Part 6 (1/2)
”Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the ways go green below, Go green to the dwelling of Kings, and the halls that the Queen-folk know.
”Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for what is there bides by the way, Save the joy of folk to awaken, and the dawn of the merry day?
”Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! for the strife awaits thine hand And a plenteous war-field's reaping, and the praise of many a land.
”Bind the red rings, O Sigurd! but how shall storehouse hold That glory of thy winning and the tidings to be told?”
Now the moon was dead and the star-worlds were great on the heavenly plain, When the steed was fully laden; then Sigurd taketh the rein And turns to the ruined rock-wall that the lair was built beneath, For there he deemed was the gate and the door of the Glittering Heath, But not a whit moved Greyfell for aught that the King might do; Then Sigurd pondered awhile, till the heart of the beast he knew, And clad in all his war-gear he leaped to the saddle-stead, And with pride and mirth neighed Greyfell and tossed aloft his head, And sprang unspurred o'er the waste, and light and swift he went, And breasted the broken rampart, the stony tumbled bent; And over the brow he clomb, and there beyond was the world, A place of many mountains and great crags together hurled.
So down to the west he wendeth, and goeth swift and light, And the stars are beginning to wane, and the day is mingled with night; For full fain was the sun to arise and look on the Gold set free, And the Dwarf-wrought rings of the Treasure and the gifts from the floor of the sea.
Beautiful and full of poetic spirit and suggestion as this phraseology is, a reader may be forgiven if it recalls the reply of Hamlet when asked by Polonius what it is he reads. Compared with the swift dramatic method employed by Wagner to make the heroes and heroines of this same saga live for our time, it must be admitted that the latter drives home with the greater energy and conviction. Morris himself, however, was ”not much interested” in anything Wagner did, looking upon it ”as nothing short of desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject under the gaslights of an opera, the most rococo and degraded of all forms of art.”
To the group of translations and adaptations already described must be added one other ambitious effort which belongs to it, properly speaking, although separated from it in time by more than ten years. In 1887 Morris published a translation of the _Odyssey_, written in anapaestic couplets, and rendered as literally as by the prose crib of which he made frank use.
Mr. Watts-Dunton finds in this translation the Homeric eagerness, although the Homeric dignity is lacking. The majority of competent critics were against it, however, nor is a high degree of cla.s.sical training necessary to perceive in it an incoherence and clumsiness of diction impossible to a.s.sociate with the lucid images of the Greeks. Compare, for example, Morris's account of the recognition of Ulysses by Argus with Bryant's limpid rendering of the same episode, and the tortured style of the former is obvious at once. Bryant's translation reads:
There lay Argus, devoured with vermin. As he saw Ulysses drawing near, he wagged his tail And dropped his ears, but found that he could come No nearer to his master. Seeing this Ulysses wiped away a tear unmark'd By the good swineherd whom he questioned thus: ”Eumaeus, this I marvel at,--this dog That lies upon the dunghill, beautiful In form, but whether in the chase as fleet As he is fairly shaped I cannot tell.
Worthless, perchance, as house-dogs often are Whose masters keep them for the sake of show.”
And thus, Eumaeus, thou didst make reply:
”The dog belongs to one who died afar.
Had he the power of limb which once he had For feats of hunting when Ulysses sailed For Troy and left him, thou wouldst be amazed Both at his swiftness and his strength. No beast In the thick forest depths which once he saw, Or even tracked by footprints, could escape.
And now he is a sufferer, since his lord Has perished far from his own land. No more The careless women heed the creature's wants; For, when the master is no longer near, The servants cease from their appointed tasks, And on the day that one becomes a slave The Thunderer, Jove takes half his worth away.”
He spake, and, entering that fair dwelling-place, Pa.s.sed through to where the ill.u.s.trious suitors sat, While over Argus the black night of death Came suddenly as soon as he had seen Ulysses, absent now for twenty years.
And here is the description by Morris of the infinitely touching scene:
There then did the woodhound Argus all full of ticks abide; But now so soon as he noted Odysseus drawing anear He wagged his tail, and fawning he laid down either ear, But had no might to drag him nigher from where he lay To his master, who beheld him and wiped a tear away That he lightly hid from Eumaeus, unto whom he spake and said:
”Eumaeus, much I marvel at the dog on the dung-heap laid; Fair-shapen is his body, but nought I know indeed If unto this his fairness he hath good running speed, Or is but like unto some--men's table-dogs I mean, Which but because of their fairness lords cherish to be seen.”
Then thou, O swineherd Eumaeus, didst speak and answer thus:
”Yea, this is the hound of the man that hath died aloof from us; And if yet to do and to look on he were even such an one As Odysseus left behind him when to Troy he gat him gone Then wouldest thou wonder beholding his speed and hardihood, For no monster that he followed through the depths of the tangled wood Would he blench from, and well he wotted of their trail and where it led.
But now ill he hath, since his master in an alien land is dead, And no care of him have the women, that are heedless here and light; Since thralls whenso they are missing their masters' rule and might.
No longer are they willing to do the thing that should be; For Zeus, the loud-voiced, taketh half a man's valiancy Whenso the day of thralldom hath hold of him at last.”
So saying into the homestead of the happy place he pa.s.sed And straight to the hall he wended 'mid the Wooers overbold.
But the murky doom of the death-day of Argus now took hold When he had looked on Odysseus in this the twentieth year.
The decade between the publication of _The Earthly Paradise_ and _Sigurd the Volsung_ had been one of sustained literary effort varied, as we have seen, but hardly interrupted by the work in decoration. The latter Morris called his ”bread-and-cheese work,” the former his ”pleasure work of books.” The time had not yet come for a complete union between the two, although it was foreshadowed by the illuminated ma.n.u.scripts made for friends during these years. A selection from his own poems, a translation of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_, a copy of Fitzgerald's _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, and the _aeneid_ of Virgil were among the works that Morris undertook to transcribe with his own hand on vellum, with decorative margins with results of great beauty. He had now long been happy in work calling out all this enthusiasm, but the world was going on without, to use his own words, ”beautiful and strange and dreadful and wors.h.i.+pful.”
He was approaching the time when his conscience would no longer let him rest in the thought that he was ”not born to set the crooked straight.”
CHAPTER VII.
PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM.