I was just five years old, that December,
And a fine little promising boy,
So my grandmother said, I remember,
And gave me a strange-looking toy:
In its shape it was lengthy and rounded,
It was papered with yellow and blue,
One end with a glass top was bounded,
At the other, a hole to look through.
‘Dear Granny, what’s this?’ I came, crying,
‘A box for my pencils? but see,
I can’t open it hard though I’m trying,
O what is it? what can it be?’
‘Why, my dear, if you only look through it,
And stand with your face to the light;
Turn it gently (that’s just how to do it!),
And you’ll see a remarkable sight.’
‘O how beautiful!’ cried I, delighted,
As I saw each fantastic device,
The bright fragments now closely united,
All falling apart in a trice.
Times have passed, and new years will now find me,
Each birthday, no longer a boy,
Yet methinks that their turns may remind me
Of the turns of my grandmother’s toy.
For in all this world, with its beauties,
Its pictures so bright and so fair,
You may vary the pleasures and duties
But still, the same pieces are there.
From the time that the earth was first founded,
There has never been anything new—
The same thoughts, the same things, have redounded
Till the colours have pall’d on the view.
But—though all that is old is returning,
There is yet in this sameness a change;
And new truths are the wise ever learning,
For the patterns must always be strange.
Shall we say that our days are all weary?
All labour, and sorrow, and care,
That its pleasures and joys are but dreary,
Mere phantoms that vanish in air?
Ah, no! there are some darker pieces,
And others transparent and bright;
But this, surely, the beauty increases,—
Only—stand with your face to the light.
And the treasures for which we are yearning,
Those joys, now succeeded by pain—
Are but spangles, just hid in the turning;
They will come to the surface again.
B.
So the old ideas, old myths, are turned and turned about, and form new combinations, and are ever evolving fresh beauties, and teaching fresh truths. Perhaps in the consideration of these ancient myths, and seeing their progressive modifications, their breaking up, their coalitions, we may find the fresh application of the old saw, that there is nothing new under the sun.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
Footnotes:
[1] Jones, Trad. N. American Indians (1830), vol. iii. 175.
[2] Original edition in Latin. A translation by John Campbell, LL.D., under the title of Hermippus Redivivus, London, 1743. A second edition much enlarged, under the title Hermippus Redivivus, or the Sage’s Triumph over Old Age and the Grave, London, 1749, 8vo. We have seen also an Italian translation. That from which we quote is the German edition.
[3] It is possible that, by the engraver’s fault, the L in the last inscription may have been substituted for an X.
[4] Ἔστρεψεν τὰ ταβλία τῶν πλακουνταρίων.