Songs before Sunrise (Swinburne)/Notes
NOTES.
P. 6.
That called on Cotys by her name.
Σεμνὰ Κὀτυς ἰν τοῖς Ήδωνοῗς
Æsch. Fr. 54 (Ήδωνοὶ).
P. 111.
Was it Love brake forth flower-fashion, a bird with gold on his wings?
Ar. Av. 696.
P. 192.
That saw Saint Catherine bodily.
Her pilgrimage to Avignon to recall the Pope into Italy as its redeemer from the distractions of the time is of course the central act of St. Catherine's life, the great abiding sign of the greatness of spirit and genius of heroism which distinguished this daughter of the people, and should yet keep her name fresh above the holy horde of saints, in other records than the calendar; but there is no less significance in the story which tells how she succeeded in humanizing a criminal under sentence of death, and given over by the priests as a soul doomed and desperate; how the man thus raised and melted out of his fierce and brutal despair besought her to sustain him to the last by her presence; how, having accompanied him with comfort and support to the very scaffold, and seen his head fall, she took it up, and turning to the spectators who stood doubtful whether the poor wretch could be "saved," kissed it in sign of her faith that his sins were forgiven him. The high and fixed passion of her heroic temperament gives her a right to remembrance and honour of which the miracle-mongers have done their best to deprive her. Cleared of all the refuse rubbish of thaumaturgy, her life would deserve a chronicler who should do justice at once to the ardour of her religious imagination and to a thing far rarer and more precious—the strength and breadth of patriotic thought and devotion which sent this girl across the Alps to seek the living symbol of Italian hope and unity, and bring it back by force of simple appeal in the name of God and of the country. By the light of those solid and actual qualities which ensure to her no ignoble place on the noble roll of Italian women who have deserved well of Italy, the record of her visions and ecstasies may be read without contemptuous intolerance of hysterical disease. The rapturous visionary and passionate ascetic was in plain matters of this earth as pure and practical a heroine as Joan of Arc.
P. 196.
There on the dim side-chapel wall.
In the church of San Domenico.
P. 198.
But blood nor tears ye love not, you.
In the Sienese Academy the two things notable to me were the detached wall-painting by Sodoma of the tortures of Christ bound to the pillar, and the divine though mutilated group of the Graces in the centre of the main hall. The glory and beauty of ancient sculpture refresh and satisfy beyond expression a sense wholly wearied and well-nigh nauseated with contemplation of endless sanctities and agonies attempted by medieval art, while yet as handless as accident or barbarism has left the sculptured goddesses.
P. 201.
Saw all Italian things save one.
O patria mia, vedo le muri e gli archi,
E le colonne e i simulacri e l'erme
Torri degli avi nostri;
Ma la gloria non vedo,
Non vedo il lauro e il ferro ond' eran carchi
I nostri padri antichi.
Leopardi.
P. 214.
Mother, that by that Pegasean spring.
(Call. Lav. Pall. 105-112.)
P. 275.
With black blood dripping from her eyes.
THE END.