Page images
PDF
EPUB

mony, in a hollow space prepared secretly within the grave of another.

Meantime the winds of his organ were ready to blow; and with difficulty he obtained grace from the Chapter for a trial of its powers on a notable public occasion, as follows. A singular guest was expected at Auxerre. In recompense for some service rendered to the Chapter in times gone by, the Sire de Chastellux had the hereditary dignity of a canon of the church. On the day of his reception he presented himself at the entrance of the choir in surplice and amice worn over the military habit. The old count of Chastellux was lately dead, and the heir had announced his coming according to custom to claim his ecclesiastical privilege. There had been long feud between the houses of Chastellux and Auxerre; but on this happy occasion an offer of peace came with a proposal for the hand of the Lady Ariane.

The goodly young man arrived, and, duly arrayed, was received into his stall at vespers, the bishop assisting. It was then that the people heard the music of the organ, rolling over them for the first time, with various feelings of delight. But the performer on and author of the instrument was forgotten in his work, and there was no reinstatement of the former favourite. The religious ceremony was followed by a civic festival, in which Auxerre welcomed its future lord. The festival would end at nightfall with a somewhat rude popular pageant, in which the person of Winter would be hunted blindfold through the streets.

It was

the sequel to that old stage-play of the Return from the East in which Denys had been the central figure. The old forgotten player saw his part

before him, and, as if mechanically, fell again into the chief place, monk's dress and all. It might restore his popularity who could tell? Hastily he donned the ashen-grey mantle, the rough hair-cloth about the throat, and went through the preliminary play. And it happened that a point of the hair-cloth scratched his lip deeply, with a long trickling of blood upon the chin. It was as if the sight of blood transported the spectators with a kind of mad rage, and suddenly revealed to them the truth. The pretended hunting of the unholy creature became a real one, which brought out in rapid increase men's evil passions. The soul of Denys was already at rest, as his body, now borne along in front of the crowd, was tossed hither and thither, torn at last limb from limb. The men stuck little shreds of his flesh, or, failing that, of his torn raiment, into their caps; the women lending their long hair-pins for the purpose. The monk Hermes sought in vain next day for any remains of the body of his friend. Only, at nightfall, the heart of Denys was brought to him by a stranger, still entire. It must long since have mouldered into dust under the stone, marked with a cross, where he buried it in a dark corner of the cathedral aisle.

So the figure in the stained glass explained itself. To me, Denys seemed to have been a real resident at Auxerre. On days of a certain atmosphere, when the trace of the Middle Age comes out like old marks in the stones in rainy weather, I seemed actually to have seen the tortured figure there to have met Denys l'Auxerrois in the streets.

WALTER PATER.

THE VIGIL OF VENUS.

A MAY-SONG.

[The Vigil of Venus, known to Latin scholars as the Pervigilium Veneris, is unique among the fragments of antiquity. Despite the limpid purity and delicacy of the style there are a few expressions and constructions which seem to mark the incipient decline of the Latin language, whence the date has been generally assigned to the end of the second or beginning of the third century after the Christian era. The occasion of the poem was doubtless the celebration of the Floralia which may well have been coupled with the worship of Venus. We gather from Ovid's Fasti (most poetical of almanacs) that this festival extended over six days from the twenty-eighth of April to the third of May. The text on which the following translation is based is that given by the Revd. Francis St. John Thackeray in the second edition of his Anthologia Latina'; the punctuation has been altered in two places where the sense seemed to require it.]

Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

Spring is come with all its music; in the spring Jove saw the day;
In the springtide hearts are mated, like the birds beneath the spray.
Now the woods unbind their tresses tangled 'neath the toying showers,
While the Queen of Love is busy weaving tender myrtle bowers
All beneath the branching greenwood, where the forest ways are lone ;
For to-morrow great Dione sits upon her judgment-throne.

Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

She it was to land in Latium Troja's worn Penates led;
She it was the maid of Laurens to her own son gave to wed;
She herself to Mars' embraces led the virgin from the shrine,
Whence the Ramnes and Quirites and the late-born Julian line.
Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.
All the country's steeped in pleasure; country scenes to love invite ;
In the country-so they tell us-Cupid's self first saw the light.
When the fields were teeming round her, Venus bore him at her breast;
Then she weaned him on the petals that were tenderest and best.
Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.
She it is with jewelled flowerets lights the purple vest of earth;
She herself the shapely rose-buds, which the west wind calls to birth,
Flings upon her home of gladness, sprinkling all with sparkling dew,
Which for her the moist night-breezes were distilling all night through.
Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

Lo, the dewy tear-drop trembles, as it were about to fall,
But some magic that we see not still arrests the glistening ball!
Ah, the purple of the rose-bud mourns her virgin modesty,

When the dew that stars besprinkle from his moist arms sets her free!

Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

Roses wrought of Cypris' heart-blood, honied with the kiss of Love,
Jewelled splendour, burning beauty, scarlet shafts of sun inwove,
All unshamed upon the morrow will surrender to the gale
Blushing charms that erst were hidden 'neath their crimson bridal veil.
Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

Lo, the queen her nymphs hath bidden seek the shady myrtle grove !
With them wends her urchin son: but who will e'er believe that Love
Means no mischief, if he carry with him all his arms of slaying?
Fear not, nymphs! His arms are banished; Love is only out a-Maying.
Love is bid to go unarmed, bare the boy is bidden to go,

Lest he do some hurt with flambeau, or with arrow, or with bow.
Love's a comely lad to look on. O ye gentle nymphs, beware!

Love is clad in arms of battle at the time when Love is bare.

Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

Venus sends thee, virgin goddess, maidens pure and chaste as thou.
There is but one boon, Diana, we would beg thy bounty now-
Let the woodlands on the morrow not with quarry slain be spread,
And let wealth of verdant foliage roof the young flowers overhead.
Truly she would like to ask thee, if to ask a maid were fit;
She would have thee come in person, did thy purity permit.
Lo! for three nights now, Diana, bands of dancers out a Maying,
Girt about by flocking numbers, through thy green glades have been straying,
All amid the flow'ry garlands, all amid the myrtle boughs,
Ceres with them, too, and Bacchus, and the lord of poets' vows.
Let us catch the fleeting moments, let us carol all the night:
Rule Dione o'er the woodlands !-0 Diana, yield thy right!

Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

See the bulls beneath the broom-plants yonder with the heifers stray,
Each unrivalled, each the husband of the herd that owns his sway;
And the ewes in shady places dally with their fleecy lords,
While the birds at Venus' bidding strike their musical accords.
Silent pools to ring with music by the wild swan's notes are made,
While the hapless wife of Tereus answers 'neath the poplar shade-
Answers with such twitt'ring rapture, you could well believe it so,
That the suff'ring fair to love again were turning her from woe.
How she sings while I am silent! When will my spring-tide appear?
Could I chatter like a swallow, and dispel the silence drear!
All the Muses are offended, and Apollo will not teach;
Even so of yore Amycle's town was lost for want of speech.

Who ne'er loved must love to-morrow; whoso loved must love the more.

THE WILDS AND WOODLANDS OF THE CAPE.

IT is a far cry from the tall Drakenburg Mountains on the north-east frontier of Natal to Table Mountain at the extreme south-west corner of the Cape Colony. The vast regions lying between these limits, from latitude 22° S. to Agulhas, the southernmost Cape of Africa in latitude 34-49° S., can naturally boast of a great variety of climate and scenery. The Cape Colony and Natal, the Free State and the Transvaal, to say nothing of such native territories as the Transkei, Basutoland, Pondoland, Zululand and Bechuanaland, contain respectively many definite geographical and climatic characteristics. South Africa has the credit of always producing some unexpected and puzzling variations, and is therefore a dangerous country for travellers to generalise hastily about. If an observer of men and things wishes really to know the country, he must take time-unless, indeed, he is content with a coasting voyage from Table Bay to Durban, and never leaves the line of railway when he lands. Even supposing that he makes a hasty pilgrimage in a Cape cart over the rough and uneven roads, the chances are that his impressions of the country will be bad, and that he will heartily abominate and abuse the sterility, forlornness and monotony of the landscape, the discomfort of travelling, and the primitive hotels and stores with their wretched accommodation. If he be indiscreet enough to travel along the dusty and wellworn tracks in the height of summer he will vote the whole place a prolonged edition of the Valley of a proHinnom.

But South Africa is a large country. The area of the Cape Colony alone is two hundred thousand square miles. It is a country of anomalies. There

are in it the most beautiful as well as the most detestable things. A campaigner has probably the worst impressions, a sportsman and naturalist the best. An invalid who is in search of health and comfort may be excused if he gives it a bad name, although there are surely worse places in the world for healing diseases of the lungs than Bloemfontein in the Free State, or any part of the elevated plateaux of the interior of South Africa. To really enjoy the country a traveller must have time and opportunity, and pleased with what he can get, and a carry with him a determination to be resolve to rough it a little.

