The Spinet
My heart’s an old Spinet with strings
To laughter chiefly tuned, but some
That Fate has practised hard on, dumb,
They answer not whoever sings.
The ghosts of half-forgotten things
Will touch the keys with fingers numb,
The little mocking spirits come
And thrill it with their fairy wings.
A jingling harmony it makes
My heart, my lyre, my old Spinet,
And now a memory it wakes,
And now the music means “forget,”
And little heed the player takes
Howe’er the thoughtful critic fret.
Notes
Page 127. The Fortunate Islands. 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.
Page 133. Whoso doth taste the Dead Men’s bread, &c. 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. 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.” See also “Wandering Willie” in Redgauntlet.
Page 152. The latest minstrel. “The sound of all others dearest to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vii., 394.
Page 161. Ronsard’s Grave. This version ventures to condense the original which, like most of the works of the Pleiad, is unnecessarily long.
Page 162. The snow, and wind, and hail. Ronsard’s rendering of the famous passage in Odyssey, vi., about the dwellings of the Olympians. The vision of a Paradise of learned lovers and poets constantly recurs in the poetry of Joachim du Bellay, and of Ronsard.
Page 166. Romance. Suggested by a passage in La Faustin, by M. E. de Goncourt, a curious moment of poetry in a repulsive piece of naturalisme.
Page 171. M. Boulmier, author of Les Villanelles, died shortly after this villanelle was written; he had not published a larger collection on which he had been at work.
Page 177. Edmund Gorliot. The bibliophile will not easily procure Gorliot’s book, which is not in the catalogues. Throughout The Last Maying there is reference to the Pervigilium Veneris.
Page 207. Bird-Gods. 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 did not invent, but only used a surviving myth of which there are scarcely any other traces in Greek literature.
Page 236. Spinet. The accent is on the last foot, even when the word is written spinnet. Compare the remarkable Liberty which Pamela took with the 137th Psalm.
My Joys and Hopes all overthrown,
My Heartstrings almost broke,
Unfit my Mind for Melody,
Much more to bear a Joke.
But yet, if from my Innocence
I, even in Thought, should slide,
Then, let my fingers quite forget
The sweet Spinnet to guide!
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, vol. i.,
p. 184., 1785.
Edinburgh London
Footnotes35
Cf. “Suggestions for Academic Reorganization.”
46 The last three stanzas are by an eminent Anthropologist.
48 Thomas of Ercildoune.
66 A knavish publisher.
88 Vous y verrez, belle Julie,
Que ce chapeau tout maltraité
Fut, dans un instant de folie,
Par les Grâces même inventé.
‘À Julie.’ Essais en Prose et en Vers, par Joseph Lisle; Paris. An. V. de la République.
108 “I have broken many a pane of glass marked Cruel Parthenissa,” says the aunt of Sophia Western in Tom Jones.
194 N.B. There is only one veracious statement in this ballade, which must not be accepted as autobiographical.
196 These lines do not apply to Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller, and her delightful sisters, Gades adituræ mecum, in the pocket edition of Mr. James’s novels, if ever I go to Gades.
207 Tonatiu, the Thunder Bird; well known to the Dacotahs and Zulus.
208a The Hawk, in the myth of the Galinameros of Central California, lit up the Sun.
208b Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, is the demiurge and “culture-hero” of several Australian tribes.
208c The Creation of Man is thus described by the Australians.
209a In Andaman, Thlinkeet, Melanesian, and other myths, a Bird is the Prometheus Purphoros; in Normandy this part is played by the Wren.
209b Yehl: the Raven God of the Thlinkeets.
210a Indra stole Soma as a Hawk and as a Quail. For Odin’s feat as a Bird, see Bragi’s Telling in the Younger Edda.
210b Pundjel, the Eagle Hawk, gave Australians their marriage laws.
210c Lubra, a woman; kobong, “totem;” or, to please Mr. Max Müller, “otem.”
210d The Crow was the Hawk’s rival.
232 Lycaon, the first werewolf.