The English Novel and the Principle of its DevelopmentLanier, Sidney
History
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development
Lanier, Sidney
English fiction -- History and criticism
But Eos proceeds to warn Deukalion and Pyrrha of long trial, and of
many disappointments, closing thus:
"When darkness falls,
And what may come is hard to see;
When solid adamant walls
Seem built against the Future that shall be;
When Faith looks backward, Hope dies, Life appals,
Think most of Morning and of me!
[The rosy glow in the sky fades away]
PROMETHEUS (to _Prince Deukalion_),
Go back to Earth, and wait!
PANDORA (to _Pyrrha_),
Go: and fulfil our fate!"
This sketch of the first Act of Taylor's work is so typical of the
remainder that I need not add quotations from the second, or third, or
fourth Act: the explicit modernness of the treatment, the
spirituality, the personality, of it, everywhere forms the most
striking contrast to the treatment of Æschylus; and I will close the
case as to _Prince Deukalion_ by quoting the subtle and wise words of
Prometheus which end the play. The time is the future: the coming man
and woman, Deukalion and Pyrrha, after long trial, and long
separation, are at last allowed to marry, and to begin their earthly
life. These are Prometheus' parting words to them. It would be
difficult to imagine one plane of thought farther removed from another
than is that of the time-spirit which here speaks through Taylor, from
the time-spirit which speaks through Æschylus. Remembering the
relations between man and inexorable nature, between man and the
exterminating god which we saw revealed by the Prometheus of Æschylus,
listen to these relations prophesied by the Prometheus of Taylor,--
"Retrieve perverted destiny!"
(In Æschylus, when once "destiny" is about, all retrieval grows
absurd.)
'Tis this shall set your children free.
The forces of your race employ
To make sure heritage of joy;
Yet feed, with every earthly sense,
Its heavenly coincidence,--
That, as the garment of an hour,
This, as an everlasting power.
For Life, whose source not here began,
Must fill the utmost sphere of Man,
And so expanding, lifted be
Along the line of God's decree,
To find in endless growth all good;
In endless toil, beatitude.
Seek not to know Him; yet aspire
As atoms toward the central fire!
Not lord of race is He, afar,--
Of Man, or Earth, or any star,
But of the inconceivable All;
Whence nothing that there is can fall
Beyond Him, but may nearer rise,
Slow-circling through eternal skies.
His larger life ye cannot miss,
In gladly, nobly using this.
Now, as a child in April hours
Clasps tight its handful of first flowers,
Homeward, to meet His purpose, go!
These things are all ye need to know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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