The Twins my
trusting
course shall guide As o'er the fickle waves I glide,
Assisted by the winds and tide,
In my swift bark ;
And every storm I'll safely ride,
A scathless mark !
Assisted by the winds and tide,
In my swift bark ;
And every storm I'll safely ride,
A scathless mark !
Universal Anthology - v05
He published his charming poem "St.
Paul" in 1867, "Renewal of Youth and Other Poems " in 1882.
His " Essays Modern and Classical " came out in 1885; his "Science and a Future Life" in 1893.
He has been greatly interested in the speculations regarding spiritualism, and is one of the honorable secretaries of the Society of Psychical Research.
He is an inspector of schools, and resides in Cambridge.
]
No words that men can any more set side by side can ever affect the mind again like some of the great passages of Homer. For in them it seems as if all that makes life precious were in the act of being created at once and together — language itself, and the first emotions, and the inconceivable charm of song. When we hear one single sentence of Anticleia's answer, as she begins —
ov£ emeg' en megaroisin euskopos ioeheaira —
what words can express the sense which we receive of an effort less and absolute sublimity, the feeling of morning freshness and elemental power, the delight which is to all other intellec tual delights what youth is to all other joys ? And what a lan guage I which has written, as it were, of itself those last two words for the poet, which offers them as the fruit of its inmost structure and the bloom of its early day ! Beside speech like this Virgil's seems elaborate, and Dante's crabbed, and Shake speare's barbarous.
There never has been, there never will be, a language like the dead Greek. For Greek had all the merits of other tongues without their accompanying defects. It had the monumental weight and brevity of the Latin without its rigid unmanageability ; the copiousness and flexibility of the Ger man without its heavy commonness and guttural superfluity ; the pellucidity of the French without its jejuneness; the force and reality of the English without its structureless com minution. But it was an instrument beyond the control of any but its creators. When the great days of Greece were past, it was the language which made speeches and wrote
LATIN POETIC RHYTHMS. 337
books, and not the men. Its French brilliancy taught Isoc- rates to polish platitude into epigram ; its German profundity enabled Lycophron to pass off nonsense as oracles ; its Italian flow encouraged Apollonius Rhodius to shroud in long-drawn sweetness the languor of his inventive soul. There was noth ing except the language left. Like the golden brocade in a queen's sepulchre, its imperishable splendor was stretched stiffly across the skeleton of a life and thought which inhabited there no more.
The history of the Latin tongue was widely different. We do not meet it full-grown at the dawn of history; we see it take shape and strength beneath our eyes. We can watch, as it were, each stage in the forging of the thunderbolt ; from the day when Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, inweave their "three shafts of twisted storm,"1 till Lucretius adds "the sound and terror," and Catullus "the west wind and the fire. " It grows with the growth of the Roman people; it wins its words at the sword's point; and the "conquered nations in long array " pay tribute of their thought and speech as surely as of their blood and gold.
In the region of poetry this union of strenuous effort with eager receptivity is conspicuously seen. The barbarous Satur- nian lines, hovering between an accentual and a quantitative system, which were the only indigenous poetical product of Latium, rudely indicated the natural tendency of the Latin tongue towards a trochaic rhythm. Contact with Greece introduced Greek meters, and gradually established a definite quantitative system. Quantity and accent are equally con genial to the Latin language, and the trochaic and iambic meters of Greece bore transplantation with little injury. The adaptations of these rhythms by early Roman authors, how ever uncouth, are at least quite easy and unconstrained ; and so soon as the prestige of the Augustan era had passed away, we find both Pagans and Christians expressing in accentual iambic, and especially in accentual trochaic meters, the thoughts and feelings of the new age. Adam of S. Victor is metrically nearer to Livius Andronicus than to Virgil or Ovid ; and the Litany of the Arval Brethren finds its true succession, not in the Secular Ode of Horace, but in the Dies Irce or the Veni Creator.
* Tris imbris torti radios, tris nnbis aquosae
Addiderant, rutili tris ignis et alitis Austri. JSneid viii. 43ft
vol. v. — 22
338
LATIN POETIC RHYTHMS
For Latin poetry suffered a violent breach of continuity in the introduction from Greece of the hexameter and the elegiac couplet. The quantitative hexameter is in Latin a difficult and unnatural meter. Its prosodial structure excludes a very large proportion of Latin words from being employed at all. It narrowly limits the possible grammatical constructions, the modes of emphasis, the usages of curtailment, the forms of narration. On the other hand, when successfully managed, its advantages are great. All the strength and pregnancy of
Latin expression are brought out by the stately march of a meter perhaps the most compact and majestic which has ever been invented. The words take their place like the organs in a living structure — close packed, but delicately adjusted and mutually supporting. And the very sense of difficulty over come gives an additional charm to the sonorous beauty of the dactylic movement, its self-retarding pauses, its onward and overwhelming flow.
To the Greek the most elaborate poetical effects were as easy as the simplest. In his poetic, as in the glyptic art, he found all materials ready to his hand ; he had but to choose between the marble and the sardonyx, between the ivory and the gold. The Roman hewed his conceptions out of the granite rock ; oftenest its craggy forms were rudely piled together, yet dignified and strong ; but there were hands which could give it finish too, which could commit to the centuries a work splendid as well as imperishable, polished into the basalt's shimmer and fervent with the porphyry's glow. "
It must not, however, be supposed that even the uEneid has wholly overcome the difficulties inseparable from the Latin poetry of the classical age, that it is entirely free either from the frigidities of an imitation or from the constraints of a tour de force. In the first place, Virgil has not escaped the injury which has been done to subsequent poets by the example of the length and the subject-matter of Homer. An artificial dignity has been attached to poems in twelve or twenty-four books, and authors have been incited to tell needlessly long stories in order to take rank as epic poets. And because Homer is full of tales of personal combat — in his day an excit ing and all-important thing — later poets have thought it necessary to introduce a large element of this kind of descrip tion, which, so soon as it loses reality, becomes not only frigid but disgusting. It is as if the first novel had been written by
"
Virgil, Horace and Varius
From the painting by Jalabert in the Luxembourg
ODES OF HORACE. 339
a schoolboy of genius, and all succeeding novelists had felt bound to construct their plots mainly of matches at football. It is the later books of the " Mneid " that are most marred by this mistake. In the earlier books there are, no doubt, some ill- judged adaptations of Homeric incident, some labored reproduc tions of Homeric formulae, but for the most part the events are really noble and pathetic, — are such as possess permanent inter est for civilized men. The three last books, on the other hand, which have come down to us in a crude and unpruned condi tion, contain large tracts immediately imitated from Homer, and almost devoid of independent value.
