No More Learning

The almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score:
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid ;
And poetry — or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.


## p. 15942 (#282) ##########################################

15942
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding-bell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and lovelorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
CHILD-SONGS
ST
TILL linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.


## p. 15943 (#283) ##########################################

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15943
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born!
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
. From lisping voices learns, —
The voices loved of him who sang
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side, -
Heard in the Teuton's household songs
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ Child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters:
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom! — Teach thou us,
0 Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;


## p. 15944 (#284) ##########################################

15944
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all!
THE YANKEE GIRL
S**
HE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!
How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!
Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,-
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
'Tis the great Southern planter,— the master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.
“Nay, Ellen, - for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;
Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
“But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them,-
For shame, Ellen, shame! - cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
« Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
But where flowers are blossoming all the year long;
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!
“Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come'at thy call;
They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law. ”
»
Oh, could ye have seen her that pride of our girls –
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,


## p. 15945 (#285) ##########################################

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15945
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!
“Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
“And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers;
But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!
« Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee! »
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
SPEA
PEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far or come they
near ?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.
“Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls:
Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! ”
Who is losing ? who is winning ? —“Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain. "
Holy mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. -
“Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain
course. ”
Look forth once more, Ximena! —“Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
“Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!


## p. 15946 (#286) ##########################################

15946
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together
fall:
Like a plowshare in the fallow, through them plows the Northern
ball. )
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who has
won ? -
"Alas! alas! I know not: friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!
с
"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting — Blessed Mother, save my
brain !
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to
rise :
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!
“O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my
knee:
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me ?
canst thou see?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er! ”
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said :
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead:
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath
of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly
smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did she watch beside her child ?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother! ” murmured he, and died!


## p. 15947 (#287) ##########################################

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15947
>>
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the North!
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena! — Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death
behind:
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive:
Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive! )
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool gray shadows
fall:
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle
rolled;
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lack-
ing food;
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern
tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours:
Upward, through its smoke and ashes, spring afresh the Eden
flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air !
THE SEER
I
HEAR the far-off voyager's horn,
I see the Yankee's trail;
His foot on every mountain pass,
On every stream his sail.
He's whittling round St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain;
He's leaving on the pictured rocks
His fresh tobacco stain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,


## p. 15948 (#288) ##########################################

15948
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit's chapel bell.
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs;
The war-chiefs with their painted bows,
And crest of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe
The steamer smokes and raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see the peddler's show,-
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty with the low.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves that soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find -
The raw material of a State,
Its music and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train,
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain. .
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindled on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.


## p. 15949 (#289) ##########################################

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15949
BURNS
(ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM)
N°
MORE these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover:
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of, live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning, -
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.


## p. 15950 (#290) ##########################################

15950
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
I watched him while in sportive mood
I read The Twa Dogs'' story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs! - The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When fariner boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already ?
I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweet-brier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God's baptizing!


## p. 15951 (#291) ##########################################

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15951
With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.
And if at times an evil strain,
To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining:
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song! -I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render,-
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor!
But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer ?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer ?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So 'Bonnie Doon' but tarry;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary!


## p. 15952 (#292) ##########################################

15952
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
THE SUMMONS
M
Y EAR is full of summer sounds,
Of summer sights my languid eye;
Beyond the dusty village bounds
I loiter in my daily rounds,
And in the noontime shadows lie.
I hear the wild bee wind his horn,
The bird swings on the ripened wheat,
The long green lances of the corn
Are tilting in the winds of morn,
The locust shrills his song of heat.
Another sound my spirit hears -
A deeper sound that drowns them all:
A voice of pleading choked with tears,
The call of human hopes and fears,
The Macedonian cry to Paul.
The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;
I know the word and countersign:
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.
Shamed be the hands that idly fold,
And lips that woo the reed's accord,
When laggard Time the hour has tolled
For true with false and new with old
To fight the battles of the Lord!
O brothers! blest by partial Fate
With power to match the will and deed,
To him your summons comes too late
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,
And has no answer but God-speed!


## p. 15953 (#293) ##########################################

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15953
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
(WRITTEN WHEN THE POET WAS NEARLY 83)
S
.
UMMER's last sun nigh unto setting shines
Through yon columnar pines,
And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
Its golden lines are
re drawn.
Dreaming of long-gone summer days like this,
Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
Have still their old delight,
I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
Lapse tenderly away;
And wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
I ask, “Is this the last ?
« Will nevermore for me the seasons run
Their round, and will the sun
Of ardent summers yet to come forget
For me to rise and set ? »
Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
Wherever thou mayst be,
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
Each answering unto each.
For this still hour, this sense of mystery far
Beyond the evening star,
No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll:
The soul would fain with soul
Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfill
The wise-disposing Will,
And, in the evening as at morning, trust
The A11-Merciful and Just.
The solemn joy that soul-communion feels,
Immortal life reveals;
And human love, its prophecy and sign,
Interprets love divine.
Come then, in thought, if that alone may be,
O friend! and bring with thee
Thy calm assurance of transcendent spheres,
And the eternal years!
xxv11-998


## p. 15953 (#294) ##########################################

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## p. 15953 (#295) ##########################################


16
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CHR. WIELAND


## p. 15953 (#296) ##########################################

15954
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
(1733-1813)
M
RITERS of a certain class exercise a fruitful influence in their
day, and form an important part in the contemporary liter-
ary development, yet with the lapse of time lose much of
their claim on our interest. This is true of Wieland, whose services
to the German language and literature were decided.
Both in prose
and verse he helped to make the tongue an artistic instrument of.
expression, lending it grace, definiteness, elegance: he gave it a sort
of French refinement. He was largely active in reviving both classi-
cal and mediæval studies; he introduced Shakespeare to his country-
men, and by his keen, sane criticism did much for German culture.
Wieland was a humanist at a time when taste and scholarship were
sorely needed in the fatherland. He was a writer of lively wit and
fancy, sometimes running into frivolity and sensuality.
He initiated
the historical culture-novel and psychological romance. He produced
an epic, Oberon, which had an immense vogue in his own and other
languages, though now it commands little more than a formal regard.
An English critic, writing at the beginning of the present century,
could remark soberly with (Oberon' in mind, that “the fame of Wie-
land is as wide-spread as that of Horace. ” That such praise now
seems excessive, must not blind us to the poet's merits and genuine
contributions to the literature of his country. Fashions in literature
succeed each other almost as rapidly as fashions in dress.
Christopher Martin Wieland, by ancestry, education, and early
habit, had a bias towards philosophical and religious thought, though
the writings of his maturity were of a very different kind.
He was
the son of a country clergyman, and was born in the Suabian village
of Oberholzheim, on September 5th, 1733. He was carefully instructed
under his father's direction, and showed literary precocity. When
fourteen he went to school at Klosterbergen, near Magdeburg, where
his exceptional abilities attracted attention. Next we find him living
with a relative in Erfurt, and reading for the University. The fam-
ily home was moved to Biberach during this preparation; and it was
there he met and fell in love with Sophie Gutermann, afterwards the
wife of De Laroche, who was the factotum of Count Stadion, in whose
home Wieland was a constant visitor in after years. The intimacy
became in time a platonic friendship, but made its deep impress upon
Wieland's ripening powers. The idea of his first poem, "The Nature


## p. 15953 (#297) ##########################################


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## p. 15953 (#298) ##########################################

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## p. 15954 (#300) ##########################################



