No More Learning

Truly, said
Percivale, in the name of God, well hath my sister holden us
covenant. Then took they out of the ship the table of silver, and
he took it to Percivale and to Bors to go tofore, and Galahad
came behind, and right so they went to the city, and at the gate
of the city they saw an old man crooked. Then Galahad called
him, and bad him help to bear this heavy thing. Truly, said the
old man, it is ten year ago that I might not go but with crutches.
Care thou not, said Galahad, and arise up and shew thy good
will. And so he assayed, and found himself as whole as ever he
was. Then ran to the table, and took one part against Galahad.
And anon arose there great noise in the city, that a cripple was
made whole by knights marvelous that entered into the city.
Then anon after, the three knights went to the water, and
brought up into the palace Percivale's sister, and buried her as
richly as a king's daughter ought to be. And when the king
of the city, which was cleped Estorause, saw the fellowship, he
asked them of whence they were, and what thing it was that
they had brought upon the table of silver. And they told him
the truth of the Sancgreal, and the power which that God had
set there. Then the king was a tyrant, and was come of the
line of paynims, and took them and put them in prison in a deep
hole.
But as soon as they were there, our Lord sent them the Sanc-
greal, through whose grace they were always fulfilled while that
they were in prison. So at the year's end it befell that this
King Estorause lay sick, and felt that he should die. Then he
sent for the three knights, and they came afore him, and he cried
them mercy of that he had done to them, and they forgave it
him goodly, and he died anon. When the king was dead, all the
city was dismayed, and wist not who might be their king. Right
so as they were in counsel, there came a voice among them, and
bad them choose the youngest knight of them three to be their
king, for he shall well maintain you and all yours.
So they
made Galahad king by all the assent of the whole city, and else
XIII-472


## p. 7538 (#344) ###########################################

7538
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
hey would have slain him. And when he was come to behold
the land, he let make about the table of silver a chest of gold
and of precious stones that covered the holy vessel, and every
day early the three fellows would come afore it and make their
prayers. Now at the year's end, and the self day after Galahad
had borne the crown of gold, he arose up early, and his fellows,
and came to the palace, and saw tofore them the holy vessel,
and a man kneeling on his knees, in likeness of a bishop, that
had about him a great fellowship of angels, as it had been Jesu
Christ himself. And then he arose and began a mass of Our
Lady. And when he came to the sacrament of the mass, and
had done, anon he called Galahad, and said to him, Come forth,
the servant of Jesu Christ, and thou shalt see that thou hast
much desired to see. And then he began to tremble right hard,
when the deadly flesh began to behold the spiritual things. Then
he held up his hands toward heaven, and said, Lord, I thank
thee, for now I see that that hath been my desire many a day.
Now, blessed Lord, would I not longer live, if it might please
thee, Lord. And therewith the good man took our Lord's body
betwixt his hands, and proffered it to Galahad, and he received
it right gladly and meekly. Now, wotest thou what I am? said
the good man. Nay, said Galahad. -I am Joseph of Arimathie,
which our Lord hath sent here to thee to bear thee fellowship.
And wotest thou wherefore that he hath sent me more than any
other? For thou hast resembled me in two things, in that thou
hast seen the marvels of the Sancgreal, and in that thou hast
been a clean maiden, as I have been and am. And when he had
said these words, Galahad went to Percivale and kissed him, and
commanded him to God. And so he went to Sir Bors and kissed
him, and commanded him to God, and said, Fair lord, salute me
to my lord Sir Launcelot, my father, and as soon as ye see him
bid him remember of this unstable world. And therewith he
kneeled down tofore the table and made his prayers, and then
suddenly his soul departed to Jesu Christ, and a great multitude
of angels bare his soul up to heaven, that the two fellows might
well behold it. Also the two fellows saw come from heaven an
hand, but they saw not the body; and then it came right to the
vessel, and took it and the spear, and so bare it up to heaven.
Sithen was there never man so hardy to say that he had seen
the Sancgreal.


## p. 7539 (#345) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
KING ARTHUR ADDRESSES THE GRAIL-SEEKERS
From The Quest of the Sangreal,' by Robert Stephen Hawker
THE
HERE stood the knights! stately, and stern, and tall:
Tristan; and Perceval; Sir Galahad;
And he, the sad Sir Lancelot of the lay:
Ah me! that logan of the rocky hills,
Pillared in storm, calm in the rush of war,
Shook at the light touch of his lady's hand!
See where they move, a battle-shouldering kind!
Massive in mold, but graceful; thorough men;
Built in the mystic measure of the Cross:
Their lifted arms the transome; and their bulk
The Tree where Jesu stately stood to die!
Thence came their mastery in the field of war:
Ha! one might drive battalions — one alone!
See now, they pause; for in their midst, the King!
Arthur, the Son of Uter and the Night.
Helmed with Pendragon; with the crested crown;
And belted with the sheathed Excalibur,
That gnashed his iron teeth and yearned for war!
Stern was that look-high natures seldom smile;
And in those pulses beat a thousand kings.
A glance! and they were hushed; a lifted hand,
And his eye ruled them like a throne of light!
Then, with a voice that rang along the moor,-
Like the Archangel's trumpet for the dead,
He spake, while Tamar sounded to the sea:---
"Comrades in arms! mates of the Table Round!
Fair Sirs, my fellows in the bannered ring,-
Ours is a lofty tryst! this day we meet,
Not under shield, with scarf and knightly gage,
To quench our thirst of love in ladies' eyes;
We shall not mount to-day that goodly throne,
The conscious steed, with thunder in his loins,
To launch along the field the arrowy spear:
Nay, but a holier theme, a mightier quest. -
'Ho! for the Sangraal, vanished vase of God! '
"Ye know that in old days, that yellow Jew,
Accursed Herod; and the earth-wide judge,
Pilate the Roman, doomster for all lands,-
Or else the Judgment had not been for all,—
Bound Jesu-Master to the world's tall tree,
Slowly to die.
-
―
7539
-


## p. 7540 (#346) ###########################################

7540
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
"Ha! Sirs, had we been there,
They durst not have assayed their felon deed,—
Excalibur had cleft them to the spine!
Slowly He died, a world in every pang,
Until the hard centurion's cruel spear
Smote His high heart; and from that severed side
Rushed the red stream that quenched the wrath of Heaven!
"Then came Sir Joseph, hight of Arimethée,
Bearing that awful vase, the Sangraal!
The vessel of the Pasch, Shere Thursday night;
The selfsame Cup, wherein the faithful Wine
Heard God, and was obedient unto Blood!
Therewith he knelt and gathered blessèd drops
From his dear Master's Side that sadly fell,
The ruddy dews from the great tree of life:
Sweet Lord! what treasures! like the priceless gems
Hid in the tawny casket of a king,-
A ransom for an army, one by one!
That wealth he cherished long; his very soul
Around his ark; bent as before a shrine!
"He dwelt in Orient Syria: God's own land;
The ladder foot of heaven - where shadowy shapes
In white apparel glided up and down!
His home was like a garner, full of corn
And wine and oil; a granary of God!
Young men, that no one knew, went in and out,
With a far look in their eternal eyes!
All things were strange and rare: the Sangraal,
As though it clung to some ethereal chain,
Brought down high Heaven to earth at Arimethée!
"He lived long centuries! and prophesied.
A girded pilgrim ever and anon;
Cross-staff in hand, and folded at his side
The mystic marvel of the feast of blood!
Once, in old time, he stood in this dear land,
Enthralled: for lo! a sign! his grounded staff
Took root, and branched, and bloomed, like Aaron's rod;
Thence came the shrine, the cell; therefore he dwelt,
The vassal of the vase, at Avalon!
"This could not last, for evil days came on,
And evil men: the garbage of their sin
Tainted this land, and all things holy fled.
The Sangraal was not: on a summer eve,
The silence of the sky brake up in sound!


## p. 7541 (#347) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
The tree of Joseph glowed with ruddy light:
A harmless fire, curved like a molten vase,
Around the bush, and from the midst a voice,
Thus hewn by Merlin on a runic stone:
[Cabalistic sentence. ]
-
"Then said the shuddering seer- - he heard and knew
The unutterable words that glide in Heaven,
Without a breath or tongue, from soul to soul:-
«‹The land is lonely now; Anathema:
The link that bound it to the silent grasp
Of thrilling worlds is gathered up and gone:
The glory is departed; and the disk
So full of radiance from the touch of God-
This orb is darkened to the distant watch
Of Saturn and his reapers, when they pause,
Amid their sheaves, to count the nightly stars.
"All gone! but not forever: on a day
There shall arise a king from Keltic loins,
Of mystic birth and name, tender and true;
His vassals shall be noble, to a man:
Knights strong in battle till the war is won;
Then while the land is hushed on Tamar side,
So that the warder upon Carradon
Shall hear at once the river and the sea,
That king shall call a Quest; a kindling cry:
"Ho! for the Sangraal! vanished vase of God! "
"Yea! and it shall be won! a chosen knight,
The ninth from Joseph in the line of blood,
Clean as a maid from guile and fleshly sin.
He with the shield of Sarras; and the lance,
Ruddy and moistened with a freshening stain,
As from a severed wound of yesterday —
He shall achieve the Graal: he alone! ?
"Thus wrote Bard Merlin on the runic hide
Of a slain deer; rolled in an aumery chest.
"And now, fair Sirs, your voices: who will gird
His belt for travel in the perilous ways?
This thing must be fulfilled: in vain our land
Of noble name, high deed, and famous men,
Vain the proud homage of our thrall the sea,
If we be shorn of God; -ah! loathsome shame!
To hurl in battle for the pride of arms;
-
-
7541
To ride in native tourney, foreign war;
To count the stars; to ponder pictured runes,


## p. 7542 (#348) ###########################################

7542
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
And grasp great knowledge, as the demons do,—
If we be shorn of God; we must assay
The myth and meaning of this marvelous bowl;
It shall be sought and found. "
-
Thus said the King.
SIR PERCIVALE'S TALE TO AMBROSIUS
From Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King'
"THE
HE sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength
Within us, better offered up to Heaven. "
To whom the monk:-"The Holy Grail! —I trust
We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here too much
We molder, as to things without, I mean:
Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,
Told us of this in our refectory,
But spake with such a sadness and so low
We heard not half of what he said. What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes? "
"Nay, monk! what phantom? " answered Percivale.
"The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with his own.
This, from the blessed land of Aromat-
After the day of darkness, when the dead
Went wandering o'er Moriah -the good saint
Arimathean Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.
And there awhile it bode; and if a man
Could touch or see it, he was healed at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven and disappeared. "
To whom the monk: "From our old books I know
--
That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury,
And there the heathen Prince Arviragus
Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build;
And there he built with wattles from the marsh
A little lonely church in days of yore;
For so they say, these books of ours but seem


## p. 7543 (#349) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7543
Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.
But who first saw the holy thing to-day ? »
"A woman," answered Percivale, "a nun,
And one no further off in blood from me
Than sister: and if ever holy maid
With knees of adoration wore the stone,
A holy maid; tho' never maiden glowed,
But that was in her earlier maidenhood,
With such a fervent flame of human love,
Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot
Only to holy things; to prayer and praise
She gave herself, to fast and alms.
And yet,
Nun as she was, the scandal of the court,
Sin against Arthur and the Table Round,
And the strange sound of an adulterous race,
Across the iron grating of her cell
Beat, and she prayed and fasted all the more.
And so she prayed and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew thro' her, and I thought
She might have risen and floated when I saw her.
"For on a day she sent to speak with me.
And when she came to speak, behold her eyes
Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful,
Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness.
And 'O my brother Percivale,' she said,
'Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail:
For waked at dead of night, I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills
Blown, and I thought, "It not Arthur's use
To hunt by moonlight;" and the slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew
Coming upon me - oh never harp nor horn,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came; and then
Streamed thro' my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colors leaping on the wall;
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Past, and the beam decayed, and from the walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night.
So now the Holy Thing is here again


## p. 7544 (#350) ###########################################

7544
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be healed. '
"Then leaving the pale nun, I spake of this
To all men; and myself fasted and prayed
Always, and many among us many a week
Fasted and prayed even to the uttermost,
Expectant of the wonder that would be.
"Then on a summer night came to pass,
While the great banquet lay along the hall,
That Galahad would sit down in Merlin's chair.
"And all at once, as there we sat, we heard
A cracking and a riving of the roofs,
And rending! and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear than day;
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail
All over covered with a luminous cloud,
And none might see who bare it, and it past.
But every knight beheld his fellow's face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose,
And staring each at other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow.
"I sware a vow before them all, that I,
Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride
A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it,
Until I found and saw it, as the nun
My sister saw it; and Galahad sware the vow,
And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot's cousin, sware,
And Lancelot sware, and many among the knights,
And Gawain sware, and louder than the rest. ”
SIR LANCELOT'S TALE
From Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King'
"THOU
HOU too, my Lancelot,' asked the King, 'my friend,
Our mightiest, hath this Quest availed for thee? '
"Our mightiest! ' answered Lancelot, with a groan;
'O King! ' and when he paused, methought I spied
A dying fire of madness in his eyes—


## p. 7545 (#351) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
'O King, my friend, if friend of thine I be,
Happier are those that welter in their sin,
Swine in the mud, that cannot see for slime,
Slime of the ditch: but in me lived a sin
So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure,
Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung
Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower
And poisonous grew together, each as each,
Not to be plucked asunder; and when thy knights
Sware, I sware with them only in the hope
That could I touch or see the Holy Grail
They might be plucked asunder. Then I spake
To one most holy saint, who wept and said
That save they could be plucked asunder, all
My quest were but in vain; to whom I vowed
That I would work according as he willed.
And forth I went, and while I yearned and strove
To tear the twain asunder in my heart,
My madness came upon me as of old,
And whipt me into waste fields far away;
There was I beaten down by little men,
Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword
And shadow of my spear had been enow
To scare them from me once; and then I came
All in my folly to the naked shore,
Wide flats, where nothing but coarse grasses grew;
But such a blast, my King, began to blow,
So loud a blast along the shore and sea,
Ye could not hear the waters for the blast,
Tho' heapt in mounds and ridges all the sea
Drove like a cataract, and all the sand
Swept like a river, and the clouded heavens
Were shaken with the motion and the sound.
And blackening in the sea-foam swayed a boat,
Half-swallowed in it, anchored with a chain;
And in my madness to myself I said,
"I will embark and I will lose myself,
And in the great sea wash away my sin. "
I burst the chain, I sprang into the boat.
Seven days I drove along the dreary deep,
And with me drove the moon and all the stars;
And the wind fell, and on the seventh night
I heard the shingle grinding in the surge,
And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up,
7545


## p. 7546 (#352) ###########################################

7546
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek,
A castle like a rock upon a rock,
With chasm-like portals open to the sea,
And steps that met the breaker! there was none
Stood near it but a lion on each side
That kept the entry, and the moon was full.
Then from the boat I leapt, and up the stairs.
There drew my sword. With sudden-flaring manes
Those two great beasts rose upright like a man;
Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between;
And when I would have smitten them, heard a voice,
'Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt, the beasts
Will tear thee piecemeal. ' Then with violence
The sword was dashed from out my hand, and fell.
And up into the sounding hall I past:
But nothing in the sounding hall I saw,
No bench nor table, painting on the wall
Or shield of knight; only the rounded moon
Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea.
But always in the quiet house I heard,
Clear as a lark, high o'er me as a lark,
A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower
To the eastward; up I climbed a thousand steps
With pain; as in a dream I seemed to climb
For ever: at the last I reached a door;
A light was in the crannies, and I heard,
'Glory and joy and honor to our Lord
And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail. '
Then in my madness I essayed the door;
It gave; and thro' a stormy glare, a heat
As from a seven times heated furnace, I,
Blasted and burnt and blinded as I was,
With such a fierceness that I swooned away—
Oh yet methought I saw the Holy Grail,
All palled in crimson samite, and around
Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes.
And but for all my madness and my sin,
And then my swooning, I had sworn I saw
That which I saw: but what I saw was veiled
And covered; and this Quest was not for me. "
So speaking, and here ceasing, Lancelot left
The hall long silent.


## p. 7547 (#353) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7547
SIR GALAHAD ACHIEVES THE GRAIL-QUEST
From Tennyson's Idylls of the King'
HEN the hermit made an end,
"W"
In silver armor suddenly Galahad shone
Before us, and against the chapel door
Laid lance, and entered, and we knelt in prayer.
And there the hermit slaked my burning thirst,
And at the sacring of the mass I saw
The holy elements alone; but he-
'Saw ye no more? I, Galahad, saw the Grail,
The Holy Grail, descend upon the shrine,
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and went;
And hither am I come; and never yet
Hath what thy sister taught me first to see,
This Holy Thing, failed from my side, nor come
Covered, but moving with me night and day,
Fainter by day, but always in the night
Blood-red, and sliding down the blackened marsh
Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top
Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below
Blood-red. And in the strength of this I rode,
Shattering all evil customs everywhere,
And past thro' pagan realms, and made them mine,
And clashed with pagan hordes, and bore them down,
And broke thro' all, and in the strength of this
Come victor. But my time is hard at hand,
And hence I go; and one will crown me king
Far in the spiritual city; and come thou, too,
For thou shalt see the vision when I go. '
"While thus he spake, his eye, dwelling on mine,
Drew me, with power upon me, till I grew
One with him, to believe as he believed.
Then, when the day began to wane, we went.
"There rose a hill that none but man could climb,
Scarred with a hundred wintry water-courses
Storm at the top, and when we gained it, storm
Round us and death: for every moment glanced
His silver arms and gloomed; so quick and thick
The lightnings here and there to left and right
Struck, till the dry old trunks about us, dead,
Yea. rotten with a hundred years of death,


## p. 7548 (#354) ###########################################

7548
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Sprang into fire: and at the base we found
On either hand, as far as eye could see,
A great black swamp and of an evil smell,
Part black, part whitened with the bones of men,
Not to be crost, save that some ancient king
Had built a way, where, linked with many a bridge,
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea.
And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge,
And every bridge as quickly as he crost
Sprang into fire and vanished, tho' I yearned
To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens
Opened and blazed with thunder such as seemed
Shoutings of all the sons of God: and first
At once I saw him far on the great Sea,
In silver-shining armor starry-clear;
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud.
And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat,
If boat it were-I saw not whence it came.
And when the heavens opened and blazed again
Roaring, I saw him like a silver star-
And had he set the sail, or had the boat
Become a living creature clad with wings?
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung
Redder than any rose, a joy to me,
For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn.
Then in a moment when they blazed again
Opening, I saw the least of little stars
Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl –
No larger, tho' the goal of all the saints—
Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail,
Which never eyes on earth again shall see.
Then fell the floods of heaven drowning the deep.
And how my feet recrost the deathful ridge
No memory in me lives: but that I touched
The chapel doors at dawn I know; and thence,
Taking my war-horse from the holy man,
Glad that no phantom vext me more, returned
To whence I came, the gate of Arthur's wars. "


## p. 7549 (#355) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
THE KNIGHT LOHENGRIN'S NARRATIVE OF THE GRAIL
From Richard Wagner's Poem for his Opera of 'Lohengrin>
I
NA far land to which your steps attain not,
A castle lies which Monsalvat is named;
A shining Temple standeth in its circuit,
So costly built that earth naught like it knows:
Therein's a Cup, of wonder-doing virtue,
All guarded as 'twere Holiness itself—
Its care and service mortals' highest duty —
Thither to us by host angelic brought;
Each several year a dove from Heaven descendeth,
Once more new strength imparting to its charm.
The Grail 'tis called; and Faith most pure, most blessed,
Its presence on our Fellowship bestows.
Whoever to its service shall be summoned,
With superhuman power is armed straightway.
On him falls useless every spell of Evil,
Before him flees the dark of Death itself.
He whom this Grail shall send to lands full distant,
For Right's defense a warrior to strive,
Not even from him its power divine is wanting
If all unknown he as its champion bides;
So high and holy is its latent blessing
That it unveiled must shun the eye profane.
But of its Knight beware a doubt to cherish;-
Once known to you, he straightway must depart.
Hark ye then, how your question I shall answer:
I by the Holy Grail to you was summoned;
My father, Parsifal, his crown is wearing,–
His knight am I, and Lohengrin my name.
-
7549
[The following twenty lines of text completing Lohengrin's story were set
to music by the composer; but are omitted from the usual printed text-books
and scores, and are rarely met. ]
And now how came I hither, further listen:
Appeal lamenting on the air was borne;
In the Grail-Temple forthwith understood we
That far away, distressful was a maid.
While we the Grail its counsel were imploring
Whereto a champion should from us be sped,
Lo, on the stream a floating swan beheld we,
And to us waiting did he bring a skiff.


## p. 7550 (#356) ###########################################

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7550
My father, he who knew that swan's true nature,
Grail-counseled, to our service it received
(Since who shall serve the Grail a single twelvemonth,
From such must needs depart dark magic's curse);
And next, it forth should tranquilly convey me
Whither the call for help afar had come.
Since through the Grail to combat was I chosen,
Thus filled with courage did I say farewell.
Through wandering streams and surging waves of ocean
The faithful swan has brought me toward my goal.
Until among ye, on the shore, he drew me
Where in the sight of God ye saw me land.
Literal version in the metre of the original, translated by E. Irenæus
Stevenson for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature'


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H O MI Ꭼ Ꭱ .


