Part 9 (1/2)
He called his boy with morning light, Told him the vision of the night, And bade his play be brought.
His finished page again he scanned, Resting his head upon his hand, Absorbed in studious thought He knew not what the dream foreshowed: That nought divine may hold abode Where death's dark shade is felt: And therefore were the Muses nine Leaving the old poetic shrine, Where they so long had dwelt.
II
The theatre was thronged once more, More thickly than the day before, To hear the half-heard song.
The day wore on. Impatience came.
They called upon Philemon's name, With murmurs loud and long.
Some sought at length his studious cell, And to the stage returned, to tell What thousands strove to ask.
'The poet we have been to seek Sate with his hand upon his cheek, As pondering o'er his task.
'We spoke. He made us no reply.
We reverentially drew nigh, And twice our errand told.
He answered not We drew more near The awful mystery then was clear: We found him stiff and cold.
'Struck by so fair a death, we stood Awhile in sad admiring mood: Then hastened back, to say That he, the praised and loved of all, Is deaf for ever to your call: That on this self-same day, 'When here presented should have been The close of his fict.i.tious scene, His life's true scene was o'er: We seemed, in solemn silence awed, To hear the ”Farewell and applaud,”
Which he may speak no more.
'Of tears the rain gave prophecy: The nuptial dance of comedy Yields to the funeral train.
a.s.semble where his pyre must burn: Honour his ashes in their urn: And on another day return To hear his songs again.'
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ A beautiful fiction.
_Mr. Falconer._ If it be a fiction. The supernatural is confined to the dream. All the rest is probable; and I am willing to think it true, dream and all.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You are determined to connect the immaterial with the material world, as far as you can.
_Mr. Falconer._ I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Certainly, there is much in the material world to displease sensitive and imaginative minds; but I do not know any one who has less cause to complain of it than you have. You are surrounded with all possible comforts, and with all the elements of beauty, and of intellectual enjoyment.
_Mr. Falconer._ It is not my own world that I complain of.
It is the world on which I look 'from the loopholes of retreat.' I cannot sit here, like one of the G.o.ds of Epicurus, who, as Cicero says, was satisfied with thinking, through all eternity, 'how comfortable he was.'{1} I look with feelings of intense pain on the ma.s.s of poverty and crime; of unhealthy, unavailing, unremunerated toil, blighting childhood in its blossom, and womanhood in its prime; of 'all the oppressions that are done under the sun.'
1 Comprehende igitur animo, et propone ante oculos, deura nihil aliud in omni aeternitate, nisi, Mihi pulchre est, et, Ego beatus sum, cogitant em.--Cicero: _De natura deorum_, 1. i. c. 41.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I feel with you on all these points; but there is much good in the world; more good than evil, I have always maintained.
They would have gone off in a discussion on this point, but the French cook warned them to luncheon.
In the evening the young lady was sufficiently recovered to join the little party in the drawing-room, which consisted, as before, of Mr.
Falconer, Mr. Gryll, Doctor Anodyne, and the Reverend Doctor Opimian.
Miss Gryll was introduced to _Mr. Falconer._ She was full of grateful encomium for the kind attention of the sisters, and expressed an earnest desire to hear their music. The wish was readily complied with. She heard them with great pleasure, and, though not yet equal to much exertion, she could not yet refrain from joining in with them in their hymn to Saint Catharine.
She accompanied them when they retired.