Page images
PDF
EPUB

group of jubilant men and joined him. "I hope what I've just heard isn't true," he said, avoiding his friend's questioning look. "The people here say our Indians have all gone down to Snake Hollow with everything you gave them, and have sold it all there, and spent the money for whiskey." "Let's go out and see whether they've gone," said Hernshaw, springing into the

wagon.

Jenifer followed him, and they drove quickly to the scene of their late labors. The only living things they found there were one or two hens, wandering among the deserted houses. Even the dogs had followed their masters in that hegira which must surely have taken place.

We may as well go back," said Hernshaw, turning away and walking toward the

wagon.

On the way home he hardly spoke at all, and his companion noticed that he was paler than usual. They parted at his house, for Jenifer thought it would be best not to intrude on him just then.

But a growing uneasiness made him wish he had stayed with Hernshaw, and soon after nightfall he determined to visit him. Opening his door he saw a figure wrapped in a blanket crouching beside the doorstep. It rose when he spoke, and the light from the room showed him it was the Indian woman, Falling Leaf.

Tears rolled down her face as she told him the story of her people's temptation and fall. At twilight on the day before, two half-breeds from the main body of the tribe had appeared among them with a bottle of whiskey, and tried to get the men to drink. When they refused the half-breeds called them a white man's dogs, and said they were afraid to disobey their master. The women tried to drive them away, but the men would not let them break their rules of hospitality. At last one of the men was taunted into drinking, and the others then gave way in quick succession. After that they were

VOL. IX.-26.

wild for more, and when the bottle was empty they all followed the half-breeds out on the prairie. She and another woman crept after them and found the whole party around a wagon, from which liquor was being handed out to them. Some one in the wagon lighted a pipe, and the glow of the match showed her it was Slemmer, the saloon-keeper. Toward midnight the men came back, yelling and screaming and crazy with drink. They hustled together all they could drag or drive, and the stampede began, the women following them with their children, whom they were afraid to leave behind. It was day when they came to Snake Hollow, and the men sold their property and spent what little they got for it at the two saloons. They were now lying in the streets there, and the women were keeping watch over them. She had come to tell Hernshaw the whole truth, but her courage had failed at his door and she did not dare to knock. "Come with me, said Jenifer. “I'm going to see him now." The house was dark when they reached it, and their knocking brought no response. Finding the door unfastened they went in, and the first dim rays of the candle Jenifer lighted fell on the form of the old man lying on a couch at the farther end of the room. The form was there, but the only element a chemist could not analyze had gone from it forever.

[ocr errors]

The Indian woman knelt down by the couch, and Jenifer stood beside her in silence. Feeling a touch on his hand he looked down and found her looking up into his face.

"Will he know what I want to tell him, up there?" she asked.

He could not tell her of the darkness in his own mind; but all he could say was, "If it's right for him to know, he will. "

The missionary was gone, but the seed he had sown took root and flourished. His helper took up the work with a stronger grasp.. New people coming into the settlement, took part in his labors, and even the

[blocks in formation]

Where straying breezes tilt the grass,
And poppies in the sunlight burn,
Like gleaming spangles careless cast
By wasteful hand at every turn,

How sweet he plies his crystal pipe-
Dewdrops and pearls to music set,
And fused to measure more divine

Than human skill has ever met.

O, matchless bay and mountain crests, And spreading slopes of green and gold; O, rhapsody of sight and sound,

As soul and sense thy charms enfold,

I drift where'er thy currents sweep,

In strength or weakness-such is fate; Today my heart's amid the homes

That nestle near the Golden Gate.

R. E. C. S.

LYRIC POETRY.

Mother of contests crowned with crowns of gold, Mistress of truth,

All hail! Olympia, where the prophet-priests of sooth

Around the burning victim stand,
Intent to find

Some index of the mind

Of Zeus, who holds the vivid levin in his hand; If he have word of them whose souls are manned Thy wreath to win, and rest from labours manifold.

(Pindar, Olym. viii., tr. by Baring).

THE fifth bright summer afternoon of the eightieth Olympiad is on the wane. Behind low-browed Cronium the sun is hiding his beaming countenance, and his rosy rays piercing through the clear airs of Elis are reflected back in warm tints from the snowmuffled summits of Erymanthus and Cylene in the distant east. His lingering light plays lovingly on the myriad white tents scattered over the Olympian plain, on the silvery olives in the altis, on the massive mar

ble fane, around which tumultuously throng enthusiastic multitudes offering thanksgiving sacrifices to the supreme deity of the Hellenic race. After the sonorous ancient hymn of Archilochus, the marshaled choruses begin their songs, and in graceful involutions, to the soft twanging of the citharæ, or the shrill music of the flutes, weave intricate figures. And now, the religious ceremonies concluded, upraised on the shoulders of shouting kindred, the olive-crowned champions are borne away to their several abodes, where long continued feasting celebrates, amid increasing enthusiasm, the exploits just performed. Most uproariously jubilant on this day are the men of Egina, for upon the brows of their own Alcimedon rests the crown for victory in wrestling, and with his first priceless prize another not less valued is to be bestowed. While the joyful banquet is in full progress the clear-voiced cittern is

heard sweet above the clamor, and there enters Pindar, attended by his tuneful choir of garlanded dancers. Amid the instant silence his lambent-worded song is sung, appealing to every sentiment of patriotic pride, and is translated with rhythmic harmony in varied gesture and movement by his carefully trained attendants; and the whole assemblage, enraptured through ear and eye, is elevated into a soul intoxication more pure, more fervid, than that of the wine cup.