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OME


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7551
HOMER
(NINTH CENTURY B. C. ? )
BY THOMAS D. SEYMOUR
HE Homeric Poems are the earliest literary product of the
world which has survived to our day, and they lie at the
fountain-head of all the later literature of Europe. No liter-
ary epic poem has been composed since Homer's day without reference
to the Iliad and the Odyssey as the standard. Apollonius of Rhodes
followed and imitated Homer; Virgil imitated Homer and Apollonius;
Dante took Virgil as his master; John Milton followed in the foot-
steps of Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Plato called Homer the father
of tragedy, as well as of the epic.
To the ancient Greek mind, the
Iliad and Odyssey of Homer formed a sort of Bible, to which refer-
ence was made as to an ultimate authority. Even in an age when
epic poetry was out of fashion, one of the most honored of Athenian
generals, Nicias, had his son Niceratus commit to memory all of the
two great Homeric poems, of which the shorter is a third longer
than Milton's 'Paradise Lost. ' About the same time (in the fifth cen-
tury B. C. ) audiences of twenty thousand people gathered to listen to
public recitals of these poems. A Homeric quotation was always in
order, to illustrate and clinch an argument, or to give poetic flavor to
a discussion.
When and where Homer lived, no one knows. Many stories about
him were invented and told, but all are without support.
"Seven cities claimed the mighty Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread. ”
A guild of singers on the island of Chios (Scio) asserted themselves
to be his descendants and rightful successors, but no evidence was
offered of his family or home. Scholars no longer ask where Homer
was born, but where Greek epic poetry had its rise. The muses were
Pierian muses, and thus associated with the southern part of Mace-
donia; they dwelt with the gods on Mount Olympus, and the abode
of Achilles, the chief hero of the Iliad, was close at hand in Thessaly.
These are pretty distinct indications that the early home of Greek
poetry was near Mount Olympus. Later this art was carried by the


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HOMER
7552
Greeks to their colonies on the western shore of Asia Minor, and
there was accepted and perfected.
Homer is represented in ancient works of art as blind, but the
greater Homeric poems offer no indication of his blindness. Quite
the contrary, he seems to have taken an active part in the doings of
men. His interest in the battles which he describes is lively. His
description of wounds inflicted shows such exact acquaintance with
battles and anatomy that some German critics have been disposed to
think he must have been a sort of army surgeon.
While the Homeric poems are the earliest works of Greek litera-
ture which have come down to us, they certainly were not the earliest
poems of the Greeks. Brief lyric songs of love, grief, feasting, or
war are ordinary precursors of epic,-i. e. , of narrative lays. And
short epics must have been well known to the people before any
poet thought of composing a long epic. The growth of a poem like
the Iliad is gradual. The art of writing was known in Greece at an
early age, quite certainly by 1000 B. C. , but not until much later was
it applied to literary compositions; it was used mainly for business.
memoranda and public records until the fifth century B. C. , and
even then the Greeks could hardly be called a reading people. But
they were patient listeners. When the Greek drama was at its best,
great audiences of fifteen to twenty thousand Athenians would sit in
the open air, in March, from early in the morning until late in the
afternoon, to hear and see three or four tragedies in succession. A
century or centuries before this, audiences listened in throngs to con-
tinuous epic recitations. But in general each separate lay seems to
have contained not more than five or six hundred lines. Probably
the recitation of such a lay was followed by an intermission, and the
connection between successive lays was not made with rigid precis-
ion. The outlines of the story, and often the details, were familiar
to the hearers. When a long poem was formed by the union of
several lays or by a process of gradual development, a singer would
select on each occasion what seemed best suited to his audience.
Some parts of the Homeric poems are well adapted to be sung at
feasts, others on the return from a long journey, others at a funeral,
many others after or before a battle.
These poems were sung, we say. Perhaps intoned or chanted would
be a more exact expression. The instrumental accompaniment was
very slight, that of a cithara of four strings (and thus only four
notes), with a sounding-board formed by a tortoise shell. We can-
not assume much melody in the recitation, and probably the cithara
served chiefly to give the keynote, and to sound a few simple chords
as a prelude or interludes. The cithara was used not only by the
professional bards at the courts of kings, but also by the warriors:


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HOMER
7553
at least Achilles, while "sulking in his tent," cheered his heart by
singing of the glorious deeds of men, holding a cithara which he had
taken from the spoils of a sacked city.
Our poet was a national poet. He gives no special honor to any
part of Greece, though the little country was broken up into many
principalities. His songs might have been sung in any hamlet with-
out arousing either envy or ill-will. He is impartial, too, between
Greeks and Trojans, and excites our sympathy for the Trojan Hector
and Andromache as well as for the Achæan Achilles and Patroclus.
The Homeric poet was fortunate not only in the body of myths
which descended to him, and which formed the groundwork for his
poems, but in his further inheritance from former generations,— his
language and his verse. The language was the most graceful and
flexible which the world has ever known. The verse itself (the so-
called dactylic hexameter) would indicate that epic poetry had been
cultivated in Greece long before Homer's day. Its laws are fully
fixed, its favorite and its forbidden pauses; the places where a light
and those where a heavy movement is preferred. No verse known
to man is so well suited to a long Greek narrative poem. No other
verse has less monotony or more dignity and stateliness. It was
nobly "described and exemplified" by Coleridge's lines:-
―
"Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows;
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean. »
The Roman poet Virgil adopted this verse, but had a much more
ponderous language, which was not well fitted for the Greek metres.
The verse has been made familiar to us all by Clough's 'Bothie,' and
especially by Longfellow's 'Evangeline' and 'The Courtship of Miles
Standish; but the line is rather too long for most modern languages,
and has not been used for any long English poem or any great Eng-
lish translation of Homer. Matthew Arnold tried it for the last verses
of the eighth book of the Iliad, as follows:
"So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of the Xanthus,
Between that and the ships, the Trojans' numerous fires.
In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires; by each one
There sat fifty men in the ruddy light of the fire;
By their chariots stood their steeds and champed the white barley,
While their masters sat by the fire and waited for morning. »
With this may be compared Tennyson's translation of the same lines
(with a few more) in English heroic verse: —
XIII-473
"As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak,
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens


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7554
HOMER
-➖➖
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And champing golden grain the horses stood
Hard by their chariots waiting for the dawn. ”
The essential characteristics of Homer's poetry are enumerated
thus by Matthew Arnold: "Homer is rapid in his movement, Homer
is plain in his words and style, Homer is simple in his ideas, Homer
is noble in his manner. " Mr. Arnold goes on to say that «< Cowper
renders him ill because he is slow in his movement and elaborate in
his style; Pope renders him ill because he is artificial both in his
style and in his words; Chapman renders him ill because he is fan-
tastic in his ideas. " Each age has desired its own translation of the
Homeric poems. Chapman's, Pope's, and Cowper's translations are
now read rather as the works of those English poets than as faith-
ful renderings of the Homeric poems. But we owe to Chapman's
translation Keats's splendid sonnet, "On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer":
"Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly States and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold;
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. »
The dramatic nature of the Homeric poems deserves remark.
About half of the verses are in speeches, although epic poetry is
narrative poetry. In long passages the verses between the speeches
have almost the quality of "stage directions," and we see with what
justice Plato and Aristotle called Homer the father of the drama.
The poet reserves for his own telling only what is necessary. The
one passage in the poems (Odyssey, vii. 112-131) which resembles
a modern description, is on this very ground strongly suspected of
not being truly Homeric. "When Homer" (says Lessing) "wishes


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HOMER
7555
to tell us how Agamemnon was dressed, he makes the king put on
every article of raiment in our presence: the soft tunic, the great
mantle, the beautiful sandals, and the sword. When he is thus fully
equipped he grasps his sceptre. We see the clothes while the poet
is describing the act of dressing. An inferior writer would have
described the clothes down to the minutest fringe, and of the action
we should have seen nothing. "
Of few epochs in any country have we clearer and more animated
pictures than Homer has painted of the early Greeks. Of no other
great nation in its childhood have we such a view. Tacitus indeed
gave a masterly sketch of the Germans, about one hundred years
after Christ: but he was an outsider at best, and seems to have drawn
largely from the accounts of others; scholars are not agreed that he
himself ever sojourned in Germany. Of the early Jews, the children
of Israel, the story is far less full than of the early Greeks. Our
poet does not claim to have lived at the time of the Trojan War, but
rather is conscious that he is in a degenerate age. Hector, Ajax, and
Æneas each do "what two men could not do, such as now live upon
the earth. " The poet never speaks as if he himself were present at
the conflicts, nor does he claim to have heard the story from others.
He appeals to the Muse for inspiration. She was present, and knows
all things; he is but her mouthpiece. Whether the customs described
in the poems were those of Homer's day, or those of an earlier age
of which the poet knew only by tradition, is a question which schol-
ars still discuss. In general his manner is distinctly that of familiar-
ity with every detail which he mentions; and his style is too naïve,
too far removed from that of studied care, for us to believe that he
was anxious to secure historical accuracy of background in painting
the picture of an earlier age. In the matters of dress, food, and
every-day life in general, he seems as free as the early illustrators
of the Bible story, who introduced mediæval Dutch, German, or Ital-
ian dress and scenery into their pictures of early events in Palestine.
But changes of custom were not frequent nor rapid in Greece a
thousand years before Christ, and the manner of life which Homer
knew was doubtless not very different from that of his heroes. In a
few matters only does he seem conscious of a change: he does not
represent his warriors as riding on horseback (except as a boy rides
bareback from pasture), or using boiled meat, or employing a trumpet
in war, yet the poet himself refers to these things as well known.
Life in the Homeric age was primitive and rude in many respects,
but still had much wealth and splendor. It is not unlike that of
the Children of Israel in the same period. The same customs seem
to have prevailed not only throughout all Greece, but even in Troy.
Nowhere does the poet indicate a difference of language or manner


