_145_
BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Oxford Book of Latin Verse
G.
_103_
SICK, Cornificius, is thy friend,
Sick to the heart: and sees no end
Of wretched thoughts that gathering fast
Threaten to wear him out at last.
And yet you never come and bring,
Though 'twere the least and easiest thing,
A comfort in that talk of thine.
You vex me. This to love of mine?
Prithee a little talk, for ease,
Full as the tears of sad Simonides!
LEIGH HUNT.
_110_
AVAUNT, ye vain bombastic crew,
Crickets that swill no Attic dew:
Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow,
Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro:
A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools,
The tinkling cymbals of the schools!
Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye,
With all our pretty company!
I'm sailing for the blissful shore,
Great Siro's high recondite lore,
That haven where my life shall be
From every tyrant passion free.
You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell,
Sweet muses mine, for truth to tell
Sweet were ye once, but now begone;
And yet, and yet, return anon,
And when I write, at whiles be seen
In visits shy and far between.
T. H. WARREN.
I append Clough's _Lines Written in a Lecture Room_. The theme is that
of Vergil inverted. But the mood in either poet is the same--that mood
of passionate revolt against academicism which never comes to some
people and never departs from others:
AWAY, haunt thou not me,
Thou dull Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skiey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?
A. H. CLOUGH.
_116_
Dryden's version of this piece shows him at his best as a translator of
Vergil. 'Methinks I come,' he writes, 'like a malefactor, to make a
speech upon the gallows, and to warn all other poets, by my sad example,
from the sacrilege of translating Vergil. ' But in the _Georgics_, at any
rate, which he reckons 'more perfect in their kind than even the divine
Aeneids,' he can challenge comparison with most of his rivals.
O HAPPY, if he knew his happy state,
The swain, who, free from bus'ness and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature's hand,
And just returns of cultivated land!
No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants,
T' admit the tides of early visitants,
With eager eyes devouring, as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten, from high pedestals;
No Persian arras hides his homely walls,
With antic vests, which, through their shady fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold:
He boasts no wool, whose native white is dy'd
With purple poison of Assyrian pride:
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty, the rich owner bless;
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvex'd with quarrels, undisturb'd with noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys--
Cool grots, and living lakes, the flow'ry pride
Of meads, and streams that through the valley glide,
And shady groves that easy sleep invite,
And, after toilsome days, a sweet repose at night.
Wild beasts of nature in his woods abound;
And youth of labour patient, plough the ground,
Inur'd to hardship, and to homely fare.
Nor venerable age is wanting there,
In great examples to the youthful train;
Nor are the gods ador'd with rites profane.
From hence Astraea took her flight, and here
The prints of her departing steps appear.
Ye sacred muses! with whose beauty fir'd,
My soul is ravish'd, and my brain inspir'd--
Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear--
Would you your poet's first petition hear;
Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,
The depths of heav'n above, and earth below:
Teach me the various labours of the moon,
And whence proceed th' eclipses of the sun;
Why flowing tides prevail upon the main,
And in what dark recess they shrink again;
What shakes the solid earth; what cause delays
The summer nights, and shortens winter days.
But if my heavy blood restrain the flight
Of my free soul, aspiring to the height
Of nature, and unclouded fields of light--
My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life--
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley, and a lofty wood.
Some god conduct me to the sacred shades,
Where Bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids,
Or lift me high to Haemus' hilly crown,
Or in the plains of Tempe lay me down,
Or lead me to some solitary place,
And cover my retreat from human race.
Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause--
His mind possessing in a quiet state,
Fearless of Fortune, and resign'd to Fate!
And happy too is he, who decks the bow'rs
Of sylvans, and adores the rural pow'rs--
Whose mind, unmov'd, the bribes of courts can see,
Their glitt'ring baits, and purple slavery--
Nor hopes the people's praise, nor fears their frown,
Nor, when contending kindred tear the crown,
Will set up one, or pull another down.
Without concern he hears, but hears from far,
Of tumults, and descents, and distant war;
Nor with a superstitious fear is aw'd,
For what befalls at home or what abroad.
Nor envies he the rich their happy store,
Nor his own peace disturbs with pity for the poor.
He feeds on fruits, which of their own accord,
The willing ground and laden trees afford.
From his lov'd home no lucre him can draw;
The senate's mad decrees he never saw:
Nor heard, at bawling bars, corrupted law.
Some to the seas, and some to camps, resort;
And some with impudence invade the court:
In foreign countries, others seek renown;
With wars and taxes, others waste their own,
And houses burn, and household gods deface,
To drink in bowls which glitt'ring gems enchase,
To loll on couches, rich with citron steds,
And lay their guilty limbs on Tyrian beds.
This wretch in earth entombs his golden ore,
Hov'ring and brooding on his buried store.
Some patriot fools to pop'lar praise aspire
Of public speeches, which worse fools admire,
While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds,
Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.
Some, through ambition, or through thirst of gold,
Have slain their brothers, or their country sold,
And, leaving their sweet homes, in exile run
To lands that lie beneath another sun.
The peasant, innocent of all these ills,
With crooked ploughs the fertile fallows tills,
And the round year with daily labour fills:
And hence the country markets are supplied:
Enough remains for household charge beside,
His wife and tender children to sustain,
And gratefully to feed his dumb deserving train.
Nor cease his labours till the yellow field
A full return of bearded harvest yield--
A crop so plenteous, as the land to load,
O'ercome the crowded barns, and lodge on ricks abroad.
Thus ev'ry sev'ral season is employ'd,
Some spent in toil, and some in ease enjoy'd.
The yeaning ewes prevent the springing year:
The laden boughs their fruits in autumn bear:
'Tis then the vine her liquid harvest yields,
Bak'd in the sunshine of ascending fields,
The winter comes; and then the falling mast
For greedy swine provides a full repast:
Then olives, ground in mills, their fatness boast,
And winter fruits are mellow'd by the frost.
His cares are eas'd with intervals of bliss;
His little children, climbing for a kiss,
Welcome their father's late return at night;
His faithful bed is crown'd with chaste delight.
His kine with swelling udders ready stand,
And, lowing for the pail, invite the milker's hand.
His wanton kids, with budding horns prepar'd,
Fight harmless battles in his homely yard:
Himself in rustic pomp, on holy-days,
To rural pow'rs a just oblation pays,
And on the green his careless limbs displays.
The hearth is in the midst: the herdsmen, round
The cheerful fire, provoke his health in goblets crown'd.
He calls on Bacchus, and propounds the prize:
The groom his fellow-groom at butts defies,
And bends, and levels with his eyes,
Or stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil,
And watches, with a trip, his foe to foil.
Such was the life the frugal Sabines led:
So Remus and his brother-god were bred,
From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose;
And this rude life our homely fathers chose.
Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth
(The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth),
Which now on sev'n high hills triumphant reigns,
And in that compass all the world contains.
Ere Saturn's rebel son usurp'd the skies,
When beasts were only slain for sacrifice,
While peaceful Crete enjoy'd her ancient lord,
Ere sounding hammers forg'd th' inhuman sword,
Ere hollow drums were beat, before the breath
Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death,
The good old god his hunger did assuage,
With roots and herbs, and gave the golden age.
I append a portion of Cowley's unequal paraphrase (beginning from the
words _Felix qui potuit_):
HAPPY the man, I grant, thrice happy he
Who can through gross effects their causes see:
Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs,
Nor vainly fears inevitable things,
But does his walk of virtue calmly go,
Through all the allarms of death and hell below.
Happy, but next such conquerors, happy they
Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way.
They unconcerned from their safe-distant seat
Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.
The quarrels of the mighty without fear
And the descent of foreign troops they hear.
Nor can ev'n Rome their steddy course misguide
With all the lustre of her perishing pride.
Them never yet did strife or avarice draw
Into the noisy markets of the law,
The camps of gownëd war, nor do they live
By rules or forms that many mad men give.
Duty for Nature's bounty they repay,
And her sole laws religiously obey.
COWLEY.
_118_
(Beginning at _At cantu commotae. . . . _)
THEN from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
Of dull dead water, and to pen them fast,
Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
Stood lost in wonderment, the Eumenides,
Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined,
E'en Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
And now with homeward footstep he had passed
All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
Eurydice, to realms of upper air
Had well-nigh won behind him following--
So Proserpine had ruled it--when his heart
A sudden mad desire surprised and seized--
Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
For at the very threshold of the day,
Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice--
His own once more. But even with the look,
Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell:
Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
These helpless hands. ' She spoke, and suddenly,
Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him,
Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
Hell's boatman lists he pass the watery bar.
JAMES RHOADES
_119 a_
ONCE a slender silvan reed
Answered all my shepherd's need;
Once to farmer lads I told
All the lore of field and fold:
Well they liked me, for the soil
Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.
Ah! who am I, 'mid war's alarms,
To 'sing the hero and his arms'?
H. W. G.
_121_
I give first the version of Conington--an excellent specimen of his
skill and its limitations; and I add Pope's imitation--a piece as
graceful as anything he wrote:
THINK not those strains can e'er expire,
Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar
Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre
I sing with arts unknown before.
Though Homer fill the foremost throne,
Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,
And fierce Alcaeus holds his own
With Pindar and Simonides.
The songs of Teos are not mute,
And Sappho's love is breathing still:
She told her secret to the lute,
And still its chords with passion thrill.
Not Sparta's queen alone was fired
By broidered robe and braided tress,
And all the splendours that attired
Her lover's guilty loveliness:
Not only Teucer to the field
His arrows brought, not Ilion
Beneath a single conqueror reeled:
Not Crete's majestic lord alone,
Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown:
Not Hector first for child and wife,
Or brave Deiphobus, laid down
The burden of a manly life.
Before Atrides men were brave,
But ah! oblivion dark and long
Has locked them in a tearless grave,
For lack of consecrating song.
'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,
What difference? _You_ shall ne'er be dumb,
While strains of mine have voice and breath:
The dull neglect of days to come
Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours
Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
When Fortune smiles and when she lowers:
To greed and rapine still severe,
Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
A consul not of one brief year,
But oft as on the judgement-seat
You bend the expedient to the right,
Turn haughty eyes from bribes array,
Or bear your banners through the fight,
Scattering the foeman's firm array.
The lord of countless revenues
Salute not him as happy: no,
Call him the happy who can use
The bounty that the gods bestow,
Can bear the load of poverty,
And tremble not at death, but sin:
No recreant he when called to die
In cause of country or of kin.
J. CONINGTON.
LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of Truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;
Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay--
Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Caesar was, or Newton, named;
Those raised new empires o'er the earth,
And these new heavens and systems framed.
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.
POPE.
_124_
ANGEL of Love, high-thronëd in Cnidos,
Regent of Paphos, no more repine:
Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us
Visit our soberly censëd shrine.
Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,
Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste
The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,
And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.
H. W. G.
_125_
WHAT slender youth bedewed with liquid odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha, for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain: and seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they
To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed
Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dripping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.
MILTON.
Milton's version has been a good deal criticized. Yet, though it lacks
the lightness of its original, it remains a nobler version than any
other. Of other versions the most interesting is, perhaps, that of
Chatterton (made from a literal English translation), and the most
graceful that of William Hamilton of Bangour. Of the latter I quote a
few lines:
WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours
Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?
For whom retired to secret shade,
Soft on thy panting bosom laid,
Set'st thou thy looks with nicest care,
O neatly plain? How oft shall he
Bewail thy false inconstancy!
Condemned perpetual frowns to prove,
How often weep thy altered love,
Who thee, too credulous, hopes to find,
As now, still golden and still kind!
W. HAMILTON.
_126_
Of this often-translated poem I give first the version of Herrick and
then that of Gladstone. There is an amusing adaptation in the Poems of
Soame Jenyns, _Dialogue between the Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham and Modern
Popularity_.
_Hor. _ WHILE, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee,
Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me
To hug thy whitest neck: than I,
The Persian King liv'd not more happily.
_Lyd. _ While thou no other didst affect,
Nor Cloe was of more respect;
Then Lydia, far-fam'd Lydia,
I flourish't more than Roman Ilia.
_Hor. _ Now Thracian Cloe governs me,
Skilfull i' th' Harpe, and Melodie:
For whose affection, Lydia, I
(So Fate spares her) am well content to die.
_Lyd. _ My heart now set on fire is
By Ornithes sonne, young Calais;
For whose commutuall flames here I
(To save his life) twice am content to die.
_Hor. _ Say our first loves we sho'd revoke,
And sever'd, joyne in brazen yoke:
Admit I Cloe put away,
And love again love-cast-off Lydia?
_Lyd. _ Though mine be brighter than the Star;
Thou lighter than the Cork by far;
Rough as th' Adratick sea, yet I
Will live with thee, or else for thee will die.
HERRICK.
_Hor. _ WHILE no more welcome arms could twine
Around thy snowy neck than mine,
Thy smile, thy heart while I possessed,
Not Persia's monarch lived as blessed.
_Lyd. _ While thou didst feed no rival flame,
Nor Lydia after Chloe came,
Oh then thy Lydia's echoing name
Excelled ev'n Ilia's Roman fame.
_Hor. _ Me now Threician Chloe sways,
Skilled in soft lyre and softer lays;
My forfeit life I'll freely give
So she, my better life, may live.
_Lyd. _ The son of Ornytus inspires
My burning breast with mutual fires;
I'll face two several deaths with joy
So Fate but spare my Thracian boy.
_Hor. _ What if our ancient love awoke,
And bound us with its golden yoke?
If auburn Chloe I resign
And Lydia once again be mine?
_Lyd. _ Though fairer than the stars is he,
Thou rougher than the Adrian sea
And fickle as light cork, yet I
With thee would live, with thee would die.
GLADSTONE.
Prior's 'echo' of this poem is well known:
'SO when I am weary of wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
No matter what beauties I saw in my way,
They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
As he was a poet sublimer than me. '
(_Answer to Chloe Jealous_).
_127_
O CRUEL, still and vain of beauty's charms,
When wintry age thy insolence disarms,[10]
When fall those locks that on thy shoulders play,
And youth's gay roses on thy cheeks decay,
When that smooth face shall manhood's roughness wear,
And in your glass another form appear,
Ah, why, you'll say, do I now vainly burn,
Or with my wishes not my youth return?
FRANCIS.
_135_
I print Dryden's version in its entirety. 'I have endeavoured to make it
my masterpiece in English,' he says. It is perhaps the only translation
of the _Odes_ which retains what Dryden calls their 'noble and bold
purity' and at the same time keeps the friendly and familiar strokes of
style which lighten Horace's graver moods.
DESCENDED of an ancient line,
That long the Tuscan sceptre swayed,
Make haste to meet the generous wine
Whose piercing is for thee delayed.
The rosie wreath is ready made
And artful hands prepare
The fragrant Syrian oil that shall perfume thy hair
When the wine sparkles from afar
And the well-natured friend cries 'Come away',
Make haste and leave thy business and thy care,
No mortal interest can be worth thy stay.
Leave for awhile thy costly country seat,
And--to be great indeed--forget
The nauseous pleasures of the great:
Make haste and come,
Come, and forsake thy cloying store,
Thy turret that surveys from high
The smoke and wealth and noise of Rome,
And all the busie pageantry
That wise men scorn and fools adore:
Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.
Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try
A short vicissitude and fit of Poverty;
A savoury dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet or the Tyrian loom
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.
The Sun is in the Lion mounted high,
The Syrian star
Barks from afar,
And with his sultry breath infects the sky;
The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry;
The shepherd drives his fainting flock
Beneath the covert of a rock
And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh.
The Sylvans to their shade retire,
Those very shades and streams new streams require,
And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.
Thou, what befits the new Lord May'r,
And what the City Faction dare,
And what the Gallique arms will do,
And what the quiverbearing foe,
Art anxiously inquisitive to know.
But God has wisely hid from human sight
The dark decrees of future fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night:
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state
When mortals search too soon and learn too late.
Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of Fortune's power.
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed,
Anon it lifts aloft its head
And bears down all before it with tempestuous force;
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown,
Both house and homestead into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.
Happy the man--and happy he alone,--
He who can call to-day his own,
He who, secure within, can say
'To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair or foul or rain or shine,
The joys I have possessed in spite of Fate are mine,
Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. '
Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does Man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless;
Still various and unconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind,
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away.
The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:
Content with poverty my soul I arm,
And Vertue, tho' in rags, will keep me warm.
What is't to me,
Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise and clouds grow black,
If the mast split and threaten wrack?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain,
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from Fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar:
And running with a merry gale
With friendly stars my safety seek
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.
DRYDEN.
_136_
O PRECIOUS Crock, whose summers date,
Like mine, from Manlius' consulate,
I wot not whether in your breast
Lie maudlin wit or merry jest,
Or sudden choler, or the fire
Of tipsy Love's insane desire,
Or fumes of soft caressing sleep,
Or what more potent charms you keep;
But this I know, your ripened power
Befits some choicely festive hour!
A cup peculiarly mellow
Corvinus asks: so come, old fellow,
From your time-honoured bin descend,
And let me gratify my friend!
No churl is he your charms to slight,
Though most intensely erudite:
And ev'n old Cato's worth, we know,
Took from good wine a nobler glow.
Your magic power of wit can spread
The halo round a dullard's head,
Can make the sage forget his care,
His bosom's inmost thoughts unbare,
And drown his solemn-faced pretence
Beneath your blithesome influence.
Bright hope you bring and vigour back
To minds outworn upon the rack,
And put such courage in the brain
As makes the poor be men again,
Whom neither tyrants' wrath affrights
Nor all their bristling satellites.
Bacchus, and Venus, so that she
Bring only frank festivity,
With sister Graces in her train,
Twining close in lovely chain,
And gladsome taper's living light,
Shall spread your treasures o'er the night,
Till Phoebus the red East unbars,
And puts to rout the trembling stars.
THEODORE MARTIN.
_139_
I give the first stanza of this poem in the effective paraphrase of
Herrick, and the first two stanzas in the rather diffuse rendering of
Byron. Byron's version is one of his earliest pieces but not altogether
wanting in force.
NO wrath of Men, or rage of Seas,
Can shake a just man's purposes:
No threats of Tyrants, or the Grim
Visage of them can alter him;
But what he doth at first entend
That he holds firmly to the end.
HERRICK.
THE man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control:
No threatening tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent;
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main
Would awe his fixed determined mind in vain.
Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurled,
He would unmoved, unawed behold.
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crushing chaos rolled,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,
Might light his glorious funeral pile,
Still dauntless 'mid the wreck of earth he'd smile.
BYRON.
_145_
BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Thine is the flower-crowned bowl, for thee shall die
When dawns yon sun, the kid
Whose horns, half-seen, half-hid,
Challenge to dalliance or to strife--in vain.
Soon must the firstling of the wild herd be slain,
And these cold springs of thine
With blood incarnadine.
Fierce glows the Dog-star, but his fiery beam
Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream
To labour-wearied ox,
Or wanderer from the flocks:
And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain:
My harp shall tell how from thy cavernous mountain,
Where the brown oak grows tallest,
All babblingly thou fallest.
C. S. CALVERLEY.
_148_
The rendering that follows is printed in the author's _Ionica_ not as a
translation, but as a poem, under the title _Hypermnestra_. It
represents our poem of Horace from the 25th line onwards.
LET me tell of Lydè of wedding-law slighted,
Penance of maidens and bootless task,
Wasting of water down leaky cask,
Crime in the prison-pit slowly requited.
Miscreant brides! for their grooms they slew.
One out of many is not attainted,
One alone blest and for ever sainted,
False to her father, to wedlock true.
Praise her! she gave her young husband the warning.
Praise her for ever! She cried, 'Arise!
Flee from the slumber that deadens the eyes;
Flee from the night that hath never a morning.
Baffle your host who contrived our espousing,
Baffle my sisters, the forty and nine,
Raging like lions that mangle the kine,
Each on the blood of a quarry carousing.
I am more gentle, I strike not thee,
I will not hold thee in dungeon tower.
Though the king chain me, I will not cower,
Though my sire banish me over the sea.
Freely run, freely sail, good luck attend thee;
Go with the favour of Venus and Night.
On thy tomb somewhere and some day bid write
Record of her who hath dared to befriend thee. '
W. JOHNSON CORY.
_149_
UNSHAMED, unchecked, for one so dear
We sorrow. Lead the mournful choir,
Melpomene, to whom thy sire
Gave harp and song-notes liquid-clear!
Sleeps he the sleep that knows no morn?
O Honour, O twin-born with Right,
Pure Faith, and Truth that loves the light,
When shall again his like be born?
Many a kind heart for him makes moan;
Thine, Vergil, first. But ah! in vain
Thy love bids heaven restore again
That which it took not as a loan.
Were sweeter lute than Orpheus' given
To thee, did trees thy voice obey;
The blood revisits not the clay
Which he, with lifted wand, hath driven
Into his dark assemblage, who
Unlocks not fate to mortal's prayer.
Hard lot. Yet light their griefs, who _bear_
The ills which they may not undo.
C. S. CALVERLEY.
_152, ii_
THE snow, dissolv'd, no more is seen,
The fields and woods, behold, are green;
The changing year renews the plain,
The rivers know their banks again;
The sprightly Nymph and naked Grace
The mazy dance together trace;
The changing year's successive plan
Proclaims mortality to Man.
Rough winter's blasts to spring give way,
Spring yields to summer's sovran ray;
Then summer sinks in autumn's reign,
And winter holds the world again.
Her losses soon the moon supplies,
But wretched Man, when once he lies
Where Priam and his sons are laid,
Is naught but ashes and a shade.
Who knows if Jove, who counts our score,
Will toss us in a morning more?
What with your friend you nobly share
At least you rescue from your heir.
Not you, Torquatus, boast of Rome,
When Minos once has fixed your doom,
Or eloquence or splendid birth
Or virtue shall restore to earth.
Hippolytus, unjustly slain,
Diana calls to life in vain,
Nor can the might of Theseus rend
The chains of hell that hold his friend.
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
_153_
NOW have I made my monument: and now
Nor brass shall longer live, nor loftier raise
The royallest pyramid its superb brow.
Nor ruin of rain or wind shall mar its praise,
Nor tooth of Time, nor pitiless pageantry
O' the flying years. In death I shall not die
Wholly, nor Death's dark Angel all I am
Make his; but ever flowerlike my fame
Shall flourish in the foldings of the Mount
Capitoline, where the Priests go up, and mute
The maiden Priestesses.
From mean account
Lifted to mighty, where the resolute
Waters ot Aufidus reverberant ring
O'er fields where Daunus once held rustic state,
Of barren acres simple-minded king,--
There was I born, and first of men did mate
To lyre of Latium Aeolic lay.
Clothe thee in glory, Muse, and grandly wear
Thy hardly-gotten greatness, and my hair
Circle, Melpomene, with Delphian bay.
H. W. G.
_161_
HE who sublime in epic numbers rolled,
And he who struck the softer lyre of love,
By Death's unequal hand alike controlled,
Fit comrades in Elysian regions move!
BYRON.
_166_
HAD he not hands of rare device, whoe'er
First painted Love in figure of a boy?
He saw what thoughtless beings lovers were,
Who blessings lose, whilst lightest cares employ.
Nor added he those airy wings in vain,
And bade through human hearts the godhead fly;
For we are tost upon a wavering main;
Our gale, inconstant, veers around the sky.
Nor, without cause, he grasps those barbed darts,
The Cretan quiver o'er his shoulder cast;
Ere we suspect a foe, he strikes our hearts;
And those inflicted wounds for ever last.
In me are fix'd those arrows, in my breast;
But sure his wings are shorn, the boy remains;
For never takes he flight, nor knows he rest;
Still, still I feel him warring through my veins.
In these scorch'd vitals dost thou joy to dwell?
Oh shame! to others let thy arrows flee;
Let veins untouch'd with all thy venom swell;
Not me thou torturest, but the shade of me.
Destroy me--who shall then describe the fair?
This my light Muse to thee high glory brings:
When the nymph's tapering fingers, flowing hair,
And eyes of jet, and gliding feet she sings.
ELTON.
_179_
NO longer, Paullus, vex with tears my tomb:
There is no prayer can open the black gate.
When once the dead have passed beneath the doom,
Barred is the adamant and vows too late.
E'en though the lord of hell should list thy prayer,
Thy tears shall idly soak the sullen shores:
Vows may move heaven; when Charon holds his fee,
The grass-grown pile stands closed by lurid doors.
So the sad trumpets told their funeral tale
While from the bier the torch dislodged my frame;
What did my husband, what my sires avail,
Or all these numerous pledges of my fame?
Did I, Cornelia, find the fates less harsh?
Five fingers now can lift my weight complete.
Accursed nights, and stagnant Stygian marsh,
And every sluggish wave that clogs my feet,
Early yet guiltless came I to this bourne;
So let the sire deal gently with my shade
If Aeacus sit judge with ordered urn,
By kin upon my bones be judgement made:
There let his brothers sit, the Furies fill
By Minos' seat the Court, an audience grave.
Let Sisyphus rest, Ixion's wheel be still,
And Tantalus once grasp the fleeting wave;
To-day let surly Cerberus hunt no shade,
By the mute bar loose let his fetters lie.
I plead my cause: if guilty, be there laid
On me that urn, the sisters' penalty.
If any may boast trophies of old days,
Still Libya tells my sires the Scipios' name;
My mother's line their Libo peers displays,
And each great house stands propp'd by scrolls of fame.
When I doffed maiden garb 'neath torches' glow,
And with the nuptial band my locks were tied,
'Twas to thy bed I came, doomed thus to go:
Let my stone say I was but once a bride.
Those ashes by Rome reverenced I attest,
Whose titles tell how Afric's pride was shorn,
Perseus that feigned his sire Achilles' breast,
And him that brought Achilles' house to scorn;
For me the censor's rule ne'er swerved from place,
Your hearth need never blush for shame of mine:
Cornelia brought such relics no disgrace,
Herself a model to her mighty line.
I never changed, I lived without a stain
Betwixt the marriage and the funeral fire:
Nature gave laws drawn from my noble strain,
Fear of no judge could higher life inspire.
