Steele High School - Annual Yearbook (Dayton, OH)

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Page sixteen THE ANNUAL a transformed Prince at her side-one who had found his ethics dust and who strove to make reparation. It is the last of life which one will think of when the roving days are past, and Tess's last days were full of the glory of life-abundant, satisfying, soul-iilled days. Little Pompilia-what a sad little other other Princess she must have been during her dreary years of marriage, pent up, powerless, miserable, so suddenly forced into a grown-up that she scarcely had any intermediate step between the ignorance of babyhood and the knowingness of womanhood. But she surely knew that she was another Princess-not because of a faith- lessness of man, but because of her faithfulness to a real ideal. In heaven we have the real true and sure, she says bravely. Tell him that I am all in flowers from head to foot. In her case the irresistible cry of the Princess heart, Oh, lover of my lifel. My soldier-saint! was answered not by flesh, but in spirit. Then there is the sad tale that seems so much more than a mere love story-the tragic fate of Phaedra, who built a temple to Aphrodite that she might, through the great queen's power, win for herself the man she loved. Oh, Aphrodite of the sea, For love have pity on me l she prayed, but the inexorable goddess turned a deaf ear on her plaint, and her life comes down through the ages only as a name, a story, and a tomb. Her name remains a symbol of the Thwarted spirit, vexed and teased By yearnings that cannot be eased, The soul that chafes upon the mesh Of tenuous yet galling flesh. Bliss Carman's conclusion to his delicate rendition of Phaedias' story is an echo of the universal pain: CC Ah, fair Greek woman, if there bloom Some flower of knowledge in the gloom, Receive the piteous, loving sigh Of one more luckless passer-by. Peace, peace, wild heart! Unsatisfied Since thy dear beauty found a bed Has every mortal lived and died, In sea-girt Hellas long ago, For ever with the dreaming dead, Immortal for thy mortal woe! There are so many other Princesses! Of what use to repeat them-you know them yourself. Of course there are many kinds of other Princesses and there are many varities of Princes. Sometimes he is an ideal that has been followed until almost within reach-and then some ruder, bolder hand suddenly app,-e-

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THE ANNUAL Page fifteen color which spoils the loveliness of all the rest by its mere presence, so the gardener takes it out and throws it away then the rest of the flowers fon'n an harmonious and complete whole. But perhaps the flower which wrought such trouble was a lovely thing in itself, only position made it a source of annoyance. So with the other Princess. Probably she had tresses of real princess gold that hung to her feet and shirnmered and waved in the sun. Her rank, too, was just as high as that of the fortunate Princess and her cheeks had just such a royal rose-flush. When she walked along all lower beings became insignificant, as the daisies seemed black against the fair white feet of Nicoletef' She, too, would have passed a restless night had she been forced to sleep on a pea hidden under seven mattresses, she would have scaled mountains of glass and have gone as a ragged beggar for the sake of her dear Prince. She would have become even a scullery-maid--but she never had the chance. And so she is merely one of the sad, patient race of those forgotten. Her lucky sister Princess could perform great feats of love and bring her Prince back to her-not so the other Princess. For her bolder sister aroused such excitement by her deeds of loving prowess that the other Princess was left behind-forgotten and alone. Well--there are many other Princesses in the world. There is many a Princess who has scaled the hill of glass and fled across the blazing pit, there is many another Princess who could get only half way up, and who lay there with bleeding feet and aching heart and clenched, inefficient hands, listening to acclamations that hailed the successful Princess. Remember, though, that perhaps the fairy godmother had helped the one, while the other had no godmother to lend her beautiful gowns done up in walnut shells and lovely, invisible caps: she had only her own efforts, her own weak hands-poor other Princess. Perhaps with only a little help she might have won a Prince, too, but as it was she could only say, with a quiet sigh of renunciation, The Prince passed by, with never a look at me,- . . . . And I wait-alone. Besides, who wants a Princess whom her lover has scorned? She will be looked at with contempt and disregard by the world, and this often influ- ences a Prince. Her proud heart may be almost broken, but she would never tell, if she has the heart of a real Princess within her. Literature is full of other Princesses-Tess of the D'Urbevilles, the Painted Lady, the Woman of Shamlagh, the Maid of Astolat, Ariadne, Pom- pilia. Sometimes they are other queens, but each is another Princess at heart, though the wor1d's cold thumb and finger fail to plumb it. In the case of Tess, it is true there was no other Princess to take her place-only the cold ethics of an upright man to whom the hard, ignorant eyes of the world meant more than the eyes of the woman who loved him. It is true, also, that for five glorious days Tess lived as a real Princess with

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THE ANNUAL Page seventeen hended it-the glorious ideal she had clung to for so long, and the loss of which makes the world a queer, empty place to live in-especially if the Princess be young and impetuously enthusiastic.. Sometimes the Prince comes in the guise of a longed-for hope, or a soaring ambition, or a dear desire-and when they disappear, there is nothing for the Princess to do but to sit down and wait in patience. Pity the Princess who must wait, crouch- ing alone in the darkness, waiting for footsteps-is there a greater agony in life than waiting for footsteps? or else, a greater pain, waiting among a crowd of ignorant ones to whom her fear is unknown and by whom it is misunder- stood. Pity the Princess who waits! Her golden hair may become thin and rough, her eyes become unspoken reflections of the longing within, her rose- leaf cheeks be sere and yellow, her features may be an a great peace-it is not the peace of content, but the costlier peace of resignation, the Princess' heart never can quite forget its youth and lost joy, it remembers into eternity, even though the bliss was transitory and fleeting, and the pain-brimmed agony is life-long. Though the world long since has passed by the fact that she ever lived, she still exists, slipped back from the coldness of human eyes, back into unrecorded history, back into the crowded, silent ranks of those forgotten. Perhaps we might mention the other Prince, too, but many sympathies have been lifted in his defenceg many strong masculine voices have aided him-and many weaker faminine ones, too. And the men who never come off, he said, who try like the rest, but get knocked down, or somehow miss --who get no Princess, nor even a second-class kingdom -this is only a sample. The other Prince somehow does not get so much contumely from those around him, a Prince may always strive again, and make his past a stepping-stone for his future, but, in some queer way, the world seems to consider a Princess who has failed as a lost atom, whose chances for success are gone. Why is it so? Only another phase of the fairy law, I suppose,- the feeling that everyone is bound on the wheel of things and must revolve with the turnings of the wheel. But why do we so often find the Princesses at the bottom of the wheel, which does not help them to rise, but passes over them and crushes them? Poor Princesses! Some of them with the half of a broken rope for a pillow at night, some with heavy heaps of regret and scorn weighing them down, some-and these are the saddest of all-whose broken hope is a tiny bundle hugged tightly in their arms-a little harmless atom, whose heritage is grief and shame. Let any one dare to say that this Princess is not in reality a Queen, just as much as are her lucky sister queens, sitting proudly on the top of the wheel and gazing down on her in haughty disdain. So you remember that, when the master went into the garden, the little gray leaves were kind to him. He knew the agony of incomprehensiong he had struggled, bitterly and alone, to remain the captain of his soul, to keep unharmed the faith and immortal love for which he stood. And the only real sympathy that came to him was that of a little gray leaf.