"GL3APP" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol03)

518. did PRK, let JL. Though neither is good, PRK seems
the better reading. Its slight clumsiness may be
passed over by a reader intent on the story: the 'neat'
evasion let, with its purely formal attribution of an
active role to the trees, is much worse, as cheap
scenery is worse than a plain backcloth. H reads:

The silent elms stood tall and grey
And at the roots long shadows lay

519-42. 'This passage', Peabody observes, 'amply atones for
the poet's lapse (dormitat Homerus) in 518. Ipsa
mollities.'

[I do not understand why Lewis picked particularly on did at line 518: the

use of did as a metrical aid was very common in the B-text as Lewis saw it
- it occurred twice, for instance, in the passage here praised: did flutter
523, did waver 533, both subsequently changed.]

555 - 6. 'O si sic omnia! Does not our poet show glimpses of
the true empyrean of poesy, however, in his work-

manlike humility, he has chosen more often to
inhabit the milder and aerial (not aetherial) middle
heaven?' (Pumpernickel). Some have seen in the
conception of death-into-life a late accretion. But cf.
the very early lyric preserved in the MS N3057, now
in the public library at Narrowthrode (the ancient
Nargothrond), which is probably as early as the Geste,
though like all the scholastic verse it strikes a more
modern note:

Because of endless pride
Reborn with endless error,
Each hour I look aside
Upon my secret mirror,
And practice postures there
To make my image fair.

You give me grapes, and I,
Though staring, turn to see
How dark the cool globes lie
In the white hand of me,
And stand, yet gazing thither,
Till the live clusters wither.

So should I quickly die
Narcissus-like for want,
Save that betimes my eye