a esistere e magnificato e l'esalta su la sua lira. And as he hears them cry, "Sursum Corda," the weight is lifted from his spirit; and he turns to the sibyls and heroes for a companion, confessing to her of Delphi, his choice, stains and miseries of which her sea-born purity can know nothing; but the only answer he receives is that which had come to him in all his holy places: "Be alone: man's stoutest companion is his own heart." And he knows weakness no more. From henceforth, in the rest of the book, he is to learn the lesson of loneliness, first, again, in the crowd of the Roman streets, where we see him in a bread riot, where the poor mad people, incited by a windy demagogue lifting up his voice against all high things, are seen beating helplessly against a wall of soldiers, and all is lost, as the fire is extinguished, all but one flame, which can never be put out: the Idea: the ancient and eternal voice of Justice, calling on the prisons of the mighty to loose their prey. Who will raise the city of a thousand years to a new life, "verso la bellezza d'una vita semplice e grande?" For that another bread than Demeter's corn is needed: the bread of the spirit. And so may be restored, to spread itself once more over the waters, the greatest thing the Sun's eyes have ever looked on: "la Pace Romana.” But there is yet another loneliness to be experienced. If Justice is a thing of human society, and a kind of Panic exultation is found only in the crowd, there is a happiness which comes only in the loneliness of actual solitude. And so the poet is drawn to the great silent desert, and it is there that he experiences the coming of Felicity, described in the exquisite passage, part of which has been already given. And with that what he calls the "vast prelude of the new song he is to sing is brought to an end. Only before its actual close he must offer a son's homage to his master, Enotrio, that is the poet Carducci, who signed his first volume with that name. The last word of all is a reassertion of his faith in life and in action; the accomplished past is a small thing compared to the work that is growing mysteriously within him; what he asks for is greater abundance of the blood of life; and if more energy of life means more pain, he will not shrink, for the voice of Ulysses has taught him— Che necessario è navigare, vivere non è necessario. Human life is a large, confused, mysterious thing, not easily penetrated by the light of any philosophy, not easily shaped by the handling of any art. And D'Annunzio is very young, if there were nothing else, and there is much, to work against his success in handling the greatest of all themes. Self-confidence and self-will are not new keys to the riddle, though perhaps they have never been made of such fine gold as they are here. “Più ragione v'è nel mio corpo valido che in ogni dottrina," is a brave saying which has its useful moments, but for life, as a whole, it simply will not do. Over that kind of Paganism Christianity has had its final victory. Only the refuse of humanity will ever again exalt body above spirit; nor, in spite of Nietzsche, will the nobler sort of men, with whom the future of the race lies, ever again desire to turn a deaf ear to the cry of sorrow and defeat. There is too much of this in D'Annunzio, though by no means without much to counterbalance it. But in any case we need not dwell on it. For amid all its crudities and vanities the poem is full of the will to act and to be; and that is, after all, the very stuff of manliness. What to act and what to be are later questions, the right answer to which may not come at first. But without this primal instinct of living energy no great results can come about. And at least we may say of it, as it is pictured in this poem, tkat it is no forced growth of closed hothouse air, luxuriating alone in its own scent and beauty, but a thing that has faced the wide world's air, an air that has in it old and new, fair and foul, the city and the desert, society and solitude, the life of the individual and the life of the whole. And if, like greater men, the poet fails to make his philosophy of life quite clear and coherent, and fails still more to make it quite convincing, his failure will not greatly disappoint us, who never looked to him for success. And we shall scarcely remember it in the consciousness that his poem is not only a storehouse of beautiful words and fancies-though that would be no small thing but a perpetual revelation of unnoticed delights and wonders and terrors of this world; and what is, perhaps, most of all, one of the finest attempts yet made to give to the dry bones of our crowded cities of sordid mechanical industry the splendid life that belongs only to art, and most abundantly to the noblest of the arts, the consummate art of poetry. J. C. BAILEY. OUTSIDE THE GATE. A PILGRIM PLAY. (An open place before the stable of an inn.) A ROMAN SOLDIER (to a group of shepherds). What are ye that loitering stay Hence, ye slaves, what do ye here? YOUNGEST SHEPHERD. Answer him and do not fear! ELDEST SHEPHERD. Humble folk, we seek our rest, Master, do not crush the weak, SOLDIER. By the Gods and Cæsar's name! Dust upon the wayside cast Where Rome's chariot wheels have passed. (He moves on.) YOUNGEST SHEPHERD. Who was he that spurned us so? ELDEST SHEPHERD. Cæsar's soldier all may know Measured movement, step and glance, By his buckler, sword and crest. THE GREEK. No eye hath she beyond her daily task. In this rude inn, no temple meet to shrine Which for our Gods we know Lords of the lyre and bow— Who on strange paths had strayed. THE INDIAN. Yet here the Star is stayed. THE EGYPTIAN. While a slow wordless harmony on high As our great river, at the Goddess' word Swells, till the desert lifts Glad in the harvest-gifts. THE INDIAN. Brethren, to find the Unknown God our quest, And let the symbols fall. We seek the One who in Himself is All; The unending Life which still is rest unstirred; The enfolding silence which is yet the Word. |