Besides these defects in matter, the latter part of the poem illustrates the metrical dangers to which Latin hexameters suc cumbed almost as soon as Virgil was gone. The types on which they could be composed were limited in number and were be coming exhausted. Many of the lines in the later books are modeled upon lines in the earlier ones. Many passages show that peculiar form of bald artificiality into which this difficult meter so readily sinks ; nay, some of the tibicines, or stop-gaps, suggest a grotesque resemblance to the well-known style of the fourth-form boy. Other more ambitious passages give the painful impression of just missing the effect at which they aim.
ODES OF HORACE.
Translated by CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY.
[Quiirrus Horatius Flaccus, the most popular of Roman poets, was born b. o. 05 ; superbly educated ; at eighteen joined Brutus' army, and fought at Philippi ; had his estate confiscated, but through Virgil's intercession with Maecenas received it again, and gained Augustus' friendship as well as that of Maecenas, who presented him with the immortal " Sabine Farm. " He died b. c. 8. His odes are enduringly valued for their charm of style and genial Epicureanism of philosophy. ]
Book Ode To Thcdiarchus.
One dazzling mass of solid snow Soracte stands the bent woods fret Beneath their load and, sharpest-set
With frost, the streams have ceased to flow.
;
;
I. ,
9.
340
ODES OP HORACE.
Pile on great fagots and break up
The ice : let influence more benign Enter with four-years-treasured wine,
Fetched in the ponderous Sabine cup :
Leave to the gods all else. When they Have once bid rest the winds that war Over the passionate seas, no more
Gray ash and cypress rock and sway.
Ask not what future suns shall bring. Count to-day gain, whate'er it chance
To be : nor, young man, scorn the dance,
Nor deem sweet Love an idle thing,
Ere time thy April youth hath changed To sourness. Park and public walk Attract thee now, and whispered talk
At twilight meetings prearranged ;
Hear now the pretty laugh that tells In what dim corner lurks thy love ; And snatch a bracelet or a glove
From wrist or hand that scarce rebels.
Ode 11.
To LeuconOe.
Seek not, for thou shalt not find what my end, what thine shall be;
Ask not of Chaldaea's science what God wills, Leuconoe
Better far, what comes, to bear it. Haply many wintry blast Waits thee still and this, may be, Jove ordains to be thy last, Which flings now the flagging sea wave on the obstinate sandstone
reef.
Be thou wise fill up the wine cup shortening, since the time
brief,
Hopes that reach into the future. While speak, hath stolen away
Jealous Time.
Mistrust To-morrow, catch the blossom of To-day.
Book III. , Ode 1.
scorn and shun the rabble's noise. Abstain from idle talk. A thing
That ear hath not yet heard,
The Muses' priest, to maids and boys.
sing,
I
; I
I:
;
is
it
it,
a
:
ODES OF HORACE.
To Jove the flocks which great kings sway, To Jove great kings allegiance owe. Praise him : he laid the giants low :
All things that are, his nod obey.
This man may plant in broader lines
His fruit trees: that, the pride of race Enlists a candidate for place :
In worth, in fame, a third outshines
His mates ; or, thronged with clients, claims Precedence. Even-handed Fate
Hath but one law for small and great :
That ample urn holds all men's names.
He o'er whose doomed neck hangs the sword Unsheathed, the dainties of the South Shall lack their sweetness in his mouth :
No note of bird or harpsichord
Shall bring him Sleep. Yet Sleep is kind, Nor scorns the huts of laboring men ; The bank where shadows play, the glen
Of Tempe dancing in the wind.
He, who but asks " Enough," defies
Wild waves to rob him of his ease ;
He fears no rude shocks, when he sees
Arcturus set or Haedus rise :
When hailstones lash his vines, or fails His farm its promise, now of rains And now of stars that parch the plains
Complaining, or unkindly gales.
— In straitened seas the fish are pent ; For dams are sunk into the deep : Pile upon pile the builders heap,
And he, whom earth could not content,
The Master. Yet shall Fear and Hate
Climb where the Master climbs : nor e'er From the armed trireme parts black Care;
He sits behind, the horseman's mate.
And if red marble shall not ease
The heartache ; nor the shell that shines Star-bright ; nor all Falernum's vines,
All scents that charmed Achaemenes :
342
ODES OF HORACE.
Why should I rear me halls of rare
Design, on proud shafts mounting high ? Why bid my Sabine vale good-by
For doubled wealth and doubled care ?
Ode 2.
Friend ! with a poor man's straits to fight Let warfare teach thy stalwart boy : Let him the Parthian's front annoy
With lance in rest, a dreaded knight :
Live in the field, inure his eye
To danger. From the foeman's wall May the armed tyrant's dame, with all
Her damsels, gaze on him, and sigh,
" Dare not, in war unschooled, to rouse Yon Lion — whom to touch is death, To whom red Anger ever saith,
' Slay and slay on' — O prince, my spouse ! "
— Honored and blest the patriot dies. From death the recreant may not flee : Death shall not spare the faltering knee
And coward back of him that flies.
Valor — unbeat, unsullied still —
Shines with pure luster : all too great To seize or drop the sword of state,
Swayed by a people's veering will.
Valor — to souls too great for death
Heaven opening — treads the untrodden way: And this dull world, this damp cold clay,
On wings of scorn, abandoneth.
— Let too the sealed lip honored be. The babbler, who'd the secrets tell Of holy Ceres, shall not dwell
Where I dwell ; shall not launch with me
A shallop. Heaven full many a time Hath with the unclean slain the just : And halting-footed Vengeance must
O'ertake at last the steps of crime.
ODES OF HORACE.
Book III. , Ode 3.
