THE WAY OF ESCAPE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE WAY OF ESCAPE

DREAMERS OF DREAMS • THE HORNS OF ELFLAND BV CHRISTINE COMBER " If {here were dreams to sell, What would you buy?" Every child lives half his time in a dream-world, and only the other half in the world of reality; and some, like spiritual Peter Pans, never grown up at all. Be that as it may, we all indulge in flights of imagination about our future fame and happiness. Every cabin-boy fancies himself an admiral; every scribbler of topicalities is in his own esteem a future Galsworthy; every child taking part in the school " breaking-up " concert is in his own mind the Beerbohm Tree or Henry Irving of the future. Poets of all nations have described for our delight the beauty and.wonder of this magic realm.. Sometimes even their love songs are but the expression of their desire for the perfect mate—

[the secret longing of man since Adam walked in the scented groves of Eden. " Whoe'er she be. That not impossible She That shall command my heart and me." Shakespeare's plays abound with fairy pieces, songs and madrigals. He invites us to join his happy freedom " under the greenwood tree," where his only enemies are " winter and rough weather;" and how we delight in the irresponsible gaiety of Puck and Ariel. Shakespeare's fairies are the embodiment of, all that is lovable, impish and eternally young. But perhaps Keats* unforgettable " Magio casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn " is perhaps the best description of this dream country that poetry has to offer. The Urge to Adventure The iidealist finds release from the sordidness and materialism of his everyday environment in such flights as: " Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths. Enwrouf.'ht with golden and silver light. The bluis and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light. I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have fipread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because ycv tread on my dreams." ' These eight lines by W. B. Yeates embody the longing of every young lover. There is nothing too good, too costly, for his lady. But alas, for wishes! He has to express his devotion through the medium of a half-pound box of sweets and shilling tickets to the cinema. Deathless in the human heart is the thirst iFor adventure, for novelty, for exploration —the thirst that has left no corner of the earth uncharted, that drove Livingstone into the heart of Africa and Columbus across the waves, and thut spurs on the faltering steps cii : mountain-climbers and those who would wrest their knowledge from

jungles., deserts and the ocean-floor. Clerks in offices, workers in factories, and all the hordes of teachers, lawyers, shop assistants, and cashiers that make up the masses of city workers echo the song oii Alfred Noyes:

"The moon is up: the stars are bright Tins wind is fresh an<l free! We're out to seek for gold to-night Across the silver sea! The world is growing grey and old: Bnsak out the sails again! We're out to seek a Realm of Gold Ecsyond the Spanish Main." Dreams of Travel

How many brochures from tourist bureaus are yearned over by these helpless rebels! In how many illustrated travel-books do they escape for an enchanted hoiir to the land of their heart's desire! Wherever a man's birthplace is, it seems certain tha.t he will always want to roam to its antipodes. Men ' ifat England long for the wide spaces of Australia's sunny freedom. Sonfc and grandsons of pioneers yearn for the Old World and the associations that school and a classical education have made dear to them. It is the same with physical attributes. An invalid loves to read of outlaws, brigands, cowboys, pioneers and wrestling champions; your sturdy, six-foot novelist will create scholarly, handsome, drcamy-eved heroes. So few of us seem satisfied with what we are, or our lives as they are. The clown is notoriously melancholy, with the unshakable conviction that he is a born tragedian, if only somebody would give him a chance. The Paths of Memory Men and women, " old and grey and full of sleep," escape from the sorrows of age and loneliness by wandering once more in the paths of the Past. Thomas Moore, knew as well as any man, the joys and sorrows of memory, yet. he sought solace, again and again in the days of long ago. " Then, I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear. When our -voices, commingling, breathed like one. on the ear.' A modern poet, Ralph Hodgson, sets down in musical stanzas the longing that sometimes comes to every man and woman who feels < that Youth is slipping by like a cloud in the night, and that the best we can expect of Time, is age and grey hairs. "'rime, you old gypsy man. Will you no' staj. Put up your caravan Just for one day?" He offers Time beautiful rewards — silver bells for his jennet, a ring of finest gold, peacocks to bow to him, little boys to sing songs for his pleasure, girls to festoon him with may. But thfi fantasy ends. Time still moves silently on. " A wanderer is man from his birth," and a dreamer of dreams. Never was born the soul that could pass through the world untroubled by some unfulfilled desire, some vain regret. To office stool, railway workshop, director's chair and an unemployment camp, there sometimes come the far, thin strains of "the horns of Elfland, faintly blowing." , •