"CHRIST IN HADES": - A CLASSIC OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2646, 30 November 1904, Page 77

"CHRIST IN HADES": - A CLASSIC OF THE DAY.

Ev Jessie M.k'kat.

IV. The varrloi's speech is prelude to that ascending passage of uneaithly beauty in ■uhich the ningnet-drawn multitudes if Hades tire poitrayed hoveling round Christ in tver-widening circles. Slowlj' ail the dead 'Che inelanchc'3- attraction of Jesus felt ; And millions like a sea, wave upon wave, Heaved dreaming to thati moonlight lace, or ran In wonderful long ripples, sorrow-chaimed. Toward Him in faded purple s'owly came Dead emperois, and sad uiiflpfctered kings; . . . . Until at last Antiquity, like evening gathering, With mild and stai'iy taces, gradually Had stolen tip He shuddered w.ith a raptuie ; and from his eye 3 L'hey felt returning agonies of. hope. As men. -flame-wrapped, hither and thither run, To rid them, or fall headlong to the ground, The dead, caught in intolerable hope, Hither and thither, burning, rushed, or fell. Imploring Him to leave ijhem cold; but Christ Cenae through them, leading irresistibly Not western spirits alone ; but all that vorM Was up ! And after him in passion, swept Dead Asia, murmuring, and the buiied Xorth ! What a power of presentment is here .' Th} shadow;/ empires of the daAvn of lime — Chaldea, struggling with Egypt for the palm of a^e; the Semitic Assyiians, the Turanian Hittites, the Aryan Persians, and Hindoos — all pa-ss by in cloudy procession, under the miiimtu'ou* banner of "dead Asia." Plainly "Asia" here stands for the storied and mighty dead of old ; while the "buried North" may stand for the rude pnleolit'hic savage* <'ho«e remains we find in the Danish kitchen middens and similar retreats, with the gigantic creatures that once roamed these Borean latitudes in ancient summer. As Stephen Phillips penned these lines, the dark material visions of Dante mu&t have been in his mind : yet with what a reserved and delicate pen he touches sorrow and judgment. Not even Dante, however, could have evolved a more striking image of 0. hope which, lurid against the horrific background of Hades, tortures by its intensity, like the throes of leturning life in one frozen. Continually in Stephen Plullips we find a strange intensity of artistic sentiment which is its' own scourge, such as the yearning expressed in "the dreadful freshness of the cUiwn." In sharp contrast with this is an equally strange rang froid in. his portrayal of certain terrible human crises — notably in some of the darker London poems. 'It is difficult to decide whether this, novel restraint in a spirit so sensitive to external influences is the self-revering, sternly truthful soul of art refusing to tear its passion to tatters, as in cruder times, or whether it is the first sign of literary decadence, the fruit- of an effete civilisation, still fair without, but touched at the core. To all, however, not bound to the tradition of a dead art, shrouded iv faultless mptre. his bold defiance of conventional technique and Parnassian artifice will be a simulating joy. Delicately rugged his blank verse may be railed; indeed, at times he seems to overstep quantities out of pure poiversity. And yet the weighted word is so obviously at home in the line, the thought is so unforced 1 , the phrase is so natural, yet so stately, that the carping critic is put to silemce. Not only is he free and fluent of accentuation, but he seldom obtains his fine effects by alliteration, that trrace upon which English poetry has ever

iv lied iince its earliest beginning. Full of nervous vibralivc? energy ard seeming naivete, his stylo is like the simple muohn gowns of Worth, whose almost infantine folds arc loally 0 costly triumph of art. And it is thus entirely dift'eient from ths work of those wild Wagneis of verse. Browning ,-i;ul Walt Whitman. Whether th»re is life in his thought may be? doubted ; but there is marvellous life in his technique. The fep.nt of VIISII nt\i confronts Christ : But 111 his path a 'onely spirit stood : A Roman, he who frcm a greater Gieek Bonovred as bdTiutiiully as the incon The fire of the sun ""Whither," he said, "O whither dost them lead In such a calm all these embattled dead? A' most 1 could begin io sing again. To see Ihess nations b dining run through Hell, Magnificent" y angiushed, by the grave Untired ; and this, last march against the Powers. Who would more gladly follow thee than I? But over me the human ticuble comes. Deal gladiator, pitted against Fate, . I fea.r for Ihee Yf>t I am thrilled; thou seemst like the bourne Of all om music, of the hinting night. Of sou's under the moonlight opening." Xow, after st>«akiiig, he bowed down 'his head, Faltered, and shed ",vet tears 111 the vain place. In Virffil \ia discover a moral elevation, a spiritual appielicr.sion, unnttiiined by tho n ime'r-?'' ghosts. True, he docs v.oi sneak moie beautifully than they, nov is ho 'Hied with a stiovger lesolution; rather do we find -i g-entL"" mohncholy. a poetic infirmity o[ purple that suffers from the very int^nsitv o: lib Jove, but cannot r>ieuc the veil of eiciiiitv v. ith tiip prophet's ere. This cj^ntlrne-s .1 d ordered, it eircumsnibed, thought iei c - not incompatible with v.-hnt we know of the great Roman. He was born no.ir M.mttia. aboat 70 n c. ; he iias educate 1 in the "Roman schools; his life was quiet, kindly, reverent, pure, amid all tl«c rapidly vitiating ahs of the im-1-erial cry. He was inme loved than any man of his time : and his tomb was a shrine, to the Romans. His supremacy" over all other Latin poets was never doubted by bis contemporaries; and the fart of Dante" « choice of him as a guide in the world of spirits is significant of his undiminishcd fume in the A^-a. i)espite the dispoiagement of some modern critics, l.is Latin laurels mo scarcely disiiuied serioiv&ly to-day. The "JEneid" places him with tlie world's few epic writers ; lm Dido, moreover, is reckoned the greatest woman character in ancient literature. His death took place in 19 8.C., about 50 yi J ais before Ihe crucifixion. His speech shows an attitude tender and responsive : yet he. too, has oplv attained n. glorified human view of the Messiah ; hi him we hear the human best of old Rome — no more

(To be continued.)