Andrew Lang

“ Our youth began with tears and sighs,
With seeking what we could not find;
Our verses all were threnodies,
In elegiacs still we whined;
Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,
We sought and knew not what we sought. ”

“ The blossoms and buds upon breasts and tresses,
The light burned white in your faces fair?”
“In a falling fane have we built our house,
With the dying Gods we have held carouse,
And our lips are wan from their wild caresses,
Our hands are filled with their holy boughs. ”

“ There Sappho sings.
p. 48SAN TERENZO. (The village in the bay of Spezia, near which Shelley was living before the wreck of the Don Juan.)
Mid April seemed like some November day,
When through the glassy waters, dull as lead,
Our boat, like shadowy barques that bear the dead,
Slipped down the long shores of the Spezian bay,
Rounded a point,—and San Terenzo lay
Before us, that gay village, yellow and red,
The roof that covered Shelley’s homeless head,—
His house, a place deserted, bleak and grey.
The waves broke on the door-step; fishermen
Cast their long nets, and drew, and cast again. ”

“ Codrington among the Solomon Islanders; it occurs in Samoa, in the Finnish Kalewala (where Wainamoinen, in Pohjola, refrains from touching meat or drink) , and the belief has left its mark on the mediæval ballad of Thomas of Ercildoune. When he is in Fairy Land, the Fairy Queen supplies him with the bread and wine of earth, and will not suffer him to touch the fruits which grow “in this countrie.” ”

“ For such a woman’s sake should suffer long.
Fair as a deathless goddess seemeth she.
Nay, but aboard the red-prowed ships again
Home let her pass in peace, not working wrong
To us, and children’s children yet to be.”
p. 119THE ISLES OF THE BLESSED. Pindar, Fr., 106, 107 (95) : B. 4, 129–130, 109 (97) : B. 4, 132.
Now the light of the sun, in the night of the Earth, on the souls of the True
Shines, and their city is girt with the meadow where reigneth the rose ”

“ This belief that the living may visit, on occasion, the dwellings of the dead, but can never return to earth if they taste the food of the departed, is expressed in myths of worldwide distribution. Because she ate the pomegranate seed, Persephone became subject to the spell of Hades. In Apuleius, Psyche, when she visits the place of souls, is advised to abstain from food. Kohl found the myth among the Ojibbeways, Mr. ”

“ And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men brought it through without falter or fail?
Why the Hawk ’twas again, and great Indra to men would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail,
While the Thlinkeet’s delight is the Bird of the Night, the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl. [107b]
And who for man’s need brought the famed Suttung’s mead? why ’tis told in the creed of the Sagamen strong,
p. 108’Twas the Eagle god who brought the drink from the blue, and gave mortals the brew that’s the fountain of song. [108a]
Next, who gave men their laws? ”

“ Telleth of a young man that fain would be fairly tattooed on his flesh, after the heathen manner, in devices of blue, and that, falling among the Dyacks, a folk of Borneo, was by them tattooed in modern fashion and device, and of his misery that fell upon him, and his outlawry. ”

“ Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum shade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow was the King. [108d]
p. 109Thus on Earth’s little ball to the Birds you owe all, yet your gratitude’s small for the favours they’ve done,
And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will, yes, you plunder and kill the bright birds one by one;
There’s a price on their head, and the Dodo is dead, and the Moa has fled from the sight of the sun! ”

“ Apparently Aristophanes preserved, in a burlesque form, the remnants of a genuine myth. Almost all savage religions have their bird-gods, and it is probable that Aristophanes p. 139did not invent, but only used a surviving myth of which there are scarcely any other traces in Greek literature. ”

“ The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.
[106b] Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and “culture-hero” of several Australian tribes.
[106c] The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.
[107a] In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros ”

“ As now the hutted Eskimo. The Eskimo and the p. 138miserable Fuegians are almost the only Socialists who practise what European Anarchists preach. The Fuegians go so far as to tear up any piece of cloth which one of the tribe may receive, so that each member may have a rag. The Eskimo are scarcely such consistent walkers, and canoes show a tendency to accumulate in the hands of proprietors. Formerly no Eskimo was allowed to possess more than one canoe. Such was the wild justice of the Polar philosophers. ”

“ This piece is a rhymed loose version of a passage in the Vera Historia of Lucian. The humorist was unable to resist the temptation to introduce passages of mockery, which are here omitted. Part of his description of the Isles of the Blest has a close and singular resemblance to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. The clear River of Life and the prodigality of gold and of precious stones may especially be noticed. ”