Part 21 (1/2)
The poem, _The Starry Sky_,[18] is full of lofty enthusiasm for Nature and piety:
When yonder glorious sky Lighted with million lamps I contemplate, And turn my dazzled eye To this vain mortal state All mean and visionary, mean and desolate, A mingled joy and grief Fills all my soul with dark solicitude....
List to the concert pure Of yon harmonious countless worlds of light.
See, in his...o...b..t sure Each takes his journey bright, Led by an unseen hand through the vast maze of night.
See how the pale moon rolls Her silver wheel....
See Saturn, father of the golden hours, While round him, bright and blest, The whole empyrean showers Its glorious streams of light on this low world of ours.
But who to these can turn And weigh them 'gainst a weeping world like this, Nor feel his spirit burn To grasp so sweet a bliss And mourn that exile hard which here his portion is?
For there, and there alone, Are peace and joy and never dying love: Day that shall never cease, No night there threatening, No winter there to chill joy's ever-during spring.
Ye fields of changeless green Covered with living streams and fadeless flowers; Thou paradise serene, Eternal joyful hours Thy disembodied soul shall welcome in thy towers!
It was chiefly in Spanish literature at this time that Nature was used allegorically. Tieck[19] says: 'In Calderon's poetry, and that of his contemporaries, we often find, in romances and song-like metres, most charming descriptions of the sea, mountains, gardens, and woody valleys, but almost always used allegorically, and with an artistic polish which ends by giving us, not so much a real impression of Nature, as one of clever description in musical verse, repeated again and again with slight variations.' This is true of Leon, but far more of Calderon, since it belongs to the very essence of drama. But, despite his pa.s.sion for description and his Catholic and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy, splendid colour, and a modern element of individuality in his poems. His heroes are conscious of their own ego, feel themselves to be 'a miniature world,' and search out their own feelings 'in the wild waves of emotion' (as Aurelian, for example, in _Zen.o.bia_).
Fernando says in _The Constant Prince_:
These flowers awoke in beauty and delight At early dawn, when stars began to set; At eve they leave us but a fond regret, Locked in the cold embraces of the night.
These shades that shame the rainbow's arch of light.
Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met, All give a warning man should not forget, When one brief day can darken things so bright.
'Tis but to wither that the roses bloom-- 'Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers, One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb.
Such are man's fortunes in this world of ours; They live, they die; one day doth end their doom, For ages past but seem to us like hours.
The warning which Zen.o.bia gives her captor in his hour of triumph to beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived:
Morn comes forth with rays to crown her, While the sun afar is spreading Golden cloths most finely woven All to dry her tear-drops purely.
Up to noon he climbs, then straightway Sinks, and then dark night makes ready For the burial of the sea Canopies of black outstretching-- Tall s.h.i.+ps fly on linen pinions, On with speed the breezes send it, Small the wide seas seem and straitened, To its quick flight onward tending.
Yet one moment, yet one instant, And the tempest roars, uprearing Waves that might the stars extinguish, Lifted for that s.h.i.+p's o'erwhelming.
Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards, Calms must storm await with trembling; Close behind the back of pleasure Evermore stalks sadness dreary.
In _Life's a Dream_ Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark prison, says:
What sinned I more herein Than others, who were also born?
Born the bird was, yet with gay Gala vesture, beauty's dower, Scarcely 'tis a winged flower Or a richly plumaged spray, Ere the aerial halls of day It divideth rapidly, And no more will debtor be To the nest it hates to quit; But, with more of soul than it, I am grudged its liberty.
And the beast was born, whose skin Scarce those beauteous spots and bars, Like to constellated stars, Doth from its greater painter win Ere the instinct doth begin: Of its fierceness and its pride, And its lair on every side, It has measured far and nigh; While, with better instinct, I Am its liberty denied.
Born the mute fish was also, Child of ooze and ocean weed; Scarce a finny bark of speed To the surface brought, and lo!
In vast circuits to and fro Measures it on every side Its illimitable home; While, with greater will to roam, I that freedom am denied.
Born the streamlet was, a snake Which unwinds the flowers among, Silver serpent, that not long May to them sweet music make, Ere it quits the flowery brake, Onward hastening to the sea With majestic course and free, Which the open plains supply; While, with more life gifted, I Am denied its liberty.
In Act II. Clotardo tells how he has talked to the young prince, brought up in solitude and confinement:
There I spoke with him awhile Of the human arts and letters, Which the still and silent aspect Of the mountains and the heavens Him have taught--that school divine Where he has been long a learner, And the voices of the birds And the beasts has apprehended.