Let any urn pass sentence stern on me:
None will be shamed that I should sit beside;
Not she, rare maid of tower-crowned Cybele,
That hauled the lagging goddess up the tide;
Not she for whom, when Vesta claimed her fire,
The linen white revealed the coals aglow.
What changed in me but fate would'st thou desire,
Sweet mother mine? I never wrought thee woe.
Her tears, the city's grief, applaud my fame:
And Caesar's sobs plead for these bones of mine;
His daughter's worthy sister's loss they blame,
And we saw tears upon that face divine.
And yet I won the matron's robe of state,
'Twas from no barren house that I was torn:
Paullus and Lepidus, balm of my fate,
Upon your breast my closing eyes were borne.
My brother twice I saw in curule place,
Consul what time his sister ceased to be.
Child, of thy father's censorship the trace,
Cleave to one husband only, copy me.
Prop the great race in line: my bark of choice
Sets sail, my loss so many to restore.
Woman's last triumph is when common voice
Applauds the pyre of her whose work is o'er.
These common pledges to thee I commend:
Still burned into my ashes breathes this care.
Father, the mother's offices attend:
This my whole troop thy shoulders now must bear.
When thou shalt kiss their tears, kiss too for me:
Henceforth thy load must be the house complete.
If thou must weep with them not there to see,
When present, with dry cheeks their kisses cheat.
Enough those nights thou weariest out for me,
Those dreams that often shall my semblance feign;
And with my shade in secret colloquy,
Speak as to one to answer back again.
But should the gate confront another bed,
And on my couch a jealous step-dame sit,
Laud, boys, and praise the bride your sire has wed;
She will be won charmed with your ready wit.
Nor praise your mother overmuch; she may
Feel contrast and free words to insult turn.
But if contented with my shade he stay,
And hold my ashes of such high concern;
His coming age learn to anticipate,
Leave to the widower's cares no path confessed.
Be added to your years what mine abate,
And in my children Paullus' age be blessed.
'Tis well: for child I ne'er wore mourning weed;
But my whole troop came to my obsequies.
My plea is done. While grateful earth life's meed
Repays, in tears ye witnesses arise.
Heaven opes to such deserts; may mine me speed
To join my honoured fathers in the skies.
L. J. LATHAM.
_217_
I give a part of the version of Stepney, whom Dr. Johnson describes as
'a very licentious translator'.
IF mighty gods can mortal sorrows know,
And be the humble partners of our woe,
Now loose your tresses, pensive Elegy,--
Too well your office and your name agree.
Tibullus, once the joy and pride of Fame,
Lies now--rich fuel--on the trembling flame;
Sad Cupid now despairs of conquering hearts,
Throws by his empty quiver, breaks his darts,
Eases his useless bows from idle strings.
Nor flies, but humbly creeps with flagging wings--
He wants, of which he robbed fond lovers, rest,--
And wounds with furious hands his pensive breast.
Those graceful curls which wantonly did flow,
The whiter rivals of the falling snow,
Forget their beauty and in discord lie,
Drunk with the fountain from his melting eye.
. . . . . . . .
In vain to gods (if gods there are) we pray,
And needless victims prodigally pay;
Worship their sleeping deities, yet Death
Scorns votaries and stops the praying breath:
To hallowed shrines intending Fate will come,
And drag you from the altar to the tomb.
Go, frantic poet, with delusions fed,
Thick laurels guard your consecrated head--
Now the sweet master of your art is dead.
What can _we_ hope, since that a narrow span
Can measure the remains of thee, Great Man?
. . . . . . . .
If any poor remains survive the flames
Except thin shadows and mere empty names,
Free in Elysium shall Tibullus rove,
Nor fear a second death should cross his love.
There shall Catullus, crowned with bays, impart
To his far dearer friend his open heart;
There Gallus (if Fame's hundred tongues all lie)
Shall, free from censure, no more rashly die.
Such shall our poet's blest companions be,
And in their deaths, as in their lives, agree.
But thou, rich Urn, obey my strict commands,
Guard thy great charge from sacrilegious hands;
Thou, Earth, Tibullus' ashes gently use,
And be as soft and easy as his Muse.
G. STEPNEY.
_240_
AFTER death nothing is, and nothing death--
The utmost limits of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hope of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear,
Nor be concerned which way, or where,
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring Time swallows us whole,
Impartial Death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul Fiend that rules
The everlasting fiery goals,
Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools,
With his grim grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimsies and no more.
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.
_261_
AND so Death took him. Yet be comforted:
Above this sea of sorrow lift thy head.
Death--or his shadow--look, is over all;
What but an alternating funeral
The long procession of the nights and days?
The starry heavens fail, the solid earth
Fails and its fashion. Why, beholding this,
Why with our wail o'er sad mortality
Mourn we for men, mere men, that fade and fall?
Battle or shipwreck, love or lunacy,
Some warp o' the will, some taint o' the blood, some touch
Of winter's icy breath, the Dog-star's rage
Relentless, or the dank and ghostly mists
Of Autumn--any or all of these suffice
To die by. In the fee and fear of Fate
Lives all that is. We one by one depart
Into the silence--one by one. The Judge
Shakes the vast urn: the lot leaps forth: we die.
But _he_ is happy, and you mourn in vain.
He has outsoared the envy of gods and men,
False fortune and the dark and treacherous way,
--Scatheless: he never lived to pray for death,
Nor sinned--to fear her, nor deserved to die.
We that survive him, weak and full of woes,
Live ever with a fearful eye on Death--
The how and when of dying: 'Death' the thunder,
'Death' the wild lightning speaks to us.
In vain,--
Atedius hearkens not to words of mine.
Yet shall he hearken to the dead: be done,
Sweet lad he loved, be done with Death, and come,
Leaving the dark Tartarean halls, come hither;
Come, for thou canst: 'tis not to Charon given,
Nor yet to Cerberus, to keep in thrall
The innocent soul: come to thy father, soothe
His sorrow, dry his eyes, and day and night
A living voice be with him--look upon him,
Tell him thou art not dead (thy sister mourns,
Comfort her, comfort as a brother can)
And win thy parents back to thee again.
H. W. G.
_262_
WHAT sin was mine, sweet, silent boy-god, Sleep,
Or what, poor sufferer, have I left undone,
That I should lack thy guerdon, I alone?
Quiet are the brawling streams: the shuddering deep
Sinks, and the rounded mountains feign to sleep.
The high seas slumber pillowed on Earth's breast;
All flocks and birds and beasts are stilled in rest,
But my sad eyes their nightly vigil keep.
O! if beneath the night some happier swain,
Entwined in loving arms, refuse thy boon
In wanton happiness,--come hither soon,
Come hither, Sleep. Let happier mortals gain
The full embrace of thy soft angel wing:
But touch me with thy wand, or hovering
Above mine eyelids sweep me with thy train.
W. H. FYFE.
I append six _Sonnets to Sleep_ by six English poets of very different
genius, none of whom, save perhaps Drummond, seems to have been
influenced by Statius. Cowley's poem _To Sleep_ in the _Mistress_ may
perhaps also be read--the last line shows that Cowley recalled Statius.
COME, Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:
Oh, make in me those civil wars to cease!
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.
SIDNEY.
CARE-CHARMER Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care, return:
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease dreams, the images of day's desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
DANIEL.
SLEEP, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince whose approach peace to all mortal brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds with grief opprest;
Lo! by thy charming-rod all breathing things
Lie slumbering, with forgetfulness possest,
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spares, alas! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, oh come, but with that face
To inward light which thou art wont to show;
With feignèd solace ease a true-felt woe;
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,
Come as thou wilt, and that thou wilt bequeath,--
I long to kiss the image of my death.
DRUMMOND.
A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;--
I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie
Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessèd barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
WORDSWORTH.
O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
KEATS.
THE crackling embers on the hearth are dead;
The indoor note of industry is still;
The latch is fast; upon the window-sill
The small birds wait not for their daily bread;
The voiceless flowers--how quietly they shed
Their nightly odours; and the household ill
Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds that fill
The vacant expectation, and the dread
Of listening night. And haply now She sleeps;
For all the garrulous noises of the air
Are hushed in peace; the soft dew silent weeps,
Like hopeless lovers for a maid so fair:--
Oh! that I were the happy dream that creeps
To her soft heart, to find my image there.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
Side by side with these sonnets may be placed Thomas Warton's _Ode_--a
fine poem, too little known:--
ON this my pensive pillow, gentle Sleep,
Descend in all thy downy plumage drest,
Wipe with thy wings these eyes that wake to weep,
And place thy crown of poppies on my breast.
O steep my senses in Oblivion's balm,
And soothe my throbbing pulse with lenient hand,
This tempest of my boiling blood becalm--
Despair grows mild, Sleep, in thy mild command.
Yet ah! in vain, familiar with the gloom,
And sadly toiling through the tedious night,
I seek sweet slumber while that virgin bloom
For ever hovering haunts my unhappy sight.
