing in the balance? 
 Suddenly the fire grew hot, its smoke 
 stifled your utterance, it gleamed in 
 flame. To your fury it would have been 
 a light task to have stormed the gates 
 of heaven, so wild a blaze streamed along 
 your blood. No gifts, no terms, no 
 promises could twist you from your 
 purpose ; you could but kill or die. 
 Nothing but death could hold you quiet, 
 and now you are quiet indeed. Wonder 
 fills me as I behold you, of so great a
 
 THE FIRE OF PROMETHEUS 127 
 
 passion was this small body the shrine. 
 Consecrated by flame, your life was as 
 the life of gods, and by the sacrificial 
 fire of its indignation it has been con- 
 sumed. See, then, in place of the purple 
 robes of sepulchre, I button up your 
 tattered shirt, and draw your sodden 
 trousers straight. For the casrulean fil- 
 lets of death, I lay your weathered and 
 sweated cap upon your brows. For the 
 winged sandals of Hermes, conductor of 
 souls, I tie the laces of your heavy boots 
 around your naked feet. And for the 
 fee of death's river, upon your mouth I 
 lay the kiss of reverence and awe.' 
 
 The light of another day was now 
 beginning to steal through the mist. 
 Hungry and worn out, I lay back upon 
 the stones, indifferent to whatever might 
 befall, and I heard no more till there 
 came a scraping of nailed boots upon 
 rock and a murmur of low voices. 
 Presently some one kicked me in the 
 side, and cried out :
 
 ' Blest if he isn't one of us, and alive, 
 too ! And we were just going to bury 
 him. I say, you there ! What are you 
 doing, nursing a dead enemy ? ' 
 
 * Oh, he 's an enemy, is he ? ' I said, 
 getting up ; ' I had quite forgotten there 
 was such a thing.' 
 
 'He's gone clean off his head,' said 
 another. 'Lend a hand to heave the 
 body down.' I took the peasant's arm, 
 and three of the burying party held his 
 other limbs, turning him over so that he 
 might be the easier to carry. Then with 
 a cry all together, we raised him up and 
 bore him down the hill to where the 
 dead were laid out in a row. His 
 head nodded, face downwards, between 
 his shoulders. 
 
 'Lift up a bit, or you'll knock him 
 against the rocks,' I said to the man who 
 held the other arm. 
 
 ' That won't do him much damage/ 
 was the reply, ' but up he comes ! '
 
 VERTICORDIA 129 
 
 IV 
 
 VERTICORDIA 
 
 THE months go by, and yet it is not so 
 very long since, with an unaccustomed 
 sense of social and spiritual distinction, 
 I enjoyed the respected position of guest 
 in the Deanery of a cathedral town. I 
 had lately returned from a disastrous 
 war in an eastern land, and perhaps on 
 that account it was all the more refresh- 
 ing that from my bedroom's open case- 
 ment in the morning, like some cloistered 
 monk, I could watch the sunlight and 
 shadow moving over the grey cathedral's 
 peaks and precipices, or hear the chanted 
 Amens of the early service sounding 
 across the faultless grass, as they had 
 sounded for centuries of innocent and 
 quiet life. Like some pilgrim on his 
 progress, I had passed from life on cam- 
 i
 
 130 VERTICORDIA 
 
 paign to an abode where involuntary 
 hunger was undreamt of, where violent 
 death was unknown, and earthly nature 
 was distilled to the purity of dew. 
 There one could rise to heights of almost 
 patristic meditation, whether brooding 
 among the grave bookshelves of the 
 Dean's library, or walking tiptoe down 
 the sanctuary's aisles, half afraid of 
 breaking the tranquillity of a chastened 
 and indwelling spirit. Vergers, canons, 
 and sometimes the very Bishop himself, 
 stole silently about, with faces of un- 
 spotted but amiable rigour, far aloof from 
 the world. Even the errand-boys wore 
 a subdued and ethereal look, caught from 
 the choristers, and the gardeners were 
 catholic and apostolic in their demeanour. 
 What it was that gave so peculiar a 
 sweetness to the sound of maidservants' 
 voices rising from the kitchen or the 
 hall, I could hardly say. It may have 
 been the contrast the delicate harmony 
 in contrast of their presence in a place
 
 VERTICORDIA 131 
 
 so permeated with the spiritual life; or 
 perhaps it was merely that delight in a 
 woman's voice which all men know when 
 wars are done. 
 
 On my third evening, I was returning 
 with one of the Canons from a tea-party 
 which the Bishop gave every month to 
 the most select tradespeople of the city, 
 in the belief that episcopalian hospitality 
 mitigated the acrimony of Dissent. It 
 had been a day which to many would have 
 seemed pure and quiet as the Liturgy. 
 The ancient buildings slumbered in 
 holy calm, and within the high-walled 
 garden gentility sat brooding like the 
 dove. But from hour to hour I had felt 
 that the sky and living earth were all 
 astir with suppressed emotion. The air 
 had been purified by rain and wind ; and 
 now and again some ragged little cloud 
 came dancing up from the distant sea. 
 Under the chestnut trees I could hear 
 the leaves unfolding their sticky buds. 
 The woods were full of multitudinous
 
 132 VERTICORDIA 
 
 little noises, and along the hedgerows 
 birds twittered and fluttered with the 
 shy excitement of children who possess 
 a secret they could tell. For Spring 
 was coming slowly, but it was certain 
 now, and all the ground sent up the 
 faint and delicate smell of it. 
 
 As we left the palace the sun was 
 almost down. Here and there a rook 
 steered homeward through the blue, and 
 above the sunset the slender moon hung 
 quivering with expectation. I do not 
 know whether it was that the winning 
 purity of the air produced within the 
 Canon a certain recrudescence of youth, 
 or whether he was slightly elated by 
 taking tea with the Bishop's wife. At 
 all events he began talking theology, and 
 I observed upon his refined and clear- 
 cut face an illuminated look as though 
 another man were peering through it 
 the man that in his heart he always was, 
 or thought he might easily become at 
 any moment. That is the man he was
 
 VERTICORDIA 133 
 
 (I thought to myself) when as an under- 
 graduate he solved the problems of the 
 universe upon the Cumnor hills; and I 
 remember that as we passed under the 
 old gateway into the Close itself, and our 
 footsteps crunched upon the trim gravel 
 path beside the row of elms, he was 
 speaking of the conversion of St. Augus- 
 tine how his heart was changed, and 
 like a man transformed he turned away 
 from the pleasures and other necessary 
 evils of the world. I listened as intently 
 as I could, for theology, like medicine, is 
 of universal interest ; but full in front of 
 us rose the grey cliff of the cathedral, 
 and in the midst of his words I could 
 not help perceiving with joy that, like 
 grey Hymettus, even its holy stones were 
 flushed with crimson beneath the touch 
 of the evening radiance. 
 
 The Canon, perhaps noticing my sudden 
 inattention, laid his hand gently on my 
 shoulder ; for he had reached that stage 
 of clerical and celibate affection ateness.
 
 134 VERTICORDIA 
 
 'My friend,' he said, 'you hang too 
 much on the things of this world. You 
 are still like St. Augustine in his youth, 
 engrossed in its interests, its beauty, and 
 its pleasures.' 
 
 ' Is it not a vale of tears ? ' I answered. 
 
 ' By reason only of its error,' he quickly 
 interposed, 'its error and the unfathom- 
 able abyss of human sin. The grossness 
 of man is the one monstrous and in- 
 credible phenomenon in a universe 
 otherwise so fair. His sin alone stands 
 like something distorted, unproportioned, 
 and incommensurable within the fair 
 scheme of things. How seldom does 
 he rise above the level of the beasts ! 
 With all his indefinable spiritual powers, 
 with his capacity for redemption and the 
 apprehension of ineffable truth, he none 
 the less abides wallowing with them in 
 the sensual sty. People talk a great 
 deal nowadays about man's poverty, his 
 sorrow, and his pain. Many deplore his 
 limited life, his limited capacity for joy.
 
 VERTICORDIA 135 
 
 Such things are but trifles compared to 
 his sin. For sin his capacity is infinite ; 
 and do you suppose you would reduce 
 it if you made his outward surroundings 
 as lovely and delicate as this Close ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know,' I answered, ' but it 
 would be an easier experiment to make 
 the Close as unlovely and indelicate as 
 man's common surroundings, and watch 
 the effect upon the conduct of its 
 inmates. ' 
 
 * I confess,' he continued, not noticing 
 my suggestion, 'the vision of the sin 
 diffused in the outer world must often 
 appal us. Our soul shrinks from it as 
 from physical contamination, and we 
 seem to have no more strength left to 
 face the pervading horror of man in his 
 indistinguishable degradation. Then it 
 is that with our utmost power we turn 
 our contemplation upon the Church for 
 our solace and refreshment. There she 
 still remains, unspotted and unmoved 
 not, we trust, entirely separated from
 
 136 VERTICORDIA 
 
 the world, but like our dear cathedral 
 rising high above the common earth on 
 which she stands. Beyond the welter 
 of man's grossness and perversity she 
 soars, ever suggesting an infinity of 
 spiritual development. By the strict- 
 ness of her ordinances she strives to 
 purify the soul. As with spire and 
 pinnacle and pointed arch, she directs 
 the eyes upward. By the beauty of 
 her services and holy places, by the 
 comeliness of her sacrificial raiment, she 
 attracts, she guides, and disciplines the 
 erring heart, turning the desire from the 
 garish joys of earth towards the glory 
 which she alone has power to reveal. 
 By the persistence and regularity of her 
 ritual, even by its very monotony, she 
 inculcates a habit of holiness, undeviating 
 from its chastened path, till at length 
 the struggle with the brutish elements of 
 our nature results in their extinction. 
 Thus she abides, the sole light in a 
 darkened world, and outside the circle
 
 VERTICORDIA 137 
 
 of her rays, what spiritual hope is left 
 upon man's horizon ? ' 
 
 * I understand your metaphor,' I 
 answered, 'for love has also been de- 
 scribed, apparently without irony, as an 
 ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests 
 and is never shaken.' 
 
 ' For myself,' the Canon continued, 
 ' I should prefer for the Church the old 
 similitude of the sheep-fold, in which 
 we are ordained as shepherds. Outside 
 stretches the wilderness of the world, 
 howling with empty winds and ravening 
 desires. But within the fold we still 
 keep our little flock untouched and pure 
 from the surrounding evil, just as this 
 Close, encircling our holy edifice, is pre- 
 served by us from the uncouth monsters 
 of human grossness, from the vulgarities 
 of passion, and whatever else may offend, 
 so that within our sacred precincts all 
 may be purity and peace for ever.' 
 
 He paused, with eyes fixed in con- 
 templation of so fair a vision, and a
 
 138 VERTICORDIA 
 
 terror seized me that he was departing 
 from the equal ground of man and 
 man. Chilled and panic-stricken, I 
 looked around for refuge, like the poor 
 dosser whose untutored mind espies a 
 philanthropist in the offing. We were 
 close to the cathedral's western doors, 
 and with a sense of relief I perceived 
 that from every corner and lurking-place 
 in the porches, strange creatures of stone 
 thrust out their peering heads or seemed 
 to shrink and hide. Uncouth monsters 
 certainly they seemed, and their am- 
 biguous forms trailed in dragon folds 
 along the mouldings, where their semi- 
 human bodies ended in the feet of goats. 
 But on the face of all was the look of 
 men and women, and from their empty 
 sockets came the yearning of exiled or 
 imprisoned souls. 
 
 But by the Canon all those com- 
 forting gargoyles were unheeded. Even 
 St. Augustine was forgot, and in speech- 
 less astonishment he was watching a
 
 VERTICORDIA 139 
 
 slight feminine figure which hastened 
 along one of the cross-paths over the 
 grass. She wore uniform the white 
 apron and shoulder-straps of the domestic 
 service corps, and there was still light 
 enough to show a fluff of ruddy hair 
 under the pure white cap. 
 
 ' Can it be ? It must be. It is 
 Elizabeth,' I heard the Canon mutter 
 to himself. And then, in his lectern 
 voice, he cried : * Elizabeth, is that you?' 
 
 The girl stopped short, and began 
 twisting the corner of her apron round 
 her fingers. 'Yes, sir, please sir,' she 
 said. ' I Ve just been to drop a letter 
 in the post, sir.' 
 
 She turned hastily away, and un- 
 happily, in turning, showed the white 
 cross-bands over her shoulders. Be- 
 tween them lay a clear triangle of black 
 dress, and right in the very centre of 
 that triangle was seen the definite im- 
 press of a great white hand palm, 
 thumb, and all the fingers, 'displayed,'
 
 140 VERTICORDIA 
 
 as the heralds say. There was no mis- 
 taking it. Even a man of peace could 
 not fail to recognise the pipe-clay brand 
 of the British army. 
 
 'Then shall the lion lie down with 
 the lamb, and within our sacred precincts 
 all shall be purity and peace for ever,' 
 I murmured to myself, recalling the 
 Canon's vision of beatitude. 
 
 I hoped the tell-tale mark had 
 escaped his notice, but I was wrong. 
 
 'Elizabeth,' he called after her in a 
 deeper tone. 
 
 ' Yes, sir,' she said, turning to us again, 
 so that the symbol of glory disappeared. 
 
 ' I think you have something white 
 on the back of your dress.' 
 
 ' No, sir, I 've not, sir,' she said, and 
 instantly her hand sought the exact 
 place between her shoulders, and tried 
 in vain to brush it. 
 
 'To me,' continued the Canon with 
 real solemnity, 'to me it suggests the 
 figure of a man's hand.'
 
 VERTICORDIA 141 
 
 The girl looked this way and that, and 
 then gave up. Throwing her apron over 
 her face in token of surrender, she cried 
 from behind that feminine defence : * O 
 sir, you do not know how sweet it is ! ' 
 
 No appeal could have been more elo- 
 quent, and I looked to see the Canon 
 falter, but he showed no more hesitation 
 than the Athanasian Creed. ' Elizabeth,' 
 he said, *I desire you to re-enter the 
 house immediately and pack your box.' 
 
 Without a word the girl hurried away, 
 and fixing his eyes on the gravel, the 
 Canon said to himself: 'The cook will 
 see it ; Mary will see it. It will revive 
 their natural propensities. This is terrible, 
 most terrible.' 
 
 ' And yet,' said a low voice close at 
 hand, 'fire is the best sauce. Evenus 
 said so.' 
 
 In the twilight under the elms I 
 beheld a weather-worn figure. His eyes 
 were following the girl with the regretful 
 look of one who has lost an opportunity.
 
 142 VERTICORDIA 
 
 ' You see, sir,' be said, turning to the 
 Canon, ' I am but a humble shepherd, 
 and now you have driven away my flock, 
 so that I fear lest I should lose it a 
 bitter thing for shepherds, as you know. 
 For as you approached I overheard you 
 saying that you also were a shepherd, 
 and kept the silly sheep in fold. ' 
 
 * I meant a shepherd of souls,' said the 
 Canon absently. 
 
 ' Of souls, no doubt,' the other replied, 
 ' but not, I suppose, of disembodied souls, 
 any more than I, though but a common 
 shepherd, tend the soulless bodies of dead 
 sheep. Unless, perhaps, with your crook 
 you catch the soul escaping from the 
 body's prison, as the pastoral poet describes 
 it in his verse on sheep-shearing : 
 
 "The shepherd sits like death who takes his 
 
 toll; 
 
 The struggling sheep secure before him lies, 
 And feels the encumb'ring fleeces off her roll, 
 And, naked, stands at gaze with dubious 
 
 eyes; 
 
 Then rushes forth, like a bewildered soul, 
 Escaping, cool and white, to Paradise."
 
 VERTICORDIA 143 
 
 Souls may, indeed, escape by some such 
 queer process, but I can hardly suppose 
 your care extends to them after they are 
 stript of the body's fleece ? ' 
 
 * Elizabeth in the arms of a common 
 soldier ! ' groaned the Canon. ' And it 
 is hardly six months since I myself 
 prepared her for confirmation.' 
 