## p. 15955 (#301) ##########################################

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15955
of Things,' written and published several years later, came to him
while he was walking with Sophie.
He went to Tübingen in 1750,- nominally to study law, but gave
his main attention to philology, philosophy, and literature. Wieland
was one of the army of young men in all lands who begin with
the law, and are irresistibly deflected by their taste toward letters.
Bodmer, the Swiss poet, was then a sort of Rhadamanthus in Ger-
man literary affairs, and to him Wieland, fired by ambition, sent his
unfinished manuscript epic 'Hermann”; the result was an invitation
to visit Bodmer at Zürich, and the young aspirant spent a number of
months with the veteran, a cordial friendship being established be-
tween them. Wieland derived much benefit from this association; but
left his friend and patron in 1754, other influences being at work in
him. He lived for some time in Zürich and Bern, supporting him-
self by tutoring. At the University his writings, such as the Moral
Letters and Moral Tales,' had been of a philosophico-ethical and
mystical nature, and under the Swiss influence they continued to be
so for several years.
His Letters from the Dead to Living Friends,'
and other works of this period, are full of spiritual aspiration; and
his tone in rebuking worldly pleasures is austere.
But this was not to be Wieland's typical work. The impulse is
explained by heredity and environment. He went to Biberach in
1760 as Director of Chancery; and as he began to mix in polite soci-
ety, and especially to frequent Count Stadion's house, he developed
into a man of the world, and his writings reflected his experience.
Wit, fancy, satire, and worldly wisdom took the place of pious mystic
imaginings. The romance Don Sylvio von Rosalva' (1764), the cul-
pably free 'Comic Tales? (1766), the romance (Agathon' (1766–67), —
described as the first modern romance of culture, and certainly one of
his most characteristic and able productions,— exhibit this change of
heart; and in the Musarion the next year (1768) a middle ground
is reached, — the author advocating the rational cultivation of the
sensual and spiritual sides of man, avoiding alike the extremes of
the ascetic and the worldling. His study of Shakespeare began at
Biberach; and between 1762 and 1766 he published twenty-two prose
translations of the plays, thus making the English poet an open book
for Germans.
After a three-years' stay in Erfurt as professor of philosophy,
Wieland began in 1772 what was to be a life residence in Weimar.
An interesting feature of this life is his connection with Goethe.
Soon after Wieland's arrival in the city, he listened in an evening
company to the remarkable improvised verses of a young man
known to him, and exclaimed, “That must be either the Devil — or
Goethe! It proved to be the latter. A warm friendship grew up
between the two, in spite of the fact that ethe had
attacked
-
-
un-


## p. 15956 (#302) ##########################################

15956
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
Wieland's writings, and in ‘Gods, Heroes, and Wieland' represented
the other as an object of sport in hell. His literary activity in Wei-
mar was prolific and many-sided;. and here his most famous single
work, the Oberon,' was done. He edited the German Mercury, many
of his writings first appearing in that paper; he began a periodical
called the Attic Museum; wrote some of his best things in the comic
and satiric veins, among them The Inhabitants of Booby-land' (Die
Abderiten: 1774), New Dialogues of the Gods) (1791), and “The
Secret History of the Philosopher Peregrinus Proteus' (1791); and
translated Horace, Lucian, and Cicero, his last labor being expended
on the Letters of the last-named classic.
His masterpiece, Oberon,' was brought out in 1780, and received
with a favor rarely extended to any literary work. It is a romantic
epic, interweaving the love story of the mediaval knight Huon with
an amatory episode in the story of the fairy king and queen, Oberon
and Titania. The poem is written in a skillfully handled stanzaic
form, and in the original possesses vigor, melody, lively invention,
picturesque description, and narrative movement, — qualities some of
which are lost in the English rendering. Its manner and matter now
seem a trifle antiquated. Wieland purchased in 1797 an estate named
Osmannstädt near Weimar, and lived there until 1801; when, his wife
dying, he returned to Weimar, and remained until his own death on
January 20th, 1813. Personally he is drawn as sensitive and vain, but
of pure private life, and of generous impulses. His character may
be studied in his (Selected Letters) (1815-16) and the biographies of
Gruber, Loebell, Ofterdingen, and Pröhle. A most voluminous writer,
his collected works number thirty-six in the edition of 1851-6.
Wieland was not a creative genius, nor a great reformatory force
in literature. He never, in his most representative works, soared
very high nor probed very deep. But he was a gifted writer in
varied fields, whose influence was salutary, and who will always have
a secure place in that particular corner of the Pantheon devoted to
authors just below stellar rank.
MANAGING HUSBANDS
From the Fourth Dialogue,' Volume xxvii. , Collected Works
Jº
UNO O my dear Livia, I am the unhappiest woman in the
world!
Livia - Never had I expected to hear such a word from
-
the lips of the queen of gods and men!
Juno — How, Livia ? Do you too hold the common error that
happiness is the inseparable property of high station ? — when we


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CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15957
-
should deem ourselves lucky could we exchange our position,
with all its prerogatives, for that of the modest joy of a poor
shepherdess who is reconciled to her lot!
Livia — Since I was first among the mortals, I do not remem-
ber ever to have been so dissatisfied with my lot as to wish to
exchange it for a humbler one.
Juno — Then you must have a tenderer, or at least a more
courteous and agreeable, husband than I have.
Livia - I should be making ridiculous pretensions did I not
count myself happy. In the three-and-fifty years of our union,
Augustus has never given me a single cause to doubt that I hold
the first place in his heart.
Juno — I can't by any means make the same boast with
respect to my husband, Livia. Who doesn't know, since that
gossipy old Homer let out all our marriage secrets so shame-
fully, with how little consideration and delicacy I have been
treated by Jupiter; how rudely he addresses me in the presence
of the other gods; what sort of names I must put up with from
him; and how he appears to take an actual pleasure in remind-
ing me on every occasion of misdeeds concerning which he ought
to feel the greatest shame, if he were still capable of blushing!
-
-
Livia — One cannot deny that men
– with some few excep-
tions, perhaps -- are in comparison with us a rough, untender,
horrid sort of being. Without some tact, it is very difficult even
for a goddess to have as much power over the most ordinary
rude mortal as a wife must have over her husband in order to
be tolerably contented.
Juno — If this be the case, Livia, I should like very much to
know how you managed to have such firm control of a husband
like Augustus, who was so jealous of his privileges, so mistrust-
ful and cautious, and withal so hot and hasty in his passions.
Livia — Nothing can be simpler at bottom. I made him be.
lieve, so long as he lived, that I had no other will than his; and
yet I managed to bring about just the contrary: he thought
he ruled me, and I ruled him. In all matters concerning which
I was indifferent, and that he laid stress upon, I did exactly
according to his taste and whim: I was always just as he wished
and believed the wife of Augustus should be. My obligingness
in such things was boundless. So far from bothering him with
jealousy, I appeared not to have the slightest suspicion of his
love affairs,
and by virtue of a sympathy of which he


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15958
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
had not the least doubt, brought it about that the ladies who
had the most charm for him were always the very ones whom I
preferred, and with whom I was on the best footing. Through
this utter indifference as to his little secrets, I gained the advan-
tage that he had no others from me; and while I left him in the
delusion that he deceived me on this point, I could be all the
surer that he deceived me in no others, and in everything touch-
ing his rule, his family, and his political relations did naught
without my counsel, and made no decision I had not led him to;
but in such manner that he ever believed he was following his
own head, when really he was the tool of mine. By this craft
(to give it its proper name) I profited, in that he was as little
jealous of my intelligence as I was of his love escapades; and
when I had won this, all was won.
Juno - You are a woman after my own heart, Julia Augusta!
We must get better acquainted with one another. But I doubt
if, with the Titanic blood that runs in my veins, I should ever be
pliant enough to make use of the hint you have given me.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature) by Richard Burton.
THE DEITIES DEPOSED
The Sixth of “The Dialogues of the Gods, Volume xxvii. of Collected Works)
[The gods, while banqueting in Olympus, are startled by the tidings
brought by Mercury, that they have been deposed as deities by the Romans.
They talk it over in council, and Jupiter points out that their case admits of
consolation.
Characters – Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Minerva, Venus, Bacchus, Vesta, Ceres,
Victoria, Quirinus, Serapis, Momus, and Mercury.
Jupiter and Juno, with the other dwellers in Olympus, sit in an open hall
of the Olympus Palace, at divers great tables. Ganymede and Antinous serve
nectar to the gods, Hebe to the goddesses. The Muses make table music, the
Graces and the Hours dance pantomimic dances, and Jocus arouses the blessed
gods to loud laughter from time to time by his caricatures and buffooneries.
When the merriment is at its beight, Mercury, in hot haste, comes flying in. )
JT
?
UPITER - You are late, my child, as you see. What news do
you bring us from below there?
l'enus [to Bacchus] – He appears to bring something un-
pleasant. How disturbed he looks!
Mercury — The latest news I bring is not very much calcu-
lated to increase the jollity which I see reigning here.


