Lycidas

“ It was not to indulge in pleasant poetic reveries that Lycidas had on that evening sought the seclusion of the olive-grove, if the direction of the current of his thoughts might be known by the index of his face, which wore an expression of indignation, which at times almost flashed into fierceness, while the silent lips moved, as if uttering words of stern reproof and earnest expostulation. ”

“ And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. ”

“ Lycidas would not have been unwilling to have heard again the fierce cries and execrations, and to have seen once more the flashing weapons around him, for the sake of also hearing the soft appeal, "Have mercy, spare him!" and to have had another glimpse of Zarah's form and face, as, with a halo of moonlight and loveliness around her, she dropped her tribute of living flowers into the grave of the dead.
"These Hebrew women are not as the women of earth, but beings that belong to a higher sphere," thought Lycidas, as he pursued his way towards the city. ”

“ For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? ”

“ Zarah turned very pale at the tidings, and leaned on her wheel for support.
"You must fly to-night, dearest lady," said Lycidas; "this dwelling is no longer a safe asylum for you."
"Whither can I fly, and how?" murmured the orphan girl. "I have no friend here except"—Zarah hesitated, and Lycidas completed the sentence.
"Except one to whom your lightest wish is a command; to whom every hair of your head is dearer than life!" exclaimed the Athenian.
"Speak not thus to me, Lycidas," said Zarah, in a tone of entreaty; "you know too well the impassable barrier which divides us." ”

“ The muleteer purposely avoided that which would have been most direct; he dared not go through one of the city gates, but passed out into the open country at a spot little frequented, where a part of the wall of Jerusalem still lay in ruins, as it had been left by Apollonius. Most unwelcome to Lycidas was the brightening day, which awoke the world to life. Every human form, even that of a child, was to him an object of alarm. The brave young Greek was full of terrors for one who in her grief had lost the sense of personal fear. ”

“ Lycidas drew forth gold, but the Hebrew refused to take it.
"To bury the martyred dead is a pious office and acceptable to the Most High," said the brave muleteer; "but as for yon Syrian, son though he may be of the Lady Hadassah, I care not to lay his bones amongst those of martyrs. I trow he was nothing but a traitor."
"He died by the hand of a Syrian, he died saving a Hebrew maiden, he died in his mother's arms," said Lycidas, with tender regard for the feelings of Zarah, who would he knew be sensitive in regard to respect paid to the corpse of her parent. ”

“ To Lycidas the remembrance of his poetical triumph in the Olympic arena, the plaudits which had then filled his soul with ecstatic delight, was little more than to a man is the recollection of the toys which amused his childhood. The Greek had been brought face to face with life's grand realities, and what had strongly excited his ambition once, appeared to him now as shadows that pass away. ”

“ Lycidas felt the keen blade strike him once and again, he felt his blood gushing warm from the wounds, he caught the arm uplifted to smite, with despair's fierce energy he endeavoured to wrench the murderous weapon away. The two men went wrestling, struggling, straining each sinew to the utmost, drawing nearer, inch by inch, to the brink of the steep descent. Abishai dropped his dagger in the struggle, and could not stoop to attempt to recover it in the darkness, but he grasped with his sinewy hand the gasping youth by the locks, and, with a gigantic effort, hurled him over the edge. ”

“ Lycidas unconsciously slackened his steps, and raised his hand to his brow. "Perhaps not all," he reflected; "from what I hear it appears that this Hebrew nation, this handful of conquered people groaning in bondage, hold themselves to be the sole guardians of a faith which is lofty, soul-ennobling, and pure. They deem themselves to be as a beacon on a hill set on high, throughout ages past, to show a dark world that there is still light, and a light which shall yet overspread the earth as the waters cover the sea; those were the words of Hadassah. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXVII. AFTER THE BATTLE. There are joys as well as sorrows into which the stranger cannot enter, and which baffle the attempt of the pen to describe; such was that of Lycidas and Zarah when they first met after the battle of Bethsura. The maiden had her happiness tempered indeed with something of anxiety and even alarm, for she beheld the young Greek pale with loss of blood, exhausted by excessive fatigue, and with his left arm in a sling, but her mind was soon relieved, for Lycidas had sustained no serious or permanent injury. ”

“ CHAPTER III. LIFE OR DEATH. "A spy! a traitor! cut him down—hew him to pieces!" such were the cries, not loud but terrible, that, as thunder on flash, followed that exclamation from Zarah. Cold steel gleamed in the moonlight; Lycidas, who had scarcely before thought of his own personal danger, found himself in a moment surrounded by a furious band with weapons upraised to take his life. With the instinct of self-preservation the young Athenian sprang forwards, clasped the knees of the leader, and exclaimed, "No spy—no Syrian—no foe! as ye would find mercy in the hour of death, only hear me!" ”

“ Lycidas had proved himself to be a brave warrior—he had won the admiration even of the fanatic Jasher; but would the Greek stand firm in his newly-adopted faith when fresh laurels were no longer to be won, or fair prize gained by adhesion to it?
"The most remote hope of winning Zarah," mused Maccabeus, "were enough to make a man espouse the cause of her people, and renounce all idolatry—save idolatry of herself. I must question this Athenian myself. ”

“ The Athenian had an innate love of the pure and true, which made him intuitively reject fables, and which, amongst his countrymen, exposed him to the charge of scepticism. Lycidas could laugh with Aristophanes at legends of gods and demigods, whom their very priests represented as having more than the common infirmities and vices of mortal men. Had Lycidas reared an altar, it would have been like that which was seen two centuries later in his native city, with the inscription, To THE UNKNOWN GOD. The Greek knew of no being above earth whom he could intelligently worship ”

