Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

NOTES

THE TOURNAMENT (PAGE 1)

JOUST FIRST

A joust or just was a combat with spears or lances between two armed knights, and was usually a feature of a tournament. A tournament might extend over several days and include armed contests of various kinds.

LINE 1.—lists. The enclosed space in which tournaments were held. For a good description of such lists and of the encounters between armed knights see Scott's Ivanhoe, Chapters VII and VIII.

9.-palfrey. Strictly speaking, a horse ridden by a lady or by a non-combatant, as opposed to a war-horse. caracoled. Pranced in zigzag fashion.

10.-tra-li-ra'd. Sounded his trumpet.

13.-favors. A favor was a scarf, glove, or some other small article given to a knight by his lady-love to be worn in a contest at arms.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

9.-or ere. Literally, before ever; a poetical phrase. 15.-hauberk. Coat of mail.

17.-falchion. Sword. baldric. Belt worn over the shoulder. 20. for grace. To win favor.

24.-sans. Without. Cf. Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act II, sc. vii, 1. 166: "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

30.-lance in rest. The lance was placed in an iron rest attached to the right side of the breastplate. It extended back under the rider's arm and was grasped and aimed by the right hand.

43.-doffed. To doff means to do off or take off. 44.-dole. Charity offering.

157

LIFE AND SONG (PAGE 5)

19-20.-His song, etc. These lines were selected by Lanier's wife to be placed on his tombstone. They are a strikingly apt characterization of his life.

SONG FOR "THE JACQUERIE"-II (PAGE 7)

This fragment is striking partly because of the haunting swing of the verse and partly owing to the suggestion it gives of a larger and romantic story. It piques the curiosity.

13.-Wit. Sense or intelligence, as in the expression halfwitted.

THAR'S MORE IN THE MAN THAN THAR IS IN THE LAND (PAGE 8)

5.-pones. Flat cakes or loaves of corn meal.

11.—boughten. This form, now a provincialism heard in various parts of the United States, was in Shakespeare's time in the best of usage.

THE POWER OF PRAYER (PAGE 10)

Mr. Clifford A. Lanier was a younger brother of Sidney, and though not a writer by profession he was the author of a number of prose sketches and poems. The present poem was suggested to him by a brief newspaper notice. He wrote the poem and sent it to his brother Sidney, who revised it and published it under their joint authorship. A sketch by Mark Twain called Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer, which appeared a year or two before The Power of Prayer, has a very similar plot. The Laniers did not know of the existence of this sketch, however, until Doctor Holland, then editor of Scribner's Monthly, in which the poem appeared, called Clifford Lanier's attention to the fact.

THE SYMPHONY (PAGE 15)

In a letter to his friend Gibson Peacock, dated March 24, 1875, Lanier thus speaks of The Symphony:

'About four days ago, a certain poem which I had vaguely ruminated for a week before took hold of me like a real James River ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since. I call it The Symphony: I person

ify each instrument in the orchestra, and make them discuss various deep social questions of the times, in the progress of the music. It is now nearly finished; and I shall be rejoiced thereat, for it verily racks all the bones of my spirit."

This poem was the means of bringing about an acquaintance between Lanier and Bayard Taylor. Taylor was at that time one of the leading literary men of America while Lanier was comparatively unknown. Mr. Peacock, the warm friend and admirer of Lanier, had sent Taylor the newly published Symphony. The friendly criticism of the poem by Taylor brought a letter to him from Lanier which began a friendship that lasted until Taylor's death.

The Symphony first appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in June, 1875. It is a protest against commercialism and an appeal for a return to a wider charity, purer ideals, and greater love. In championing the cause of the poor Lanier shows a singularly modern attitude. If he had lived to the present, we may be sure that he would have been intensely interested in the great social and economic questions now so fervently discussed, for he believed heart and soul in the universal brotherhood of man.

The Trade of the poem might well be the capital of the present day, and its reply to the appeal of the poor has a modern ring.

