No More Learning

It was the flare of a forlorn hope. The cloud of barbarian
invasion already hung low upon the horizon; and the end of the
Golden City of the past was as plainly announced as is that of the
"golden autumn woodland" on the last still day of October. Mean-
while Roma Aurea had lost but little as yet of her unparalleled


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12359
outward magnificence; and it seems to have been more that vision-
ary and bewildering beauty of aspect which fired the imaginations of
her latest pagan devotees, than any deep reverence for her hoary
traditions, or reasoned attachment to her political code and forms.
The three poets of the fourth and early fifth centuries whose names
we instinctively associate - Ausonius, Claudian, and Rutilius-were
all of them, like nearly every other late writer whose name has sur-
vived, of provincial extraction. Two were professed pagan believers,
and eager pagan apologists. The third, who as the tutor of a nom-
inally Christian prince was himself of necessity a nominal Christian,
was the most deeply imbued with pagan feeling, and debauched by
pagan sensualism, of them all.
Decimus Magnus Ausonius-"proud," as he used to say, "of pre-
serving even in his name a reminiscence of Italy"-was born in
Burdigala, now Bordeaux, in 309. He saw the conversion of Con-
stantine, the apostasy and death of Julian, the restoration of so-
called Christian rule in the person of the blunt soldier Jovian. In
369, being already well advanced in years, he was appointed tutor
to Gratian, then a boy of eight, son of the Pannonian general Valen-
tinian I. , who had been proclaimed Roman Emperor three years
before. Valentinian had divided the empire with his brother Valens;
sending the latter to the city of Constantine in the East, while he
himself assumed the sovereignty of the West and fixed his court at
Augusta Trevirorum (Trier or Trèves). Ausonius was educated at
Toulouse, and returned at about the age of twenty-eight to Bor-
deaux, where he had been known as a teacher of rhetoric and
literature for nearly thirty years before he received his court ap-
pointment. In 375 Valentinian I. went back to his own native prov-
ince, to subdue a revolt which had broken out among the Quadi;
and died there suddenly in the month of November of the same
year.
After the accession of his royal pupil at the age of sixteen, Auso-
nius was made prefect of Italy and Africa. Three years later, in 378,
he and his son Hesperius were joint prefects of Gaul; and we find
him consul-designate for 379. Four years later Gratian was murdered
by the revolting Briton Maximus, but not before he had associated
with himself in the empire a Spanish general who was none other
than Theodosius the Great. Maximus managed to hold his own for
four years; and while he reigned at Trèves, Ausonius was in disgrace.
Theodosius restored him to favor; but he was now past seventy, and
soon retired to a fine estate near his native town of Bordeaux, where
he seems to have lived to extreme old age, corresponding with
friends all over the Roman world, and polishing for publication his
early poetical writings.


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12360
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
The most noteworthy of these, the 'Idyll of the Moselle,' is a
description of the poet's journey upon that river from the port of
Taberna (now Bern-Castel) to the Augustan capital. It is full of
keen observation and picturesque description, affording by far the
clearest picture we possess of Roman civilization in the north of
Europe, and enabling us-along with the highly impressive Roman
remains yet existing in and about Trèves - to reconstruct with very
tolerable success the outward features of that civilization.
Ausonius also sketched a certain number of human figures typical
of his time, in the series of epigrams and epitaphs upon his own
kindred which he entitled 'Parentalia'; and in his 'Ordo Nobilium
Orbium' he described, seemingly from personal observation, the six-
teen greatest cities of Europe in his day, beginning with Rome and
ending with Bordeaux. "Her I love," he says of his native place;
"but Rome I worship. "
Officially as a laureate produces a birthday ode - Ausonius com-
posed, soon after his arrival at Valentinian's court, an Easter hymn.
But in his graceful 'Dream of Cupid Crucified' he travesties, appar-
ently with no thought of blasphemy, and in singularly light and
charming verse, the awful central scene of Christian history; and in
his 'Griphus, or riddling disquisition on the properties of the num-
ber three, he points out that there are "three Graces, three Harpies,
three Furies, three prophesying Sibyls, three drinks to a toast, and
three persons in the Trinity. " Ausonius also perpetrated many epi-
grams, most of them insufferably coarse, and a few tame and tasteless
eclogues; and he wrote other idyls besides that of the 'Moselle. '
In the best of these he essays, as Omar Khayyám and Ronsard, Wal-
ler and Herrick, and a hundred more have done since his day, the
everlasting theme of the evanescent rose; adorning it lavishly with
"pathetic fallacies," and giving it a wealth of sentimental develop-
ment which contrasts curiously with the perfectly simple transcrip-
tion of the elementary melody by Florus, two hundred years before.
A far more virile minstrel, many of whose compact and ringing
hexameters need have been disdained neither by Lucretius nor Vir-
gil, was Claudius Claudianus. He was born and brought up at Alex-
andria; and his father, who seems to have lectured on philosophy in
the city of Hypatia something like a generation before her day, was
a native of Asia Minor. But though born to speak Greek, Claudian
wrote, by preference if not always, in Latin. His mature years were
passed in Rome, and he was passionately identified with the last
struggle of the Roman patriciate against the official establishment of
Christianity by Theodosius.
When the great Spaniard died, in 395, each of his two sons, be-
tween whom the kingdom of the world was divided, fell under the
-