 ' Nay, sir,' said the shepherd soothingly, 
 * I did not know that you also had a 
 claim on her, for I thought she was in 
 my sole charge to-night. But since it is 
 so, could we not come to some arrange- 
 ment about the matter ? Let us, for 
 example, contend in amcebaaic song, as 
 shepherds use, and set the lamb to be the 
 winner's prize. Or perhaps you would 
 prefer the rivalry of the oaten pipe ? ' 
 
 The vision of himself playing a pan- 
 pipe in the Close was too much for the 
 Canon's dignity. Turning to the shep- 
 herd for the first time, he exclaimed with 
 some irritation, in spite of his general 
 politeness : ' Really, my good fellow, I
 
 144 VERTICORDIA 
 
 must remind you that in this Close no 
 one except the Dean is allowed to walk 
 upon the grass.' 
 
 * It is quite like old times to hear of 
 the worship of grass,' said the shepherd ; 
 * and, indeed, grass like this is a holy 
 thing for weanling lambs to eat. Let 
 us, therefore, recline rather upon this 
 bench for our contest. The evening 
 wind is warm, and the white-limbed 
 moon is stealing to her lover behind 
 the woods ; Hesper hangs low from the 
 depth of air, and the lambs are folded 
 beneath the open sky. Begin with me, 
 dear sir, the strain of Masnalus. Or, if you 
 will not begin, let my turn come the first. 
 
 * Far away in Arcadia, overshadowing 
 the Tegean plain, where the children of 
 black earth turn their mother-soil, Mount 
 Masnalus yet stands, and his head looks 
 northward to snowy Cyllene, where 
 Aphrodite dwelt. His precipitous sides 
 are wet with melting snows ; they gleam 
 in the fitful sunlight. The soft rain
 
 VERTICORDIA 145 
 
 falls ; green are the slopes of his pastures, 
 and there the she-goat leads her young. 
 Year by year the spring has passed over 
 his crest from the times of old when 
 gods danced there. The seasons go, the 
 gods are gone, but he is ever new, and 
 sure as hope and love. He himself shall 
 vanish from the world, but hope and 
 love remain. Now is the season of love 
 and hope, when all things are renewed. 
 All things are new, but none so new 
 as is the lover's heart. The tender leaf 
 is like last year's leaf; and last year the 
 snow ran down in streams like this. But 
 love is newer than the morning, and the 
 lover's heart to-day is such a thing as 
 never was before. Begin with me, dear 
 sir, Masnalian strains.' 
 
 'That sort of stuff is all very pretty,' 
 said the Canon, ' but for my part I reserve 
 the word love for holier things. I agree 
 with the man in the play who said : " Let 
 us determine to call a mere sensual in- 
 stinct by as few fine names as possible." 
 K
 
 146 VERTICORDIA 
 
 ' I implore you,' answered the shep- 
 herd, ' not to summon the poet's aid in 
 putting the gods to open shame. It 
 is sad to find how far you stand behind 
 the Egyptians in consideration for them. 
 For you remember that in Egypt all 
 worshippers knew as a fact that the gods 
 had once been men, but decency forbade 
 them to say so. In the same way, none 
 but the ungentle and impious should 
 throw up his humble descent against 
 love. It is quite true that, like man's 
 own, his origin was distinctly low. For 
 he was born in the green twilight of the 
 warm primaeval sea, before the surface 
 fires of earth were cold. When first 
 the lumps of living jelly drifted over 
 the shallows of heaving slime, love was 
 already there. Among the crawling 
 dragons of the swamp he had his home, 
 and where the ravening monsters cried, 
 he made his habitation. Poor hairy 
 creatures were glad at his coming, and 
 he was foster-brother to the wolf. Even
 
 VERTICORDIA 147 
 
 then he possessed a power which I can 
 hardly describe, for it was unlike all the 
 other powers of men and gods. You 
 remember what the poet says of love's 
 mother, as she went through the forests 
 of Ida, where wild beasts find their food : 
 
 " She through the mountain coverts took her way, 
 And close behind her tender footsteps came 
 Devouring leopard things, and wolves all grey, 
 Wild bears, and lions staring fixed flame, 
 Which she beholding was fulfill'd with cheer, 
 And in their desert hearts she set her longings 
 dear." 
 
 In those lines is it not reasonable to 
 suppose that unless the old poet had 
 perceived, even in his day, something 
 marvellous and inscrutable in the power 
 of love, he would have spoken of gentle 
 antelopes and doves rather than of bears 
 and lions grim ? But if love's longing 
 can indeed produce so comfortable a 
 change even in uncouth and savage 
 beasts, let us no longer mock at his 
 homely origin, rejoicing rather that, no 
 matter from what source he sprang, so
 
 148 VERTICORDIA 
 
 improving a god has been brought into 
 the world of mankind. For we should 
 have been sad enough without him, if 
 what another poet says be true : 
 
 " Without thee, on the holy shore of light 
 No living thing appears, nor any joy 
 Is found therein, nor lovesomeness at all." ' 
 
 ' It seems to me,' said the Canon, ' that 
 people who believe we are derived from 
 lobsters might just as well sing the 
 praises of a sea-water life, as this so- 
 called love. After all, it is but a sensuous 
 infatuation, and what do the passions of 
 ascidians matter to me, or the passions 
 of swine either ? ' 
 
 'Nothing, certainly, to you,' said the 
 shepherd ; ' I only wished to say that 
 upon simple men, as upon the beasts, the 
 god exercises the same peculiar power 
 of change. For it is well known that 
 he makes the coward brave, and the 
 churl almost agreeable ; and in the higher 
 ranks of life many a shrinking and fas- 
 tidious gentleman has been converted at
 
 VERTICORDIA 149 
 
 his touch into a bold, bad poet. There- 
 fore it appears to me best not to thwart 
 such powers as his, but, as the Greeks 
 used to say, to let the water run under 
 the bridge. It pities me to think what 
 woe you may have wrought by driving 
 apart my humble sheep to-night. To 
 their souls (you will grant them souls) a 
 supreme moment had arrived. They too 
 were transfigured like the lions and the 
 bears. Full of gentleness and yearning, 
 their hearts transcended the limits of 
 mortality. Companionless no more in 
 space, they beheld the ancient universe 
 transfused with new illumination, and 
 had no fear of all the world. On return- 
 ing to barracks, the soldier would have 
 answered his name as though it were a 
 duke's title. In waiting at your table 
 to-night, your serving-maid would have 
 moved an equal to the youthful minis- 
 trant of gods, and had she dashed your 
 pottery to the ground, she would have 
 felt no qualm, recognising wealth for the
 
 150 VERTICORDIA 
 
 dust it is, compared to love. But now 
 perchance they are parted for ever, and 
 their souls will wander in desert places, 
 crying in vain. It may be that even 
 yet, though Hesperus has followed sun 
 and moon into the sea-sepulchre of reno- 
 vation, it were best for me to seek them 
 out and bring them to each other's 
 sight. For, in truth, lovers are only 
 safe together.' 
 
 'Unsafe, you mean,' interposed the 
 Canon, * and if you go ringing for 
 Elizabeth at my back-door, I 'm afraid 
 I must tell the cook not to admit you.' 
 
 'To be turned from the door is the 
 destiny of low estate,' said the shepherd. 
 ' That is the worst of being only a lay- 
 man in the gods' service.' 
 
 ' Fine gods, indeed ! ' said the Canon, 
 with his politest smile. 
 
 'Common rather than fine,' answered 
 the shepherd, 'for this evening I was in 
 the service of Mars and Venus, both 
 quite ordinary deities, connected from of
 
 VERTICORDIA 151 
 
 old by an illicit understanding. Indeed, 
 at this time of year, as you know, all 
 shepherds like me serve Venus among 
 their flocks, and it is impossible, I sup- 
 pose, to serve the beloved without serv- 
 ing the lover too ; since their hearts are 
 always one.' 
 