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7556
HOMER
of life between the Achæans and the Trojans;-unless it is found
in the facts that King Priam of Troy is the only polygamist of the
poems, and that the Trojans are noisier (and hence, says an old com-
mentator, less civilized) as they go into battle. The tribes are ruled
by kings, or as we should style them, petty chiefs. The freedom
with which the titles king and prince are bestowed is illustrated by
the large number of princes on Ithaca in the Homeric age; an island
which at the last census (according to Baedeker) had about 12,500
inhabitants, and probably had no more in Homer's time. The lives
of princes were much like those of peasants. They built their own
ships and their own houses, and tended their herds and flocks. So
princesses went to the town spring for water, and washed the fam-
ily raiment. The unwritten constitutions of the kingdoms were very
simple: custom ruled, not law. For the most part each man was
obliged to vindicate his own rights; even murder was a personal
offense against the friends of the slain man, and these (not the
government) were bound to avenge his death. Murder and theft in
themselves were no mortal sins against the gods. Fidelity to oaths,
honor to parents, and hospitality to strangers and suppliants, were
cardinal virtues. No moral quality inhered in the terms usually trans-
lated by good, bad, blameless, excellent. The existence of the soul after
death was supposed to be as shadowy as a dream. Ghosts and dreams
behaved in exactly the same way, and the land of dreams immedi-
ately adjoined that of the dead. The dead met no judgment on "the
deeds done here in the body," but all alike followed the shadowy
likeness of their former occupations: the shade of the mighty hunter
Orion chased in Hades the shades of the wild beasts which he had
killed while on earth. Coined money was unknown; all commerce
was by way of barter. The standard of value was cattle, one woman
slave was estimated to be worth four cattle, another twenty; a
suit of bronze armor was worth nine cattle; a tripod to stand over
the fire was valued at twelve cattle. Much of the land was still
held in common for the use of the people's flocks and herds. Horses
were never put to menial toil: the plowing was done with oxen and
mules. The milk of cows was not used for food, but the milk and
milk products of goats and sheep were of great importance. The
olive berry and its oil were not yet used for the relish of food, but
olive oil (sometimes scented with roses) was used as an unguent.
The warriors were hearty eaters, but their feasts were simple; they
ate little but bread and roast meat, and they were moderate drink-
ers, enjoying wine, but always diluting it with water. The Homeric
Greeks were not bold mariners. They shrunk from the dangers of
the sea, and preferred to go a long way around rather than to trust
themselves in their craft far from a safe harbor. Their geographical


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HOMER
7557
world was limited. Even the island which the later Greeks identified
with Corfu was in fairy-land.
Both the great Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, have to
do with the Trojan War,-the siege of Troy by the Greeks, ending
with the sack of the city, and the return to their homes of the be-
siegers with various fortunes. Troy stood on a hill of no imposing
dimensions in the northwest corner of Asia Minor, about five miles
from the Hellespont. Until within the last score of years, scholars
have been inclined to look upon this city as no more real than that
of the Liliputians, or Utopia itself, and authorities were divided as to
the site which the poet had in mind. Dr. Schliemann, however, a
German by birth but a citizen of the United States by "naturaliza-
tion," who had gained wealth in Russia and chosen Greece to be
his home,—a true cosmopolite, -in ardent admiration for Homer and
with implicit belief in the literal accuracy of the Homeric story began
in a small way excavations on the site of Hissarlik, the traditional
successor of the ancient city. There he found in several layers, one
upon another, the ruins of more cities than he knew what to do
with! But he assigned to the Homeric city the remains which indi-
cated the greatest power and wealth. In subsequent years he dug
on Homeric sites in Greece,- at Mycena and Tiryns in Argolis, — and
there too laid bare abundant evidence of wealth and culture, though
manifestly a different culture from that which he had discovered
on the banks of the Hellespont. Continued excavations at Hissarlik,
however, under the direction of Dr. Dörpfeld, the distinguished head
of the German Archæological Institute in Athens, to whom we owe a
large portion of the archæological discoveries in Greece during recent
years, brought to light what Schliemann's eyes had longed to see,—
the remains of a city of like culture, and apparently of the same
age, as the ruins of Mycena and Tiryns. Schliemann's Homeric Troy
may have flourished three thousand years before Christ. The later
Trojan city (found by Dörpfeld) and Mycenæ seem to have been in
their glory at just about the time set by tradition for the sack of
Troy, 1184 B. C. This date is not historical, but it will serve as well
as another. The assignment of these ruins to the close of the second
millennium before Christ gives plausibility to the belief that Homeric
poetry flourished as early as the ninth century B. C. The "father of
history," Herodotus, thought that Homer lived four hundred years
before him, or 850 B. C. By that time the myths are likely to have
been fully developed. Clearly the existence of the massive ruined
walls would stimulate the imagination of story-tellers and poets.
According to the story which our poet follows, Paris, one of the
sons of Priam, King of Troy, had been hospitably received as a guest
at the palace of Menelaus, son of Atreus, King of Sparta, and had