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12361
dominion of a powerful prime minister. Arcadius, in the East, became
the tool of the infamous Rufinus; Honorius, in the West, was more
happily controlled by his father-in-law, the brilliant Vandal warrior
Stilicho, who was able so long as he lived to hold the other bar-
barians at bay. It was the signal deliverance, under his generalship,
of the Golden City from its first threatened sack by Alaric the Visi-
goth, which rendered Stilicho the hero par excellence of the poet
Claudian. He wrote among other things an epithalamium and four
short Fescennine lays on the marriage of Honorius to Stilicho's
daughter Maria; the praises of the great Vandal leader in two books;
of his consulate in another; of his wife Serena in a fourth; a brill-
iant poem on the Getic war and the defeat of Alaric; invectives
against Rufinus and Eutropius; and three books of a mythological
poem on the rape of Proserpine, parts of which are exceedingly fine.
The literary merits of Claudian were acknowledged by those who
had least sympathy with him in opinion: by Sidonius Apollinaris in
an ode; in the 'Civitas Dei' by St. Augustine, who mourns that so
noble a writer should have been "hostile to the name of Christ”; and
by Orosius, who says that though a superlatively good poet, he was
a most stubborn (pervicacissimus) pagan. After the fall of Stilicho in
403, there is no further mention of Claudian in history; and it seems
natural to conclude that his fate was involved in that of the man
whom he so admired and exalted. The emperors Honorius and
Arcadius, on petition of the Roman Senate, erected in the Forum of
Trajan a statue, of which the inscription, discovered in the fifteenth
century, describes "Claudian the Tribune" as uniting in one person
"the mind of Virgil and the muse of Homer. "
It is a singular fact that the one other militant pagan of this
tragic period whose poetical work has endured should have been as
vehemently hostile to Stilicho as Claudian was eloquent in his
praise. Rutilius Claudius Numatianus was born in Toulouse, but like
Claudian, he lived long in Rome, was at one time prefect of the city,
and was undoubtedly residing there at the time of Stilicho's disgrace
and Claudian's disappearance. He bitterly charges the great Vandal
himself with contempt of the elder gods, in ordering the destruction
of the Sibylline Books; and though this particular accusation has
never been substantiated, it is apparently true that Stilicho did strip
the doors of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus of their golden plating,
and steal from the neck of a venerable statue of Cybele—a horrified
Vestal protesting the while a most ancient and precious necklace,
which he bestowed upon his wife Serena. When in 410 Rome had
finally succumbed to the second assault of Alaric, and the barbarian
hordes had overflowed into Gaul, breaking up the Aurelian Way as
they went, destroying bridges and plundering and laying waste the
―


## p. 12362 (#412) ##########################################

12362
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
country,- Rutilius followed them by sea, to save what he might of
his patrimony. It was with heartsick reluctance that he forsook the
city of his impassioned predilection; endeavoring to silence, by yearn.
ing promises of a speedy return, the ominous voice within which
told him that his farewell was a final one.
Seven years later, in 417, we find him beguiling his lingering
exile, in Gaul by the composition in sweetly flowing elegiacs of an
'Itinerarium,' or narrative of his homeward journey. The poem was to
have been a long one, to judge by the first and fragment of a second
book, which are all that we possess; and its easy graphic style
enables one to follow the poet, mile by mile and day by day, from
the port of Ostia, where he embarked, to a point on the eastern
Riviera of the Mediterranean somewhere between Pisa and Genoa.
All the incidents of the voyage are recalled and revivified. All the
objects descried in passing, upon mainland or island,- cities, villas,
fortifications, fishing and salt-making stations; immemorial ruins, like
those of the Etruscan Populonia, whose aspect is almost the same to-
day as when Rutilius beheld it; incipient convents which excite him
to explosions of scorn and wrath at the senseless fanaticism of the
monks; mines of Elba divined rather than seen,- pass before him in
review; and when the white city of Luna, on a spur of the Carrara
Mountains, fades from view, and this fascinating guide-book of the
fifth century comes to an untimely end, we regret its fragmentary
nature, for the moment, almost more than the mutilation of some of
the greater works of antiquity.
One more name remains to be added to the list of Roman poets
whose hearts were irrevocably set upon the past, and who caught
such inspiration as they had from the expiring glories of the pre-
Christian order. Claudian had once said, in his carelessly hyperboli-
cal way, that every individual of the renowned Anician stock would
be found to have sprung from a consul; and Anicius Manlius Seve-
rinus Boëthius, born in 480, or about seventy-five years after Claudian
ceased to be, was certainly himself a consul, the son of a consul, and
the father of two boys who were named honorary consuls in their
mere infancy by Theodoric, on his visit to Rome in 522. The Anicii,
like the remnant in general of the old Roman patriciate, were now
Christian in name, as their sovereigns had long been; but their feel-
ing of race, their habits of mind, their code of conduct,- all their
civic and social traditions, in a word,-were still intensely and im-
penitently pagan. With great wealth, commanding position, and the
broadest culture of his day, Boëthius passed the years of his early
manhood chiefly in his own beautiful library, "ceiled with ivory and
decorated with crystal," now writing a philosophical essay on the
Trinity or a tract against Nestorius, now translating Plato, Aristotle,


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12363
or Euclid. But when the hour came suddenly upon him, of cruel
calamity and uttermost reverse, it was in the innate pride and power
of a long-descended and indomitable Roman that he rose to meet his
fate. It was philosophy, not religion, that he summoned to his aid;
and in her mystic sign, rather than that of the Labarum of Constan-
tine, he conquered. A monotheist Boëthius undoubtedly was, and a
devout one; but not, if we are to judge him by his own clear and
candid testimony, a practical follower of the sect of the Nazarenes.
He was a Roman citizen first; a deist afterward; an orthodox Christ-
ian last and least of all: and the book by which he still holds the
memory and affections of men, and still, out of the solitude and
squalor of his dim prison chamber, affords help in trouble to a cer-
tain order of minds among them, is a dialogue, partly in prose, but
interrupted by pieces of noble verse, with a visible embodiment of
the philosophic spirit.
Jealousy of the splendid fortune and exclusive national prejudices
of Boëthius would seem to have been the sole source of the baseless
and malign accusation of treason which poisoned against him the
mind of Theodoric. He was arrested in the sacristy of a church near
Ticinum, the modern Pavia,-imprisoned for a year in a strong
tower, never examined or allowed a hearing, finally tortured and
slain in prison. The 'Consolation of Philosophy,' beloved of Dante
and many another undaunted sufferer, was written there; and the
simplicity and sincerity of expression born of the writer's own des-
perate condition invest its thrilling pages with unique and enduring
power.
Harmeet Tracers Preston
ANNIUS FLORUS
ROSES
NCE more the genius of the laughing spring
Doth roses bring.
A spear-like point amid the under green
Is one day seen,
The next a swelling bud, the next we greet
The rose complete;
Whose race, before another set of sun,
Will all be run.
Gather then, quickly, ere this glory's o'er,
Or nevermore!
ON
Translation of H. W. P.