 * Better among sheep than with a 
 soldier and a housemaid ! ' cried the 
 Canon. ' Common is certainly the word 
 for your deities of unrestraint and vulgar 
 abandonment ! ' 
 
 'You must excuse me, sir,' said the 
 shepherd, 'for even mentioning a theme so 
 humble. You see, it is easy for the rich 
 and intellectual to gain the peace of the 
 gods. They do it every day, and still 
 have plenty of time over to condemn the 
 ignorance, imprudence, and vices of the 
 poor. But for my own charges, I am 
 full of anxiety lest in the scurry of their 
 hunger and toil they should miss any of 
 their skimpy opportunities of grace in 
 the few brief hours before they are wiped
 
 152 VERTICORDIA 
 
 away, like the sums upon a child's slate 
 washed out, may we not think? by the 
 tears of their distracted creator, because 
 they will not come right.' 
 
 'When a domestic servant acquiesces 
 in the animal instincts of a soldier,' said 
 the Canon, ' I admire your courage in 
 speaking of opportunities of grace. Dis- 
 grace is likely to prove the more suitable 
 word.' 
 
 ' That may be so,' replied the shepherd 
 with unruffled calm ; * but still I discern 
 an opportunity for what shall I say ? 
 Will you allow me to use the word 
 transfiguration ? ' 
 
 'The transfiguration from my house 
 to the haunts of sin is certainly consider- 
 able,' cried the Canon impatiently. * And 
 not to understand what it implies shows 
 ignorance of the world and of common 
 sense.' 
 
 'I was thinking rather of an inner 
 and spiritual change,' said the shepherd. 
 'But as to my ignorance you are cer-
 
 VERTICORDIA 153 
 
 tainly right. For who can know the 
 world's depth and height ? And for 
 common sense, even the gods have sel- 
 dom shown it.' 
 
 Seeing that the Canon was slightly 
 irritated at the poor man's simplicity, 
 and not wishing to witness a contest 
 between two such shepherds within the 
 Close itself, I hastily tried to divert the 
 dialogue towards some wider theme. 
 * That word transfiguration has a very 
 solemn sound,' I said ; ' but I suppose 
 that in spite of its solemnity there is 
 some sort of meaning in it ? ' 
 
 'I half think so,' said the shepherd, 
 with a puzzled look. * It is hard to say 
 exactly what it is hard, I mean, for 
 me ; though whatever the explanation 
 may be, I have heard lovers say that 
 the change is true. But I knew how it 
 would be if I dared to approach so near 
 to wisdom and use magnificent words. 
 For such teaching I had far better com- 
 mend you to the smile of golden Venus
 
 154 VERTICORDIA 
 
 herself when she fingers her loosened 
 zone. One of her many names, you 
 know, is Verticordia ; I suppose because 
 she transfigures the heart.' 
 
 'For centuries the Church struggled 
 against the foulness of her degradation,' 
 said the Canon ; ' and are we to turn to 
 her now as a transfiguring power ? ' 
 
 *Many evil things, indeed, have been 
 said of her,' the shepherd went on ; ' but 
 a few nice things too. There is a pretty 
 Greek sentence, that love in a gloomy 
 man is like a cheerful fire in a cold 
 house ; and you know what a difference 
 that makes. The Argives used to say 
 that the soul of a lover resided in the 
 soul of the beloved, and they were not 
 people to philander over the affections 
 like writers of flim-flam tales. If then 
 the soul can really quit her home and 
 dwell in the beloved's life, is not that 
 a transfiguration enough ? And may we 
 not say that the soul in her flitting then 
 changes self as well as sky ? Moreover,
 
 VERTICORDIA 155 
 
 I have heard physicians say, the physical 
 senses of lovers are redoubled, so that 
 they become quick as the senses of wood- 
 land creatures, and across the desert of a 
 public assembly, lovers will hold inter- 
 course with their eyes, enough to popu- 
 late all fairyland. For they understand 
 the words of silence, and at the thought 
 of the beloved's voice, or at the faint 
 sound of it, coming upon them suddenly 
 from far off, their hearts stop beating, 
 and they stand quivering with rapture. 
 If, then, the lover's senses, which are the 
 feeders and instruments of the soul, are 
 thus intensified to new powers, may we 
 not suppose that the soul herself is trans- 
 figured, at least to a like degree ? ' 
 
 ' But even you,' I answered, ' would 
 hardly maintain that Venus is the only 
 transfiguring power.' 
 
 'I am not quite sure,' said the shep- 
 herd. 'A similar change is certainly 
 seen in the service of love's lover and 
 opposite the crimson plague of men,
 
 156 VERTICORDIA 
 
 who batters cities down. We need not 
 speak of his influence on kings and 
 generals, such as history disembowels 
 and embalms. But you at all events 
 have witnessed the change in humble 
 craftsmen and tillers of earth who form 
 the fighting ranks. Their life is short, 
 to each of them it is very dear, and they 
 long to enjoy it to the full. Some 
 delight in laughter and wine ; some 
 follow prudence, who is the grandmother 
 of the little virtues, and at times rewards 
 them with an approving sixpence. Some 
 love their children, some their parents 
 or friends, some their comforts, others 
 their possessions ; all love women. Yet, 
 with a light heart, they endure discom- 
 forts in war time which at home would 
 have exposed their wives to continuous 
 blasphemy, and as though to win the 
 best places at a lascivious show, each 
 rushes forward in furious emulation to 
 climb the ruin of the breach and be the 
 first to enter the hostile city as a corpse.
 
 VERTICORDIA 157 
 
 Is it not strange, is it not a marvel that 
 so diverse a soul should dwell within one 
 man? Who would have suspected these 
 hidden qualities in a sane and mortal 
 creature ? Compared to the marvel of 
 the soul's change under a god's inspira- 
 tion, there is no miracle ever performed 
 in earth or heaven which I would turn 
 my head to see or wag my little finger 
 to accomplish.' 
 
 ' Blithe shepherd,' I said hastily, for 
 fear the Canon should take offence again, 
 ' what you say about war reminds me of 
 the proverb that love is an invincible 
 general, and in my boyhood I remember 
 reading of some leader who composed a 
 battalion entirely of loving comrades, 
 setting them two by two together in the 
 ranks, so that they became incapable of 
 defeat ; for even though separated on the 
 field, a man would hold his ground as 
 long as he thought his comrade was 
 fighting on. And I have somewhere 
 read the lines :
 
 158 VERTICORDIA 
 
 " Backwards and forwards, up and down the land, 
 
 The battle rolls unending, and the air 
 Thickens with mist of blood and columned sand, 
 Hiding the souls in lingering conflict there. 
 
 My comrade, it was morning when we parted, 
 'Tis evening now, the foe is on the flanks ; 
 
 My comrade, here I stand unshaken-hearted, 
 Knowing that somewhere you are in the ranks." 
 
 That is the comradeship of war, and do 
 you not think, that if Mars and his lover 
 could indeed combine their inspiration on 
 the battlefield, we might acquire an army 
 of unexampled valour ? For, kindled 
 by god and goddess alike, and terrified 
 lest the beloved at his side should suffer 
 by one hair's loss, the lover would fling 
 himself upon the enemy with irresistible 
 passion, and in his vengeance be more 
 terrible than a regiment of uninspired 
 men.' 
 
 ' It is a very charming brigade which 
 you imagine,' replied the shepherd : * all 
 the men in the front rank and their 
 lovers behind them. Their bivouacs 
 beneath the moon on summer nights
 
 VERTICORDIA 159 
 
 would be especially delightful. My fear 
 is that in battle, instead of advancing 
 ever forward, the lover would only stand 
 as shelter for the beloved, lest wounds 
 befall her beauty, and slit her lovesome 
 skin. In case of sudden alarm, it is 
 true, such an army would have great 
 advantage at first, for each man would 
 spring to his place with his lover behind 
 him, and no time would be lost in 
 numbering or telling off. But I have 
 heard say that love hath wings and lovers 
 change, and might not confusion arise 
 if two or three in either the front or 
 rear rank had fixed their affections upon 
 a new object only a few minutes before 
 the alarm was sounded ? It is unlikely 
 that they should be able simply to change 
 places among themselves, and if the new 
 lover found his desired position in file 
 already occupied, disorder would arise, 
 and the ranks would fall to internal 
 strife, endangering victory. For desire 
 to be near the beloved is more powerful
 
 160 VERTICORDIA 
 
 even than the fear of defeat and death. 
 Do you not think so ? ' 
 
 * I hardly know what to think,' I re- 
 plied, ' for you have extended my simple 
 conceit into a similitude of the wide 
 world, in which men and women arrange 
 their files as though they were eternally 
 lovers, but afterwards pine for disturbing 
 changes.' 
 
