Rennell Rodd

“ Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of what it symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is. Indeed, the transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of art. The metaphysical mind of Asia may create for itself the monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most closely to the perfect facts of physical life also. Nor, in its primary aspect, has a painting, for instance, any more spiritual message or meaning for us than a blue tile from the wall of Damascus, or a Hitzen vase. ”

“ To myself who have lived for some years in that enchanted world of Greece, and have sailed from island to island of its haunted seas, the shores have seemed still quick with the voices of those gracious presences who gave exquisite form to their thoughts on life and death, their sense of awe and beauty and love. ”

“ And yet, after the broken music of love and the burial of love in the autumn woods, we can trace that wandering among strange people, and in lands unknown to us, by which we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the life we know, and that pure and passionate devotion to Art which one gets when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, and is with discontent or sorrow marring one's youth, just as often, I think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living ”

“ Hold fast thine youth, dear soul of mine, new lives will come to birth,
And I that shall have passed away be one with the brown earth.
SAPPHO
7TH AND 6TH CENTURY B.C.
I
A BITTER WORD
Dying thou shalt lie in nothingness, nor after
Love shall abide here nor memory of thee;
For thou hast no portion in the roses of Pieria;
But even in the nether world obscurely shalt thou wander
Flitting hither thither with the phantoms of the dead. ”

“ Mongst the many young men in England who are seeking along with me to continue and to perfect the English Renaissance—jeunes guerriers du drapeau romantique, as Gautier would have called us—there is none whose love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose artistic sense of beauty is more subtle and more delicate—none, indeed, who is dearer to myself—than the young poet whose verses I have brought with me to America ”

“ We were staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that little village with its gray-slate roofs and steep streets and gaunt grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle like white pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart—very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. ”

“ One might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for no deeper chords of life than those that love and friendship make eternal for us; and the best poems in this volume belong clearly to a later time, a time when these real experiences become absorbed and gathered up into a form which seems from such real experiences to be the most alien and the most remote; when the simple expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer, and lives rather in the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music and colour of the linked words, than in any direct utterance ”

“ Among the many diverse forms of expression in which the Greek genius has been revealed to us, that which is preserved in the lyrics of the anthology most typically reflects the familiar life of men, the thought and feeling of every day in the lost ancient world. ”

“ And the joy of the woods came o'er us, and we felt that our world was
young
With the gladness of years unspent and the sorrow of life unsung.
So we passed with a sound of singing along to the seaward way,
Where the sails of the fishermen folk came homeward over the bay;
For a cloud grew over the forest and darkened the sea-god's shrine,
And the hills of the silent city were only a ruby line. ”

“ For all that it be yesterday's, in memory of her.
The rose that loveth lovers, the rose lets fall a tear
Because my arms are empty, because she is not here.
VIII
THE WREATH
White violet with the tender-leaved narcissus I will twine,
And the laughing lips of lilies with myrtle blooms combine;
And I will bind the hyacinth, the dark red-purple flower,
With crocus sweet and roses that are the lovers' dower,
To make the wreath that Heliodore's curl-scented brow shall wear,
To strew with falling petals the glory of her hair. ”

“ To kiss the white lips of his marble boy
And call by name his little heart's-desired.
1879.
"ATQUE IN PERPETUUM FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE"
This was the end love made,—the hard-drawn breath,
The last long sigh that ever man sighs here;
And then for us, the great unanswered fear,
Will love live on,—the other side of death?
Only a year, and I had hoped to spend
A life of pleasant communing, to be
A kindred spirit holding fast to thee,
We never thought that love had such an end. ”

“ There indeed poetry seems the appropriate expression of the environment, and there even still to-day, more than anywhere else in the world, the correlation of our life with nature may be felt instinctively; the human soul seems nearest to the soul of the world.
The poems, of which some renderings are here offered to those who cannot read the originals, cover a period of about a thousand years, broken by one interval during which the lesser lyre is silent. ”

“ For the quality of their exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive and creative handling of lime and colour, from a certain form and choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting all literary reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely satisfying to the æsthetic sense—is, as the Greeks would say, an end in itself; the effect of their work being like the effect given to us by music; for music is the art in which form and matter are always one—the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression ”

“ This is the Cyprian's holy ground,
Who ever loves to stand
Where she can watch the shining seas
Beyond the utmost land;
That sailors on their voyages
May prosper by her aid,
Whose radiant effigy the deep
Beholding is afraid. ”

“ One can perhaps convey it best in terms of the other arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of Venetian glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as simple in natural motive as an etching by Whistler is, or one of those beautiful little Greek figures which in the olive woods round Tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment ”

“ Of those that remain some at least I hope approach the desired standard, failing to achieve which they would undoubtedly be better expressed in simple prose. And yet there is a value in rendering rhythm by rhythm where it is possible, and if any success has been attained, such translations probably convey more of the spirit of the original, which meant verse, with all which that implies, and not prose. ”

