X

There is no derogation of new things in this plea I make specially to you who may be candidates in our School of English. You may remember my reading to you in a previous lecture that liberal poem of Cory's invoking the spirit of 'dear divine Comatas,' that

Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek.

Well, I would have your minds, as you read our literature, reach back to that Dorian shepherd through an atmosphere—his made ours—as through veils, each veil unfolding a value. So you will recognise how, from Chaucer down, our literature has panted after the Mediterranean water-brooks. So through an atmosphere you will link (let me say) Collins's "Ode to Evening," or Matthew Arnold's "Strayed Reveller" up to the 'Pervigilium Veneris,' Mr Sturge Moore's "Sicilian Vine-dresser" up to Theocritus, Pericles' funeral oration down to Lincoln's over the dead at Gettysburg. And as I read you just now some part of an English oration in the Latin manner, so I will conclude with some stanzas in the Greek manner. They are by Landor—a proud promise by a young writer, hopeful as I could wish any young learner here to be. The title—

Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra

  Tanagra! think not I forget
     Thy beautifully storied streets;
  Be sure my memory bathes yet
     In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
  The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy,
     Whose sunny bosom swells with joy
  When we accept his matted rushes
     Upheav'd with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes.

  A gift I promise: one I see
     Which thou with transport wilt receive,
  The only proper gift for thee,
     Of which no mortal shall bereave
  In later times thy mouldering walls,
     Until the last old turret falls;
  A crown, a crown from Athens won,
     A crown no god can wear, beside Latona's son.

  There may be cities who refuse
     To their own child the honours due,
  And look ungently on the Muse;
     But ever shall those cities rue
  The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,
    Offering no nourishment, no rest,
  To that young head which soon shall rise
     Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies.

  Sweetly where cavern'd Dirce flows
     Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay,
  Flapping the while with laurel-rose
     The honey-gathering tribes away;
  And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues
     Lisp your Corinna's early songs;
  To her with feet more graceful come
     The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home.

  O let thy children lean aslant
     Against the tender mother's knee,
  And gaze into her face, and want
     To know what magic there can be
  In words that urge some eyes to dance,
     While others as in holy trance
  Look up to heaven: be such my praise!
     Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays.

[Footnote 1: The Works of Lucian of Samosata: translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (Introduction, p. xxix). Oxford, Clarendon Press.]

[Footnote 2: "The Training of the Imagination": by James
Rhoades. London, John Lane, 1900.]

[Footnote 3: Landor: "Æsop and Rhodopè."]