 * There,' said the Canon, with a smile 
 of triumph, * there lies the irremediable 
 weakness of this earthly passion ; there 
 the falsity of all the fine things sung in 
 its praise. It is animal, therefore tem- 
 poral. It is for us to fix our thoughts 
 on the things that are eternal.' 
 
 ' Ah, well,' said the shepherd, ' I sup- 
 pose we must not be too exacting with 
 the gods. Life is a stream, and nought 
 abides. Even the stars stare themselves 
 blind and die. We must love them 
 whilst they shine, and trust that future 
 stars will gleam no less. We eat to-day, 
 though to-morrow we may starve. A
 
 VERTICORDIA 161 
 
 lover looking back on past love reminds 
 me of Pythagoras when, in a temple at 
 Argos, he found the armour which in 
 a previous existence he had himself worn 
 during the siege of Troy. Perhaps his 
 former body also lay under it, yet he 
 raised no idle lamentation over that 
 ancient skeleton, but was only thankful 
 he had another set both of armour and of 
 bones to bless himself with. Tragic indeed 
 the disarrangements you speak of may 
 sometimes appear, especially in the case of 
 the best soldiers in your delightful army ; 
 and it is only the tragedy of the best that 
 counts. Yet even in the midst of their 
 unhappy perturbations we can perceive 
 the light of the god's transfiguring power, 
 and at times I can even imagine an 
 abiding influence, which might almost 
 be called eternal without absurdity as 
 eternal as the gods themselves, I mean ; 
 though, to be sure, that is not saying 
 much. So now, having worshipped love 
 by extolling his might among wild beasts
 
 162 VERTICORDIA 
 
 and simple men, we may as well depart, 
 especially as it is near the hour for us 
 who obey the kindly influence of heaven, 
 to submit ourselves to the night and 
 stars like mountain goats.' 
 
 ' Gentle shepherd,' I said, * may I say 
 that you remind me of a nightingale, 
 almost as much as of a goat ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, if you are going to begin upon 
 riddles,' cried the Canon, getting up, ' I 
 will go and see what chance we have 
 of dinner to-night. Our friend tells me 
 that if her love had run smooth, Eliza- 
 beth would have dashed my china to 
 the ground without a qualm ; and now 
 that the affair is happily detected, a 
 fortiori,, she may be doing worse. I 
 only hope I shall not find the soldier 
 sitting among the ruins of my pantry.' 
 
 * A soldier is a terrible thing for 
 kitchens, like the wolf for sheepfolds,' 
 said the shepherd. 
 
 'A transfigured soldier is a sheep in 
 wolf's clothing,' said the Canon.
 
 VERTICORDIA 163 
 
 He went off, smiling to himself at 
 having the last word ; and drawing nearer 
 to the shepherd on the ecclesiastic bench, 
 I continued : 
 
 ' You know the nightingale, how when 
 spring is young, he utters but a few 
 notes, and those harsh and out of tune, 
 and then he falls to silence with a kind 
 of despairing gasp, as though he would 
 say, " It is no good ; I shall never sing 
 like the blackbird or the thrush ! " And 
 so he goes on, evening after evening, 
 perhaps unconscious of his power, per- 
 haps dissimulating with modest irony, 
 until one night when all the woods are 
 still, some lover, watching the candle in 
 his beloved's bedroom, perchance may 
 hear a longdrawn cry of exquisite and 
 unutterable yearning, and will say to 
 himself, " That is the nightingale ! Ah, 
 if only his voice were mine ! " But for 
 a fortnight more the brown little bird 
 will twitter again, nursing in secret all 
 the passion of his life, and only rising
 
 164 VERTICORDIA 
 
 at the very last to his full rapture of 
 unconstrained delight, as though to re- 
 veal to the whole listening world what 
 singing really is. So if indeed it is the 
 same with you if you are keeping back 
 some magic word or secret song or 
 hidden knowledge I entreat you of 
 your courtesy to let me hear it now. 
 It may be that for the last time I hear 
 you speak. Year slides after year; war 
 is really rather dangerous, and nothing 
 is so dangerous as life. So speak now, 
 that I may not go out into the dark 
 uncomforted.' 
 
 He looked at me as though with sad 
 affection, but immediately recovering his 
 accustomed cheerfulness, he turned away 
 and began laughing low to himself. 
 
 'Do you not think the priest would 
 mock,' he said, ' if on his return he found 
 two adult persons still discoursing upon 
 love? Under that spiky temple too, 
 whose blackness just blots out the con- 
 stellation of Andromeda, chained to a
 
 VERTICORDIA 165 
 
 sea-rock amid the pitiless benedictions 
 of her relatives, till love delivered her ! 
 He would be like an astronomer who, 
 knowing for a fact that the little moon 
 was only the sunlit edge of a lifeless ball 
 of rock, should overhear two benighted 
 pagans joyfully praising that thin curve 
 of brightness as a chaste huntress queen, 
 whose lithe and tender form well matched 
 her crescent bow. And if he further 
 heard them tell how once upon a time, 
 as she sank into the woods to hide among 
 her forest things, the woodland god did 
 woo her, and she rejected him not, she 
 who rejected all why, then, no doubt, 
 the astronomer would laugh, like a sub- 
 urban resident fallen among country folk.' 
 
 * Or, perhaps, if he were a magistrate, 
 he might get them shut up for lunacy,' 
 I said. 
 
 * In the same way,' he continued, ' the 
 priest, who evidently knows far more 
 about the scientific nature of love than 
 either of us, would laugh or rage to hear
 
 166 VERTICORDIA 
 
 the strange illusions and dreams which 
 simple men have woven around so plain 
 and obvious a matter. Such eremites 
 of the spirit naturally breathe a higher 
 air than ours, and we cannot wonder 
 that this poor old earth looks gross and 
 dusty from their ethereal seats. It is 
 seldom that her voice reaches them up 
 there, and when it does, they listen 
 shuddering, or smile with downcast eyes 
 at the thought of the elevation to which 
 they have been wafted. But we poor 
 children of the sand, who still are 
 gathered close to the breasts of earth, 
 and lie entangled in her hair of grass 
 and forest, marvelling in our childlike 
 simplicity at the sweetness of her voice 
 in winds and sea and living things we, 
 I suppose, may listen without shame to 
 the strange outcries and imaginations 
 of man among the rest, and perhaps we 
 should not be much distressed if the 
 wise contemn the homely dreams which 
 poor earthly lovers tell us about Verti-
 
 VERTICORDIA 167 
 
 cordia and things of that kind. They 
 are sometimes sweet to hear, and we 
 need not suppose them meaningless 
 because, love being so shy and fugitive 
 a thing, even lovers can hardly get a 
 sight of him except disguised in some 
 veil of dream. Once, it is true, I have 
 heard that he was very nearly seen, 
 disembodied as it were, and without his 
 skin and bones, just as you would like 
 to catch a human soul as it flits away 
 from the beloved's outworn heart. But 
 even you, ignorant and earthly as you 
 are, would hardly listen to such a tale 
 seriously.' 
 
 ' Yes,' I answered, ' I will be as solemn 
 as a City dinner during the grace.' 
 