_103_
SICK, Cornificius, is thy friend,
Sick to the heart: and sees no end
Of wretched thoughts that gathering fast
Threaten to wear him out at last.
And yet you never come and bring,
Though 'twere the least and easiest thing,
A comfort in that talk of thine.
You vex me. This to love of mine?
Prithee a little talk, for ease,
Full as the tears of sad Simonides!
LEIGH HUNT.
_110_
AVAUNT, ye vain bombastic crew,
Crickets that swill no Attic dew:
Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow,
Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro:
A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools,
The tinkling cymbals of the schools!
Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye,
With all our pretty company!
I'm sailing for the blissful shore,
Great Siro's high recondite lore,
That haven where my life shall be
From every tyrant passion free.
You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell,
Sweet muses mine, for truth to tell
Sweet were ye once, but now begone;
And yet, and yet, return anon,
And when I write, at whiles be seen
In visits shy and far between.
T. H. WARREN.
I append Clough's _Lines Written in a Lecture Room_. The theme is that
of Vergil inverted. But the mood in either poet is the same--that mood
of passionate revolt against academicism which never comes to some
people and never departs from others:
AWAY, haunt thou not me,
Thou dull Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skiey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?
A. H. CLOUGH.
_116_
Dryden's version of this piece shows him at his best as a translator of
Vergil. 'Methinks I come,' he writes, 'like a malefactor, to make a
speech upon the gallows, and to warn all other poets, by my sad example,
from the sacrilege of translating Vergil. ' But in the _Georgics_, at any
rate, which he reckons 'more perfect in their kind than even the divine
Aeneids,' he can challenge comparison with most of his rivals.
O HAPPY, if he knew his happy state,
The swain, who, free from bus'ness and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature's hand,
And just returns of cultivated land!
No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants,
T' admit the tides of early visitants,
With eager eyes devouring, as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten, from high pedestals;
No Persian arras hides his homely walls,
With antic vests, which, through their shady fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold:
He boasts no wool, whose native white is dy'd
With purple poison of Assyrian pride:
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty, the rich owner bless;
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvex'd with quarrels, undisturb'd with noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys--
Cool grots, and living lakes, the flow'ry pride
Of meads, and streams that through the valley glide,
And shady groves that easy sleep invite,
And, after toilsome days, a sweet repose at night.
Wild beasts of nature in his woods abound;
And youth of labour patient, plough the ground,
Inur'd to hardship, and to homely fare.
Nor venerable age is wanting there,
In great examples to the youthful train;
Nor are the gods ador'd with rites profane.
From hence Astraea took her flight, and here
The prints of her departing steps appear.
Ye sacred muses! with whose beauty fir'd,
My soul is ravish'd, and my brain inspir'd--
Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear--
Would you your poet's first petition hear;
Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,
The depths of heav'n above, and earth below:
Teach me the various labours of the moon,
And whence proceed th' eclipses of the sun;
Why flowing tides prevail upon the main,
And in what dark recess they shrink again;
What shakes the solid earth; what cause delays
The summer nights, and shortens winter days.
But if my heavy blood restrain the flight
Of my free soul, aspiring to the height
Of nature, and unclouded fields of light--
My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life--
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley, and a lofty wood.
Some god conduct me to the sacred shades,
Where Bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids,
Or lift me high to Haemus' hilly crown,
Or in the plains of Tempe lay me down,
Or lead me to some solitary place,
And cover my retreat from human race.
Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause--
His mind possessing in a quiet state,
Fearless of Fortune, and resign'd to Fate!
And happy too is he, who decks the bow'rs
Of sylvans, and adores the rural pow'rs--
Whose mind, unmov'd, the bribes of courts can see,
Their glitt'ring baits, and purple slavery--
Nor hopes the people's praise, nor fears their frown,
Nor, when contending kindred tear the crown,
Will set up one, or pull another down.
Without concern he hears, but hears from far,
Of tumults, and descents, and distant war;
Nor with a superstitious fear is aw'd,
For what befalls at home or what abroad.
Nor envies he the rich their happy store,
Nor his own peace disturbs with pity for the poor.
He feeds on fruits, which of their own accord,
The willing ground and laden trees afford.
From his lov'd home no lucre him can draw;
The senate's mad decrees he never saw:
Nor heard, at bawling bars, corrupted law.
Some to the seas, and some to camps, resort;
And some with impudence invade the court:
In foreign countries, others seek renown;
With wars and taxes, others waste their own,
And houses burn, and household gods deface,
To drink in bowls which glitt'ring gems enchase,
To loll on couches, rich with citron steds,
And lay their guilty limbs on Tyrian beds.
This wretch in earth entombs his golden ore,
Hov'ring and brooding on his buried store.
Some patriot fools to pop'lar praise aspire
Of public speeches, which worse fools admire,
While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds,
Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.
Some, through ambition, or through thirst of gold,
Have slain their brothers, or their country sold,
And, leaving their sweet homes, in exile run
To lands that lie beneath another sun.
The peasant, innocent of all these ills,
With crooked ploughs the fertile fallows tills,
And the round year with daily labour fills:
And hence the country markets are supplied:
Enough remains for household charge beside,
His wife and tender children to sustain,
And gratefully to feed his dumb deserving train.
Nor cease his labours till the yellow field
A full return of bearded harvest yield--
A crop so plenteous, as the land to load,
O'ercome the crowded barns, and lodge on ricks abroad.
Thus ev'ry sev'ral season is employ'd,
Some spent in toil, and some in ease enjoy'd.
The yeaning ewes prevent the springing year:
The laden boughs their fruits in autumn bear:
'Tis then the vine her liquid harvest yields,
Bak'd in the sunshine of ascending fields,
The winter comes; and then the falling mast
For greedy swine provides a full repast:
Then olives, ground in mills, their fatness boast,
And winter fruits are mellow'd by the frost.
His cares are eas'd with intervals of bliss;
His little children, climbing for a kiss,
Welcome their father's late return at night;
His faithful bed is crown'd with chaste delight.
His kine with swelling udders ready stand,
And, lowing for the pail, invite the milker's hand.
His wanton kids, with budding horns prepar'd,
Fight harmless battles in his homely yard:
Himself in rustic pomp, on holy-days,
To rural pow'rs a just oblation pays,
And on the green his careless limbs displays.
The hearth is in the midst: the herdsmen, round
The cheerful fire, provoke his health in goblets crown'd.
He calls on Bacchus, and propounds the prize:
The groom his fellow-groom at butts defies,
And bends, and levels with his eyes,
Or stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil,
And watches, with a trip, his foe to foil.
Such was the life the frugal Sabines led:
So Remus and his brother-god were bred,
From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose;
And this rude life our homely fathers chose.
Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth
(The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth),
Which now on sev'n high hills triumphant reigns,
And in that compass all the world contains.
Ere Saturn's rebel son usurp'd the skies,
When beasts were only slain for sacrifice,
While peaceful Crete enjoy'd her ancient lord,
Ere sounding hammers forg'd th' inhuman sword,
Ere hollow drums were beat, before the breath
Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death,
The good old god his hunger did assuage,
With roots and herbs, and gave the golden age.
I append a portion of Cowley's unequal paraphrase (beginning from the
words _Felix qui potuit_):
HAPPY the man, I grant, thrice happy he
Who can through gross effects their causes see:
Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs,
Nor vainly fears inevitable things,
But does his walk of virtue calmly go,
Through all the allarms of death and hell below.
Happy, but next such conquerors, happy they
Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way.
They unconcerned from their safe-distant seat
Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.
The quarrels of the mighty without fear
And the descent of foreign troops they hear.
Nor can ev'n Rome their steddy course misguide
With all the lustre of her perishing pride.
Them never yet did strife or avarice draw
Into the noisy markets of the law,
The camps of gownëd war, nor do they live
By rules or forms that many mad men give.
Duty for Nature's bounty they repay,
And her sole laws religiously obey.
COWLEY.
_118_
(Beginning at _At cantu commotae. . . . _)
THEN from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
Of dull dead water, and to pen them fast,
Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
Stood lost in wonderment, the Eumenides,
Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined,
E'en Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
And now with homeward footstep he had passed
All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
Eurydice, to realms of upper air
Had well-nigh won behind him following--
So Proserpine had ruled it--when his heart
A sudden mad desire surprised and seized--
Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
For at the very threshold of the day,
Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice--
His own once more. But even with the look,
Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell:
Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
These helpless hands. ' She spoke, and suddenly,
Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him,
Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
Hell's boatman lists he pass the watery bar.
JAMES RHOADES
_119 a_
ONCE a slender silvan reed
Answered all my shepherd's need;
Once to farmer lads I told
All the lore of field and fold:
Well they liked me, for the soil
Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.
Ah! who am I, 'mid war's alarms,
To 'sing the hero and his arms'?
