NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 10 May 1917, Page 34

NOTES

Things Obvious The following advertisement caught our eye: ‘ Wanted a typist, must he good.’ We have a reason for thinking that our friend, the Knight, would have worded it, ‘ Must not be a good Catholic.’ Does ho know why ? The organ of the Loyal Orange Lodges is responsible for the following:—‘The King’s Own L.0.L., No. 29, meets monthly, Monday on or before the full moon.’ When they do meet they show that 'he full moon has the usual influence. An Old Song Again Mr. Hanan has written a letter to the bigots of Ponsonby to thank these children of light for their support, which he says was a great encouragement to him. He has had a great number of similar testimonials. He says that they indicate that he' has the support of a very large section of the community. And how do you think he ends his letter? The dear old bird trolls forth as merrily as ever: ‘To grant special concessions would result in the undermining and destruction of the system.’ Why does he not learn to sing Croppies, Lie Down, or Boyne Water for a change ? Yeats Not for the many, but for the elect, W. B. YeaH is the greatest of the poets of the New Ireland. In spite of all its dreamy, mystic loveliness, and its faultless diction the greater part of his work will hardly ever become popular with Irish readers. At his best he is unrivalled in modern literature. With the exception of Goldsmith no Irish poet has written more perfect verse in the English language; and Goldsmith and Yeats are so far apart in ideals that there is no ground for comparison between them. It will be for his lyric poems that Yeats will be remembered in the years to come by the host of Irish readers. We quote one little love poem, pure, tender, and beautiful, in its way as fine as anything in English literature: ‘ When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book. And slowly read, and dream of the soft look • : Your eyes had once, and of their shadows, deep*

‘ How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. ‘ And bending down beside the glowing bars Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled And paced among the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.’ Parodies The parody may not appeal to lovers of literature of such high standards of taste as the respected editors of the organ of the Loyal Orange Lodges, and of the Christchurch Sun, but to people whose minds are strung to a less severe tension of high seriousness this form of literature will be always entertaining. Few poems lend themselves to parody so readily as ‘ Hiawatha ’; of many at temps this is the latest: ‘ He killed the noble Mudjokiveis, Of the skin he made him mittens, Made them with the fur side inside, Made them with the skin side outside, He to get the warm side inside, Put the inside, skinside, outside ; He to get the cold side outside. Put the warm side, fur side, outside, When he turned them inside outside.’ Epitaphs Shane Leslie wrote the following lines on the deaths of four daring aeronauts: ‘ One flying past the Alps to see What lay beyond their crest —- Behind the snows found Italy Beyond the mountains—rest. ‘ Nor rugged earth nor untamed sky Gave him his death to die, But gentlest of the Holy Three— The long grey liquid sea. ‘ Say not his life is little worth Whose broken wings are made his shroud; Death men have met on sea and earth, But he hath slain him in the cloud. ‘ Another one of mortal birth Hath set his spirit free, ’ Lie very lightly on him, Earth, Who did not tread on thee.’ Ave Atque Vale These familiar words occur in a little poem by Catullus, a poet banished, with good reason, from the schools; for if he was the ‘ tenderest of Roman poets,’ he was also the most salacious. As a lyric poet he has hardly ever been excelled. ‘ Catullus,’ said the saintly Fenelon, ‘ whom we cannot name without shuddering at his obscenities, is perfection itself in impassioned simplicity. . . . Compare him with Ovid and Martial; how inferior are their ingenious and artificial points to his unadorned words in which the heart talks with itself alone in an access of despair.’ He had the pure trill of the lark, that indefinable qualitv of * tears in things,’ and a simplicity and grace of diction that merit all the praise bestowed on him by Tennyson. The poem from which the Ave atque Vale is taken was

inspired by a pilgrimage to the tomb of his brother. Lamb’s version runs thus; ‘ Brother, I come o’er many seas and lands To the sad rite which pious love ordains, To pay thee the last gift which death demands; And oft, though vain, invoke thy mute remains : Since death has ravished half myself in thee, O, wretched brother, sadly torn from me ! ‘ And now ere fate our souls shall reunite, To give me back all it hath snatched away, Receive the gifts, our father’s ancient rite, To shades departed still was wont to pay; Gifts wet with tears of heartfelt grief that tell, And ever, brother, bless thee, and farewell !’ Lamb’s translation, well as it is done, loses the loveliness of the Latin original which we quote for lovers of the classics: ‘ Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus Advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis Et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem, Quandoquidem fortuna mihi fete abstulit ipsum, lieu miser indigne frater adempte mihi. Nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentum Tradita sunt tristes munera ad inferias, Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, Atque in perpetuom, frater, ave atque vale.’ There is an exquisite charm in these lines that grows more and more as they are repeated ; and for melody and pathos we do not think they can bo matched in any language. On account of their very simplicity they are as difficult to translate as the lyrics of Heine or the old Irish ballads.