The just man's single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will
Which is as rock ; not warrior winds
That keep the seas in wild unrest ;
Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled : The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.
Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed, The fiery bastions of the skies ;
Thus Pollux ; with them Caesar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.
Honored for this, by tigers drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before Untamed ; for this War's horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron.
To the pleased gods had Juno said In conclave: "Troy is in the dust; Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange woman prostrated.
" The day Laomedon ignored
His god-pledged word, resigned to me And Pallas ever pure, was she,
Her people, and their traitor lord.
" Now the Greek woman's guilty guest Dazzles no more : Priam's perjured sons Find not against the mighty ones
Of Greece a shield in Hector's breast :
"And, long drawn out by private jars,
The war sleeps. Lo ! my wrath is o'er : And him the Trojan vestal bore
(Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,
"To Mars restore I. His be rest
In halls of light : by him be drained The nectar bowl, his place obtained
In the calm companies of the blest.
ODES OF HORACE.
" While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves A length of ocean, where they will Rise empires for the exiles still :
While Paris's and Priam's graves
" Are trod by kine, and she-wolves breed Securely there, unharmed shall stand Rome's lustrous Capitol, her hand
Curb with proud laws the trampled Mede.
" Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne Her story ; where the central main Europe and Libya parts in twain,
Where full Nile laves a land of corn :
" The buried secret of the mine,
(Best left there) let her dare to spurn, Nor unto man's base uses turn
Profane hands laying on things divine.
a Earth's utmost end, where'er it be,
Let her hosts reach ; careering proud O'er lands where watery rain and cloud,
Or where wild suns hold revelry.
" But, to the warriors of Rome,
Tied by this law, such fates are willed ; That they seek never to rebuild,
Too fond, too bold, their grandsires' home.
" With darkest omens, deadliest strife, Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat
I the victor fleet Shall lead, Jove's sister and his wife.
Her history ;
" Thrice let Apollo rear the wall
Of brass ; and thrice my Greeks shall hew The fabric down : thrice matrons rue
In chains their sons', their husbands' fall. "
Ill my light lyre such notes beseem.
Stay, Muse ; nor, wayward still, rehearse Sayings of Gods in meager verse
That may but mar a mighty theme.
ODES OF HORACE.
Book III. , Ode 5.
Jove we call King, whose bolts rive heaven ; Then a god's presence shall be felt
In Caesar, with whose power the Celt
And Parthian stout in vain have striven.
Could Crassus' men wed alien wives, And greet, as sons-in-law, the foe ? In the foes' land (oh Romans, oh
Lost honor ! ) end, in shame, their lives,
'Neath the Mede's sway ? They, Marsians and Apulians — shields and rank and name Forgot, and that undying flame —
And Jove still reign, and Rome still stand ?
This thing wise Regulus could presage : He brooked not base conditions ; he Set not a precedent to be
The ruin of a coming age :
" No," cried he, " let the captives die, Spare not. I saw Rome's ensigns hung In Punic shrines ; with sabers, flung
Down by Rome's sons ere blood shed. I
" Saw our free citizens with hands
Fast pinioned ; and, through portals now Flung wide, our soldiers troop to plow,
As once they trooped to waste, the lands.
" ' Bought by our gold, our men will fight
But keener. ' What ? To shame would you Add loss ? As wool, its natural hue
Once gone, may not be painted white ;
" True Valor, from her seat once thrust, Is not replaced by meaner wares.
Do stags, delivered from the snares,
Fight ? Then shall he fight, who did trust
" His life to foes who spoke a lie :
And his sword shatter Carthage yet, Around whose arms the cords have met,
A sluggard soul, that feared to die !
ODES OF HORACE.
" Life, howe'er bought, he treasured : he — Deemed war a thing of trade. Ah fie ! Great art thou, Carthage —towerest high
O'er shamed and ruined Italy ! "
As one uncitizened — men said — He put his wife's pure kiss away. His little children ; and did lay
Stern in the dust his manly head :
Till those unequaled words had lent Strength to the faltering sires of Rome ; Then from his sorrow-stricken home
Went forth to glorious banishment.
Yet knew he, what wild tortures lay Before him : knowing, put aside
His kin, his countrymen —who tried
To bar his path, and bade him stay :
He might be hastening on his way, —
A lawyer freed from business — down To green Venafrum, or a town
Of Sparta, for a holiday. Epode 2.
Alphius.
Translated BY SIR THEODORE MARTIN.
Happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled, Who, living simply, like our sires of old,
Tills the few acres which his father tilled, Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold ;
The shrilling clarion ne'er his slumber mars, Nor quails he at the howl of angry seas ;
He shuns the forum, with its wordy jars,
Nor at a great man's door consents to freeze.
The tender vine-shoots, budding into life, He with the stately poplar tree doth wed,
Lopping the fruitless branches with his knife, And grafting shoots of promise in their stead
ODES OF HORACE.
Or in some valley, up among the hills,
Watches his wandering herds of lowing kine,
Or fragrant jars with liquid honey fills,
Or shears his silly sheep in sunny shine ;
Or when Autumnus o'er the smiling land Lifts up his head with rosy apples crowned,
Joyful he plucks the pears, which erst his hand Graffed on the stem they're weighing to the ground ;
Plucks grapes in noble clusters purple-dyed, A gift for thee, Priapus, and for thee,
Father Sylvanus, where thou dost preside, Warding his bounds beneath thy sacred tree.
Now he may stretch his careless limbs to rest, Where some old ilex spreads its sacred roof ;
Now in the sunshine lie, as likes him best, On grassy turf of close elastic woof.
And streams the while glide on with murmurs low, And birds are singing 'mong the thickets deep,
And fountains babble, sparkling as they flow, And with their noise invite to gentle sleep.
But when grim winter comes, and o'er his grounds Scatters its biting snows with angry roar,
He takes the field, and with a cry of hounds Hunts down into the toils the foaming boar ;
Or seeks the thrush, poor starveling, to ensnare, In filmy net with bait delusive stored,
Entraps the traveled crane, and timorous hare, Rare dainties these to glad his frugal board.
Who amid joys like these would not forget
The pangs which love to all its victims bears,
The fever of the brain, the ceaseless fret,
And all the heart's lamentings and despairs ?
But if a chaste and blooming wife, beside,
The cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills,
Like some stout Sabine, or the sunburnt bride Of the lithe peasant of the Apulian hills
ODES OF HORACE.
Who piles the hearth with logs well dried and old Against the coming of her wearied lord,
And, when at eve the cattle seek the fold,
Drains their full udders of the milky hoard ;
And bringing forth from her well-tended store A jar of wine, the vintage of the year,
Spreads an unpurchased feast, — oh then, not more Could choicest Lucrine oysters give me cheer,
Or the rich turbot, or the dainty char, If ever to our bays the winter's blast
Should drive them in its fury from afar ; Nor were to me a welcomer repast
The Afric hen or the Ionic snipe,
Than olives newly gathered from the tree,
That hangs abroad its clusters rich and ripe, Or sorrel, that doth love the pleasant lea,
Or mallows wholesome for the body's need, Or lamb foredoomed upon some festal day
In offering to the guardian gods to bleed,
Or kidling which the wolf hath marked for prey.
What joy, amidst such feasts, to see the sheep, Full of the pasture, hurrying homewards come ;
To see the wearied oxen, as they creep,
Dragging the upturned plowshare slowly home !
Or, ranged around the bright and blazing hearth, To see the hinds, a house's surest wealth,
Beguile the evening with their simple mirth, And all the cheerfulness of rosy health !
Thus spake the miser Alphius ; and, bent Upon a country life, called in amain
The money he at usury had lent ; —
But ere the month was out, 'twas lent again.
ODES OF HORACE.
Book III. , Ode 29.
To Mcecenas.
Tbamslatbd by TALLMADGE A. LAMBERT.
O thou, Maecenas, who canst trace Descent from 'Truria's royal race, My humble store I pray thee grace
Of unbroached wine,
And at my board resume the place
Forever thine !
Make no delay, but once again Forsake wet Tibur's moistened plain, And ^Esula, whose fields attain
The hill's steep side,
And Telegon, red with the stain
Of parricide.
Thy cloying wealth and honors proud, Thy palace rearing to the cloud,
And all the sycophantic crowd,
Leave for a time ;
Avoid the din, the smoky shroud
Of Home sublime.
The wealthy ofttimes welcome change ; And oft the farmer's humble grange, Where cleanliness and health arrange
The plain repast,
Restores the brow which cares derange
And overcast.
Bright Cepheus rises in the sky, And Procyon fiercely burns on high, While Leo's star, of lurid dye,
Portends the drouth,
And glowing Phœbus, drawing nigh,
Deserts the south.
The shepherd, now, and panting sheep Close to the thicket's shading keep, And in the cooling streamlet steep
Their languid limbs ;
The sluggish waters onward creep
Uncurled by winds.
ODES OF HORACE.
But thou, engaged in state affairs, And pressed by weight of civic cares, Must needs inquire what best appears
For thine own Rome,
How China, Bactria, Tanais fares,
The Parthian's home.
An all-wise Power conceals from sight Our after fortunes, dark or bright, And o'er them sets a rayless night
Of Stygian shade,
And laughs whenever mortal might
Would fain invade.
Enjoy to-day : as yonder stream Whose waters, smooth-revolving, seem To bear within their depths a gleam
Of Tuscan sea,
So life 'neath fortune's favoring beam
Flows happily.
But like those waters when they sweep, A swollen torrent, broad and deep,
And headlong every stay o'erleap
In mad career,
So life a turbid course will keep,
Impelled by care.
He nobly o'er himself holds sway, And truly lives, who thus can say,
As evening seals each well-spent day :
" I've lived my life !
The Father may arouse the sea
And winds to strife —
" But lo, he cannot render vain
What fleeting Time hath backward ta'en, Nor yet avoid nor change again
That which is past.
Thus, Memory's joys must e'en remain
Unto the last! "
Fair Fortune, pleasing but to grieve, Exciting hope but to deceive, Exulting when she may bereave
With keenest pain,
Neptune Calming the Waves From the Original Statue in the Louvre
ODES OF HORACE.
The transient honors I receive Will take again.
Ipraise her — with me —when Isee Her, fluttering, rise, about to flee ;
I give up all and tranquilly
Behold her go,
And seek undowered poverty
Whence virtues flow.
'Tis not for me, when Afric's blast Bends low the sailless, creaking mast. — 'Tis not for me, with eyes upcast,
To supplicate
That through the storm my ship hold fast
Its precious freight.
Not mine to strive, with bargaining vows, The heavenly deities to rouse,
Lest my rich Cyprian, Tyrian prows
Sink on the deep ;
For griefless poverty allows
Unbroken sleep.
The Twins my trusting course shall guide As o'er the fickle waves I glide,
Assisted by the winds and tide,
In my swift bark ;
And every storm I'll safely ride,
A scathless mark !
Book III. , Ode 28. Neptune and the Sea Goddesses.
How shall I honor Neptune best On his holiday ? Lyde mine,
Bring the hoarded Caecuban out with zest, Break Wisdom's guarded line.
You feel the noontide sun decline, Yet as if the fleet day stood still,
You leave the lingering cask of wine With Consul Bibulus' vintage sign,
Asleep in the cellar's chill.
We will sing by turns of the ocean sire
And the Nereids' tresses green;
HORACE ON CHARITABLE JUDGMENTS.
You first recite to the arching lyre Latona's love, and the arrows dire Of Cynthia, fleet-foot queen ; The carol done, of her be the tale
Whom Cnidus' charms can please, Who swan-borne visits her Paphian vale
And the sun-bright Cyclades ;
And the song of Night in a minor wail
Shall fitly follow these.
HORACE ON CHARITABLE JUDGMENTS. (From the " Satires," L 3. )
Translated by SIR THEODORE MARTIN.
True love, we know, is blind : defects that blight The loved one's charms escape the lover's sight,— Nay, pass for beauties ; as Balbinus shows
A passion for the wen on Agna's nose.
