United States or Caribbean Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He sprang up from his recumbent posture and attracted Theos's attention to another bust even finer than the last, it was placed on a pedestal wreathed at the summit and at the base with laurel. "The divine Hyspiros!" he exclaimed pointing to it in a sort of ecstasy "The Master from whom it may be I have caught the perfect entrancement of my own verse-melody!
I must tell you, however, that nothing concerning its kings or great men has been preserved, only a few allusions to one Hyspiros, a writer of tragedies, whose genius seems to have corresponded to that of our Shakespeare of to-day. The name of Sah-luma is nowhere extant." A burning wave of color flushed Alwyn's face, but he was silent.
He spoke with a rush of earnestness and eloquence that was both persuasive and powerful, and he now stood silent and absorbed, his dreamy eyes resting meditatively on the massive bust of the immortal personage he called Hyspiros, which smiled out in serene, cold whiteness from the velvet-shadowed shrine it occupied.
Warmed by enthusiasm, with his eyes flashing and the impetuous words coursing from his lips, his head thrown back, his hand uplifted, Sah-luma looked magnificent, and Theos, to whose misty brain the names of Oruzel and Hyspiros carried no positively distinct meaning, was nevertheless struck by a certain suggestiveness in his remarks that seemed to bear on some discussion in the literary world that had taken place quite recently.
Again, reverting to the question of taste and literature, the mob, untaught and untrained in the subtilties of art, will applaud to the echo certain grand and convincing home-truths set forth in the plays of the divine Hyspiros, simply because they instinctively FEEL them to be truths, no matter how far they themselves may be from acting up to the standard of morality therein contained.
Why, in this very news-sheet I have seen the immortal works of the divine Hyspiros so hacked by the blunt knives of ignorant and vulgar criticism that, by my faith! ... were it not for contempt, one would be disposed to nail the hands of such trumpery scribblers to a post, and scourge their bare backs with thorny rods to cure them of their insolence!
Hyspiros a traitor to the art he served and glorified? ... Hyspiros a literary juggler and trickster? ... By the Serpent's Head! they may as well seek to prove the fiery Sun in Heaven a common oil- lamp, as strive to lessen by one iota the transcendent glory of the noblest poet the centuries have ever seen!"
"These are some of the earliest editions of the plays of Hyspiros" he went on, talking in that rapid, fluent way of his that was as musical as a bird's song "They are rare and curious. See you! the names of the scribes and the dates of issue are all distinct. Ah! the treasures of poetry enshrined within these pages! ... was ever papyrus so gemmed with pearls of thought and wisdom?
The marvellous Plays of Hyspiros! ... the grandest tragedies, the airiest comedies, the tenderest fantasies, ever created by human brain, have been called in question by these thistle-eating animals! and one most untractable mule-head hath made pretence to discover therein a passage of secret writing which shall, so the fool thinks, prove that Hyspiros was not the author of his own works, but only a literary cheat, and forger of another and lesser man's inspiration!
Mute, and with a feeling as of hot, unshed tears welling up from his very heart, he turned over the volumes of Hyspiros almost mechanically, they were formed of sheets of papyrus artistically bound in loose leather coverings and tied together with gold-colored ribbon.
Word Of The Day