## p. 12364 (#414) ##########################################

12364
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
THE EMPEROR HADRIAN
TO HIS SOUL
IFELING, changeling, darling,
L My body's comrade and guest,—
To what place now wilt betake thee,
Weakling, shivering, starveling,
Nor utter thy wonted jest?
Translation of William Everett.
LITTLE Soul from far away,
Sweet and gay,
While the body's friend and guest,-
Whither now again wilt stray?
Shivering, paling,
Rent thy veiling,
And forgot thy wonted jest?
Translation of L. P. D.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
From the 'Pervigilium Veneris >
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
SPE
PRING again! The time of singing! All the earth regenerate!
Everywhere the rapt embrace! Each winged creature seeks his
mate.
From thy leafy locks, O forest, shake the drops of bridal dew,
For to-morrow shall the Linker pass thy shadowy by-ways through,
Binding every bower with myrtle. Yea, to-morrow, on her throne,
Set in queenly state, Dione gives the law to all her own.
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
Hark! the goddess calls her nymphs to enter by the myrtle gate.
"Come, my maidens, for the day to Love disarmed is consecrate.
Bidden to fling his burning gear, his quiver bidden to fling away,
So nor brand nor barbèd shaft may wound upon my holiday:
Lo, the Boy among the maidens! Foolish maidens, dull to see
In the helpless, bowless Cupid, still the dread divinity.
Have a care! his limbs are fair, and nakedness his panoply! "


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12365
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
"Be my bar," the queen ordains, "with blushing garlands decorate.
When I sit for judgment, let the Graces three upon me wait;
Send me every blossom, Hybla, that thy opulent year doth yield;
Shed thy painted vesture, fair as that of Enna's holy field.
Rally, all ye rural creatures! nymphs of grove and fountain bright,
Dwellers in the darksome woodland, haunters of the lonely height! "
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
This is she, the procreatrix, hers the power, occult, innate,
Whereby soul and sense of man with breath divine are permeate.
Sower of the seed, and breather of the brooding warmth of life,
Hers the universal realm, with universal being rife.
None in air or hidden ocean, or the utmost parts of earth,
But have trodden, at her bidding, the mysterious ways of birth.
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
Hark the lowing herd, their joys in leafy shades who celebrate!
Hark the hoarser calling of the noisy marsh-bird to his mate!
Aye the goddess will have song of all whom she has dowered with
wings;
Wherefore still the soul of Philomela in the poplar sings,
Till the very pulse of love seems beating in the rapturous strain,
And the sister soul of Procne hath forgot her wedded pain.
Who am I, to listen dumbly? Come, my spring, desired so long!
I have angered great Apollo, I have done the Muses wrong.
Come and waken on these voiceless lips of mine the swallow-song!
Translation of H. W. P.
CALPURNIUS SICULUS
THE RUSTIC IN THE AMPHITHEATRE
C
ORYDON—I saw the heaven: high structure of woven timbers
wrought,
Looking down on the very Tarpeian rock, methought;
I saw the gradients vast, and I gained by easy stairs
The place assigned to the common folk, and the women's chairs.
Where these and the men in homely raiment view the show;
For the statelier places under the open sky below


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12366
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
Are all for the knights and the tribunes in their snowy dress.
Even as our sunny valley in the wilderness
Ringed by these forest ranks that aye reclining seem,
Flares to the unbroken chain of hills about its brim,
So there, the arena circuit girds the level ground,
And the massive hemispheres in an oval vast are bound.
But how to tell thee all, which I scarce had eyes to see
In part? For the universal splendor dazzled me.
And there I stood agape, and as rooted to the spot,-
Though little of all the coming wonders then I wot,-
Till an ancient gaffer on my left hand spake and said:
"No marvel if all this glory hath turned thy clownish head,
Who knowest, mayhap, not gold by sight, nor ever saw
Statelier home than a starveling peasant's hut of straw!
Why, hoary-headed and shaky as I stand here to-day,
Having grown old in the city-I know not what to say!
All they have shown us in years before is poor and mean,
Sordid, I tell thee, man, to this bewildering scene!
Look how the gem-set barriers and gilded loggia shine!
And down on the marble wall,- the arena's boundary-line,—
Where are the foremost seats of all, dost thou discern
The cylinders made of beauteous ivory slabs, that turn
Smoothly on polished axles, and suddenly let slip
Claws of the dizzied climber, who tumbles in a heap?
For him too glitter the nets of golden wire hung out,
Each from an ivory tusk,-the arena round about
Whole tusks, and all of a size! " And I, Lycotas, deem
Each one of those tusks was longer than our plowshare beam!
And what shall I tell thee next? All manner of beasts were
-
-:
there,
The elk, even in his own native forest rare;
With snow-white hares, and horrid boars, and bulls galore!
Some without necks, a hideous hump on the shoulders bore;
There were shaggy manes and bearded chins. And others yet
Had rigid dewlaps all with quivering bristles set.
But the strange, wild forest creatures made not all the show:
Seals were there, along with the bear, their constant foe;
And the shapeless being called a river-horse, and born
Of the stream whose overflowings quicken the vernal corn.
Awesome it was indeed, to see in the sandy deep
The wild things out of their subterranean caverns leap,
Or up from the selfsame hollow places grow amain
Living arbutus bowers, in a nimbus of golden rain!
-