Oh, with our friendships that we did the same, And screened our blindness under virtue's name ! For we are bound to treat a friend's defect
With touch most tender, and a fond respect : Even as a father treats a child's, who hints
The urchin's eyes are roguish, if he squints :
Or if he be as stunted, short, and thick " As Sisyphus the dwarf, will call him "chick !
If crooked all ways, in back, in legs, and thighs, With softening phrases will the flaw disguise.
So, if one friend too close a fist betrays,
Let us ascribe it to his frugal ways ;
Or is another — such we often find —
To flippant jest and braggart talk inclined,
'Tis only from a kindly wish to try
To make the time 'mongst friends go lightly by ; Another's tongue is rough and overfree,
Let's call it bluntness and sincerity ;
Another's choleric — him we must screen,
As cursed with feelings for his peace too keen. This is the course, methinks, that makes a friend, And having made, secures him to the end.
POEMS OF OVID. 353
POEMS OF OVID.
[Publius Ovidiub Naso, the youngest of the great Augustan poets, was born B. C. 43, the year after Caesar's murder, and died a. d. 17, three years after Au gustus. He was of Sulmo in the Apennines, a landholder like Tibullus and Pro- pertius, and, unlike them, kept his estate. He settled at Rome and filled some minor offices, but led an easy, pleasure-seeking life. But he became involved, seemingly, in the dreadful family scandal which clouded Augustus' later years and ruined his political family plans ; his " Art of Love" was regarded as one of the influences which had made Roman society so rotten ; and he was banished to Tomi on the Danube, a barbarous village of Grecized Goths, where he lived the ten remaining years of his life. His "Metamorphoses" have been trans lated, adapted, and used as subjects, in every European language ; his " Fasti " poetized the Roman religious rites ; his Elegies ranked him as one of the great quartet (see Tibullus) ; his Epistles have been brilliantly and repeatedly trans lated. He wrote also " Remedia Amoris," a sort of apology for the " Ars Ama- toria"; a tragedy, "Medea"; the " Heroides," on the old myths ; and others. ]
Sappho to Phaon.
(From the " Epistles " : Pope's translation).
Sat, lovely youth, that doth my heart command, Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand ?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love ?
Ask not the cause that I new members choose, The lute neglected, and the Lyric Muse.
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow, And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.
I burn, I burn, as when through ripened corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne. Phaon to Etna's scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than Etna's fires I No more my soul a charm in music finds,
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds :
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please,
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move, Once the dear objects of my guilty love;
All other loves are lost in only thine,
Ah, youth ungrateful to a flame like mine !
Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise, Those heavenly looks, and dear deluding eyes ?
The harp and bow would you like Phoebus bear,
A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear;
you v. —23
POEMS OF OVID.
Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,
Not Bacchus' self with Phaon could compare :
Yet Phoebus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame,
One Daphne warmed, and one the Cretan dame ; Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,
Than e'en those gods contend in charms with thee. . . Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame
Inspired young Perseus with a generous flame ; Turtles and doves of different hues unite,
And glossy jet is paired with shining white.
If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign,
But such as merit, such as equal thine,
By none, alas ! by none thou canst be moved :
Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved !
Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ ;
Once in her arms you centered all your joy :
No time the dear remembrance can remove,
For, oh ! how vast a memory has love !
My music, then you could not ever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear.
You stopped with kisses my enchanting tongue,
And found my kisses sweeter than my song.
In all I pleased, but most in what was best ;
And the last joy was dearer than the rest.
Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired, You still enjoyed, and yet you still desired,
Till all dissolving in the trance we lay,
And in tumultuous raptures died away. . . .
O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy I
O useful time for lovers to employ !
Pride of thy age and glory of thy race,
Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace ! The vows you never will return, receive ;
And take at least the love you will not give.
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears !
The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Sure 'twas not much to bid one kind adieu ;
(At least to feign was never hard to you ! )
" Farewell, my Lesbian love," you might have said ; Or coldly thus, " Farewell, oh Lesbian maid ! "
No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover's gift your Sappho could confer,
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
POEMS OF OVID.
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
But this, " Be mindful of your loves, and live. "
Now by the Nine, those powers adored by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee,
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale I stood,
Grief chilled my breast, and stopped my freezing blood No sigh to rise, no tear had power to flow,
Fixed in a stupid lethargy of woe :
But when its way the impetuous passion found, I rend my tresses, and my breast I wound ;
I rave, then weep ;
I curse, and then complain ; Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again ; Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame
Whose firstborn infant feeds the funeral flame. . . . Stung with my love, and furious with despair,
All torn my garments, and my bosom bare,
My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim :
Such inconsistent things are love and shame ! 'Tis thou art all my care and my delight,
My daily longing, and my dream by night.
O night, more pleasing than the brightest day, When fancy gives what absence takes away, And dressed in all its visionary charms, Restores my fair deserter to my arms ! . . . But when with day, the sweet delusions fly, And all things wake to life and joy, but I ;
As if once more forsaken, I complain,
And close my eyes to dream of you again.
Laodamia to Protesilaus.
(Translated by Miss E. Garland. )
Ah ! Trojan women (happier far than we), Fain in your lot would I partaker be !
If ye must mourn o'er some dead hero's bier, And all the dangers of the war are near,
With you at least the fair and youthful bride May arm her husband, in becoming pride ;
Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow,
And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow : With fingers all unused the weapon brace,
And gaze with fondest love upon his face !
POEMS OF OVID.
How sweet to both this office she will make — How many a kiss receive — how many take! When all equipped she leads him from the door, Her fond commands how oft repeating o'er : —
" Return victorious, and thine arms enshrine — Return, beloved, to these arms of mine ! "
Nor shall these fond commands be all in vain, Her hero-husband will return again.
Amid the battle's din and clashing swords
He still will listen to her parting words ;
And, if more prudent, still, ah ! not less brave, One thought for her and for his home will save.
The Ring.
(Translated by A. A. Brodribb. )
Sign of my too presumptuous flame, To fairest Celia haste, nor linger,
And may she gladly breathe my name, And gayly put thee on her finger !
Suit her as I myself, that she
May fondle thee with murmured blessing;
Caressed by Celia ! Who could be Unenvious of such sweet caressing ?
