Two Years Ago, Volume I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 430 pages of information about Two Years Ago, Volume I.

Two Years Ago, Volume I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 430 pages of information about Two Years Ago, Volume I.
make a noble poem of it, it will be their own fault.  I mean that sad and fantastic tragedy of Fra Dolcino and Margaret, which Signor Mariotti has lately given to the English public, in a book which, both for its matter and its manner, should be better known than it is.  Elsley’s soul had been filled (it would have been a dull one else) with the conception of the handsome and gifted patriot-monk, his soul delirious with, the dream of realising a perfect Church on earth; battling with tongue and pen, and at last with sword, against the villanies of pope and kaiser, and all the old devourers of the earth, cheered only by the wild love of her who had given up wealth, fame, friends, all which render life worth having, to die with him a death too horrible for words.  And he had conceived (and not altogether ill) a vision, in which, wandering along some bright Italian bay, he met Dolcino sitting, a spirit at rest but not yet glorified, waiting for the revival of that dead land for which he had died; and Margaret by him, dipping her scorched feet for ever in the cooling wave, and looking up to the hero for whom she had given up all, with eyes of everlasting love.  There they were to prophesy to him such things as seemed fit to him, of the future of Italy and of Europe, of the doom of priests and tyrants, of the sorrows and rewards of genius unappreciated and before its age; for Elsley’s secret vanity could see in himself a far greater likeness to Dolcino, than Dolcino—­the preacher, confessor, bender of all hearts, man of the world and man of action, at last crafty and all but unconquerable guerilla warrior—­would ever have acknowledged in the self-indulgent dreamer.  However, it was a fair conception enough; though perhaps it never would have entered Elsley’s head, had Shelley never written the opening canto of the Revolt of Islam.

So Elsley, on a burning July forenoon, strolled up the lane and over the down to King Arthur’s Nose, that he might find materials for his sea-shore scene.  For he was not one of those men who live in such quiet, everyday communication with nature, that they drink in her various aspects as unconsciously as the air they breathe; and so can reproduce them, out of an inexhaustible stock of details, simply and accurately, and yet freshly too, tinged by the peculiar hue of the mind in which they have been long sleeping.  He walked the world, either blind to the beauty round him, and trying to compose instead some little scrap of beauty in his own self-imprisoned thoughts; or else he was looking out consciously and spasmodically for views, effects, emotions, images; something striking and uncommon which would suggest a poetic figure, or help out a description, or in some way re-furnish his mind with thought.  From which method it befell, that his lamp of truth was too often burnt out just when it was needed; and that, like the foolish virgins, he had to go and buy oil when it was too late; or failing that, to supply its place with some baser artificial material.

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Two Years Ago, Volume I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.