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CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15959
-
-
Jupiter — At all events, your manner isn't, Mercury. What
can have happened so bad as to have disturbed the gods in their
joy?
Quirinus - Has an earthquake overthrown the Capitol ?
Mercury - That would be a small matter.
a
Ceres — Has a more violent eruption of Ætna devastated my
beautiful Sicily?
Bacchus — Or an untimely frost nipped the vineyards of the
Campagna ?
Mercury - Trifles, trifles!
Jupiter — Now out with your grievous story, then!
Mercury — It is nothing more than — [He pauses. ]
Jupiter — Don't make me impatient, Hermes! What is noth.
ing more than — ?
Mercury — Nothing, Jupiter, except that, upon a motion made
by the Emperor in his own person in the Senate, you have been
formally deposed by a decided majority.
[The gods all arise from the tables in great agitation. ]
Jupiter [who alone remains seated, laughing] – Nothing but
that? I have foreseen it for a long while.
?
All the Gods [together] – Jupiter deposed! Is it possible ?
Jupiter!
Juno-You talk nonsense, Mercury. Æsculapius, feel of his
pulse!
The Gods — Jupiter deposed!
Mercury – Just as I say: formally, and with solemnity, de-
clared by a great majority of votes to be a man of straw -
What do I say? A man of straw is something. Less than a man
of straw, a mere nothing; robbed of your temple, your priests,
your dignities as the highest protector of the Roman realm!
Hercules — It's a mad piece of news, Mercury; but as true as
I am Hercules (he swings his club], they shan't have done it to
me in vain!
Jupiter -- Be quiet, Hercules! So, then, has Jupiter Optimus
Maximus, Capitolinus, Feretrius, Stator, Lapis, etc. , played out
his part ?
Mercury — Your statue is overthrown, and they are in the
very act of destroying your temple. The same tragedy is being
played in all the provinces and corners of the Roman kingdom.


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CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
Everywhere hosts of goat-bearded brutes rush about with torches,
battering-rams, hammers, hatchets, and axes, and in a fanatic
rage lay waste the honored objects of the ancient faith of the
folk.
Serapis — Alas, what will happen to my stately temple at
Alexandria and my splendid colossal statue! If the Theban des-
ert belches forth only half of its holy hermit wood-devils, every-
thing's up.
Momus - Oh, you don't need to worry, Serapis. Who would
undertake to lay hands on your image, when at Alexandria it is
an understood thing that at the least despite offered it by an
impious hand, heaven and earth - would fall in fragments, and all
nature sink back into old chaos ?
Quirinus — But one can't always depend upon stories of that
kind, my good Serapis. It might happen with you as it did with
the massive golden statue of the goddess Anaitis at Zela, concern-
ing which it was believed that the first person who seized on it
would be stricken to the ground by a thunderbolt.
Serapis - And what happened to this statue ?
Quirinus — When the triumvir Antony defeated the Phæni-
cians at Zela, the city together with the temple of Anaitis was
plundered, and nobody could say where the massive golden god-
dess had got to.
It chanced that some years after, Augustus was
passing the night at Bononia with a veteran of Antony's. The
Emperor was sumptuously entertained; and as the talk at table
fell on the battle of Zela and the plundering of the temple of
Anaitis, he asked his host as an eye-witness, whether it was true
that the first who laid a hand on her had been suddenly stricken
dead to the earth. “You see that foolhardy one before you,”
replied the veteran; "and you are in fact eating off the leg of
the goddess. I had the fortune to conquer her first. Anaitis is
a very good sort of person, and I acknowledge gratefully that I
owe to her all my wealth. ”
Serapis - You give me poor consolation, Quirinus. If things
are going in the world as Mercury declares, I can promise my
colossus at Alexandria no better fate. It is simply shocking that
Jupiter can regard such outrageous things so coolly!
Jupiter - You will do well, Serapis, if you can manage to do
the same.
You have enjoyed long enough the honor of being
reverenced from East to West, — you, a mere god from the
Pontus; and you certainly can't desire that it should fare better


