HOME | DD
ExiledChaos — Stone Lions
Published: 2005-07-07 23:47:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 397; Favourites: 14; Downloads: 10
Redirect to original
Description
Ok...I need to calm down a little and put my mind on something else for a while. This is in Versailles.Related content
Comments: 13
The following came to mind, I'm not sure how, but it just seems relevent:
I saw what seemed the crooked hind legs of a horse on a pedestal
and deduced an equestrian statue, in the somewhat bloated
fashion of the early eighteenth century equestrian statues.
But the figure, from where I stood, was wholly hidden in the tops
of trees growing round it in a ring; masking it with leafy curtains
or draping it with leafy banners. But they were green banners,
that waved and glittered all about it in the sunlight;
and the face they hid was the face of an English king.
Or rather, to speak more correctly, a German king.
When laws can stay . . . it was impossible that an old rhyme should
not run in my head, and words that appealed to the everlasting
revolt of the green things of the earth. . . . "And when the leaves
in summer time their colour dare not show." The rhyme seemed
to reach me out of remote times and find arresting fulfilment,
like a prophecy; it was impossible not to feel that I had seen an omen.
I was conscious vaguely of a vision of green garlands hung on gray stone;
and the wreaths were living and growing, and the stone was dead.
Something in the simple substances and elemental colours,
in the white sunlight, and the sombre and even secret image,
held the mind for a moment in the midst of all the moving city,
like a sign given in a dream. I was told that the figure was
that of one of the first Georges; but indeed I seemed to know
already that it was the White Horse of Hanover that had thus
grown gray with Irish weather or green with Irish foliage.
I knew only too well, already, that the George who had really
crossed the Channel was not the saint. This was one of those German
princes whom the English aristocracy used when it made the English
domestic polity aristocratic and the English foreign policy German.
Those Englishmen who think the Irish are pro-German, or those Irishmen
who think the Irish ought to be pro-German, would presumably
expect the Dublin populace to have hung the statue of this
German deliverer with national flowers and nationalist flags.
For some reason, however, I found no traces of Irish tributes round
the pedestal of the Teutonic horseman. I wondered how many people
in the last fifty years have ever cared about it, or even been conscious
of their own carelessness. I wonder how many have ever troubled
to look at it, or even trouble not to look at it. If it fell down,
I wonder whether anybody would put it up again. I do not know;
I only know that Irish gardeners, or some such Irish humorists,
had planted trees in a ring round that prancing equestrian figure;
trees that had, so to speak, sprung up and choked him, making him more
unrecognisable than a Jack-in-the-Green. Jack or George had vanished;
but the Green remained.
About a stone's-throw from this calamity in stone there stood,
at the corner of a gorgeously coloured flower-walk, a bust evidently
by a modern sculptor with modern symbolic ornament surmounted
by the fine falcon face of the poet Mangan; who dreamed and drank
and died, a thoughtless and thriftless outcast, in the darkest
of the Dublin streets around that place. This individual
Irishman really was what we were told that all Irishmen were,
hopeless, heedless, irresponsible, impossible, a tragedy of failure.
And yet it seemed to be his head that was lifted and not hidden;
the gay flowers only showed up this graven image as the green leaves
shut out the other; everything around him seemed bright and busy,
and told rather of a new time. It was clear that modern men
did stop to look at _him;_ indeed modern men had stayed there
long enough to make him a monument. It was almost certain
that if his monument fell down, it really would be put up again.
from IRISH IMPRESSIONS
by
G. K. CHESTERTON
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Been there. Lovely place. Liked alot of those old structures.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Perfect focus! VERY nice piece!
great shot, very impressed....nothing to say against any aspect of this particular piece!
good work
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The Photo you've done looks very neat.
Good Pic
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
THAT IS SO BEAUTIFUL! OMG! AND THE BACKGROUND! Is that a garden or something?! *has never been so excited over dev art pictures* Oh god the reflection pool.... Its all so beautiful. I want to live there. Wow you really get to see the most beautiful things dont you? I'm in total awe right now. What is that keyhole looking thing in the far back? I love this picture to pieces. The perspective is great the setting, the colors, and the lions are so cute. The sky just goes so well with it. The abscense of clouds gives it a creamy, very artistic, aspect. It looks like its straight out of like... forever ago. *cant think* *mezmerized*
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
heh....
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Ooo, it's very lovely. I wish I could see it someday. Looks like love takes a long time to deteriorate. [ excuse my ranting.]
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thank you for the fav! yeah ^__^ and I hope you get to go too someday. It's really a life changing event! [don't worry, I rant too ^_~]
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
You're welcome. You deserved the fav!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