Olympia, for a thousand years the witness of such recurring scenes, is no more. Her sacred graves have been desecrated by fire; her treasuries have been plundered; her hundreds of sculptured marbles have vanished from the face of the earth; her high altars, her monumental columns, her splendid temple, containing that most magnificent product of Phidias's art, have crumbled into dust; the very god-Zeus, "wielder of the thunderbolt"-in whose honor all these were erected, is no longer the venerated object of worshipers' hecatombs. But the fame of an Alcimedon, enshrined in the glittering verse of a Pindar, still glows with undimmed brilliance.

"Gold when refined throws out full lustre, and a hymn that tells of valiant deeds makes a man equal in fortune to kings."

(Nem. iv.)

Almost every nation that has a history boasts traditions of a golden age, a period made illustrious in its annals by a remarkable development of material prosperity, with a perhaps concurrent culmination of genius as exemplified in works of fine art or of literature. That of Greece, whose story exercises a singular fascination upon every studentwhether he reads it in the rolling hexameters of Homer or the stately periods of Thucydides may challenge the world's admiration. Powerful warriors, who founded its various states and organized that system of military discipline which, joined with valor, made Grecian arms a terror in the ancient world;

statesmen, whose laws embody such illustrious precepts of democracy as are received with favor by modern peoples; orators, whose eloquence charmed the popular ear; philosophers, at whose feet the learned still humbly sit; sculptors, whose marvelous works-even in fragmentary copies-extort our lasting admiration; poets, whose songs and dramas ever shall be the delight of the scholar:-all these Greece, that multum in parvo, produced in a variety and profusion unrivaled. The historian of any branch of the art of clothing thought in metrical garb, will therefore necessarily refer to the poetical treasures in part bequeathed by this ancient race, if he attempts any adequate discussion of the epic, the drama, or the lyric.

The Greek was an impressionable bein g His life was an open air existence, to which his sunny clime conduced. His religion was a nature-worship. His superstitious

veneration of the natural forces and their exhibition around him, which seated Zeus on high Olympus and enthroned Poseidon in the watery depths, was equaled only by the playful fancy that peopled each grove with its illusive wood-nymphs, and beneath the crystal flood of each fountain hid its own naiad. Strike a low note upon the pianoforte: a cultivated musical sense will distinguish the harmonic an octave above. Similarly the ear of the Greek caught and recognized the various subtle voices of nature, harsh or sweet, loud or soft, according to her mood. The strident solo of Boreas, whistled through the somber pine; the rustling melodies the gentle summer breeze breathed over the waving golden tassels of the wheat fields; the hoarse thunders of the heavy waves dashing upon the rocks; the babbling of the brook rippling down through the orchard: these evoked a responsive echo. And perchance as he lay under some ancient plane tree in the flowery meadow on the cliff, lulled to a half unconscious daydream by the lightly lapping waves of the

Ægean below, some bee, flown straight from Hymettus, kissed his lips, and he awoke and sang.

The fable of Amphion taming the hearts of savage men, and rearing the walls of Thebes by the strains of his lyre; the still more beautiful story of Orpheus's descent into Hades, and his nearly successful restoration to light of the beloved Eurydice simply show the possession by such as these of unusual musical and poetical genius, before which melted the hearts of that ruder age. The poet was aoidos (singer) before he was poietes (maker); the minstrel preceded the versifier; and his efforts, humbler, as viewed from the standpoint of later literary achievement, have not been preserved. As Mother Goose, the solace of English childhood in successive generations, is scarcely considered a part of literature, and, barring the accident of printing, might long ago have been forgotten or transformed; so in the childhood of the Greek race, before as well as during the existence of a written literature, unnumbered songs were sung that have passed out of memory.

Some few, of unusual longevity and incidentally incorporated in the works of later poets or critics, have been preserved. Such are: the Linus song, referred to by Homer, a lament "sung by reapers for the beautiful dead youth who symbolized" summer's decay; the Lityerses song of the corn reapers, another plaintive strain; the Mitylenean mill song of women grinding; the flowersong, the swallow song of the children, both heralding the approach of spring. (The latter is still sung.') But where are the songs to whose measures the villagers

"Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy," as they danced around the wine-press, or celebrated the happy nuptials of comrades, rejoiced in the harvest-home, or bewailed the loved and lost; where are the unwritten songs of later years? Like the ethereal 1 Beard, Modern Greece.

music to which the sleepless youth listens in the watches of the night, or the happy numbers that come unbidden in our dreams, and mock our waking efforts to recall, all now are but confused though pleasant memories. Of all the fair handmaidens of Lyric Poetry, Popular Song is the eldest; and though she is a simple-mannered damsel, with a lyre of uncouth shape and few chords, we delight in her fresh rustic beauty. and are charmed by her mellow tones, subdued now by the more sensuous, shrill strains of the attractive choristers she marshals in.

In the earliest periods the song and the dance were inseparable companions: the agile steps of the one were guided by the tuneful notes of the other, nor can we assign priority of birth to either. Both were unitedly attendant upon worship; as devotional ceremonial became more complex, the arts of the sisters grew more intricate, and not until in a later epoch, when worship became wholly spiritual, were they two divorced-dancing, the adoration of the body, sundered from music, the ethereal medium in which the soul rises to higher flights.

Poesy, the third sister, soared on the pinions of music. Greek poetry, until the age of Alexander, was always composed to be sung. No pale-faced student by the feeble light of some ill-smelling taper silently pored over it, thus entirely missing its most effective beauties. It appealed directly to the ear, and the Greek, with his exquisite taste, soon discovered the measure and movement most appropriate to each emotion. If it was the stately hymn to Apollo, sung as they marched around his altar, or the triumph-bearing pean shouted to Mars, as with firm tread and leveled spear they advanced in serried phalanx on the field of battle, the slow, firm spondee and vigorous anapaest made the movement. biting satire was the design of the poet, the terse, pungent iambus was the mordant.

If

If

« PreviousContinue »