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CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15961
with your temples than with mine, or that your colossus should
last longer than the godlike master-work of Phidias. If we all
topple over, you would not wish to be the only one who remains
upright?
Momus — Ho, ho, Jupiter, where have you left your renowned
thunderbolt, that you take your downfall so mildly?
Jupiter - If I were not what I am, I would answer you with
one of them for this silly question, you noodle!
Quirinus [to Mercury] – You must tell me once more, Mer-
cury, if I am to believe you. My flamen superseded ? my temple
closed ? my feast no longer celebrated ? and the enervated, slav-
ish, heartless Quirites have sunk to this degree of unthankfulness
towards their founder?
Mercury- I should be deceiving you if I gave you any other
information.
Victoria – I don't need to ask what is happening to my altar
and my statue in the Julian Curia. It is so long now since the
Romans have learned the art of conquest, that I find nothing
more natural than that they cannot any longer endure the pres-
ence of my picture. At every glance which they throw upon it,
it must be to them a reproach for their shameful degeneration.
With the Romans, whose name has become a byword among
the barbarians which only blood can wash away, Victoria has
nothing more to do.
Vesta - Under these circumstances they will certainly not
allow the holy fire in my temple to burn any longer! Heavens,
what will be the fate of my poor virgins!
Mercury - Oh, not a hair of their heads will be touched, hon-
ored Vesta! They will be allowed to die of hunger in perfect
peace.
Quirinus - How times change! Once it was a shocking mis-
fortune for the whole Roman world, if the holy fire on the altar
of Vesta went out –
Mercury — And now there would be more to-do made if the
profane fire in some Roman cook-shop went out than if the ves-
tals had allowed theirs to be extinguished twice a week.
Quirinus — But who, then, in the future shall be the patron
of war at Rome in my place ?
Mercury — St. Peter with his double key has assumed to him-
self this duty.
Quirinus — St. Peter with his double key? Who is he?


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CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
Mercury – I don't know myself exactly; ask Apollo, - perhaps
he can give you more points about it.
Apollo — He's a man, Quirinus, who, in his successors, shall
rule half the world eight hundred years on end, although he him-
self was only a poor fisherman.
Quirinus — What?
The world will let itself be ruled by fish-
ermen ?
Apollo — By a certain kind of fishermen, at least: fishers of
men, who, in a very cunning kind of fish-net called decretals,
shall little by little catch all the nations and princes of Europe.
Their commands shall be esteemed as oracles of the gods, and
a piece of sheepskin or paper sealed with St. Peter's fisherman's
ring will have the power to seat and unseat kings.
Quirinus - This St. Peter of the double key must be a mighty
magician!
Apollo — No less than that! As you ought to have known
long ago, all the strange and wonderful things in the world occur
quite naturally in this way. The avalanche which shakes down
a whole village was at first a little snowball, and the flood that
shatters a great ship is at its source a purling mountain spring.
Why should not the successors of the Galilean fishermen in a
few centuries be able to become lords of Rome, and arrange a
new religion, of which they constitute themselves high priests,
and with the aid of brand-new ethics and politics, which they
know how to build upon it, finally be masters for a while of
half the world? Didn't you yourself herd the flocks of the King
of Alba, before you made yourself the head of all the bandits in
Latium, and patched together the little robbers' nest that finally
became the capital city and queen of the world ? St. Peter, to
be sure, in his life cut no great figure; but he shall see the time
when kaisers shall hold the stirrups of his successors, and queens
shall humbly kiss their feet.
Quirinus — What doesn't one go through, when one is im-
mortal!
A pollo — It needs a good deal of time, perhaps, and not a
little craft also, in order to bring fishermen so far; but then
the fish will be stupid enough who let themselves be caught by
them.
Quirinus — In the mean time, here we are all together deposed,
aren't we?