 He was silent a while, and then con- 
 tinued with much hesitation : ' Once 
 upon a time (for that is the only date 
 which really matters), an ambiguous 
 creature was sitting at the Great Mother's 
 feet and looking up into her face as she 
 mingled the souls and bodies of living
 
 168 VERTICORDIA 
 
 things in her kneading-trough. I could 
 see from her eyes that all was not going 
 well, for she had the distressed look of 
 a woman when the bread will not rise. 
 At last, throwing down a lump of the 
 half-living clay in despair, and driving 
 it off in the form of a hippopotamus, 
 whereas she had intended it for a Justice 
 of the Peace, she cried : "Dear dog-of- 
 all-work, I really do not know what has 
 come over the race of man. With my 
 other pleasant creatures I am as success- 
 ful as ever. That lion, just issuing into 
 the upper light, is as fleet and strong as 
 the royal beasts which Ashur-bani-pal 
 hunted in his chariots with dogs and 
 arrows. Like them he will trot loose- 
 jointed over the desert ; like them, with 
 ears thrown back and thin-pinched flank, 
 he will roar his hot heart to the moon ; 
 like them he will tenderly lick his yellow- 
 eyed mate among the rocks, and with 
 those terrible paws caress her velvet side. 
 But man is sick and different. I am
 
 VERTICORDIA 169 
 
 sure I try my very best to make him as 
 nicely as ever, but for some reason or 
 another he is unsatisfied and unhappy. 
 A sadness has fallen on him, and an 
 evidence of his sickness is that men and 
 women no longer openly delight in being 
 together, with nothing but the cheerful 
 god of love between them, as in the days 
 when you and I were younger than we 
 are. They crawl away into deserts, 
 there to lie groaning and tormenting 
 themselves, as though they could not be 
 wretched enough without deliberately 
 increasing their misery. Surely some 
 curse lies on them, shrivelling and dis- 
 torting their nature, like a blight in corn. 
 I really cannot think what to do with 
 them. Hitherto man has been a very 
 nice little fellow, but now he is getting 
 beyond me, as the nursemaids say, and 
 if I had my own will I would give up 
 making him, and fashion only savage 
 things. So sick am I at the failure that 
 I will go visit for a while the blameless
 
 170 VERTICORDIA 
 
 Ethiopians, who are still unspoiled and 
 happy, and in my absence I pray you 
 watch the streams of life as they flow. 
 As diversion you can try your hand 
 on a beast or two, if you like, but play 
 no tricks with man. For he looks 
 terribly volcanic, and no one knows 
 what ^Etnean monster might arise from 
 his substance now." 
 
 * In sadness she departed, bringing joy 
 and plenty to the Ethiopians, and I was 
 left alone in the workshop of life. So, 
 like a schoolboy let loose with a tool- 
 chest, I set to at once, squeezing and 
 moulding the substances into shapes 
 which followed the old models pretty 
 closely. But exact imitation, you know, 
 is impossible, and philosophers tell us 
 that it is individuality which makes the 
 artist. That is why, in my zeal for art, 
 I gave an extra pull to the giraffe's neck; 
 and it was I who bestowed on the 
 flamingo a general's beak, and modelled 
 the adjutant-bird on the portrait of an
 
 VERTICORDIA 171 
 
 elderly lawyer. It was I who painted 
 the baboon with vermilion and blue, and 
 gave to the turkey the power of redden- 
 ing with rage and stiffening out his 
 feathers like a magistrate on the bench. 
 To the sulkiest camels I gave two 
 humps instead of one. I made the 
 elephant's hind-legs bend inwards like 
 a courtier's, and moulded the rhinoceros 
 into a dream of armoured chivalry. 
 Having thus added a pleasing variety 
 to life, I looked out on the world, and 
 saw that all the dear things were de- 
 lighted with themselves and as happy as 
 the day is long. Blue and red became 
 the national colours of baboons ; lady 
 giraffes thought nothing so becoming as 
 a long neck, and the more like a mon- 
 strous illusion the rhinoceros looked, the 
 better his mate loved him. 
 
 'But when I turned from the gay 
 deserts and the jungles to regard man in 
 places where he boasted himself most 
 like the gods, I perceived the truth of
 
 172 VERTICORDIA 
 
 the Great Mother's words. For he 
 kept moving restlessly up and down, as 
 though on some vain search, and what 
 had pleased him before was insufficient 
 now, like toys to a grown youth. Stung 
 by the lash of some power more malig- 
 nant than the Erinnyes, he hid himself 
 in loneliness, brooding over death and 
 tearing his own flesh because it cried out 
 for satisfaction which no longer satisfied ; 
 for I perceived that all the riches of 
 Sardis, all the concubines of Babylon, 
 and the victories of Assyrian kings 
 would now have availed him nothing. 
 The world also was full of cruelty, man 
 rending the life of man in rage at his 
 own indefinable wretchedness; or if in 
 their gloomy cities man and woman 
 met at all, they snatched a haphazard 
 pleasure, in which was no kindly inter- 
 course, or length of affection, or tender 
 solicitude for young ones, or sweet 
 mutual service of food and sleep such 
 as even wild things have, but in igno-
 
 VERTICORDIA 173 
 
 ranee and bitter haste they met and 
 parted. And behind all that is gentle 
 and lovesome upon the variegated crust 
 of earth they espied an ominous peril to 
 their souls, and they scorned the familiar 
 things of mortality, whilst in their eyes 
 smouldered a yearning unappeased for 
 some intangible mystery beyond the 
 confine of this trimly rounded world. 
 
 ' Full of sorrow at their unhappy state, 
 I had no heart to continue my merry 
 creations, but lay stretched in idleness 
 upon the ground, sad as the wind of 
 memories when now the Eurotas flows 
 under the full Spartan moon and no 
 white feet come dancing to the banks. 
 And as I lay, the streams of life ran past 
 on either hand, lapping against the sides 
 like little waves upon a breakwater. But 
 I let them run unheeded, for it wearied 
 me of life, and being born, as you know, 
 a little old-fashioned, I wept at the 
 thought of man's unhappiness after all 
 the trouble that had been taken with
 
 174 VERTICORDIA 
 
 him. And in sorrow I said to myself, 
 " It is time to die now, for they have 
 again forgotten me, and all my quaint 
 attributes and darling delights are turned 
 to fear and derision." Then I stretched 
 forth my hands on either side, and plung- 
 ing them into the streams as they ran, I 
 looked once more upon the stuff which 
 might have become human, but now was 
 better uncreated. And lo ! under my 
 touch it began to struggle blindly like 
 an unborn child, and unwittingly my 
 hands were drawn closer to each other, 
 till the substances leapt together with a 
 cry of joy and were transfused. Terrible 
 was my perplexity, for I remembered the 
 Mother's warning, and indeed the stuff* 
 heaving and writhing before me did look 
 very volcanic. But I yearned over it 
 with desire for its fulfilment, like a 
 mother when she feels the baby's shape- 
 less bones begin to stir. Taking it in 
 my hands, I looked cautiously round, 
 and saw no one. All was silent but for
 
 VERTICORDIA 175 
 
 the sorrow of the world, which, like the 
 lamentation of reeds, struck in variance 
 across the punctual harmony of the 
 moving stars. Full of that sad sweet 
 sound which is my music, I began to 
 mix and mould the substance, disobeying 
 the greater gods. And as I fashioned 
 the work my tears fell upon it, and were 
 mingled with the half-conscious clay, for 
 into my heart I had gathered up all the 
 long unhappiness of man, and I wept 
 as we primitive things sometimes must. 
 Then I called aloud to love, if perchance 
 he were living still. Once and again I 
 called, but there was no voice that 
 answered. Then I cried to him a third 
 time, for it is at the third call, if ever, 
 that the gods arrive. And waiting with 
 sorrow, I perceived that on a sudden the 
 substance between my hands began to 
 glow with an inner radiance, as though 
 a star of lightning were kindled in its 
 depths. And a voice said, "Love is 
 born again, and into him have passed all
 
 176 VERTICORDIA 
 
 the longings and inexhaustible imagina- 
 tions of mankind." 
 
