A Christmas Garland by Sir Max Beerbohm (e book reader for pc txt) 📖
- Author: Sir Max Beerbohm
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'Tis time we press on to revisit
That dear little planet,
To-day of all days to be seen at
Its brightest and best.
Now holly and mistletoe girdle
Its halls and its homesteads,
And every biped is beaming
With peace and good will.
SEMICHORUS II.With good will and why not with free will?
If clearly the former
May nest in those bosoms, then why not
The latter as well?
Let's lay down no laws to trip up on,
Our way is in darkness,
And not but by groping unhampered
We win to the light.
The Spirit and Chorus of the Years traject themselves, closely followed by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits and Choruses Sinister and Ironic, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel.
There is the sound of a rushing wind. The Solar System is seen for a few instants growing larger and larger—a whorl of dark, vastening orbs careering round the sun. All but one of these is lost to sight. The convex seas and continents of our planet spring into prominence.
The Spirit of Mr. Hardy is visible as a grey transparency swiftly interpenetrating the brain of the Spirit of the Years, and urging him in a particular direction, to a particular point.
The Aerial Visitants now hover in mid-air on the outskirts of Casterbridge, Wessex, immediately above the County Gaol.
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.First let us watch the revelries within
This well-kept castle whose great walls connote
A home of the pre-eminently blest.
The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass. Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of the cells. Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at attention, his face to the wall.
At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve, and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they line up against the walls.
Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.Enough!
SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC.'Tis more than even we can bear.
SPIRIT OF THE PITIES.Would we had never come!
SPIRIT OF THE YEARS.Brother, 'tis well
To have faced a truth however hideous,
However humbling. Gladly I discipline
My pride by taking back those pettish doubts
Cast on the soundness of the central thought
In Mr. Hardy's drama. He was right.
Automata these animalculae
Are—puppets, pitiable jackaclocks.
Be't as it may elsewhere, upon this planet
There's no free will, only obedience
To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry
That justifies the horridest pessimism.
Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat
A quick but not disorderly retreat.
He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his Chorus, and by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel.
Footnote 7: (return)This has been composed from a scenario thrust on me by some one else. My philosophy of life saves me from sense of responsibility for any of my writings; but I venture to hold myself specially irresponsible for this one.—TH*M*S H*RDY.
SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS By FR*NK H*RR*SThat Shakespeare hated Christmas—hated it with a venom utterly alien to the gentle heart in him—I take to be a proposition that establishes itself automatically. If there is one thing lucid-obvious in the Plays and Sonnets, it is Shakespeare's unconquerable loathing of Christmas. The Professors deny it, however, or deny that it is proven. With these gentlemen I will deal faithfully. I will meet them on their own parched ground, making them fertilise it by shedding there the last drop of the water that flows through their veins.
If you find, in the works of a poet whose instinct is to write about everything under the sun, one obvious theme untouched, or touched hardly at all, then it is at least presumable that there was some good reason for that abstinence. Such a poet was Shakespeare. It was one of the divine frailties of his genius that he must be ever flying off at a tangent from his main theme to unpack his heart in words about some frivolous-small irrelevance that had come into his head. If it could be shown that he never mentioned Christmas, we should have proof presumptive that he consciously avoided doing so. But if the fact is that he did mention it now and again, but in
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