H. W. G.
_121_
I give first the version of Conington--an excellent specimen of his
skill and its limitations; and I add Pope's imitation--a piece as
graceful as anything he wrote:
THINK not those strains can e'er expire,
Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar
Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre
I sing with arts unknown before.
Though Homer fill the foremost throne,
Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,
And fierce Alcaeus holds his own
With Pindar and Simonides.
The songs of Teos are not mute,
And Sappho's love is breathing still:
She told her secret to the lute,
And still its chords with passion thrill.
Not Sparta's queen alone was fired
By broidered robe and braided tress,
And all the splendours that attired
Her lover's guilty loveliness:
Not only Teucer to the field
His arrows brought, not Ilion
Beneath a single conqueror reeled:
Not Crete's majestic lord alone,
Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown:
Not Hector first for child and wife,
Or brave Deiphobus, laid down
The burden of a manly life.
Before Atrides men were brave,
But ah! oblivion dark and long
Has locked them in a tearless grave,
For lack of consecrating song.
'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,
What difference? _You_ shall ne'er be dumb,
While strains of mine have voice and breath:
The dull neglect of days to come
Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours
Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
When Fortune smiles and when she lowers:
To greed and rapine still severe,
Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
A consul not of one brief year,
But oft as on the judgement-seat
You bend the expedient to the right,
Turn haughty eyes from bribes array,
Or bear your banners through the fight,
Scattering the foeman's firm array.
The lord of countless revenues
Salute not him as happy: no,
Call him the happy who can use
The bounty that the gods bestow,
Can bear the load of poverty,
And tremble not at death, but sin:
No recreant he when called to die
In cause of country or of kin.
J. CONINGTON.
LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of Truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;
Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay--
Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Caesar was, or Newton, named;
Those raised new empires o'er the earth,
And these new heavens and systems framed.
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.
POPE.
_124_
ANGEL of Love, high-thronëd in Cnidos,
Regent of Paphos, no more repine:
Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us
Visit our soberly censëd shrine.
Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,
Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste
The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,
And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.
H. W. G.
_125_
WHAT slender youth bedewed with liquid odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha, for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain: and seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they
To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed
Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dripping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.
MILTON.
Milton's version has been a good deal criticized. Yet, though it lacks
the lightness of its original, it remains a nobler version than any
other. Of other versions the most interesting is, perhaps, that of
Chatterton (made from a literal English translation), and the most
graceful that of William Hamilton of Bangour. Of the latter I quote a
few lines:
WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours
Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?
For whom retired to secret shade,
Soft on thy panting bosom laid,
Set'st thou thy looks with nicest care,
O neatly plain? How oft shall he
Bewail thy false inconstancy!
Condemned perpetual frowns to prove,
How often weep thy altered love,
Who thee, too credulous, hopes to find,
As now, still golden and still kind!
W. HAMILTON.
_126_
Of this often-translated poem I give first the version of Herrick and
then that of Gladstone. There is an amusing adaptation in the Poems of
Soame Jenyns, _Dialogue between the Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham and Modern
Popularity_.
_Hor. _ WHILE, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee,
Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me
To hug thy whitest neck: than I,
The Persian King liv'd not more happily.
_Lyd. _ While thou no other didst affect,
Nor Cloe was of more respect;
Then Lydia, far-fam'd Lydia,
I flourish't more than Roman Ilia.
_Hor. _ Now Thracian Cloe governs me,
Skilfull i' th' Harpe, and Melodie:
For whose affection, Lydia, I
(So Fate spares her) am well content to die.
_Lyd. _ My heart now set on fire is
By Ornithes sonne, young Calais;
For whose commutuall flames here I
(To save his life) twice am content to die.
_Hor. _ Say our first loves we sho'd revoke,
And sever'd, joyne in brazen yoke:
Admit I Cloe put away,
And love again love-cast-off Lydia?
_Lyd. _ Though mine be brighter than the Star;
Thou lighter than the Cork by far;
Rough as th' Adratick sea, yet I
Will live with thee, or else for thee will die.
HERRICK.
_Hor. _ WHILE no more welcome arms could twine
Around thy snowy neck than mine,
Thy smile, thy heart while I possessed,
Not Persia's monarch lived as blessed.
_Lyd. _ While thou didst feed no rival flame,
Nor Lydia after Chloe came,
Oh then thy Lydia's echoing name
Excelled ev'n Ilia's Roman fame.
_Hor. _ Me now Threician Chloe sways,
Skilled in soft lyre and softer lays;
My forfeit life I'll freely give
So she, my better life, may live.
_Lyd. _ The son of Ornytus inspires
My burning breast with mutual fires;
I'll face two several deaths with joy
So Fate but spare my Thracian boy.
_Hor. _ What if our ancient love awoke,
And bound us with its golden yoke?
If auburn Chloe I resign
And Lydia once again be mine?
_Lyd. _ Though fairer than the stars is he,
Thou rougher than the Adrian sea
And fickle as light cork, yet I
With thee would live, with thee would die.
GLADSTONE.
Prior's 'echo' of this poem is well known:
'SO when I am weary of wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
No matter what beauties I saw in my way,
They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
As he was a poet sublimer than me. '
(_Answer to Chloe Jealous_).
_127_
O CRUEL, still and vain of beauty's charms,
When wintry age thy insolence disarms,[10]
When fall those locks that on thy shoulders play,
And youth's gay roses on thy cheeks decay,
When that smooth face shall manhood's roughness wear,
And in your glass another form appear,
Ah, why, you'll say, do I now vainly burn,
Or with my wishes not my youth return?
FRANCIS.
_135_
I print Dryden's version in its entirety. 'I have endeavoured to make it
my masterpiece in English,' he says. It is perhaps the only translation
of the _Odes_ which retains what Dryden calls their 'noble and bold
purity' and at the same time keeps the friendly and familiar strokes of
style which lighten Horace's graver moods.
DESCENDED of an ancient line,
That long the Tuscan sceptre swayed,
Make haste to meet the generous wine
Whose piercing is for thee delayed.
The rosie wreath is ready made
And artful hands prepare
The fragrant Syrian oil that shall perfume thy hair
When the wine sparkles from afar
And the well-natured friend cries 'Come away',
Make haste and leave thy business and thy care,
No mortal interest can be worth thy stay.
Leave for awhile thy costly country seat,
And--to be great indeed--forget
The nauseous pleasures of the great:
Make haste and come,
Come, and forsake thy cloying store,
Thy turret that surveys from high
The smoke and wealth and noise of Rome,
And all the busie pageantry
That wise men scorn and fools adore:
Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.
Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try
A short vicissitude and fit of Poverty;
A savoury dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet or the Tyrian loom
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.
The Sun is in the Lion mounted high,
The Syrian star
Barks from afar,
And with his sultry breath infects the sky;
The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry;
The shepherd drives his fainting flock
Beneath the covert of a rock
And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh.
The Sylvans to their shade retire,
Those very shades and streams new streams require,
And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.
Thou, what befits the new Lord May'r,
And what the City Faction dare,
And what the Gallique arms will do,
And what the quiverbearing foe,
Art anxiously inquisitive to know.
But God has wisely hid from human sight
The dark decrees of future fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night:
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state
When mortals search too soon and learn too late.
Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of Fortune's power.
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed,
Anon it lifts aloft its head
And bears down all before it with tempestuous force;
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown,
Both house and homestead into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.
Happy the man--and happy he alone,--
He who can call to-day his own,
He who, secure within, can say
'To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair or foul or rain or shine,
The joys I have possessed in spite of Fate are mine,
Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. '
Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does Man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless;
Still various and unconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind,
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away.
The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:
Content with poverty my soul I arm,
And Vertue, tho' in rags, will keep me warm.
What is't to me,
Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise and clouds grow black,
If the mast split and threaten wrack?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain,
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from Fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar:
And running with a merry gale
With friendly stars my safety seek
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.
DRYDEN.
_136_
O PRECIOUS Crock, whose summers date,
Like mine, from Manlius' consulate,
I wot not whether in your breast
Lie maudlin wit or merry jest,
Or sudden choler, or the fire
Of tipsy Love's insane desire,
Or fumes of soft caressing sleep,
Or what more potent charms you keep;
But this I know, your ripened power
Befits some choicely festive hour!
A cup peculiarly mellow
Corvinus asks: so come, old fellow,
From your time-honoured bin descend,
And let me gratify my friend!
No churl is he your charms to slight,
Though most intensely erudite:
And ev'n old Cato's worth, we know,
Took from good wine a nobler glow.
Your magic power of wit can spread
The halo round a dullard's head,
Can make the sage forget his care,
His bosom's inmost thoughts unbare,
And drown his solemn-faced pretence
Beneath your blithesome influence.
Bright hope you bring and vigour back
To minds outworn upon the rack,
And put such courage in the brain
As makes the poor be men again,
Whom neither tyrants' wrath affrights
Nor all their bristling satellites.