Had I Medea's magic art,
Or Proteus' power of transformation,
Then would I blithely play thy part, The happiest trinket in creation !
Oh ! on her bosom I would fall,
Her finger guiding all too lightly ;
Or else be magically small, Fearing to be discarded nightly.
And I her ruby lips would kiss
(What mortal's fortune could be better ? )
As oft allowed to seal my bliss As she desires to seal a letter.
Now go, these are delusions bright Of idle Fancy's idlest scheming ;
Tell her to read the token right —
Tell her how sweet is true love's dreaming.
POEMS OF OVID.
Elegy on Tibullus.
(Translated by Professor J. P. Nichol. )
If bright Aurora mourned for Memnon's fate, Or the fair Thetis wept Achilles slain,
And the sad sorrows that on mortals wait Can ever move celestial hearts with pain —
Come, doleful Elegy ! too just a name ! Unbind thy tresses fair, in loose attire, For he, thy bard, the herald of thy fame,
Tibullus, burns upon the funeral pyre.
Ah, lifeless corse ! Lo ! Venus' boy draws near With upturned quiver and with shattered bow;
His torch extinguished, see him toward the bier With drooping wings disconsolately go.
He smites his heaving breast with cruel blow,
Those straggling locks, his neck all streaming round,
Receive the tears that fastly trickling flow, While sobs convulsive from his lips resound.
In guise like this, lulus, when of yore
His dear ^Eneas died, he sorrowing went ;
Now Venus wails as when the raging boar The tender thigh of her Adonis rent.
We bards are named the gods' peculiar care ; Nay, some declare that poets are divine ;
Yet forward death no holy thing can spare, 'Round all his dismal arms he dares entwine.
Did Orpheus' mother aid, or Linus' sire ? That one subdued fierce lions by his song
Availed not ; and, they say, with plaintive lyre
The god mourned Linus, woods and glades among.
Maeonides, from whose perennial lay
Flow the rich fonts of the Pierian wave
To wet the lips of bards, one dismal day
Sent down to Orcus and the gloomy grave —
Him, too, Avernus holds in drear employ ; Only his songs escape the greedy pile ;
POEMS OF OVID.
His work remains — the mighty wars of Troy, And the slow web, unwove by nightly guile.
Live a pure life ; —yet death remains thy doom : Be pious ; — ere from sacred shrines you rise,
Death drags you heedless to the hollow tomb ! Confide in song — lo ! there Tibullus lies.
Scarce of so great a soul, thus lowly laid, Enough remains to fill this little urn ; O holy bard ! were not the flames afraid
That hallowed corse thus ruthlessly to burn ?
These might devour the heavenly halls that shine With gold —they dare a villany so deep :
She turned who holds the Erycinian shrine,
And there are some who say she turned to weep.
Yet did the base soil of a stranger land
Not hold him nameless ; as the spirit fled
His mother closed his eyes with gentle hand, And paid the last sad tribute to the dead.
Here, with thy wretched mother's woe to wait, Thy sister came with loose dishevelled hair ;
Nemesis kisses thee, and thy earlier mate —
They watched the pyre when all had left it bare.
Departing, Delia faltered, " Thou wert true,
The Fates were cheerful then, when I was thine :
The other, " Say, what hast thou here to do ? " Dying, he clasped his failing hand in mine.
Ah, yet, if any part of us remains
But name and shadow, Albius is not dead ;
And thou, Catullus, in Elysian plains, With Calvus see the ivy crown his head.
Thou, Gallus, prodigal of life and blood, If false the charge of amity betrayed,
And aught remains across the Stygian flood, Shalt meet him yonder with thy happy shade.
Refined Tibullus ! thou art joined to those Living in calm communion with the blest ;
In peaceful urn thy quiet bones repose — May earth lie lightly where thy ashes rest !
THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA. 359
Acis and Galatea.
(From the " Metamorphoses " : Dryden's translation. )
Acis, the lovely youth, whose loss I mourn, From Faunus and the nymph Symethis born, Was both his parents' pleasure ; but to me Was all that love could make a lover be.
The gods our minds in mutual bands did join : I was his only joy, and he was mine.
Now sixteen summers the sweet youth had seen; And doubtful down began to shade his chin: When Polyphemus first disturbed our joy,
I loved the boy.
Ask not which passion in my soul was higher,
And loved me fiercely as
My last aversion, or my first desire :
Nor this the greater was, nor that the less ;
Both were alike, for both were in excess.
Thee, Venus, thee both heaven and earth obey ; Immense thy power, and boundless is thy sway. The Cyclops, who defied th' ethereal throne,
And thought no thunder louder than his own,
The terror of the woods, and wilder far
Than wolves in plains, or bears in forests are,
Th' inhuman host, who made his bloody feasts
On mangled members of his butchered guests,
Yet felt the force of love, and fierce desire,
And burned for me with unrelenting fire :
Forgot his caverns, and his woolly care,
Assumed the softness of a lover's air:
And combed, with teeth of rakes, his rugged hair. Now with a crooked scythe his beard he sleeks, And mows the stubborn stubble of his cheeks : Now in the crystal stream he looks, to try
His simagres, and rolls his glaring eye.
His cruelty and thirst of blood are lost,
And ships securely sail along the coast.
The prophet Telemus (arrived by chance Where ^Etna's summits to the seas advance, Who marked the tracks of every bird that flew, And sure presages from their flying drew) Foretold the Cyclops, that Ulysses' hand
In his broad eye should thrust a flaming brand. The giant, with a scornful grin, replied,
"Vain augur, thou hast falsely prophesied; Already Love his flaming brand has tossed ; Looking on two fair eyes, my sight I lost. "
360 THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA.
Thus, warned in vain, with stalking pace he strode, And stamped the margin of the briny flood
With heavy steps ; and, weary, sought again
The cool retirement of his gloomy den.
A promontory, sharpening by degrees,
Ends in a wedge, and overlooks the seas :
On either side, below, the water flows :
This airy walk the giant lover chose;
Here on the midst he sat; his flocks, unled, Their shepherd followed, and securely fed.
