dependent lychni laquearibus aureis
incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.
98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, _Paradise Lost_, iv. 140.
99. V. Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, vi, Philomela.
100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.
115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.
118. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”
126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.
138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s _Women beware Women_.
III. THE FIRE SERMON
176. V. Spenser, _Prothalamion_.
192. Cf. _The Tempest_, I. ii.
196. Cf. Marvell, _To His Coy Mistress_.
197. Cf. Day, _Parliament of Bees_:
“When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
“A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
“Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
“Where all shall see her naked skin . . .”
199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these
lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.
202. V. Verlaine, _Parsifal_.
210. The currants were quoted at a price “carriage and insurance
free to London”; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed
to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
210. “Carriage and insurance free”] “cost, insurance and
freight”-Editor.
218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a
“character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem,
uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of
currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not
wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women
are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias
_sees_, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage
from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:
‘. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus,’ dixisse, ‘voluptas.’
Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’
Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem
Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.
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