 'Full of astonishment, I caught the 
 radiant substance quickly to my heart, 
 being terrified for its welfare and not 
 knowing what sort of thing this new love 
 might be. But keeping it safe against 
 my hairy breast, I moulded it there into 
 man and woman, gently rending its 
 delicate texture in twain, and with much 
 effort keeping the creatures apart, for 
 they struggled wildly to reunite. And 
 I said to myself : " Being fashioned with 
 my hands and kneaded with my tears, 
 they surely will not forget me. Where- 
 fore should I die ? " Then I breathed 
 into their nostrils the breath of the forest 
 and of the mountain pasture and of all 
 seas, and smiling sadly to myself with 
 unanticipated joy, I laid bare their hearts 
 before I closed them up in their breasts, 
 and kissed them as a mother kisses her 
 weanling child the very last time she 
 gives it suck, so that they were filled
 
 VERTICORDIA 177 
 
 with laughter which was but half sorrow, 
 and with spendthrift delight and pas- 
 sionate affection intensified by the know- 
 ledge of death. Then finishing off their 
 separated flesh as finely as I could, 
 remembering what I had learnt by 
 practice on lions and antelopes, I sent 
 the twain boldly out into the upper air 
 upon their diverse ways. 
 
 'So without repining, I returned to 
 my humble labours, having great con- 
 fidence in the god's power, but from time 
 to time I peered forth to see my dear 
 ones, how they were getting on. Then I 
 perceived that full of hope and an 
 immeasurable passion for something un- 
 attained, they roved the earth, and as 
 though by accidents and mistakes were 
 drawn step by step nearer together, 
 whilst the very stars moved with them 
 as in expectation of a god's birth, and 
 the rocks heaved and were troubled, so 
 that, remembering the old prophecy how 
 love should one day bring chaos back 
 M
 
 178 VEKTICORDIA 
 
 again, I shivered at what I had done 
 like a child who lets a tiger loose. And 
 in the midst of creation's travail I heard 
 the angry shrieks of sluggard and sensual 
 souls who were satisfied with common 
 things, and through cowardice dreaded 
 the steps of coming change. Then I 
 looked again and beheld the man and 
 woman standing face to face, aflame 
 with desire for a communion that should 
 transcend the limits of the world, and 
 I saw that the throbbing of the uni- 
 verse did but repeat the throbbing of 
 the lover's heart, for it quivered like a 
 hound in leash, and at the sound of the 
 beloved's salutation it leapt and stood 
 still. As they came near to each other, 
 I perceived also that the radiance of 
 the god who had come in answer to 
 my prayer was again kindled within 
 them, so that the very forms of both 
 were transfused with unearthly light; 
 and when their hearts, being now close 
 together, held converse as though by
 
 VERTICORDIA 179 
 
 interwoven music, in which words would 
 hinder rather than help, I knew that in 
 their love was born a strange and incal- 
 culable quality oh, sweeter far than 
 food to the starving or water to the 
 thirsty, or light to those who issue 
 from a mine. For into their spirit was 
 gathered up all the long yearning of 
 mankind for a vision of beatitude beyond 
 the compass of mortality, and of man's 
 glory they found assurance in the un- 
 limited prodigality of their own devotion. 
 Into the service of their love they turned 
 all the old delight of earth, so that the 
 morning sang of it, and the sorrow of 
 its desire lived in the tenderness of the 
 setting sun. It hung upon the horns 
 of the moon, and its voice was heard in 
 the breath of trees and the cadences 
 of the waves. It rose in the smell of 
 the warm ground after rain, and to snow 
 or desert heat it bade an equal welcome. 
 Within their heart also the lovers heard 
 the calling of unimaginable generations
 
 180 VERTICORDIA 
 
 to whom aforetime love had given his 
 solace. With their joy of spirit were 
 blended the joys of the far-off and in- 
 human creatures to whose brief moments 
 of lovingkindness caverns dark and cold 
 gave shelter on shores where the grey 
 sea beat. In their souls the mailed 
 warriors again made love; they knew 
 the happiness of the shepherd returning 
 home, and of the spearman back from 
 war, and they knew the happiness of 
 those who stood to meet them, nor did 
 they feel shame of their love, but only 
 the greater joy, because one single ray 
 of its nature had lightened the eyes of 
 tigers meeting in the night where waters 
 flow. 
 
 'And in the music of their diverse 
 harmony I seemed to hear their thoughts 
 speaking in antiphone, as though one 
 said: "Love has no reason but itself"; 
 and the other answered : " It is more 
 blessed to love than to be loved." And 
 one said : " Love can deny nothing to
 
 VERTICORDIA 181 
 
 love." And the other answered : " I will 
 not deny even the gift of strange and 
 sweet reserves, that love's lustre be not 
 dimmed." Ever striving for union they 
 rejoiced that, being twain, each might 
 love the other better than the soul loves 
 itself. Seeking for some miracle whereby 
 their spirit might mingle by day and 
 night, they found that the miraculous 
 had already happened. For the first 
 time life was theirs, and for the first time 
 they knew death, how by the foreboding 
 of eternal separation he concentrates the 
 embrace of living flesh into a passion of 
 solicitude hardly to be endured. 
 
 ' Other words of theirs I might have 
 heard, but I shut my ears, drawing down 
 their furry points, lest even a god should 
 do the lovers wrong through envy and 
 astonishment. For their souls seemed 
 intertwined as the spirit intertwines with 
 the flesh, so that one cannot say, " Here 
 it is," or, "That is it." The air about 
 them was golden with light and quivered
 
 182 VERTICORDIA 
 
 like summer heat above a plain, as though 
 it were laden with some unpenetrated 
 secret. The world in their sight was 
 charged with gladness, and to gaze upon 
 that lady the common people ran to- 
 gether, knowing that in her they beheld 
 a miracle. For the lovely joy which 
 radiated from her soul, in touching others 
 became split into various hues like sun- 
 shine on a raincloud, so that upon the 
 happy she cast the gold of greater glad- 
 ness, and on the rebel the green of 
 liberty, and on the mourner the violet 
 of consolation. But upon her lover she 
 threw a scarlet flame, in the midst of 
 which she burned with a light brighter 
 than fire. Thus they entered upon ful- 
 ness of life, becoming, as the Greeks say, 
 greater than themselves. For they were 
 continually driven to rise above the past, 
 seeing that day by day love had to be 
 conquered afresh, like a persistent enemy, 
 and he refused to surrender himself unto 
 a yesterday's virtue.
 
 VERTICORDIA 183 
 
 'Thus they moved along the track of 
 life with redoubled soul, and like Leto I 
 was full of joy in my miraculous children. 
 For it seemed that with them a new 
 light had risen, far surpassing all that 
 the people of old days had to tell of the 
 brightest affection. And for the rest of 
 mankind, amid the sliding uncertainties 
 of life, it held out a vision of incalculable 
 hope. So the sailors in the wash and 
 swirl of the monotonous but shifting sea, 
 when the wind blowing from Thrace 
 drives the spray along the surface of the 
 black water like fragments of glass 
 suddenly at midnight they see the white 
 columns of the temple gleaming on the 
 promontory, and the lamps of the priests 
 shining yellow as they move about in 
 service to the god and goddess who rule 
 the sea and air, so that the rude and out- 
 cast men take comfort on their way.' 
 
