Page:The Bibelot (Volume 15).djvu/68

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

REVIEW

many of the descriptions of the vision, for instance in the vestments tinted "like the heart of an opal" and "like a flame seen through water" of the final scene.

As its name implies, this prose poem has for its subject Love. The mystery of Love is here displayed as in a pageant to the dreaming spirit of the poet by his soul conceived as an external and superior power. It is not therefore without good reason that the single illustration with which the book is adorned should represent the Soul and the Novice: in the same way, if a medieval artist had designed one woodcut for the Divine Comedy, he would probably have drawn Dante with Virgil or with Beatrice as his initiator in the mysteries of the spiritual world.

The Love of Mr. Solomon's Vision is quite distinct and unconventional. He is unlike the "bitter sweet impracticable wild beast" who bent Sappho's soul as "storms break oaks upon the mountains." He is unlike the blacksmith of Anacreon's Mythus, who forged the soul upon an anvil and then plunged it in a wintry stream. Nor again has he anything in common with the beauti-

58