{Atalanta in Calydon}[9th August 1990]

[Redbook7:203-204][19900809:1007]{Atalanta in Calydon}[9th August 1990]

.1007

How could I have reached the age of nearly 40 and apparently never have come across this* before? – To everyone else I suppose it must be old hat by now – ‘Good grief, not that again!’ [–] but to me it is full of that resonance of wonder which attaches to my first discovery of the [...]land, and [+K],** of whom it might well speak:

‘When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

And the brown bright nightingale amorous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

‘Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,

Maiden most perfect, lady of light,

With a noise of winds and many rivers,

With a clamor of waters, and with might;

Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,

Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;

For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,

Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.’

{‘Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,

Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?

O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,

Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!’}

[‘For the stars and the winds are unto her

As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;

For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,

And the southwest wind and the west wind sing....’]

***

*(PTO) [– See poem above, this journal entry]

**(& of [J.R.R.] Tolkien’s world)

[See next entry, fn=*]

***– Swinburne, ‘Atalanta in Calydon’, First Chorus (opening verses).

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