Bardo

“ He was a moneyless, blind old scholar, the Bardo de Bardi, to whom Nello introduced Tito Melema; a man who came of a proud, energetic stock, whose ancestors had loved to play the signor, had been merchants and usurers of keen daring, and conspicuous among those who clutched the sword in the earliest world-famous quarrels of Florentine with Florentine. The family passions lived on in Bardo under altered conditions ”

“ The complete recognition of this psychology by the deceased sets him free into Reality. Therefore is it that the Bardo Thödol, as the name implies, is The Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing and by Seeing.
The deceased human being becomes the sole spectator of a marvellous panorama of hallucinatory visions; each seed of thought in his consciousness-content karmically revives; and he, like a wonder-struck child watching moving pictures cast upon a screen, looks on, unaware, unless previously an adept in yoga, of the non-reality of what he sees dawn and set. ”

“ At length the deceased passes out of the Bardo dream-world into a womb of flesh and blood, issuing thence once more into the waking state of earth-experience. This is what in English is called Re-incarnation, or Re-birth in the flesh. The Sanskrit term is Sangsāra, that is, ‘rising and rising again’ (Punariutpatti) in the worlds of birth and death. Nothing is permanent, but all is transitory. In life, the ‘soul-complex’ is never for two consecutive moments the same, but is, like the body, in constant change. ”

“ As the intellect comes into activity, after the sublime heart-born impulses subside, the deceased begins to realize more and more the state in which he is; and with the supernormal faculties of the Bardo-body which he begins to make use of—in much the same manner as an infant new-born in the human world begins to employ the human plane sense-faculties—he is enabled to think how he may win this or that state of existence. ”

“ Bardo Bardi, aged blind scholar, father of Romola. She is his colaborer in the studies he pursues despite his infirmity.—George Eliot, Romola.
Bar'dolph, corporal of captain sir John Falstaff, in 1 and 2 Henry IV. and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Henry V. he is promoted to lieutenant, and Nym is corporal. Both are hanged. Bardolph is a bravo, but great humorist; he is a lowbred, drunken swaggerer, wholly without principle, and always poor. His red, pimply nose is an everlasting joke with sir John and others. Sir John in allusion thereto calls Bardolph "The Knight of the Burning Lamp." ”

“ An Italian, fighting man to man, would choose a knife; a Westerner would take in preference that same harmless piece of rope. In his hands it takes on life, it gains a strange and sinister quality. One instant it lies passive, or slowly whirled in a careless circle—the next its noose darts out like the head of a striking cobra, the coil falls and fastens, and then it draws tighter and tighter, remorselessly as a boa constrictor, paralyzing life.
Something of all this went through the mind of Bard as he lay watching the limp noose of the cowboy's lariat, and then he nodded smiling. ”

“ Here is a twilight world of intellectual notions and poetic motives wafted hither and thither on the blast of the Bard’s frenzy. The Bard himself, a commanding figure, stands on a shelf of rock surveying the vortex, while he smites music from his harp. Below, a king and queen and their horses are overwhelmed in a Stygian stream. All [Pg 165] is dark, with a strange gleam and shimmer here and there, like jewels and burnished silver seen through a purple veil. ”

“ Enter Bardas deprecatingly, followed by Antonio.
Bardas: Antonio! not in the sea? You live?
Antonio: I say, where is she?
Bardas: You are mortal?
Antonio (groaning with impatience) : O
This utter superstition! (Pricking his arm.) Is it not blood?
Bardas: You live! and live? but let her think your death!
You let her! still devising for yourself
Safety and preservation!
Antonio: She's not safe?
Bardas: O, safe—if she had shrift!
Charles (hoarsely) : The dead are so!
Bardas: Ay, so. ”

“ Of course I don't know what way Bard headed, because he's got the girl with him, but I figure it this way: if a tenderfoot knows any part of the range at all, he'll go in that direction after he's in trouble. I've seen it work out before. So I think that Bard may have ridden straight for the old Drew place on the other side of the range. I know a short cut over the hills; we can reach there by morning. Kilrain, you'll go there with me. ”

“ Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their days listening to the lays of the bards, and feeling the weapons which laid their enemies low, and when at length they die, by a convulsion of nature, the bard allows us a short and misty glance into futurity, yet as clear, perchance, as their lives had been. ”

“ The terrible situations in which we find the Bard, as the drama unfolds, betoken not only a powerful imagination, but also an intensity of feeling which enabled him to realise the conceptions of such imagination. We follow the Bard and his heavenly guide through all their perils with breathless attention; the demons and the damned he so clothes with flesh and blood that our hatred or our sympathy is instantly stirred; his World is palpitating with life, his Hell, with its gloom and glare, is an awful, haunting dream. ”

“ After wandering from nook to nook, the Bard and his guide at last come to the court before the palace of the hellish regions, where, amidst thousands of horrible objects, the Bard perceives two feet of enormous magnitude, reaching to the roof of the whole infernal firmament, and inquires of his companion what those horrible things may be, but is told to be quiet for the present, as on his return he will obtain a full view of the monster to whom they belong, and is then conducted into the palace of Lucifer, who is about to hold a grand council. ”

“ The images are very bold and animated, and poured forth with such rapidity, as argues an uncommon warmth of imagination in the bard, whose mind seems to have been so filled with his subject, and the several scenes of the war appear to have so crowded in upon him, that he has not leisure to mark the transitions with that cool accuracy, which a feebler genius would have been careful to have done. ”

“ The Bard is carried away by sleep to chambers where some people are crying, others screaming, some talking deliriously, some uttering blasphemies in a feeble tone, others lying in great agony with all the signs of dying men, and some yielding up the ghost after uttering ‘a mighty shout.’ He is then conducted to a kind of limbo or Hades, where he meets with his prototype the Sleeping Bard of old and two other Welsh poets, one of whom is Taliesin, who is represented as watching the caldron of the witch Cridwen, even as he watched it in his boyhood. ”

“ While lo! with his hand on his harp the old bard is undone!
One false note, then he stammers, he sobs like a child, he is failing,
And the song that so bravely began ends in discord and wailing.
II
Can it be it is they who make merry, 't is they taunting him?
Shall the sun, then, be scorned by the planets, the tree by the limb!
These bardlings, these mimics, these echoes, these shadows at play,
While he only is real;—they shine but as motes in his day!
III
All that in them is best is from him; all they know he has taught ”

“ I was laboriously pounding the piano with one finger when I heard Bard's heavy step on the verandah. The next moment he came into the room, a big figure of a man in a tussore silk suit with a Panama hat. Somehow the sight of him made me feel easier in my mind. That sublime sense of superiority, which we British suck in with our mother's milk, is a heartening thing when you find it in your fellow Britisher abroad thousands of miles from home. And John Bard, though, with his small pointed beard and rather pallid face, he looked like a Spaniard, was through and through British. ”

“ The harp he shall never part with.”
“When a song is called for, the Bard President should begin; the first song shall be addressed to God, the next to the king. The Domestic Bard shall sing to the queen and royal household.”
The bard therefore in ancient times performed important functions. In peace he delighted his lord with songs of chivalry, love and friendship. In war he accompanied his prince to battle, and recited the might and prowess of his leader and the martial virtue of his hosts. ”

“ The bards held a still higher rank: they preserved in their verses the mystic learning of the priests, the traditions of their race, and the great actions of their heroes. No sacrifice was duly offered without their sacred chant; they encouraged the warrior going to the field of combat, and received him on his return with notes of triumph. To live in heroic song was the aspiration of every Celtic warrior, and to the coward or traitor, there was no penalty so terrible as the denunciation of the sacred bards. ”

“ Inconstant beats the manly heart—
⁠The present Bard's extremely so!
Wit, Wisdom, Strength, and Valour meet
(The Bard amongst them) , at thy feet
⁠To kneel in homage, as of old;
Yet turn a rival Queen to greet,
⁠Whose crown is of a purer gold!
Preen as thou wilt thy feathers fine,
A gift is hers, by grace divine,
⁠Even more potent to enthral,
O Bird of Paradise, than thine,
⁠The hearts and souls of one and all! ”