“ He would raise himself on his feet, though not without a pang from his wounded side. Then the Greek would take a few steps, from one end of his prison to the other, leaning for support against the wall. This was something for a beginning; youth and love would soon enable him to do more. But Lycidas carefully concealed from Hadassah and Anna that he could do as much. ”

“ As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
RHad ye been there, S . . . for what could that have done? ”

“ But even that strong under current of conviction has no power long to steady him against the wave of sorrow which breaks above his head, none the less powerful because it breaks in a line of white and shivers itself into drops which flash diamond colors in the warm and pure sunlight of his cultured imagination. More poetry than sorrow? Then there is more poetry in Lycidas than in any other poem of the same length in our language. ”

“ In the age of Milton, the poetical world had been accustomed by the Italian and Spanish writers to a more abundant use of allegory than has been pleasing to their posterity; but Lycidas is not so much in the nature of an allegory as of a masque; the characters passed before our eyes in imagination, as on the stage; they are chiefly mythological, but not creations of the poet. Our sympathy with the fate of Lycidas may not be much stronger than for the desertion of Gallus by his mistress; but many poems will yield an exquisite pleasure to the imagination that produce no emotion in the heart ”

“ To English readers, the three elegies, on Daphnis, on Adonis, and on Bion, severally attributed to Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, will always be associated with the names of Milton and Shelley. There is no comparison whatever between Lycidas and Daphnis. In spite of the misplaced apparition of St. Peter, and of the frigidity which belongs to pastoral allegory, Lycidas is a richer and more splendid monument of elegiac verse. ”

“ Search was made for him in vain. I feared that evil had happened to my guest, and as time rolled on and brought no tidings, I sent word to his friends in Athens, asking what should be done with property left under my charge by him who, as I deemed, had met an untimely end. Ere the answer arrived, the Lord Lycidas himself appeared at my door, but in evil plight, weak in body and troubled in mind. He would give no account of the past; he said not where he had sojourned; and yester-morn, though scarcely strong enough to keep the saddle, he mounted his horse, and rode off—I know not whither ”

“ Honest Lycidas expresses his horror at the narrow escape of the neighbourhood from such a catastrophe. What should they all have done for a poet, if they had lost Menalcas? who could compose such songs—and who could sing them? And he breaks out himself into fragmentary reminiscences which he has picked up by ear from his friend. Then Mœris too—who, being a poet’s farm-servant, has caught a little of the inspiration—repeats a few lines of his master’s. ”

“ Nothing is more unreasonable than this despair of sorrow. Tossed in its own wild passion, it sees nothing clearly, and seeking for some adequate cause, heaps blindly unmerited reproaches on anything, on all things. So, recoiling before its power, stung with its pain, the poet turns reproachfully to the nymphs, blaming them for their negligence. But before the words are fairly uttered he realizes his folly. Lycidas was beloved by them, but if Calliope could not save even her own son, how powerless are they against the step of inevitable fate! ”

“ Not even to Zarah did Lycidas ever repeat the conversation between himself and the man whose earthly happiness he had wrecked. As the Greek passed forth from the presence of Maccabeus, he met Simon and Eleazar, who had just returned from escorting their young kinswoman to the dwelling of Rachel. ”

“ On their way they meet with a goatherd, Lycidas, who invites them, "with a smiling eye," to recline beneath the trees and while away the hours of noontide heat with song. "The very lizard," he says, "is sleeping by the wall; but on the hard stones of the footpath your heavy boots keep up a ceaseless ringing." Thus chided by the goatherd they resolve upon a singing-match between Simichidas, the teller of the tale, and Lycidas, who offers his crook as the prize of victory. ”

“ Alarmed at finding that he had conducted Zarah to the scene of an expected deadly conflict, Lycidas inquired with anxiety, "Where then can the lady and her attendant find shelter and protection?"
"For protection, she has all that our swords can give—our fate must be her fate," replied the Hebrew whom the Greek had addressed. "As for shelter, there is a goatherd's hut hard by. Some of our men have passed the night there, though our leader slept on the ground." ”

“ From Athens Mardonius despatched a Greek messenger to Salamis, repeating the propositions of Alexander. On hearing these offers in council, the Athenians were animated by a species of fury. A counsellor named Lycidas having expressed himself in favour of the terms, he was immediately stoned to death. The Athenian women, roused by a similar passion with the men, inflicted the same fate upon his wife and children—one of those excesses of virtue which become crimes, but for which exigency makes no despicable excuse. ”

“ He knew me, and did not forget that I had been one to spare his life by stepping over the spear," continued the muleteer, with a grim smile. "The Gentile is not ungrateful. I suppose that he remembered that he owed a debt in another quarter also, for he bade me return in a few hours; and when I did so, charged me to bear these things to the dwelling of the Lady Hadassah—ay, and gave me this purse of silver for her handmaid."
"The Lord Lycidas has a noble heart! Would that he were a son of Abraham!" exclaimed the delighted Anna, as she received the gift of the Greek. ”

“ The truth is of course that in each case he is beating the air. The stamp upon the ground would have been a triumphant answer to a fool who should say that the senses cannot feel: it does not touch {204} Berkeley who says they cannot know. So the attack on Lycidas might be fatal to a judge who put his judgment into the form of a pastoral; as the criticism of a poet it is in the main simply irrelevant. ”