The Poet is shut out of Paradise.
CHAPTER XII: PARIS AND HELEN
The first name in romance, the most ancient and the most enduring, is
that of Argive Helen. During three thousand years fair women have been
born, have lived, and been loved, "that there might be a song in the ears
of men of later time," but, compared to the renown of Helen, their glory
is dim. Cleopatra, who held the world's fate in her hands, and lay in
the arms of Caesar; Mary Stuart (_Maria Verticordia_), for whose sake, as
a northern novelist tells, peasants have lain awake, sorrowing that she
is dead; Agnes Sorel, Fair Rosamond, la belle Stuart, "the Pompadour and
the Parabere," can still enchant us from the page of history and
chronicle. "Zeus gave them beauty, which naturally rules even strength
itself," to quote the Greek orator on the mistress of them all, on her
who, having never lived, can never die, the Daughter of the Swan.
While Helen enjoys this immortality, and is the ideal of beauty upon
earth, it is curious to reflect on the _modernite_ of her story, the
oldest of the love stories of the world. In Homer we first meet her, the
fairest of women in the song of the greatest of poets. It might almost
seem as if Homer meant to justify, by his dealing with Helen, some of the
most recent theories of literary art. In the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" the
tale of Helen is without a beginning and without an end, like a frieze on
a Greek temple.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230