309. From St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
357. This is _Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii_, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (_Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America_) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.
360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was _one more member_ than could actually be counted.
366-76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, _Blick ins Chaos_:
“Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”
401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the _Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad_, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s _Sechzig Upanishads des Veda_, p. 489.
407. Cf. Webster, _The White Devil_, v. vi:
“. . . they’ll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.” 411. Cf. _Inferno_, xxxiii. 46:
“ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto all’orribile torre.” Also F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, p. 346:
“My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”