A pine so burly, and of length so vast,
That sailing ships required it for a mast,
He wielded for a staff, his steps to guide :
But laid it by, his whistle while he tried.
A hundred reeds, of a prodigious growth,
Scarce made a pipe proportioned to his mouth : Which when he gave it wind, the rocks around, And watery plains, the dreadful hiss resound.
I heard the ruffian shepherd rudely blow, Where, in a hollow cave, I sat below;
On Acis' bosom I my head reclined :
And"still preserve the poem in my mind.
0 lovely Galatea, whiter far
Than falling snows, and rising lilies are;
More flowery than the meads; as crystal bright: Erect as alders, and of equal height :
More wanton than a kid; more sleek thy skin
Than orient shells, that on the shores are seen :
Than apples fairer, when the boughs they lade; Pleasing as winter suns, or summer shade :
More grateful to the sight than goodly plains;
And softer to the touch than down of swans,
Or curds new turned; and sweeter to the taste
Than swelling grapes, that to the vintage haste :
More clear than ice, or running streams, that stray Through garden plots, but, ah ! more swift than they.
" Yet, Galatea, harder to be broke
Than bullocks, unreclaimed to bear the yoke : And far more stubborn than the knotted oak : Like sliding streams, impossible to hold;
Like them fallacious; like their fountains, cold: More warping than the willow, to decline
My warm embrace; more brittle than the vine; Immovable, and fixed in thy disdain;
Rough as these rocks, and of a harder grain :
THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA. 361
More violent than is the rising flood ;
And the praised peacock is not half so proud : Fierce as the fire, and sharp as thistles are ; And more outrageous than a mother bear : Deaf as the billows to the vows I make ;
And more revengeful than a trodden snake : In swiftness fleeter than the flying hind,
Or driven tempests, or the driving wind.
All other faults with patience I can bear;
But swiftness is the vice I only fear.
" Yet, if you knew me well, you would not shun My love, but to my wished embraces run :
Would languish in your turn, and court my stay; And" much repent of your unwise delay.
My palace, in the living rock, is made
By nature's hand; a spacious pleasing shade; Which neither heat can pierce, nor cold invade. My garden filled with fruits you may behold, And grapes in clusters, imitating gold;
Some blushing bunches of a purple hue :
And these, and those, are all reserved for you. Red strawberries in shades expecting stand Proud to be gathered by so white a hand; Autumnal cornels latter fruit provide,
And plums, to tempt you, turn their glossy side : Not those of common kinds ; but such alone,
As in Phaeacian orchards might have grown :
Nor chestnuts shall be wanting to your food,
Nor garden fruits, nor wildings of the wood ;
The laden boughs for you alone shall bear;
And yours shall be the product of the year.
"The flocks, you see, are all my own; beside The rest that woods and winding valleys hide ; And those that folded in the caves abide.
Ask not the numbers of my growing store ;
Who knows how many, knows he has no more. Nor will I praise my cattle; trust not me,
But judge yourself, and pass your own decree : Behold their swelling dugs; the sweepy weight Of ewes, that sink beneath the milky freight;
In the warm folds their tender lambkins lie ; Apart from kids, that call with human cry.
New milk in nut-brown bowls is duly served
For daily drink; the rest for cheese reserved. Nor are these household dainties all my store :
362 THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA.
The fields and forests will afford us more ;
The deer, the hare, the goat, the savage boar : All sorts of venison; and of birds the best;
A pair of turtles taken from the nest.
I walked the mountains, and two cubs I found, Whose dam had left 'em on the naked ground; So like, that no distinction could be seen;
So pretty, they were presents for a queen;
And so they shall; I took them both away; And"keep, to be companions of your play.
Oh raise, fair nymph, your beauteous face above The waves; nor scorn my presents, and my love. Come, Galatea, come, and view my face;
I late beheld it in the watery glass,
And found it lovelier than I feared it was.
Survey my towering stature, and my size;
Not Jove, the Jove you dream, that rules the skies, Bears such a bulk, or is so largely spread:
My locks (the plenteous harvest of my head)
Hang o'er my manly face; and dangling down,
As with a shady grove, my shoulders crown.
Nor think, because my limbs and body bear
A thick-set underwood of bristling hair,
My shape deformed : what fouler sight can be
Than the bald branches of a leafless tree?
Foul is the steed without a flowing mane,
And birds, without their feathers, and their train. Wool decks the sheep; and man receives a grace From bushy limbs, and from a bearded face.
My forehead with a single eye is filled,
Round as a ball, and ample as a shield.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun,
Is nature's eye ; and she's content with one.
Add, that my father sways your seas, and I,
Like you, am of the watery family.
I make you his, in making you my own ;
You I adore, and kneel to you alone :
Jove, with his fabled thunder, I despise,
And only fear the lightning of your eyes.
Frown not, fair nymph ; yet I could bear to be Disdained, if others were disdained with me.
But to repulse the Cyclops, and prefer
The love of Acis, heavens !
But let the stripling please himself; nay more, Please you, though that's the thing I most abhor;
Icannot bear.
THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA. 363
The boy shall find, if e'er we cope in fight,
These giant limbs endued with giant might.
His living bowels from his belly torn,
And scattered limbs, shall on the flood be borne, Thy flood, ungrateful nymph; and fate shall find That way for thee and Acis to be joined,
I burn with love, and thy disdain Augments at once my passion and my pain. Translated Mtna, flames within my heart, And thou, inhuman, wilt not ease my smart. "
For, oh!
Lamenting thus in vain, he rose, and strode With furious paces to the neighboring wood : Restless his feet, distracted was his walk;
Mad were his motions, and confused his talk. Mad as the vanquished bull, when forced to yield His lovely mistress, and forsake the field.
Thus far unseen I saw : when, fatal chance His looks directing, with a sudden glance,
Acis and I were to his sight betrayed;
Where, naught suspecting, we securely played. From his wide mouth a bellowing cry he cast;
I
A roar so loud made . SCtna to rebound;
And all the Cyclops labored in the sound.
Affrighted with his monstrous voice, I fled,
And in the neighboring ocean plunged my head. Poor Acis turned his back, and, "Help," he said, "Help, Galatea! help, my parent gods, "
And take me dying to your deep abodes !