If a tourist or naturalist can tear luxury of Cogill's Hotel at Wynberg, himself away from the comparative near the famous vineyards of Constantia, and under the shadow, as it were, of Table Mountain, he may find much to please him. In the western province, what can be more beautiful than the Tulbagh Valley in the spring, covered with its myriads of wild itself, with its romantic Hout Bay, and flowers? In fact, the Cape Peninsula wild craggy scenery of Cape Point,— the stormy Land's End of South Africa, can show something new to even the jaded traveller who knows the world from China to Peru. In fifty or sixty different kinds of heaths, this peninsula the botanist will find and an incredible number of little spring with thousands of everlastings, orchids. The hill sides are white in as plentiful as daisies in an English meadow; the crimson gladioli and blue agapanthi wave over nearly every rock, scarlet crassula, myriads of the lowly mesembryanthemum blossom on the plain. One flower jostles another in the tangled mass of fern and creeper and copious under

growth; the tall silver-tree with its delicate white and glistening leaves lords it amongst them all, and is the most beautiful tree on the peninsula. Although the botanical wealth of these regions around Table Bay has been explored and classified, still there are, for the lover of flowers, many welcome surprises in the sheltered nooks and crannies of the neighbouring hills.

If a traveller prefers a quiet village high up in the mountains, at some distance from Capetown, he can visit Ceres, where many a noble scene of rock and gorge meets the eye. Or to go further east and northwards, it would be hard to find a more exhilarating spot than the summit of the Zuurberg above Port Elizabeth, or the Boschberg range that towers above the peaceful villages of Bedford and Somerset East. Along the grassy ridges of these inland mountains and in the recesses of such a little-known district as Swagers' Hoek the sports man can still find abundance of game. The red and grey partridge, the rheebok and the bush-buck have not yet been exterminated here by any means. Or if he travels south, in the forest country of Humansdorp and the Knysna he will surely see something new, where the Outeniqua and Zitzikama woods fringe the coast with evergreen close by the water's edge, and the white foam of the southern breakers dash upon the clinging beds of dark green mesembryanthemum wetting with spray the bole of some ancient monarch of the forest, which nods aloft with lazy swing as the sea breezes rustle through his lichencovered boughs. Then there are the regions of Kaffirland along the eastern coast; and, further north, the homes of the Zulus and the wide Transvaal and rocky Basutoland-a very Switzerland of South Africa wedged in between the white man's colonies. Surely there is choice enough in climate and scenery for the most fastidious explorer!

South Africa seems to admit of a triple description if we follow its variations in veldt, bosch and berg. The veldt certainly has a very dis tinctive character of its own, and is equally unlike the wind-swept Pampas of South America and the Bush of Australia. The name is applied to the open slopes of mountains as well as to the flat surface of the plateaux. The South African farmer will exclaim, as his eye rests upon a good pasturage, "What a beautiful veldt," just as we should say, "What a beautiful country," simply intending his remark to apply to the agricultural or pastoral aspects of a tract, rather than its natural beauties. He

will also say, "Drive in the sheep from the veldt," or "Fetch me a horse from the veldt," where we should use such a restricted term as field or paddock. Veldt means much more than our field. A farmer will also speak of sweet and sour veldt, thereby mystifying a stranger. He is simply referring to the quality of the herbage, and it is very necessary to know the difference between the two. All campaigners and sportsmen know to their cost that oxen will die off very quickly if travelling from sweet to sour veldt.

In the Transvaal the wide and undulating plateaux which extend from the Drakensberg range to the interior are called by the collective term the high veldt, and from these regions, which constitute the watershed of the Transvaal, the rivers have their sources. Here, as in the neighbouring country of the Orange Free State and around the sources of the Orange River, the elevation is very high, frequently reaching from five thousand to six thousand feet. The climate of this part is, therefore, cool, bracing, and dry, even in summer, and during the winter so cold that deep snow sometimes covers its surface. In the latter season the African farmer is frequently driven from the high veldt to the bush veldt, where herbage is more

Roughly speaking, the scenery of plentiful and the climate more genial.

« PreviousContinue »