"Go!

There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know.

Move out, if you think you're underpaid.

The poor are prolific; we're not afraid;
Trade is trade."

As also the lines:

"Does business mean, Die, you-live, I?
Then 'Trade is trade' but sings a lie:

'Tis only war grown miserly.

If business is battle, name it so:
War-crimes less will shame it so,
And widows less will blame it so."

102.-polyphone. A complex of many sounds.

145.-minevers. Minever was a fur often mentioned in early English writers; it is not certain from what animal it

came.

161.-lotos-sleeps. The lotos if eaten was supposed to produce forgetfulness of the past. Read Tennyson's The LotosEaters.

166.-leal. Loyal.

171-177.-Much time is run, etc. These lines allude to the days of pagan mythology when instead of loving Nature herself directly men gave their praise and worship to inferior divinities.

178-182.-Later, a sweet Voice, etc. The teaching of Christ with its message of human brotherhood.

180.—confines of ethnic dread. Boundaries imposed by the dread of or prejudice against people of other races than one's

own.

181.-covenant head. Bound by the covenant or compact of the Jewish church.

240.-mercery. Trading. A mercer was originally a dealer in cloths.

241-248.-I would my lover, etc. An ideal of manly love worthy of Galahad himself.

254.-lorn. Lost, from the Anglo-Saxon past participle loren. 270.-caitiff. Originally meant captive; hence miserable, cowardly.

294-302.-Shall woman scorch, etc. Lanier was a firm believer in a single standard of virtue for men and women. 311.-Pembroke. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), who served in the English army in the Netherlands, was knighted by James I; author of The Life of Lord Herbert. A descendant of the Earl of Pembroke.

326.-hautboy.. An oboe; a slender wood-wind instrument with a mouthpiece containing a reed.

332.-Man. Jesus Christ. Lanier may have had in mind the passage in Mark x, 15: "Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein."

336.-bassoon. A wood-wind instrument with a heavier, deeper tone than the oboe.

340.-runes. Poetry of the early Teutonic peoples; more strictly, the alphabetic characters in which the poetry was written.

347.-sea-fugue. A fugue is a kind of musical composition in which different independent themes or melodies are developed through a succession of measures and at last are blended into a unified whole.

355.-weltering. Confused. palimpsest. A parchment that has been used several times, the earlier writings having been erased or merely written over. 364.-glozing. Deceits.

THE DISCOVERY (PAGE 27)

The following eight sonnets with the six introductory lines are merely a part of the complete poem. The poem first appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, June, 1876.

41-42.-Judas needle, etc. An allusion to the variation in the compass which occurred during the voyage of Columbus and which so alarmed the crew.

50.—o'er-defalking. Over-yielding, too easy.

55.-Palos. The port in Spain from which, in 1492, Columbus set sail on his famous voyage of discovery.

63.-Gomera. One of the Canary Islands west of Africa. 64.-caravels. A kind of vessel with broad, blunt bows, high, narrow stern, and three or four masts. Two of the vessels of Columbus were caravels.

77.-Slimy-weeded sea.

The Sargasso Sea, a section of the Atlantic west of Africa filled with vast masses of seaweed. 79.-sunk Atlantis. An allusion to the ancient belief that somewhere off the straits of Gibraltar there was an island that had been sunk deep in the sea by some great natural cataclysm.

93.-Salve Regina. The opening words of a hymn to the Virgin, much used in the Roman Catholic Church.

110.-Pedro Gutierrez. "A gentleman of the King's bedchamber" who accompanied Columbus on the Santa Maria. 113.-Sanchez of Segovia. A gentleman sent by the King and Queen of Spain to accompany the expedition as an inspector.

EVENING SONG (PAGE 32)

This poem appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, January, 1877.

6-7.-As Egypt's pearl, etc. An allusion to the story that at a banquet given to Antony, Cleopatra once had a pearl dissolved in some strong liquid which she afterwards drank to the great Roman's health.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »