The Youth of Parnassus, and Other StoriesSmith, Logan Pearsall
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The Youth of Parnassus, and Other Stories
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Short stories; University of Oxford -- Fiction
The ladies looked at the windows, the religious carving; and their
movement, as they went about, filled with a rustling sound the vacant
silence of the place. Then they all gathered in a group while one of the
Fellows told them something of the history of the chapel: how it had
been built in the fourteenth century, and how ever since then the
members of the College had worshipped there, and among them many whose
names had afterwards grown famous.
"Tell me," Ruth Ellwood whispered, as they walked away, "is this where
the undergraduates sit; where do you sit?" He showed her the Scholars'
seats, and the old brass eagle from which they read the lessons, and
then, when they went through the ante-chapel, she paused a moment,
looking at the inscriptions and monuments.
"Were there any nice old epitaphs?" she asked. "Do show them to me, if
there are."
The rest of the party had left the chapel, but could still be seen
through the open door standing not far off in the sunshine, and the
gossip of their voices came in faintly now and then.
The old brasses, dating from Gothic times, bore inscriptions in rhyming
Latin, that Rutherford read and translated to his companion; there were
monuments of a later time, adorned with urns, cherubs, and
garlands--old trappings of death that made death itself seem almost
quaint and charming. But in the seventeenth century the tranquil records
of the scholars' lives were disturbed by echoes of old war and exile.
"Reader, look to thy feet! Honest and Loyal men are sleeping under
Thee," one inscription ran; and the name of more than one was recorded
"who, when Loyalty and the Church fainted, lay down and Died."
Other monuments were put up to the memory of young men who had died at
College. Well-born and modest, the old Latin described them, and dead,
centuries ago, in the flower of their fruitless years. "Vivere dulce
fuit!" one of them had complained, as four hundred years before, in
florid Latin, he bade farewell to youth and hope.
Of another it was quaintly said, "Talis erat vita, qualis stylus,
elegans et pura"; while another undergraduate's virtues were recorded in
verses ending with the line,
"Expertus praedico, tutor eram."
Then there was an inscription in English verse, from some Cavalier poet,
Rutherford thought,
"Him while fresh and fragrant Time
Cherisht in his golden prime;
Ere Hebe's hand had overlaid
His smooth cheeks with downy shade,
The rush of Death's unruly wave
Swept him off into his grave.
* * * * *
Eyes are vocall, teares have tongues,
And there be words not made with lungs;
Sententious showres: Oh let them fall!
Their cadence is rhetoricall."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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