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12367
Lycotas-Ay, ay!
And thou art a happy fellow, Corydon,
To have seen by grace divine, e'er tremulous eld come on,
This age of ours! And tell, oh, tell me if by chance
Thou hadst a right near view of the godlike countenance;
And how did the dread one look ? What manner of garb
wore he?
I fain would know the aspect on earth of deity!
Corydon - Would I had gone less meanly clad! For then, mayhap,
I had not been balked of a noble sight by a sordid wrap
And a clumsy brooch! But to me, as I stood afar,
He carried, unless these eyes of mine deceivers are,
The part at once of the god of song and the god of war!
Translation of H. W. P.
DECIMUS MAGNUS AUSONIUS
IDYL OF THE ROSES
SP
PRING morning! and in all the saffron air,
The tingling freshness of a day to be!
The breeze that runs before the sun-steeds, ere
They kindle fire, appeared to summon me;
And I went forth by the prim garden beds
To taste that early freshness, and behold
The bending blades dew-frosted, and the heads
Of the tall plants impearled, and heavy-rolled
O'er spreading leaves, the sky-drops crystalline.
Here too were roses, as in Pæstum gay;
Dim through the morning mist I saw them shine,
Save where at intervals a blinding ray
Flashed from a gem that Sol would soon devour!
Verily, one knew not if the rosy Dawn
Borrowed her blushes from the rosy flower,
Or this from her; for that the two had on
The same warm color, the same dewy veil.
Yea, and why not? For flower alike and star
Live under Lady Venus, and exhale,
Mayhap, the self-same fragrance. But afar
The planet's breath is wafted and is spent,
The blossom sheds its fragrance at our side;
Yet still they wear the one habiliment
The Paphian goddess lent them, murex-dyed!
A moment more and the young buds were seen
Bursting their star-like sheathings. One was there


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12368
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
Who sported yet a fairy helm of green;
And one a crimson coronal did wear;
And one was like a stately pyramid
Tipped at the apex with a purple spire;
And one the foldings of her veil undid
From her fair head, as moved by the desire
To number her own petals. Quick, 'tis done!
The smiling casket opens, and we see
The crocus therein hidden from the sun
Dense-seeded. But another flower, ah me!
With flame-like hair afloat upon the breeze
Paled suddenly, of all her glory shorn.
"Alas for the untimely fate of these,
Who age the very hour wherein they're born,"
I cried. And even so, the chevelure
Of yon poor blossom dropped upon the mold,
Clothing it far and wide with color pure!
How can the same sunrising see unfold
And fade so many shapes of loveliness?
Ah cruel Nature, with thy boon of flowers
Too quick withdrawn! Ah youth, grim age doth press!
Ah life of roses, told in one day's hours!
The morning star beholds a birth divine
Whereof the evening star shall find no trace.
Think then upon the rose's endless line,
Since the one rose revisiteth her place
Never again! And gather, sweetest maid,
Gather young roses in the early dew
Of thine own years, remembering how they fade,
And how for thee the end is hastening too!
Translation of H. W. P.
A MOTHER'S EPITAPH
Æ
ONIA, mother, with thy mingled strain
Of blood from Normandy and Aquitaine,
Thine were the graces of the perfect wife!
The busy fingers the inviolate life,
Thine husband's trust, the empire of thy boys,
A gracious mien, a fund of quiet joys!
Thy long embrace among the peaceful dead
Make warm my father's tomb, as once his bed!
Translation of H. W. P.


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12369
CLAUDIUS CLAUDIANUS
THE BEREAVEMENT OF CERES
From the Rape of Proserpine>
A
LL in terror, in hope no more, as the mother of nestlings
Fears for her tender young, in the rowan sapling deserted,
Fears while she seeks their food, and wearies again to be
with them;
Trembling lest the wind may have smitten the nest from the
bough, or
Cruel man have slain, or the fang of the ravening serpent,—
So she came again to her lonesome dwelling unguarded.
Wide on their idle hinges yawned the doors, and, beholding
All the silent space of the empty hall, in her anguish,
Rent she her robes, and tore the bearded wheat from her tresses.
Never a tear nor a word had she, for the breath of her nostrils
Barely went and came, and she shivered in every member.
Then upon quaking feet, and closing the portal behind her,
Passed within, and on through the lorn and sorrowful chambers,
Found the loom with its trailing web and intricate skein, and
Read with a failing heart the woven story unfinished.
Vain that gracious labor now! and the insolent spider
Busily spinning among the threads his texture unholy!
Never a tear nor a moan; but she fell with kisses unnumbered
Upon the woven stuff, and the sob of her gathering passion
Choked with the useless thread: then pressed to her bosom
maternal,
As it had been the maid herself, the delicate shuttle
Smooth from her hand, and the fallen wool, and the virginal trifles
Of her delight; surveyed the seats where she loved to linger,
Leaned o'er the spotless couch, and touched the pillow forsaken.
Translation of H. W. P.
WHAT
XXI-774
INVOCATION TO VICTORY
From the Consulate of Stilicho'
HAT shouts of our nobles, in jubilant chorus
Went up to the hero, while over his head,
Inviolate Victory, bodied before us
Wide, wide in the ether, her pinions outspread!
O guardian Goddess of Rome in her splendor!
O radiant Palm-bearer in trophies arrayed,
Who only the spirit undaunted canst render,
Who healest the wounds that our foemen had made!


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12370
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
So
I know not thy rank in the heavenly legion,-
If thou shinest a star in the Dictæan crown,
Or art girt by the fires of the Leonine region,
Or bearest Ione's sceptre, or winnest renown
From the shield of Minerva, or soothest in slumber
The War-god, aweary when battles are o’er;
But come, all the prayers of thy chosen to number,
Oh, welcome to Latium! Leave us no more!
Translation of H. W. P.
CLAUDIUS RUTILIUS NUMATIANUS
PROLOGUE TO THE ITINERARIUM'
EADER, marvelest thou at one who early departing,
R
Missed the unspeakable boon granted the children of Rome?
Know there is time no more to the dwellers in Rome the
beloved,
Early and late no more, under her infinite charm!
Happy beyond compute the sons of mortals appointed
Unto that marvelous prize, birth on the consecrate soil!
Who to the rich estate of the heirs of Roman patricians
Add thy illustrious fame-City without a peer!
Happiest these, but following close in the order of blessing.
They who have come from afar, seeking a Latian home.
Wide to their pilgrim feet the Senate opens its portal,—
"Come all ye who are fit! Come and be aliens no more! "
sit with the mighty and share in the honors of Empire.
Share in their worship too, kneeling where all do adore,
Thrill with the State's great life, as aye the State and its æther,
Unto the uttermost Pole, thrills with the being of Jove.
Translation of H. W. P.
ANICIUS SEVERINUS BOËTHIUS
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE World
From the Consolation of Philosophy'
FRAMER of the jeweled sphere,
Who, firm on thy eternal throne,
Dost urge the swift-revolving year
The stars compel thy laws to own;-
The stars that hide their lesser light
When Luna with her horns full-grown
O


