In terra viventium,
and in this last glorious thing comes in the note of marching and of soldiers as well as the note of separation and of longing. But after all the mention of religion is in itself a proof of song, for what spell could there ever be without incantation, or what ritual could lack its chaunt?
If any man wonders why these two, Religion and Song, are connected, or thinks it impious that they should so be, let him do this: if he is an old man let him cover his face with his hand and remember at evening what occasions stand out of the long past, full of a complete life, and of an acute observation and intelligence of all that was around: how many were occasions for song! There are pictures a man will remember all his life only because he watched them for a pastime, because he heard a woman singing as he watched them, and there are landscapes which remain in the mind long after other things have faded, but so remain because one went at morning with other men along the road singing a walking song. And if it is a young man who wishes to make trial of this truth, he also has his test. For he will note as the years continue how, while all other pleasures lose their value and gradation, Song remains, until at last the notes of singing become like a sort of sacrament outside time, not subject to decay, but always nourishing men, for Song gives a permanent sense of futurity and a permanent sense of the presence of Divine things. Nor is there any pleasure which you will take away from middle age and leave it more lonely, than this pleasure of hearing Song.
It is that immortal quality in the business which makes it of a different kind from the other efforts of men. Write a good song and the tune leaps up to meet it out of nothingness. It clothes itself with tune, and once so clothed it continues on through generations, eternally young, always smiling, and always ready with strong hands for mankind. On this account every man who has written a song can be certain that he has done good; any man who has continually sung them can be certain that he has lived and has communicated life to others.
It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
On an Empty House
A MAN a little over forty years of age had desired to take a house in London. He had lived hitherto between a cottage in the country, where he had stables and where he made it his pleasure to ride, and rooms in town off St. James’s Street. He had also two clubs, one of which he continually visited. From his thirtieth year onward he had come more often to town; he was heavier in build; he rode with less pleasure. He had taken to writing and had published more than one little study, chiefly upon the creative work of other men. He was under no compulsion to write or to do any other thing, for he had a private fortune of about £3000 a year. This he managed with some ability so that it neither increased nor diminished, and like many other Englishmen, he had wisely invested abroad, from the year 1897 onwards. Now, I say, that middle age was upon him, London controlled him more and more. He was in sympathy with the maturity of the great town, which responded to his own maturity. He could find a leisure in it which he had never found in youth. The multitude of the books and the easy access to them, the sensible and varied conversation of men of his own rank and age, and that sort of peopled quiet which supports the nights of men living in London—all these had become a sort of food to him; they greatly pleased him. So also did the physical food of London. He took an increasing pleasure in changing the choice of his wine, which (an invariable effect of age) he now distinguished. His rooms in London had thus become for now some years past more and more his home; but he had begun to feel that rooms could not be a home; and he would set up for himself; he would be a master. He would feel again and in a greater way that comfortable consciousness of self and of surroundings fitting one which a man has in early youth every time he enters his father’s house.