Bacchus, and Venus, so that she
Bring only frank festivity,
With sister Graces in her train,
Twining close in lovely chain,
And gladsome taper's living light,
Shall spread your treasures o'er the night,
Till Phoebus the red East unbars,
And puts to rout the trembling stars.
THEODORE MARTIN.
_139_
I give the first stanza of this poem in the effective paraphrase of
Herrick, and the first two stanzas in the rather diffuse rendering of
Byron. Byron's version is one of his earliest pieces but not altogether
wanting in force.
NO wrath of Men, or rage of Seas,
Can shake a just man's purposes:
No threats of Tyrants, or the Grim
Visage of them can alter him;
But what he doth at first entend
That he holds firmly to the end.
HERRICK.
THE man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control:
No threatening tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent;
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main
Would awe his fixed determined mind in vain.
Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurtling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurled,
He would unmoved, unawed behold.
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crushing chaos rolled,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,
Might light his glorious funeral pile,
Still dauntless 'mid the wreck of earth he'd smile.
BYRON.
_145_
BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Thine is the flower-crowned bowl, for thee shall die
When dawns yon sun, the kid
Whose horns, half-seen, half-hid,
Challenge to dalliance or to strife--in vain.
Soon must the firstling of the wild herd be slain,
And these cold springs of thine
With blood incarnadine.
Fierce glows the Dog-star, but his fiery beam
Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream
To labour-wearied ox,
Or wanderer from the flocks:
And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain:
My harp shall tell how from thy cavernous mountain,
Where the brown oak grows tallest,
All babblingly thou fallest.
C. S. CALVERLEY.
_148_
The rendering that follows is printed in the author's _Ionica_ not as a
translation, but as a poem, under the title _Hypermnestra_. It
represents our poem of Horace from the 25th line onwards.
LET me tell of Lydè of wedding-law slighted,
Penance of maidens and bootless task,
Wasting of water down leaky cask,
Crime in the prison-pit slowly requited.
Miscreant brides! for their grooms they slew.
One out of many is not attainted,
One alone blest and for ever sainted,
False to her father, to wedlock true.
Praise her! she gave her young husband the warning.
Praise her for ever! She cried, 'Arise!
Flee from the slumber that deadens the eyes;
Flee from the night that hath never a morning.
Baffle your host who contrived our espousing,
Baffle my sisters, the forty and nine,
Raging like lions that mangle the kine,
Each on the blood of a quarry carousing.
I am more gentle, I strike not thee,
I will not hold thee in dungeon tower.
Though the king chain me, I will not cower,
Though my sire banish me over the sea.
Freely run, freely sail, good luck attend thee;
Go with the favour of Venus and Night.
On thy tomb somewhere and some day bid write
Record of her who hath dared to befriend thee. '
W. JOHNSON CORY.
_149_
UNSHAMED, unchecked, for one so dear
We sorrow. Lead the mournful choir,
Melpomene, to whom thy sire
Gave harp and song-notes liquid-clear!
Sleeps he the sleep that knows no morn?
O Honour, O twin-born with Right,
Pure Faith, and Truth that loves the light,
When shall again his like be born?
Many a kind heart for him makes moan;
Thine, Vergil, first. But ah! in vain
Thy love bids heaven restore again
That which it took not as a loan.
Were sweeter lute than Orpheus' given
To thee, did trees thy voice obey;
The blood revisits not the clay
Which he, with lifted wand, hath driven
Into his dark assemblage, who
Unlocks not fate to mortal's prayer.
Hard lot. Yet light their griefs, who _bear_
The ills which they may not undo.
C. S. CALVERLEY.
_152, ii_
THE snow, dissolv'd, no more is seen,
The fields and woods, behold, are green;
The changing year renews the plain,
The rivers know their banks again;
The sprightly Nymph and naked Grace
The mazy dance together trace;
The changing year's successive plan
Proclaims mortality to Man.
Rough winter's blasts to spring give way,
Spring yields to summer's sovran ray;
Then summer sinks in autumn's reign,
And winter holds the world again.
Her losses soon the moon supplies,
But wretched Man, when once he lies
Where Priam and his sons are laid,
Is naught but ashes and a shade.
Who knows if Jove, who counts our score,
Will toss us in a morning more?
What with your friend you nobly share
At least you rescue from your heir.
Not you, Torquatus, boast of Rome,
When Minos once has fixed your doom,
Or eloquence or splendid birth
Or virtue shall restore to earth.
Hippolytus, unjustly slain,
Diana calls to life in vain,
Nor can the might of Theseus rend
The chains of hell that hold his friend.
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
_153_
NOW have I made my monument: and now
Nor brass shall longer live, nor loftier raise
The royallest pyramid its superb brow.
Nor ruin of rain or wind shall mar its praise,
Nor tooth of Time, nor pitiless pageantry
O' the flying years. In death I shall not die
Wholly, nor Death's dark Angel all I am
Make his; but ever flowerlike my fame
Shall flourish in the foldings of the Mount
Capitoline, where the Priests go up, and mute
The maiden Priestesses.
From mean account
Lifted to mighty, where the resolute
Waters ot Aufidus reverberant ring
O'er fields where Daunus once held rustic state,
Of barren acres simple-minded king,--
There was I born, and first of men did mate
To lyre of Latium Aeolic lay.
Clothe thee in glory, Muse, and grandly wear
Thy hardly-gotten greatness, and my hair
Circle, Melpomene, with Delphian bay.
H. W. G.
_161_
HE who sublime in epic numbers rolled,
And he who struck the softer lyre of love,
By Death's unequal hand alike controlled,
Fit comrades in Elysian regions move!
BYRON.
_166_
HAD he not hands of rare device, whoe'er
First painted Love in figure of a boy?
He saw what thoughtless beings lovers were,
Who blessings lose, whilst lightest cares employ.
Nor added he those airy wings in vain,
And bade through human hearts the godhead fly;
For we are tost upon a wavering main;
Our gale, inconstant, veers around the sky.
Nor, without cause, he grasps those barbed darts,
The Cretan quiver o'er his shoulder cast;
Ere we suspect a foe, he strikes our hearts;
And those inflicted wounds for ever last.
In me are fix'd those arrows, in my breast;
But sure his wings are shorn, the boy remains;
For never takes he flight, nor knows he rest;
Still, still I feel him warring through my veins.
In these scorch'd vitals dost thou joy to dwell?
Oh shame! to others let thy arrows flee;
Let veins untouch'd with all thy venom swell;
Not me thou torturest, but the shade of me.
Destroy me--who shall then describe the fair?
This my light Muse to thee high glory brings:
When the nymph's tapering fingers, flowing hair,
And eyes of jet, and gliding feet she sings.
ELTON.
_179_
NO longer, Paullus, vex with tears my tomb:
There is no prayer can open the black gate.
When once the dead have passed beneath the doom,
Barred is the adamant and vows too late.
E'en though the lord of hell should list thy prayer,
Thy tears shall idly soak the sullen shores:
Vows may move heaven; when Charon holds his fee,
The grass-grown pile stands closed by lurid doors.
So the sad trumpets told their funeral tale
While from the bier the torch dislodged my frame;
What did my husband, what my sires avail,
Or all these numerous pledges of my fame?
Did I, Cornelia, find the fates less harsh?
Five fingers now can lift my weight complete.
Accursed nights, and stagnant Stygian marsh,
And every sluggish wave that clogs my feet,
Early yet guiltless came I to this bourne;
So let the sire deal gently with my shade
If Aeacus sit judge with ordered urn,
By kin upon my bones be judgement made:
There let his brothers sit, the Furies fill
By Minos' seat the Court, an audience grave.
Let Sisyphus rest, Ixion's wheel be still,
And Tantalus once grasp the fleeting wave;
To-day let surly Cerberus hunt no shade,
By the mute bar loose let his fetters lie.
I plead my cause: if guilty, be there laid
On me that urn, the sisters' penalty.
If any may boast trophies of old days,
Still Libya tells my sires the Scipios' name;
My mother's line their Libo peers displays,
And each great house stands propp'd by scrolls of fame.
When I doffed maiden garb 'neath torches' glow,
And with the nuptial band my locks were tied,
'Twas to thy bed I came, doomed thus to go:
Let my stone say I was but once a bride.
Those ashes by Rome reverenced I attest,
Whose titles tell how Afric's pride was shorn,
Perseus that feigned his sire Achilles' breast,
And him that brought Achilles' house to scorn;
For me the censor's rule ne'er swerved from place,
Your hearth need never blush for shame of mine:
Cornelia brought such relics no disgrace,
Herself a model to her mighty line.
I never changed, I lived without a stain
Betwixt the marriage and the funeral fire:
Nature gave laws drawn from my noble strain,
Fear of no judge could higher life inspire.