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ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
12371
Reflects her brother's glories bright,
Paling-she too - when he draws nigh,
In his great fires extinguished quite;
As Hesper up the evening sky
Leads the cold planets, but to fling
Their wonted leash aside, and fly
At Phoebus's bright awakening;-
Thou who dost veil in vapors chill
The season of the leaf-dropping
-
With its brief days, rekindling still
The fires of summer, making fleet
The lessening nights;-all do thy will;
The year obeys thee on thy seat;
The leaves that Boreas bore amain
Return once more with Zephyr sweet;
Arcturus tills the unsown grain,
And Sirius burns the waving gold;
The task thy ancient laws ordain
All do, the allotted station hold.
Man's work alone dost thou despise,
Nor deign his weakness to enfold
In changeless law. Else wherefore flies
Sleek Fortune's wheel so madly round?
The good man bears the penalties
Of yon bold sinner, who is found
Enthroned, exultant, apt to grind
His blameless victim to the ground!
Virtue is fain in caverns blind
Her light to hide; and just men know
The scourgings meet for baser kind.
Mendacious Fraud reserves no blow
For men like these, nor Perjury;
But when they will their might to show,
Then conquer they, with ease and glee,
The kings unnumbered tribes obey.
O Judge unknown, we cry to thee!
To our sad planet, turn, we pray!
Are we we men the meanest side
Of all thy great creation? Nay!
Though but the drift of Fortune's tide
Compel her wasteful floods to pause!
And, ruling heaven, rule beside
O'er quiet lands, by steadfast laws.
-
Translation of L. P. D.


## p. 12372 (#422) ##########################################

12372
ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE
THE HYMN OF PHILOSOPHY
From the Consolation of Philosophy'
NDYING Soul of this material ball,
Heaven-and-Earth-Maker!
Thou who first didst call
Time into being, and by thy behest
Movest all things, thyself alone at rest,
No outward power impelled thee thus to mold
In shape the fluid atoms manifold,
Only the immortal image, born within
Of perfect beauty! Wherefore thou hast been
Thine own fair model, and the things of sense
The image bear of thy magnificence!
Parts perfect in themselves, by Thy control,
Are newly wrought into a perfect whole;
The yoked elements obey thy hand:
Frost works with fire, water with barren sand,
So the dense continents are fast maintained,
And heaven's ethereal fire to earth restrained.
Thou dost the life of threefold nature tame,
To serve the parts of one harmonious frame,—
That soul of things constrained eternally
To trace thy image on the starry sky,
The greater and the lesser deeps to round,
And on thyself return. Thou too hast found
For us, thy lesser creatures of a day,
Wherewith thou sowest earth,- forms of a clay
So kindly-fragile naught can stay our flight
Backward, unto the source of all our light!
Grant, Father, yet, the undethroned mind!
A way unto the fount of truth to find,
And, sought so long, the Vision of thy Face!
Lighten our flesh! Terrestrial vapors chase,
And shine in all thy splendor! For thou art
The final Rest of every faithful heart,
The First, the Last! of the expatriate soul
Lord, Leader, Pathway, and Eternal Goal!
UN
-
Translation of H. W. P.


## p. 12373 (#423) ##########################################

12373
PIERRE RONSARD
(1524-1585)
BY KATHARINE HILLARD
HERE is no more picturesque moment in the whole history of
France than that at which Pierre Ronsard was born. The
Gre
first quarter of the sixteenth century had just struck, and
Europe was waking to the new day of the Renaissance. Luther
had burned the Pope's bull at Wittenberg, and had introduced the
reformed worship there. Henry VIII. and Francis I. had met on the
Field of the Cloth of Gold; Michael Angelo
had finished his masterpieces in the Sistine
Chapel; Raphael, having painted the great-
est of all Madonnas, had been dead five
years; Titian was still holding the world
breathless with the triumphs of his brush;
Rabelais had just emerged from his mo-
nastic prison to begin life at the age of
forty; Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Earl of Sur-
rey, and their co-mates, were preparing the
way in England for the full choir of the
next half-century; and France, stimulated
on all sides by the advance of her neigh-
bors in literature and art, had set herself
to rival them. Since the appearance of the 'Roman de la Rose' in
1310, there had been little of note in French literature. The feeble
singers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose voices could
scarcely be heard through the constant din of war, made that poem
their great example; and it is hard to say whether the poverty of
their invention, or the religious allegory concealed beneath its senti-
mental platitudes, had had the greater power in preserving it so
long. Charles d'Orléans, François Villon, and Clément Marot, had
already sung the first chansons worthy of note since the 'Roman de
la Rose' began to reign; and the "gentil maistre Clément " was even
now sharing the captivity of his royal master at Pavia.
PIERRE RONSARD

Besides the usual causes that impede the production of great
poems, we must take into account the transitions and imperfect con-
dition of the French language at this time; the patronage of zealous