“ What now is a singer's fame?
He may startle the ear with a word one day,
And die,—and live in a name.
But the world has heed unto no fair thing,
Men pass on their soulless ways,
They give no faith unto those who sing,
—Give hardly a heartless praise.
But you say, Let us go unto all wide lands,
Let us speak to the people's heart!
Let us make good use of our lips and hands,
There is hope for the world in art!
Will the dull ears hear, will the dead souls see?
Will they know what we hardly know?
The chords of the wonderful harmony
Of the earth and the skies?—if so ”

“ Theirs is the age of the austerer mood, when the clean-cut marble outlines of a great language matured in its noblest expression. Then a century of song is followed by the period of the dramatists during which the lyric muse is almost silent, in an age of political and intellectual intensity.
A new epoch of lyrical revival is inaugurated by the advent of Alexander, and the wide extension of Hellenic culture to more distant areas of the Mediterranean. Then follows the long succession of poets who may generally be classified as of the school of Alexandria. ”

“ But it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the æsthetic demands of the age: there should be also about it, if it is to give us any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality. Whatever work we have in the nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of personality and perfection. ”

“ There was more than one Plato, but the great Plato is evidently referred to in the prefatory poem of Meleager as included among the poets of his anthology.
Captives from Eretria were established in a colony in Persia by Darius after the first Persian war. The colony at Ardericca was, however, hundreds of miles from Ecbatana.
If the epigram on Lais is not attributed to the great Plato by the most competent authorities, the dates of the two famous courtesans who bore the name would not exclude the possibility of his being the author. ”

“ Rennell Rodd's poetry; for, while there is much in his work that may interest the intellect, much that will excite the emotions, and many cadenced chords of sweet and simple sentiment—for to those who love Art for its own sake all other things are added—yet the effect which they preëminently seek to produce is purely an artistic one. ”

“ And love were with us yet.
1880.
"Ερωτοϛ" Ανδοϛ
The autumn wind goes sighing
Through the quivering aspen tree,
The swallows will be flying
Toward their summer sea;
The grapes begin to sweeten
On the trellised vine above,
And on my brows have beaten
The little wings of love.
Oh wind if you should meet her
You will whisper all I sing!
Oh swallow fly to greet her,
And bring me word in spring!
1881.
ATALANTA
Wait not along the shore, they will not come ”

“ These few words of introduction should suffice, since the development of the lyric poetry of Greece and the characteristics of its successive exponents have been made familiar to English readers in the admirable work of my friend J.W. Mackail. A reference to his Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology suggests one plea of justification for the present little collection of renderings, since the greater number of them have been by him translated incomparably well into prose. ”

“ But the dust of a world forgotten lay under the barren ground.
There are shrines under these green hillocks to the beautiful gods that
sleep,
Where they prayed in the stormy season for lives gone out on the deep ”

“ Now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic school, and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but the real quality of all work which, like Mr. Rodd's, aims, as I said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot be described in terms of intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for that. ”

“ The interpretation of these lyrics has been my sole and grateful distraction during a period of ceaseless work and intense anxiety in the tragic years of 1914 and 1915.
R.R.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
MIMNERMUS—CARPE DIEM
SAPPHO—
I. A BITTER WORD
II. THE BELOVED PRESENCE
III. HESPER
IV. OUT OF REACH
ANACREONTICA—
I. LOVE'S CHALLENGE
II. BACCHANAL
III. HER PORTRAIT
IV. METAMORPHOSIS
V. APOLOGIA
UNKNOWN—ANACREON'S GRAVE
SIMONIDES—
I. ON THE SPARTANS
II. ON THE ATHENIANS
PLATO—
I. A GRAVE IN PERSIA
II. STARWORSHIP
III. THE UNSET STAR
IV. LAIS ”

“ He will not, for instance, in intellectual matters, acquiesce in that facile orthodoxy of our day which is so reasonable and so artistically uninteresting, nor yet will he desire that fiery faith of the antique time which, while it intensified, yet limited, the vision, still less will he allow the calm of his culture to be marred by the discordant despair of doubt or the sadness of a sterile skepticism ”

“ In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet, perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the poems; one's real life is so often the life that one does not lead ”

“ In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their recognition; but of those that would enter the serene House of Beauty the question that we ask is not what they had ever meant to do, but what they have done. ”

“ Their pathetic intentions are of no value to us, but their realised creations only. Pour moi je préfère les poètes qui font des vers, les médecins qui sachent guérir, les peintres qui sachent peindre. ”

“ It is seldom, indeed, that we have the time and the place and the loved one all together! It is not denied that this inscription was written by Mr. Rodd, however effusive, and somehow, after the lapse of years one wishes he had not so completely discountenanced the kindly offices of one who later on fell into such desperate extremes. It is quite likely that the evident editing bestowed upon the poems by Wilde may have added to the displeasure of the poet. ”

“ Now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value of beautiful workmanship, this recognition of the primary importance of the sensuous element in art, this love of art for art's sake, is the point in which we of the younger school have made a departure from the teaching of Mr. ”