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7558
HOMER
violated the most sacred bond of hospitality by carrying away to his
own home Menelaus's wife Helen, the most beautiful woman of the
world. The brother of Menelaus, Agamemnon, was King of Mycenæ,
and the most powerful prince of Greece. Allies were invited from
all parts of the country. Odysseus (Ulysses) from Ithaca, one of the
Ionian islands not far from Corfu, and Nestor the oldest and wisest
in counsel of the Greeks, who had known three generations of men,
enlisted the services of the young warriors of Greece: Achilles from
Thessaly, Diomedes from Argos, Ajax from Salamis, and others. A
fleet of twelve hundred ships gathered at Aulis, on the strait north
of Athens.
The expedition against Troy thus became a great national Hellenic
undertaking. This was regarded by Herodotus as the historical be-
ginning of the conflicts between Greece and Asia, of which the cul-
mination appeared in the great expedition of Xerxes against Greece
(this too with twelve hundred, but much larger, ships) early in the
fifth century before Christ, and that of Alexander the Great from
Greece into Asia a century and a half later. The strife is not ended
indeed even yet, while Turkey holds Greeks in subjection, and Greece
is burning with desire for the possession not only of Crete but of
Constantinople.
The ships sent against Troy were not ships of war: they were for
transport only, and the warriors were their own sailors. The largest
of these ships carried one hundred and twenty men, and the total
number of fighting Greeks before Troy was reckoned at about one
hundred thousand. But in this we may see a certain amount of
poetic exaggeration. The ships might fairly be called boats, since
they had no deck except a little at bow and at stern, and their oars
were more important than their sails, though they were always glad
to avail themselves of a favoring breeze. The setting out of a small
fleet of such boats has been compared, not inaptly, with an expedi
tion of war canoes from one island against another in the South
Seas: in each case the fighting men managed the boat; and this was
not intended like our ships to be a floating dwelling, but merely a
sort of ferry-boat. Each separate voyage would be only the distance
which they could sail or row in a single day. The islands of the
Ægean formed convenient "stepping-stones" and resting-places on
their way.
Nowhere were they out of sight of land in fair weather,
such as Greece enjoys during the summer. On reaching their des
tination, the boats were drawn up on shore, and the barracks for the
camp were built by their side; so the "ships of the Achæans" became
a synonym for the "camp of the Greeks. "
Menelaus, the injured husband of Helen, accompanied by Odys-
seus, the shifty orator "of many devices," went to Troy with a formal


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HOMER
7559
demand for the return of Helen. But though some of the older Tro-
jans favored peace, the party of Paris prevailed, and the ambassadors
and their cause were treated with despite.
The war continues for ten years, and ends with the sack of the
city. The siege was not close. The ancient Greeks (like the North-
American Indians before these learned the lesson from the whites) in
general shrank from warfare by night. At evening the Greek forces
which had been fighting by the gates of Troy retired to their own
camp. Consequently the Trojans, though they were not able to culti-
vate their fields, were able to supply their city with all necessaries
and maintain unbroken relations with their friends abroad, though
the city which had been called "rich in gold and rich in bronze" was
obliged to part gradually with all its treasures in order to buy food
and to reward its allies. The Greeks, on the other hand, who had
come without stores of provisions, or other material of war except
their personal arms, naturally turned to foraging expeditions, first in
the immediate neighborhood of Troy, and then at a greater distance.
In these forays they destroyed towns and killed many of the inhab-
itants. The male captives were sent to distant islands to be sold
as slaves; the women were ransomed or kept as slaves in the camp.
Obviously, when the Greeks went forth to battle they could not with
safety have left in their camp a large body of male slaves whom they
had reduced to servitude. Their chief danger would have been in
their rear.
In the tenth year of the war, one of these female captives — the
beautiful daughter of a priest of Apollo, the fair-cheeked Chryseis―
was allotted as prize of honor to Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief
of the expedition. The Iliad opens with the visit of her father to
the Greek camp.
The action of the Iliad occupies only seven weeks:
from the visit of the old priest to the Greek camp, to the burial of
Hector. And these weeks are neither at the beginning nor at the
close of the war; yet no reader is left in ignorance of facts necessary
for an understanding of the story. Few readers feel that the poem
is in any way incomplete, though Goethe thought the sack of Troy
ought to have been included. The so-called Cyclic poets- Arctinus,
Stasinus, Lesches, and others- continued the tale, amplifying the
story and supplying details. But their poems, though the action
extended over twice as many years as that of the Iliad and Odyssey
covered weeks, yet were all together not so long as the Odyssey.
The unity of these "Cyclic" poems, according to Aristotle, was far
from being so complete as that of the Homeric poems. They had
much influence on later literature and art, suggesting themes and
scenes to painters and poets, and we regret their loss; but we cannot
suppose them to have had the grace, force, and life which attract us


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7560
HOMER
in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The preservation of these rather than
those was not wholly a matter of chance. Here too we have a
"survival of the fittest. "
According to the Cyclic poets, the queen of the Amazons, Pen-
thesilea, is slain by Achilles, who after her death bemoans her fate.
Further reinforcement for the Trojan army comes from the Ethi-
opians under the command of Memnon, the beautiful son of the
Dawn. Achilles is slain by Paris and Apollo. Paris himself falls.
Achilles's young son Neoptolemus is brought to the war; and Philo-
ctetes, who had been left behind on the island Lemnos on the voyage
to Troy (being bitten by a water-snake), is fetched and brings with
him the bow of Heracles. But even after a ten-years' siege, Troy is
not taken by storm, nor does it surrender. The goddess Athena sug-
gested to Odysseus the successful device. Making a great hollow
wooden horse, a small company of chieftains took their places within
this hollow place of ambush, while the rest of the Greeks set fire to
their camp and sailed away. The wooden horse is drawn by the
Trojans to their citadel, as an offering to the gods. At night, when
the city is still, and the people are sleeping free from anxiety for
the first time in ten years, the Greek ships return; their chieftains
leap out of the wooden horse, open the city gates to admit their
comrades, and set fire to the town.
As the Greeks set out to return to their homes, a storm arises.
Menelaus and his newly recovered Helen are driven to Egypt; a large
part of his fleet is wrecked, and they wander for eight years before
they see Greece again. Agamemnon escapes the dangers of the
storm, but on his return is slain by his cousin Ægisthus, the para-
mour of his faithless wife Clytemnestra.
But Odysseus suffers the hardest lot; the entire Odyssey recounts
his long and eventful homeward journeying, and the recovery of his
throne and wife.