## p. 12374 (#424) ##########################################

PIERRE RONSARD
12374
but ignorant princes; and more than all, the fact that in the recent
revival of learning, studious minds grasped at everything. They
made no distinction between natural genius and acquired talents;
and believed the development of poetry to be as much a matter of
perseverance as the development of physics,- a thing to be worked.
at like a sum in arithmetic.
While, then, in France the learned were poring over classical dic-
tionaries, and occasionally giving evidence of progress by a neat copy
of Greek or Latin verses, the French language was suffering neglect.
Noble words and phrases used by the Troubadours had dropped out
altogether; the writers of each half-century had to be translated by
their successors before they could be understood. For the new music
there must be new strings to the lyre; and two young poets, Pierre
Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, undertook the audacious task of re-
constructing their native tongue.
Pierre Ronsard, to whose influence may be ascribed the 'Illustra-
tion de la Langue Française,' published by his friend Du Bellay, was
born on the 11th of September, 1524, at the Château de la Poissonière
(Vendômois). He was the fifth son of Louis Ronsard, maître d'hotel
to Francis I. His father, born of a noble Hungarian family, was
himself a scholar and a poet, who composed verses in both French
and Latin which received a tolerable amount of praise from his con-
temporaries. Till the age of nine, Pierre was brought up at home
under the direction of a tutor. When sent to the College of Navarre,
he was a bright and beautiful boy of ten; but the Regent there was
an uncommonly harsh master, under whose rule in six months the
child lost not only his color and his vivacity, but his taste for study.
His alarmed father gave up all thought of educating him for the law
or the church, and entered him in the service of the Duke of Orléans
as a page. Three years later, in 1537, when James V. of Scotland
returned to his own country with his first wife, Madeleine of France,
Ronsard went in their train to Edinburgh, where he spent two years;
and then, despite the King's efforts to detain him, returned to France
(spending six months in England on the way), and re-entered the
service of the Duke. His royal master sent his prodigy of a page
on all sorts of secret missions, -to Scotland, to Flanders, to Zealand,
to the Diet of Spires with Lazare de Baïf, to Piedmont with the
viceroy Du Bellay. He suffered many hardships, and even ship-
wreck; and finally a severe illness, which left him almost totally
deaf at the early age of sixteen. He lost his heart too about this
time (not so irremediable a loss, however, as his hearing), to a fair
bourgeoise of Blois, whom he chose to christen Cassandra.
She was
little more than a child; and he, though not seventeen, was already
an accomplished courtier, skilled in all manly exercises, and already


## p. 12375 (#425) ##########################################

PIERRE RONSARD
12375
a verse-maker. His deafness interfering with his chances at court,
he wished to devote himself to study. But his father, ambitious for
the future of his brilliant son, peremptorily forbade his apprentice-
ship to "le mestier des Muses. " During his travels, however, he had
learned to speak English, Italian, and German, while one of his com-
rades had taught him Latin.
When the elder Ronsard died, Pierre was left free to follow his
own inclinations. At eighteen, having already seen more of life than
most men, he retired with his friend Antoine de Baïf, then only six-
teen, to the College of Coqueret. Seven long years they passed in
this retreat, studying with the greatest ardor, and helping each other
along the thorny ways of learning.
At the college they were joined by Remi Belleau, afterwards an
enthusiastic disciple of Ronsard, and by Antoine Muret, his future
commentator. Here too came Joachim du Bellay, who eagerly em-
braced the literary theories of Ronsard, and published in 1549 the
result of their joint studies and speculations under the title of
'L'Illustration de la Langue Française. ' "Coloring their prejudices
as erudite scholars with all the illusions of youth and patriotism,"
says Sainte-Beuve in his admirable work on 'French Poetry in the
Sixteenth Century,' "they asserted that there was no such thing as
poetry in France, and promised themselves to create it all. " The
ideas of these youthful enthusiasts were set forth (in part) as follows:
"Languages are not like plants, strong or weak by chance: they depend
upon human volition. Consequently, if our language be more feeble than the
Greek or the Latin, it is the fault of our ancestors, who neglected to strengthen
and adorn it. Translations alone will never enrich a language. We need
to follow the example of the Romans, who imitated rather than translated the
best Greek authors, transforming them into their own likeness, devouring
their substance, and after digesting it thoroughly, converting it into nourish-
ment and blood. »
To this careful transportation of the classics, of Spanish and Ital-
ian, Ronsard added an audacious use of the words of his own tongue.
Where French failed him, he dressed up a Latin, Greek, or Italian
substitute. He advised what he called the provignement (literally
the layering of words, the term being taken from the gardener's
method of laying a shoot under ground to take root, without detach-
ing it from the parent stem); and from a recognized substantive, for
instance, would form a verb or an adjective to suit his need. More-
over, he borrowed right and left from every French patois he could
lay his hands upon; and in all the workshops of Paris he sought
among the artisans for words and phrases to give amplitude and
vigor to his verse. His genius melted down this heterogeneous mass
into a wonderfully mellifluous stream; and to us, in this polyglot age,
-


## p. 12376 (#426) ##########################################

12376
PIERRE RONSARD
his verse presents fewer difficulties than it did, perhaps, to his con-
temporaries.
-
In 1549, after seven years' study of "le mestier des Muses," Ron-
sard was persuaded to appear in print for the first time; and to
publish his Epithalamium on the marriage of Antoine de Bourbon
with Jeanne de Navarre. His first book of 'Odes' came out in 1550;
and two years later, 'Amours,' - a collection of sonnets addressed to
the fair Cassandra. Meantime he was publishing more odes, of which
a fifth book appeared in 1553, accompanied with music fitted to the
songs and sonnets, and a commentary by Muret. Then came a book
of 'Hymnes,' followed in two years by a second, and by the last of
the 'Amours. ' Finally, in 1560, he brought out the first edition of
his collected works.
Never were poems received with such tempests of applause. In
vain the jovial curé of Meudon made fun of his neighbor; not even
the mighty laughter of Rabelais could drown the praise of princes.
The Toulouse Academy of Floral Games christened Ronsard "the
prince of poets"; and although he had not entered their lists as a
competitor, they not only crowned him with their usual golden wreath
of eglantine, but sent him also a massive silver statue of Minerva.
Queen Elizabeth presented a diamond of great price; and Marie
Stuart sent him from her English prison a buffet surmounted by a
silver Pegasus, standing on the summit of Parnassus, bearing this
inscription: "To Ronsard, the Apollo of the fountain of the Muses. "
Montaigne immortalized him in a single line; Tasso was proud
to read to him the first cantos of his Gerusalemme; and his works
were publicly read and expounded in the French schools of Flanders,
Poland, England, and other countries. Saddest and sweetest tribute
of all, the poet Chastelard would have no other consolation upon the
scaffold than Ronsard's 'Hymn to Death. '
The people shared the admiration of princes, and women burned
incense before the popular idol. Many damsels besides Cassandra
are celebrated in his charming verses; either by their real names, or
by the finer Callirrhoës and Astræas of the fashion of the day. The
nebulous clouds of adoration that surrounded him finally encompassed
that famous constellation, the "Pléiade," wherein he was still the
central star. Around him at a respectful distance revolved Dorat,
his old master; Jamyn, his pupil; Du Bellay and De Baïf, his fellow-
students; Jodelle and De Thiard: but it was only Ronsard whom the
whole world delighted to honor.
At the command of Charles IX. he undertook an epic poem; and
about a fortnight after the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August
24th, 1572) appeared all that was ever written of the 'Franciade,’-
four cantos of the destined twenty-four. The delighted King loaded


