Pausanias, the Spartan; The Haunted and the Haunters Part 27

(UNFINISHED.) The pages covered by the ma.n.u.script of this uncompleted story of "Pausanias" are scarcely more numerous than those which its author has filled with the notes made by him from works consulted with special reference to the subject of it. Those notes (upon Greek and Persian antiquities) are wholly without interest for the general public. They ill.u.s.trate the author's conscientious industry, but they afford no clue to the plot of his romance. Under the sawdust, however, thus fallen in the industrial process of an imaginative work, unhappily unfinished, I have found two specimens of original composition. They are rough sketches of songs expressly composed for "Pausanias;" and, since they are not included in the foregoing portion of it, I think they may properly be added here. The unrhymed lyrics introduced by my father into some of the opening chapters of this romance appear to have been suggested by some fragments of Mimnermus, and composed about the same time as "The Lost Tales of Miletus."

Indeed, one of them has been already printed in that work. The following verses, however, which are rhymed, bear evidence of having been composed at a much earlier period. I know not whether it was my father's intention to discard them altogether, or to alter them materially, or to insert them without alteration in some later portion of the romance. But I print them here precisely as they are written.

L.

FOR PAUSANIAS.

_Partially borrowed from Aristophanes' "Peace,"_ v. 1127, etc.

Away, away, with the helm and greaves, Away with the leeks and cheese![1]

I have conquer'd my pa.s.sion for wounds and blows, And the worst that I wish to the worst of my foes Is the glory and gain Of a year's campaign On a diet of leeks and cheese.

I love to drink by my own warm hearth, Nourisht with logs from the pine-clad heights, Which were hewn in the blaze of the summer sun To treasure his rays for the winter nights On the hearth where my grandam spun.

I love to drink of the grape I press, And to drink with a friend of yore; Quick! bring me a bough from the myrtle tree Which is budding afresh by Nicander's door.

Tell Nicander himself he must sup with me, And along with the bough from his myrtle tree We will circle the lute, in a choral glee To the G.o.ddess of corn and peace.

For Nicander and I were fast friends at school.

Here he comes! We are boys once more.

When the gra.s.shopper chaunts in the bells of thyme I love to watch if the Lemnian grape[2]

Is donning the purple that decks its prime; And, as I sit at my porch to see, With my little one trying to scale my knee, To join in the gra.s.shopper's chaunt, and sing To Apollo and Pan from the heart of Spring.[3]

Listen, O list!

Hear ye not, neighbours, the voice of Peace?

"The swallow I hear in the household eaves."

Io Aegien! Peace!

"And the skylark at poise o'er the bended sheaves,"

Io Aegien! Peace!

Here and there, everywhere, hear we Peace, Hear her, and see her, and clasp her--Peace!

The gra.s.shopper chaunts in the bells of thyme, And the halcyon is back to her nest in Greece!

IN PRAISE OF THE ATHENIAN KNIGHTS.

_Imitated from the "Knights" of Aristophanes_, v. 505, etc.

Chaunt the fame of the Knights, or in war or in peace, Chaunt the darlings of Athens,[4] the bulwarks of Greece Pressing foremost to glory, on wave and on sh.o.r.e, Where the steed has no footing they win with the oar.[5]

On their bosoms the battle splits, wasting its shock.

If they charge like the whirlwind, they stand like the rock.

Ha! they count not the numbers, they scan not the ground, When a foe comes in sight on his lances they bound.

Fails a foot in its speed? heed it not. One and all[6]

Spurn the earth that they spring from, and own not a fall.

O the darlings of Athens, the bulwarks of Greece, Wherefore envy the lovelocks they perfume in peace!

Wherefore scowl if they fondle a quail or a dove, Or inscribe on a myrtle, the names that they love?

Does Alcides not teach us how valour is mild?

Lo, at rest from his labours he plays with a child.

When the slayer of Python has put down his bow, By his lute and his lovelocks Apollo we know.

Fear'd, O rowers, those gallants their beauty to spoil When they sat on your benches, and shared in your toil!

When with laughter they row'd to your cry "Hippopai,"

"On, ye coursers of wood, for the palm wreath, away!"

Did those dainty youths ask you to store in your holds Or a cask from their crypt or a lamb from their folds?

No, they cried, "We are here both to fight and to fast, Place us first in the fight, at the board serve us last!

Wheresoever is peril, we knights lead the way, Wheresoever is hardship, we claim it as pay.

"Call us proud, O Athenians, we know it full well, And we give you the life we're too haughty to sell."

Hail the stoutest in war, hail the mildest in peace, Hail the darlings of Athens, the bulwarks of Greece!

Notes:

[1] [Greek: Turou te kai kromuon]. Cheese and onions, the rations furnished to soldiers in campaign.

[2] It ripened earlier than the others. The words of the Chorus are, [Greek: tas Laemnias ampelous ei pepainousin aedae].

[3]: Variation--"What a blessing is life in a noon of Spring."

[4] Variation--"The adorners of Athens, the bulwarks of Greece."

[5] Variation--"Keenest racers to glory, on wave or on sh.o.r.e, By the rush of the steed or the stroke of the oar!"

[6] Variation--"Falls there one? never help him! Our knights one and all."

THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS:

OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN

[This tale first appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_, August, 1859. A portion of it as then published is now suppressed, because encroaching too much on the main plot of the "Strange Story." As it stands, however, it may be considered the preliminary outline of that more elaborate attempt to construct an interest akin to that which our forefathers felt in tales of witchcraft and ghostland, out of ideas and beliefs which have crept into fashion in the society of our own day. There has, perhaps, been no age in which certain phenomena that in all ages have been produced by, or upon, certain physical temperaments, have excited so general a notice,--more perhaps among the educated cla.s.ses than the uneducated. Nor do I believe that there is any age in which those phenomena have engendered throughout a wider circle a more credulous superst.i.tion. But, on the other hand, there has certainly been no age in which persons of critical and inquisitive intellect--seeking to divest what is genuine in these apparent vagaries of Nature from the cheats of venal impostors and the exaggeration of puzzled witnesses--have more soberly endeavoured to render such exceptional thaumaturgia of philosophical use, in enlarging our conjectural knowledge of the complex laws of being--sometimes through physiological, sometimes through metaphysical research. Without discredit, however, to the many able and distinguished speculators on so vague a subject, it must be observed that their explanations as yet have been rather ingenious than satisfactory. Indeed, the first requisites for conclusive theory are at present wanting. The facts are not sufficiently generalized, and the evidences for them have not been sufficiently tested.

It is just when elements of the marvellous are thus struggling between superst.i.tion and philosophy, that they fall by right to the domain of Art--the art of poet or tale-teller. They furnish the constructor of imaginative fiction with materials for mysterious terror of a character not exhausted by his predecessors, and not foreign to the notions that float on the surface of his own time; while they allow him to wander freely over that range of conjecture which is favourable to his purposes, precisely because science itself has not yet disenchanted that debateable realm of its haunted shadows and goblin lights.]

A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest,--" Fancy! since we last met, I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."

"Really haunted?--and by what? ghosts?"