STAMPS THAI HONOUR POETS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 7 February 1931, Page 9

STAMPS THAI HONOUR POETS

HY RON 0N LY ENG Id SUM A N rp\VO thousand years ago the poet \ irgil was horn, the great exponent of the aims and ideals of the Augustan Age, in whose memory Italy has issued ten stamps to celebrate the second millenary. Each stamp illustrates an incident or passage from the “Aeneid,” “Bucolics,” or “Georgies,” and has a familiar quotation m the original Latin. The fifteen centesimi stamp (according to a description in the “Christian Science Monitor”) shows Etjeno greeting Aeneas on his arrival at the new Trow The next value depicts a Roman father and son watch T ho do- - pnrture of a Legion toward the coast-, and the quotation is very apt: “To rule

the: subject peoples with imperial tsv.a.y. ho that votir care. O Roman!” (Aeneid Ml, 851). Aeneas feasting in the shade «f Albunea forms tho subject of the 25 oentesimi stamp with a passage from •Aeneid Yll.” (120-122). The 30 centesimi -stamp illustrates an allegory: it shows a mo: her arid her children surrounded by the kindly fruits of the earth, and has an extract from the “Georgies” (11.174). One- stamp of the series has been set aside for aerial postage, and its accompanying quotation is one of the many signs of Virgil’s prophetic vision. The subject is an ofil man watching the iglit- of an eagle, and the inscription is from “Aeneid I.” (278): “For them I assign limits neither to the- extent nor the duration of their Empire.” The vignettes are executed in the stv!e of mural paintings by the Italian artist Dr. Corrado Mezzana, and aro

reproduced in photogravure. They are. cerv much finer than the three stamps I Italy previously dedicated to another famous son. the jxiet Dante. Spain and Portugal have vied with; each other in producing stamps worthy ( of their literary sons, but perhaps the most beautiful stamps of this kind were those issued in Bulgaria in 1920 to celebrate the jubilee of their greatest poet, Vazoff. France gave a rather insignificant blue 7 centime stamp as a. trinte to her “Prince of Poets,” Pierre do llonsard. and Poland, in 1927, issued several stamps in honour of lier patriot :i n 1 ipoet Sknvacki. Slowaelki, who 'ived between 1809 and 1849, resided in Paris from the year IS3I, and his work hears the impress of Byron and tor Hugo. The only English poet who has found a niche in the Poets’ Corner in pliil- ! ritelv is ByrOn, to whom Greece dedii cated a stamp on the. occasion of the centenary of liis death.