## p. 12377 (#427) ##########################################

PIERRE RONSARD
12377
him with new honors; bestowing upon him, besides two priories, the
abbeys of Bellozane and Croix-Val.
To Croix-Val Ronsard retired upon the death of his royal patron
in 1574. Gouty and prematurely old, he led a studious and pious life;
amusing himself by editing another edition of his complete works,
which appeared in 1584. So captious had grown his fastidious taste,
that he altered the sonnets and lyrics of his youth with a most un-
sparing hand, often much to the loss of their spontaneity and vigor;
"not considering," says Colletet, in his quaint old French, "that
although he was the father of his works, yet doth it not appertain
to sad and captious age to sit in judgment upon the strokes of gal-
lant youth. "
A singer to the last, he died at his priory of St. Cosme, Tours, on
December 27th, 1585, at the age of 61; and was quietly buried in the
choir of the priory church. Two months after his death, however,
his dear friend Galland, who had closed the poet's eyes, celebrated
his obsequies at the chapel of the College of Boncour. Henri III. ,
then King, sent his own musicians to sing the mass; Duperron, after-
wards bishop of Evreux and cardinal, pronounced the funeral oration,
and drew tears from the eyes of all present. The chapel was crowded
with the princes of the blood, the cardinals, the Parliament, and the
University of Paris. The next day memorial orations and verses
were recited in all the colleges of Paris, and volumes might be made
of the commemorative elegies and epitaphs.
But only fifteen years after these panegyrics filled the air, arose
the star of Malherbe, severest of his critics because so close a rival.
It is related that Racan, coming in one day,-when Malherbe was ill,
let us hope,- took up a volume of Ronsard with many verses erased.
"Posterity will quote the others as admired by Malherbe," said
Racan; whereupon the irritated censor seized a pen and scratched
out all the rest.
The wheel of Fortune turned again. Malherbe was as completely
forgotten as Ronsard. Corneille, Racine, and classic drama ruled the
day. Again the wheel went round; and in 1828 the reign of the
Romantic School began. Guizot, Ampère, Prosper Mérimée, Phila-
rète Chasles, Théophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, led the
acclaim for Ronsard; and once more all France rang with his praises.
Sainte-Beuve wrote his Tableau Historique et Critique de la Poésie
Française au 16e. Siècle' (Critical and Historical View of French
Poetry in the Sixteenth Century), followed by a volume of selections
which set the new school wild. Early editions commanded fabulous
prices; and a copy of 1609 was presented to Victor Hugo as the fittest
tribute to "the successor of the greatest lyric poet of France. "
It is easier to account for the fame of Ronsard than for its sudden
waning. His service to French speech is enormous. As a poet, he


## p. 12378 (#428) ##########################################

12378
PIERRE RONSARD
worked much upon the same lines as did Rabelais in prose, allowing
for the humorous extravagance of the latter. Both borrowed from
all sources, and both developed the French vocabulary in every direc-
tion.
Nor were Ronsard's services to the art of versification less nota-
ble. To him belongs the honor of introducing the ode into French
poetry; that he also revived the epic is a doubtful matter for con-
gratulation. Sainte-Beuve claims as his invention a great variety
of new rhythms, and at least eight or ten new forms of strophes.
Indeed, France had to wait three hundred years for a worthy succes-
sor to him in the realm of lyric verse. Not until Victor Hugo took
up the fallen lyre do we find in French poetry any songs that for
exquisite melody, simplicity, and grace can rival his. He transplanted
some of the finest odes and sonnets of Anacreon, Theocritus, Horace,
Petrarch, and Bembo into his native tongue; but added to them such
fine and delicate touches of his own fancy that they seemed to bloom
anew as with engrafted flowers.
And he kept a kind and fatherly eye upon the younger poets
springing up around him. He taught them the value of careful work;
inspired them to write less and write better; and bade them remem-
ber that verses should be weighed, not counted, and that like dia-
monds, one fine gem was far more precious than a hundred mediocre
specimens.
Of all English poets Herrick most resembles Ronsard. But Her-
rick set out with the great advantage of finding his material ready to
his hand; for the noble English language was at the very acme of its
splendor. His mastery of rhythm is as great as Ronsard's, but his
poetic genius is of a lower order. Ronsard's imagination has a loftier
flight than Herrick's fancy; there is more dignity and depth in his
sweetness, a subtler pathos in his tenderness.
Both poets profess a like Epicurean philosophy: "Gather ye rose-
buds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying," sings Herrick; and Ron-
sard utters the same wisdom to Cassandra. This is the moral of many
a verse in both poets, it is true; but Ronsard's treatment of love is
more noble and dignified than that of the English singer. Although
touched occasionally by the worst taste of his time, Ronsard pre-
serves in nearly all his love poems a manliness and a delicacy that
enhance their richness. Perhaps the most celebrated of his verses
is the sonnet to Hélène de Surgères, maid of honor to Catherine de
Medici, a sonnet which Béranger has imitated and Thackeray para-
phrased:-
"When by the fire, grown old, with silvery hair,
You spin by candle-light with weary eyes,
Humming my songs you'll say, with still surprise,
'Ronsard once sang of me, when I was young and fair. '


## p. 12379 (#429) ##########################################

PIERRE RONSARD
12379
Then as your maidens hear the well-known sound,-
Though half asleep after the toils of day,-
Not one but wakes, and as she goes her way
Blesses your name, with praise immortal crowned.
I shall be dead and gone, a fleshless shade
Under Elysian bowers my head be laid;
While you, crouched o'er your fire, grown old and gray,
Sigh for my love, regret your past disdain.
Live now, nor wait for love to come again;
Gather the roses of your life to-day! "
Ronsard, like Chaucer, in spite of a courtier's training, had an
intense love of nature. The poet laureate of his age and country,
he was none the less an excellent gardener, well versed in all the
secrets of horticulture; and side by side with marriage odes to princes
and epistles to kings and queens, we find charming songs addressed
to the birds and insects and fountains of the country that he loved
even better than the court. And like Chaucer, again, he was capa-
ble of higher flights; and could comfort a dying poet with his 'Hymn
to Death,' or write verses full of a lofty stoicism,-like the stanzas
taken from one of the odes, which irresistibly suggest the "good
counsel" of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Katharine Hillard
SONNET
TO ANGELETTE
Η
ERE through this wood my saintly Angelette
Goes, making springtime blither with her song;
Here lost in smiling thought she strays along,
While on these flowers her little feet are set.
Here is the meadow and the gentle stream
That laughs in ripples by her hand caressed,
As loitering still, she gathers to her breast
The enameled flowers that o'er its wavelets dream.
Here, singing I behold her, there, in tears;
And here she smiles, and there my fancy hears
Her sweet discourse, with boundless blessings rife.
Here sits she down, and there I see her dance;
So with the shuttle of a vague romance,
Love weaves the warp and woof of all my life.
Translation of Katharine Hillard.


## p. 12380 (#430) ##########################################

12380
PIERRE RONSARD
HIS LADY'S TOMB
AⓇ
S IN the gardens, all through May, the rose,
Lovely and young and rich apparellèd,
Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red,
When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows;
Graces and Loves within her breast repose,
The woods are faint with the sweet odor shed,
Till rains and heavy suns have smitten dead
The languid flower, and the loose leaves unclose:
So this, the perfect beauty of our days,
When heaven and earth were vocal of her praise,
The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes:
And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb
Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom,
That, dead as living, Rose may be with roses.
Translation of Andrew Lang.
ROSES
SEND you here a wreath of blossoms blown,
And woven flowers at sunset gathered.
Another dawn had seen them ruined, and shed
Loose leaves upon the grass at random strown.
By this, their sure example, be it known
That all your beauties, now in perfect flower,
Shall fade as these, and wither in an hour,
Flower-like, and brief of days, as the flower sown.
Ah, time is flying, lady-time is flying;
Nay, 'tis not time that flies but we that go,
Who in short space shall be in churchyard lying,
And of our loving parley none shall know,
Nor any man consider what we were:
Be therefore kind, my love, whiles thou art fair.
Translation of Andrew Lang.
TO CASSANDRA
"D
ARLING! look if that blushing rose,
That but this morning did unclose
Her crimson vestments to the sun,
Hath not quite lost in evening's air


## p. 12381 (#431) ##########################################

PIERRE RONSARD
12381
The fine folds of that vestment rare,
And that bright tinting like your own.
"Alas! even in this little space,
Dearest, we see o'er all the place
Her scattered beauties strown!
O stepdame Nature! stern and hard,
That could not such a flower have spared
From morn till eve along!
"Then, darling, hear me while I sing!
Enjoy the verdure of your spring,
The sweets of youth's short hour;
Gather the blossoms while ye may,
For youth is gone like yesterday,
And beauty like that flower! "
SONG
TO MARIE
TH
HE spring hath not so many flowers;
The autumn, grapes within its bowers;
The summer, heats that make men pale;
The winter, stores of icy hail;
Nor fishes hath the boundless sea,
Nor harvests in fair Beau there be;
Nor Brittany, unnumbered sands,
Nor fountains have Auvergne's broad lands;
Nor hath so many stars the night,
Nor the wide woodland branches light,-
As hath my heart of heavy pains,
Born of my mistress's disdains.
WHY
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
―
A MADRIGAL
TO ASTREA
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
those engraven agates dost thou wear,
Rich rubies, and the flash of diamonds bright?
Thy beauty is enough to make thee fair,-
Beauty that love endows with its own light.


## p. 12382 (#432) ##########################################

12382
PIERRE RONSARD
Then hide that pearl, born of the Orient sea:
Thy grace alone should ornament thy hand;
Thy gems but serve to make us understand
They take their splendor and their worth from thee.
'Tis thy bright eyes that make thy diamonds shine,
And not the gems that make thee more divine.
Thou work'st thy miracles, my lady fair,
With or without thy jewels; all the same,
I own thy sovranty: now ice, now flame,—
As love and hatred drive me to despair,—
I die with rapture, or I writhe in shame,
Faint with my grief, or seem to tread on air.
NOT
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
GOOD COUNSEL
OT to rejoice too much at Fortune's smile
Nor at her frown despair,—
This makes man happy, and he lives meanwhile
Without or fear or care.
Like Time himself, borne by his sweeping wings,
All things else pass away;
And fifty sudden summers and sweet springs
Flit by us like a day.
Cities and forts and kingdoms perish all
Before Time's mighty breath;
And new ones spring to life, like them to fall,
And crumble into death.
Therefore let no man cherish the vain thought
Of an immortal name,
Seeing how Time itself doth come to naught,
And he shall fare the same.
Arm thyself then with proud philosophy
Against the blows of fate;
And with a soul courageous, firm, and free
The storms of life await.
Translation of Katharine Hillard.