 The shepherd was silent for a moment, 
 and I could hardly see him, for the twi- 
 light had gone, and clouds were swimming
 
 184 VERTICORDIA 
 
 round the earth. ' Such a thing does not 
 often happen,' he went on, laughing as 
 he sighed ; * for that ambiguous creature 
 does not get many chances at the knead- 
 ing-trough, and think of the myriad 
 passionate souls which are needed to 
 make up one such consummation as a 
 lover's heart ! About once in three ages, 
 people say, it may be possible, but a 
 separation of a few years may thwart it 
 a few miles of water, a few yards of 
 dust or slime or stone. Yet under the 
 similitude of Verticordia, whether she is 
 seen in snails or goats or love's own 
 lovers, lurks one of the powers by which 
 this queer old earth is illumined. If you 
 put your ear to the ground on a spring 
 evening like this, you may hear the 
 mysterious breathing of earth, just as a 
 lover in the stillness of night may lay 
 his head upon the beloved's heart with- 
 out awaking her, and in its throbbing 
 hear the murmur of the wild and un- 
 imaginable generations of warm-beating
 
 VERTICORDIA 185 
 
 hearts which have handed down to her 
 the flame of life. As I listen, my marvel 
 grows at the brief but immeasurable 
 glory of my poor human charges. They 
 appear and are gone. Like shipwrecked 
 boys they are cast upon the shoals of 
 time, and drop off into darkness. No 
 research of history, no deciphering of 
 village tombs can ever recover them. 
 We think that somewhere they may 
 still lie nestled up, with all their age 
 about them ; but even darkness holds 
 them no more. They stood on this 
 flying earth, we see their footsteps, we 
 hear the thin ghost of their voices, and 
 on the stones lies the touch of their dead 
 hands, but they are nowhere to be found 
 at all. They knew how short their dear 
 life was, yet they filled it with labour 
 and unrecorded toil. Morning and night 
 through their little space of minutes they 
 struggled and agonised to keep on living 
 and feed their children for the struggle 
 and agony of a few minutes more. The
 
 186 VERTICORDIA 
 
 sun blasted them, ice devoured their flesh, 
 their mouths were mad with thirst, 
 hunger twisted them with cramps, plague 
 consumed them, they rotted as they 
 stood, bolts of torture drove through 
 their brains, their bodies were clamped 
 into hoops ; in battle, in childbed they 
 died with extremity of pain. Yet they 
 endured, and into the chinks and loop- 
 holes of their misery they crammed 
 laughter and beauty and a passion trans- 
 figuring them beyond the semblance of 
 the gods. My son, let us leave it to the 
 priests to marvel at man's wickedness. 
 At many things I marvel, but over the 
 mere conception of any such thing as 
 love or laughter in the heart of man, I 
 could stand astonished with admiration 
 throughout a god's lifetime. 
 
 ' It is in vain that, fifty times in suc- 
 cession, man calls himself a miserable 
 sinner. What he ought to recall fifty 
 times in succession is the miracle that 
 it is not true. He knows well enough
 
 VERTICORDIA 187 
 
 that, under the flame of passionate 
 devotion, he may find himself fused, 
 moulded, and battered into forms beyond 
 the touch of misery or sin. Below 
 the long drone of uninspired exist- 
 ence, we may still hear the throb 
 of those lifegiving moments when the 
 spirit is transfigured by the virtue of 
 extremes. By those drum-beats life is 
 counted, and nowhere but in extremes 
 does virtue lie. Who has found warmth 
 in the tempered moderation of all the 
 philosophers, or comfort in their reason- 
 able consolations ? No misery is so 
 freezing as deliberate happiness ; no sin 
 so black as moderated virtue and moder- 
 ated vice. Who loves a moderate 
 woman, or cares to chase a lion reason- 
 able in his rage ? Let us unphilosophic 
 people follow the extremes of the spirit 
 wherever they may lead us, as is the 
 lover's way, hoping to win on our course 
 the lover's reward of uncalculating ser- 
 vice. By madness only, or by sleep, it is
 
 188 VERTICORDIA 
 
 written, man may enter into the council- 
 chamber of the gods. So now, my son, 
 I wish you good-night, and after sleep 
 a happy madness.' 
 
 He turned with a smile to the Canon, 
 who had come back with news of dinner, 
 and was waiting impatiently behind us. 
 
 ' I am not sleepy, I confess,' said the 
 Canon, with a condescending laugh, ' and 
 I still retain my sanity, but from your 
 last words I conclude that you are con- 
 founding morality with works of super- 
 erogation, which the Church declares 
 cannot be taught without arrogance and 
 impiety.' 
 
 ' I 'm sure I never wished to dispute 
 with churches or talk about morality,' 
 said the shepherd sighing ; ' I only know 
 that in love and in war the works of 
 supererogation are the things that count, 
 and a good lover or a good fighter always 
 does more than in bounden duty is re- 
 quired. That is the reason that I, a 
 mere shepherd, have also become a
 
 VERTICORDIA 189 
 
 curate to Venus and Mars. And so, 
 when I die, please take my old parch- 
 ment skin, shave it and dry it and 
 stretch it tight to form the head of a 
 hollow war-drum. But, for my heart, 
 bray it in a mortar and pound it fine, 
 that lovers may drink it as a charm.' 
 
 We had risen and were walking slowly 
 towards the further gate of the Close. 
 I wondered whether it would be in ac- 
 cordance with canonical law to ask a 
 god to dinner, or whether it was not 
 more usual to offer him a drink in the 
 kitchen. Whilst I was hesitating to 
 suggest either, for fear of what he might 
 say to the servants, especially in con- 
 solation to poor Elizabeth, the Canon 
 broke out rather irritably : * I beg your 
 pardon, my man, but I must really ask 
 you again not to walk on the edge of 
 our grass. You see it isn't common 
 grass for sheep like the stuff you are 
 accustomed to, and we are all very par- 
 ticular to keep it really nice. If I may
 
 190 VERTICORDIA 
 
 say so, it is part of God's service, and 
 I 'm sure I don't know what the head- 
 verger will say if he finds your footsteps 
 on it in the morning ! ' 
 
 ' He will think the beasts of the field 
 have broken into the sanctuary, and 
 that would be terrible ! ' cried the shep- 
 herd, and was gone. 
 
 I lit a match and examined the soft 
 turf where he had been walking. It 
 was all dinted with a cloven hoof. The 
 Canon traced the marks with the point 
 of his umbrella, and then looked up at 
 me in wild surmise. 
 
 * The devil ! ' he exclaimed. And I do 
 not know whether he was stating a 
 scientific fact, or had forgotten himself 
 for the first time in his life. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S 
 LOVE-LETTERS 
 
 Small crown 8v0, $s. net. 
 
 First Edition, .... November 1900. 
 
 Second Impression, . . . December 1900. 
 
 Third Impression, . . . December 1900. 
 
 Fourth Impression, . . . December 1900. 
 
 Fifth Impression, . . . January 1901. 
 
 Sixth Impression, . . . January 1901. 
 
 Seventh Impression, . . . February 1901. 
 
 Eighth Impression, .... March 1901. 
 
 PRESS OPINIONS. 
 
 "... charming letters, . . . polished, but not too polished to be passionate, 
 nor too passionate to overstep natural reticence.' The Spectator. 
 
 Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR in the Daily Mail says: 'I turned over the leaves 
 rapidly, almost greedily, and had read almost all its story before I could allow 
 myself to sleep. . . . This little book, of which all London is now talking of 
 which London may still be talking many a generation hence. It is a loud cry, 
 not merely of one intoxicated and torn heart, but of the claim of inner and true 
 emotion to be still the greatest force of life ; the one thing worth having worth 
 living for, longing for, dying for." 
 
 ' The true story of an actual life . . . beautiful letters, beautifully written. . . . 
 Their author was a woman of great parts, of very refined sense. ... It is much 
 to say, but we remember nothing in literature quite so full of passionate human 
 appeal as Letter LXXVII. . . . Nothing could be more intensely human, no cry of 
 a human soul more passionate. Few will read it dry-eyed. ... If there is any 
 meaning in literature, if the most intimate of letters can express aught of human 
 feeling, she was a woman to die for.' Vanity Fair. 
 
 'We have not for a long time seen anything as pathetic as "An English- 
 woman's Love-Letters "... a tragedy and a record too sacred and too piteous 
 for publication ... so great is their charm ... a tragedy, without plot, story, 
 action, or incident ... it needs none of them . . . this is not a book to quote or 
 to review, but to read.' Literature. 
 
 ' There will be many for whom these letters will have an extraordinary charm ; 
 many more cannot fail to respond to the intensity of the passion they reveal, and 
 the depth of the tragedy they suggest, while the most critical and least emotional 
 will find much to please them in the mere technical excellence of the writing. . . . 
 There are veins of deepest passion, of tender sentiment, delightful touches of 
 humour, quaint revelations of a vanity, half childish, half womanly, which is 
 exquisite by reason of its being inspired by love, glimpses without number into 
 the soul of an adoring, adorable woman, and a note oi tragic self-abnegation of a 
 very rare kind ... to the most casual they must bring a heartache.' Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
 
 University of California 
 
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