Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/522

490 BOOK This new home then is that ideal land far away in the west, over which is spread the soft beauty of an everlasting twilight, unsullied ?Aik^ by unseemly mists and murky vapours, where the radiant processions nods. which gladden the eyes of mortal men only when the heavens are clear are ever passing through the streets and along the flower-clad hills. On this beautiful conception the imagination of the poet might feed, and find there an inexhaustible banquet ; and we need only mark the several images which he has chosen to see how faith- fully he adheres (and it may be unconsciously) to the phenomena of cloud-land. He who has seen in the eastern or western sky as lit up by the rising or setting sun the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous temples catching the light on their burnished faces, can well feel whence came the surpassing and everlasting glory of the palace and the gardens of Alkinoos. In those marvellous scenes which more than all other painters Turner delighted to transfer to paper or canvas, we may see the walls and chambers of that splendid dwelling gleaming with the lustre of the sun or the moon, the brazen walls with their purple bands and stringcourses, the golden doors, and steps of silver. Nay, who has not watched the varying forms and half convinced himself that the unsubstantial figures before him are the shapes of men and beasts who people that shadowy kingdom ? Who has not seen there the dogs of gold and silver who guard the house of Alkinoos and on whom old age and death can never lay a finger — the golden youths standing around the inmost shrine with torches in their hands, whose light never dies out— the busy maidens plying their golden distaffs as their fingers run along the filmy threads spread on the bare ground of the unfading ether? Who does not understand the poet at once when he says that their marvellous skill came from Athene, the goddess of the dawn ? And who does not see that in the gardens of this beautiful palace must bloom trees laden always with golden fruits, that here the soft west nd brings new blossoms before the old have ripened, that here fountains send their crystal streams to freshen the meadows which laugh beneath the radiant heaven ? It is certainly possible that in this description the poet may have introduced some features in the art or civilisation of his own day ; but the magnificent imagination even of a Spanish beggar has never dreamed of a home so splendid as that of the Scherian chieftain, and assuredly golden statues and doors, silver stairs and brazen walls formed no part of the possessions of any king of the east or the west from the days of the Homeric poets to our own. In truth, there is nothing of the earth in this exquisite picture. In the Phaiakian land sorrow and trouble are things unknown. The house