The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879Various
History
The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
round again he will rise from his couch and rush forth, wildly howling,
to join his master.
A gentler legend is that which we find preserved in a charming poem of
the Swede, Torpelius, called "The Winter Street"--another of the names
for the Milky-way. With this, in the form in which it has been rendered
into English,[36] we may end our list of legends connected with the Sea
of Death or the Bridge of Souls. The story is of two lovers:--
"Her name Salami was, his Zulamyth;
And each so loved, each other loved. Thus runs the tender myth:
"That once on earth they lived, and, loving there,
Were wrenched apart by night, and sorrow, and despair;
And when death came at last, with white wings given,
Condemned to live apart, each reached a separate heaven.
* * * * *
"Yet loving still upon the azure height,
Across unmeasured ways of splendour, gleaming bright,
With worlds on worlds that spread and glowed and burned,
Each unto each, with love that knew no limit, longing turned.
"Zulamyth half consumed, until he willed
Out of his strength one night a bridge of light to build
Across the waste--and lo! from her far sun,
A bridge of light from orb to orb Salami had begun.
"A thousand years they built, still on, with faith,
Immeasurable, quenchless, so my legend saith,
Until the winter street of light--a bridge
Above heaven's highest vault swung clear, remotest ridge from ridge.
"Fear seized the Cherubim; to God they spake--
'See what amongst thy works, Almighty, these can make!'
God smiled, and smiling, lit the spheres with joy--
'What in my world love builds,' he said, 'shall I, shall Love itself
destroy?'"
* * * * *
C. F. KEARY.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Elia.
[6] Unless indeed we are to except a figure upon the Ephesian drum
(Artemisium) now in the British Museum, which some have imagined to
represent Thanatos.
[7] Hel is from the Icl. _helja_ "to conceal."
[8] Isaiah xxxviii. 18, 19; cf. also Genesis xxxvii. 35; 1 Samuel
xxviii. 19. Sheol is misrendered "grave" in our version. It means the
place of the dead, not of bodies only.
[9] The fact that the sun dies every day militates against his claim to
the rank of a god: otherwise he would probably always receive the
greatest meed of worship. As it is, he is often worshipped rather as a
hero or demigod than a true immortal.
[10] Fick. "Verg. Wörterbuch der I.-G. Sp." s.v. _mara_.
[11] Hesperides. They are, however, called the daughters of Night by
Hesiod and others.
[12] Πόντος is from the same root as the Skr. _patha_, a _path_, _pfad_,
&c. One might suppose from this that the Greeks were the first
adventurers upon the deep waters. While the other Aryan folks called the
sea "a death," they called it a "road."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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