Let any urn pass sentence stern on me:
None will be shamed that I should sit beside;
Not she, rare maid of tower-crowned Cybele,
That hauled the lagging goddess up the tide;
Not she for whom, when Vesta claimed her fire,
The linen white revealed the coals aglow.
What changed in me but fate would'st thou desire,
Sweet mother mine? I never wrought thee woe.
Her tears, the city's grief, applaud my fame:
And Caesar's sobs plead for these bones of mine;
His daughter's worthy sister's loss they blame,
And we saw tears upon that face divine.
And yet I won the matron's robe of state,
'Twas from no barren house that I was torn:
Paullus and Lepidus, balm of my fate,
Upon your breast my closing eyes were borne.
My brother twice I saw in curule place,
Consul what time his sister ceased to be.
Child, of thy father's censorship the trace,
Cleave to one husband only, copy me.
Prop the great race in line: my bark of choice
Sets sail, my loss so many to restore.
Woman's last triumph is when common voice
Applauds the pyre of her whose work is o'er.
These common pledges to thee I commend:
Still burned into my ashes breathes this care.
Father, the mother's offices attend:
This my whole troop thy shoulders now must bear.
When thou shalt kiss their tears, kiss too for me:
Henceforth thy load must be the house complete.
If thou must weep with them not there to see,
When present, with dry cheeks their kisses cheat.
Enough those nights thou weariest out for me,
Those dreams that often shall my semblance feign;
And with my shade in secret colloquy,
Speak as to one to answer back again.
But should the gate confront another bed,
And on my couch a jealous step-dame sit,
Laud, boys, and praise the bride your sire has wed;
She will be won charmed with your ready wit.
Nor praise your mother overmuch; she may
Feel contrast and free words to insult turn.
But if contented with my shade he stay,
And hold my ashes of such high concern;
His coming age learn to anticipate,
Leave to the widower's cares no path confessed.
Be added to your years what mine abate,
And in my children Paullus' age be blessed.
'Tis well: for child I ne'er wore mourning weed;
But my whole troop came to my obsequies.
My plea is done. While grateful earth life's meed
Repays, in tears ye witnesses arise.
Heaven opes to such deserts; may mine me speed
To join my honoured fathers in the skies.
L. J. LATHAM.
_217_
I give a part of the version of Stepney, whom Dr. Johnson describes as
'a very licentious translator'.
IF mighty gods can mortal sorrows know,
And be the humble partners of our woe,
Now loose your tresses, pensive Elegy,--
Too well your office and your name agree.
Tibullus, once the joy and pride of Fame,
Lies now--rich fuel--on the trembling flame;
Sad Cupid now despairs of conquering hearts,
Throws by his empty quiver, breaks his darts,
Eases his useless bows from idle strings.
Nor flies, but humbly creeps with flagging wings--
He wants, of which he robbed fond lovers, rest,--
And wounds with furious hands his pensive breast.
Those graceful curls which wantonly did flow,
The whiter rivals of the falling snow,
Forget their beauty and in discord lie,
Drunk with the fountain from his melting eye.
. . . . . . . .
In vain to gods (if gods there are) we pray,
And needless victims prodigally pay;
Worship their sleeping deities, yet Death
Scorns votaries and stops the praying breath:
To hallowed shrines intending Fate will come,
And drag you from the altar to the tomb.
Go, frantic poet, with delusions fed,
Thick laurels guard your consecrated head--
Now the sweet master of your art is dead.
What can _we_ hope, since that a narrow span
Can measure the remains of thee, Great Man?
. . . . . . . .
If any poor remains survive the flames
Except thin shadows and mere empty names,
Free in Elysium shall Tibullus rove,
Nor fear a second death should cross his love.
There shall Catullus, crowned with bays, impart
To his far dearer friend his open heart;
There Gallus (if Fame's hundred tongues all lie)
Shall, free from censure, no more rashly die.
Such shall our poet's blest companions be,
And in their deaths, as in their lives, agree.
But thou, rich Urn, obey my strict commands,
Guard thy great charge from sacrilegious hands;
Thou, Earth, Tibullus' ashes gently use,
And be as soft and easy as his Muse.
G. STEPNEY.
_240_
AFTER death nothing is, and nothing death--
The utmost limits of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hope of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear,
Nor be concerned which way, or where,
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring Time swallows us whole,
Impartial Death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul Fiend that rules
The everlasting fiery goals,
Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools,
With his grim grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimsies and no more.
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER.
_261_
AND so Death took him. Yet be comforted:
Above this sea of sorrow lift thy head.
Death--or his shadow--look, is over all;
What but an alternating funeral
The long procession of the nights and days?
The starry heavens fail, the solid earth
Fails and its fashion. Why, beholding this,
Why with our wail o'er sad mortality
Mourn we for men, mere men, that fade and fall?
Battle or shipwreck, love or lunacy,
Some warp o' the will, some taint o' the blood, some touch
Of winter's icy breath, the Dog-star's rage
Relentless, or the dank and ghostly mists
Of Autumn--any or all of these suffice
To die by. In the fee and fear of Fate
Lives all that is. We one by one depart
Into the silence--one by one. The Judge
Shakes the vast urn: the lot leaps forth: we die.
But _he_ is happy, and you mourn in vain.
He has outsoared the envy of gods and men,
False fortune and the dark and treacherous way,
--Scatheless: he never lived to pray for death,
Nor sinned--to fear her, nor deserved to die.
We that survive him, weak and full of woes,
Live ever with a fearful eye on Death--
The how and when of dying: 'Death' the thunder,
'Death' the wild lightning speaks to us.
In vain,--
Atedius hearkens not to words of mine.
Yet shall he hearken to the dead: be done,
Sweet lad he loved, be done with Death, and come,
Leaving the dark Tartarean halls, come hither;
Come, for thou canst: 'tis not to Charon given,
Nor yet to Cerberus, to keep in thrall
The innocent soul: come to thy father, soothe
His sorrow, dry his eyes, and day and night
A living voice be with him--look upon him,
Tell him thou art not dead (thy sister mourns,
Comfort her, comfort as a brother can)
And win thy parents back to thee again.
H. W. G.
_262_
WHAT sin was mine, sweet, silent boy-god, Sleep,
Or what, poor sufferer, have I left undone,
That I should lack thy guerdon, I alone?
Quiet are the brawling streams: the shuddering deep
Sinks, and the rounded mountains feign to sleep.
The high seas slumber pillowed on Earth's breast;
All flocks and birds and beasts are stilled in rest,
But my sad eyes their nightly vigil keep.
O! if beneath the night some happier swain,
Entwined in loving arms, refuse thy boon
In wanton happiness,--come hither soon,
Come hither, Sleep. Let happier mortals gain
The full embrace of thy soft angel wing:
But touch me with thy wand, or hovering
Above mine eyelids sweep me with thy train.
W. H. FYFE.
I append six _Sonnets to Sleep_ by six English poets of very different
genius, none of whom, save perhaps Drummond, seems to have been
influenced by Statius. Cowley's poem _To Sleep_ in the _Mistress_ may
perhaps also be read--the last line shows that Cowley recalled Statius.
COME, Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:
Oh, make in me those civil wars to cease!
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.
SIDNEY.
CARE-CHARMER Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care, return:
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease dreams, the images of day's desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
DANIEL.
SLEEP, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince whose approach peace to all mortal brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds with grief opprest;
Lo! by thy charming-rod all breathing things
Lie slumbering, with forgetfulness possest,
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spares, alas! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, oh come, but with that face
To inward light which thou art wont to show;
With feignèd solace ease a true-felt woe;
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,
Come as thou wilt, and that thou wilt bequeath,--
I long to kiss the image of my death.
DRUMMOND.
A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;--
I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie
Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessèd barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
WORDSWORTH.
O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
KEATS.
THE crackling embers on the hearth are dead;
The indoor note of industry is still;
The latch is fast; upon the window-sill
The small birds wait not for their daily bread;
The voiceless flowers--how quietly they shed
Their nightly odours; and the household ill
Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds that fill
The vacant expectation, and the dread
Of listening night. And haply now She sleeps;
For all the garrulous noises of the air
Are hushed in peace; the soft dew silent weeps,
Like hopeless lovers for a maid so fair:--
Oh! that I were the happy dream that creeps
To her soft heart, to find my image there.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
Side by side with these sonnets may be placed Thomas Warton's _Ode_--a
fine poem, too little known:--
ON this my pensive pillow, gentle Sleep,
Descend in all thy downy plumage drest,
Wipe with thy wings these eyes that wake to weep,
And place thy crown of poppies on my breast.
O steep my senses in Oblivion's balm,
And soothe my throbbing pulse with lenient hand,
This tempest of my boiling blood becalm--
Despair grows mild, Sleep, in thy mild command.
Yet ah! in vain, familiar with the gloom,
And sadly toiling through the tedious night,
I seek sweet slumber while that virgin bloom
For ever hovering haunts my unhappy sight.
