THE STEADFAST PRINCE.

Page 128, stanzas 7, 8.

In these stanzas I had before me Calderon’s magnificent description of the advance of the Portuguese fleet, which he puts into the mouth of one of the Moors. These are a few lines:—

Primero nos pareciÓ

Viendo que sus puntas tocan

Con el cielo, que eran nubes

De los que Á la mar se arrojan

A concebir en zafir

Lluvias, que en cristal abortan.

Luego de marinos monstruos

Nos pareciÓ errante copia,

Que Á acompaÑar Á Neptuno

Salian de sus alcobas:

Pues sacudiendo las velas

Que son del viento lisonja

Pensamos que sacudian

Las alas sobre las olas.

Ya parecia mas cerca

Una inmensa Babilonia,

De quien los pÉnsiles fueron

FlÁmulas, que el viento azotan.

P. 129, s. 9, l. 5.

“Vexilla Regis prodeunt,” the great Crusaders’ hymn.

P. 173.
ORPHEUS AND THE SIRENS.

This poem was first suggested by some words in the “Sirenes, sive Voluptas,” in Lord Bacon’s “Sapientia Veterum.” [Orpheus] “laudes Deorum cantans et reboans, Sirenum voces confudit et summovit: meditationes enim rerum divinarum voluptates sensÛs non tantum potestate, sed etiam suavitate superant.” According to the author of the “Orphic Argonautics,” the song of Orpheus ended the enchantment of the Sirens, and caused them to fling themselves into the sea, where they were changed into rocks. Lord Bacon gives finely the meaning of the shore white with bones (stanza xix.), which yet were unable to deter others from approaching;—how it teaches us “exempla calamitatum, licet clara et conspicua, contra voluptatum corruptelas non multum proficere.”

The classical reader will at once recognise, in more than one passage, my obligations to Pindar.

P. 185.
THE OIL OF MERCY.

The traditions concerning the relations between the Tree of life which was set in Paradise, and the Cross on which hung the Saviour of the world, are almost infinite; or, rather, the one deep idea of their identity has clothed itself in innumerable forms. They constitute indeed one of the richest portions of what may without offence be termed the Mythology of the Christian Church. That which I have followed here is given in the “Evangelium Nicodemi,” c. 19. See Thilo’s “Codex Apocryphus,” v. i. p. 684. In the “Recognitions” of Clement, l. 1, c. 45, an Ebionite book, and therefore only acknowledging the humanity of Christ, he is, consistently with this view, said, not himself to anoint, but to have been anointed with the oil from the Tree of Life. The connexion between the Tree of Life and the Cross of Christ has been twice wrought up into sublime dramatic poems by Calderon; once in his Auto, entitled “El Arbor del mejor Fruto;” and again in that which is indeed only the same poem in a later and more perfect form, “La Sibila del Oriente.” We have the same tradition of Seth going to the gates of Paradise in the fine old Cornish Mystery of “The Creation of the World,” which was lately published with an English translation; and allusions to it are frequent in all the popular literature of the Middle Ages; see, for instance, GÖthe’s recension of the “Reineke Fuchs,” near the beginning of the tenth book; and I remember a curious passage about it in Mandeville’s “Travels.” RÜckert, in the following poem, has given the tradition in somewhat a different shape.

I may just observe that this poem is an attempt—I will confess a most unsuccessful one—to write English verse in the Spanish assonant rhyme, of which the principle is, that words are considered to rhyme which have the same vowel-sounds, though the consonants are different: thus, angel and raiment having the same vowel-sounds, a—e, are perfect assonant rhymes. As in the Persian Ghazel, there is but one rhyme running through the whole poem, and in this all the alternate lines, beginning with the second, terminate: and of course the rhythmical effect of the poem is to be judged, not by any half-dozen lines apart, but by the total impression which the whole Poem continuously read leaves on the ear.

THE END.

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