“ Should blossom; only weeds whose withering
Can hurt no heart!
Bardas: These tears should seal fierce oaths
Against him!
Hæmon: And they shall! until God wrecks
Him in the tempest raised of his outrage!
Bardas: Then may I be the rock on which he breaks!
But hear; who comes? (Revellers are heard approaching.)
We must aside until
This mirth is past. (They conceal themselves.)
Enter revellers dressed as bacchanals and bacchantes, dancing and singing.
[ 32 ]
Bacchus, hey! ”

“ When the tapers burn clear and the goblet shines bright,
In the hall of his chief on a festival night,
I have smiled at the glance of his rapturous eye,
While the brim of the goblet laugh'd back in reply;
⁠Then say not the Bard has turned old.
When he sings of the valorous deeds that were done,
By his clan or his chief in the days that are gone,
His strains then are various—now rapid—now slow,
As he mourns for the dead or exults o'er the foe ”

“ The blood of John Bard?" asked Nash.
Drew started.
"Who said John Bard?"
He grew grey again, the flush dying swiftly. He started to his feet and repeated in a great voice, sweeping the room with a wild glance: "Who said John Bard?"
"I thought maybe this was his son," answered Nash.
"You're a fool! Does he look like John Bard? No, there's only one person in the world he looks like."
He strode again up and down the room, repeating in a deep monotone:
"John Bard!" ”

“ Antonio: My father?
Bardas: O, well feigned.
Be sure none will suspect he is too old
For knightly feat like this—and that he has
A son!
Antonio: To Helena! my father! sealed!
Hæmon: Bardas, you bring the truth?—And so, my lord,
You stab me through another—you, my friend?
Antonio (to Bardas) : Do you mean that——?
Bardas: Until this hour I held
The race of Charles di Tocca bold, or other
But empty of all lies in deed or speech,
It grows—a little low?
Antonio: Why you are mad! ”

“ O how heavy is the Almighty’s punishment, that the crimson sword cannot be drawn! I remember how great its size was, and how wide its havoc; numerous are now the oppressed captives who languish in gnashing indignation. Our native Bards are excluded from their accustomed entertainments. How great a stop is put to generosity since a munificent hero, like Nudd, [46a] is confined in prison. The valorous hawk of Griffydd, [46b] so renowned for ravaging and destroying his enemies, is deplored by the expert Bards, who have lost their festivity and mirth in the place where mead was drunk. ”

“ Numerous sagas and legends, which live in the minds of all, yield abundant material for filling up blanks; and thus the bard’s narrative flows on like a calm stream whose springs never dry up: it is only necessary to keep it in the proper metre to make him a poet for ever. Even this is made easy to him; for every bard accompanies his recitative on the three-stringed Kirghiz zither, and as he links on each measure to the next by playing on this, he can make the interlude last until the next verse has taken shape in his mind. ”

“ Dropping to hands and knees, or crouching almost as prone, he moved from the shadow of one tree to the next, now and then venturing a glance to make sure that he was pursuing the right course, until he manoeuvred to a point of vantage which commanded a clear view of Bard.
The latter was fishing, with his back to Drew. Again and again he cast his fly out under an overhanging limb which shadowed a deep pool. The big grey man set his teeth and waited with the patience of a stalking beast of prey, or a cat which will sit half the day waiting for the mouse to show above the opening of its hole. ”

“ The great Bard well understood how to make use of this kind of ornament in Epic Poetry. He brings his valiant heroes into the field with much parade, and sets them a fighting with great fury; and then, after a few thrusts and parries, he introduces a long string of similies. During this the battle is supposed to continue; and thus the time necessary for the action is gained in our imaginations; and a degree of probability produced, which contributes to the temporary deception or reverie of the reader. ”

“ Bards have genius: so their lay wins renown. 'Tis well-nigh all delusion that the stage gives us. Bards have beheld in poetry dark ghosts in the underworld and the pale realm of Dis amid the ashes of the dead. ”

“ The stablemen of the castle came forward and led away the horses. The sixteen knights stood in a group together with Segfried at their head, waiting with some anxiety on their brows for the next move in the game. The Baron, his sword drawn in his hand, strode up and down before them, his brow bent on the ground, evidently struggling to get the master hand over his own anger. If it came to blows the odds were against him and he was too shrewd a man to engage himself single-handed in such a contest. ”