The Cyclops followed; but he sent before
A rib, which from the living rock he tore :
Though but an angle reached him of the stone,
The mighty fragment was enough alone
To crush all Acis; 'twas too late to save,
But what the Fates allowed to give, I gave :
That Acis to his lineage should return,
And roll, among the river gods, his urn.
Straight issued from the stone a stream of blood; Which lost the purple, mingling with the flood. Then like a troubled torrent it appeared;
The torrent too, in little space, was cleared.
The stone was cleft, and through the yawning chink New reeds arose, on the new river's brink.
No words that men can any more set side by side can ever affect the mind again like some of the great passages of Homer. For in them it seems as if all that makes life precious were in the act of being created at once and together — language itself, and the first emotions, and the inconceivable charm of song. When we hear one single sentence of Anticleia's answer, as she begins —
ov£ emeg' en megaroisin euskopos ioeheaira —
what words can express the sense which we receive of an effort less and absolute sublimity, the feeling of morning freshness and elemental power, the delight which is to all other intellec tual delights what youth is to all other joys ? And what a lan guage I which has written, as it were, of itself those last two words for the poet, which offers them as the fruit of its inmost structure and the bloom of its early day ! Beside speech like this Virgil's seems elaborate, and Dante's crabbed, and Shake speare's barbarous.
There never has been, there never will be, a language like the dead Greek. For Greek had all the merits of other tongues without their accompanying defects. It had the monumental weight and brevity of the Latin without its rigid unmanageability ; the copiousness and flexibility of the Ger man without its heavy commonness and guttural superfluity ; the pellucidity of the French without its jejuneness; the force and reality of the English without its structureless com minution. But it was an instrument beyond the control of any but its creators. When the great days of Greece were past, it was the language which made speeches and wrote
LATIN POETIC RHYTHMS. 337
books, and not the men. Its French brilliancy taught Isoc- rates to polish platitude into epigram ; its German profundity enabled Lycophron to pass off nonsense as oracles ; its Italian flow encouraged Apollonius Rhodius to shroud in long-drawn sweetness the languor of his inventive soul. There was noth ing except the language left. Like the golden brocade in a queen's sepulchre, its imperishable splendor was stretched stiffly across the skeleton of a life and thought which inhabited there no more.
The history of the Latin tongue was widely different. We do not meet it full-grown at the dawn of history; we see it take shape and strength beneath our eyes. We can watch, as it were, each stage in the forging of the thunderbolt ; from the day when Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, inweave their "three shafts of twisted storm,"1 till Lucretius adds "the sound and terror," and Catullus "the west wind and the fire. " It grows with the growth of the Roman people; it wins its words at the sword's point; and the "conquered nations in long array " pay tribute of their thought and speech as surely as of their blood and gold.
In the region of poetry this union of strenuous effort with eager receptivity is conspicuously seen. The barbarous Satur- nian lines, hovering between an accentual and a quantitative system, which were the only indigenous poetical product of Latium, rudely indicated the natural tendency of the Latin tongue towards a trochaic rhythm. Contact with Greece introduced Greek meters, and gradually established a definite quantitative system. Quantity and accent are equally con genial to the Latin language, and the trochaic and iambic meters of Greece bore transplantation with little injury. The adaptations of these rhythms by early Roman authors, how ever uncouth, are at least quite easy and unconstrained ; and so soon as the prestige of the Augustan era had passed away, we find both Pagans and Christians expressing in accentual iambic, and especially in accentual trochaic meters, the thoughts and feelings of the new age. Adam of S. Victor is metrically nearer to Livius Andronicus than to Virgil or Ovid ; and the Litany of the Arval Brethren finds its true succession, not in the Secular Ode of Horace, but in the Dies Irce or the Veni Creator.
* Tris imbris torti radios, tris nnbis aquosae
Addiderant, rutili tris ignis et alitis Austri. JSneid viii. 43ft
vol. v. — 22
338
LATIN POETIC RHYTHMS
For Latin poetry suffered a violent breach of continuity in the introduction from Greece of the hexameter and the elegiac couplet. The quantitative hexameter is in Latin a difficult and unnatural meter. Its prosodial structure excludes a very large proportion of Latin words from being employed at all. It narrowly limits the possible grammatical constructions, the modes of emphasis, the usages of curtailment, the forms of narration. On the other hand, when successfully managed, its advantages are great. All the strength and pregnancy of
Latin expression are brought out by the stately march of a meter perhaps the most compact and majestic which has ever been invented. The words take their place like the organs in a living structure — close packed, but delicately adjusted and mutually supporting. And the very sense of difficulty over come gives an additional charm to the sonorous beauty of the dactylic movement, its self-retarding pauses, its onward and overwhelming flow.
To the Greek the most elaborate poetical effects were as easy as the simplest. In his poetic, as in the glyptic art, he found all materials ready to his hand ; he had but to choose between the marble and the sardonyx, between the ivory and the gold. The Roman hewed his conceptions out of the granite rock ; oftenest its craggy forms were rudely piled together, yet dignified and strong ; but there were hands which could give it finish too, which could commit to the centuries a work splendid as well as imperishable, polished into the basalt's shimmer and fervent with the porphyry's glow. "
It must not, however, be supposed that even the uEneid has wholly overcome the difficulties inseparable from the Latin poetry of the classical age, that it is entirely free either from the frigidities of an imitation or from the constraints of a tour de force. In the first place, Virgil has not escaped the injury which has been done to subsequent poets by the example of the length and the subject-matter of Homer. An artificial dignity has been attached to poems in twelve or twenty-four books, and authors have been incited to tell needlessly long stories in order to take rank as epic poets. And because Homer is full of tales of personal combat — in his day an excit ing and all-important thing — later poets have thought it necessary to introduce a large element of this kind of descrip tion, which, so soon as it loses reality, becomes not only frigid but disgusting. It is as if the first novel had been written by
"
Virgil, Horace and Varius
From the painting by Jalabert in the Luxembourg
ODES OF HORACE. 339
a schoolboy of genius, and all succeeding novelists had felt bound to construct their plots mainly of matches at football. It is the later books of the " Mneid " that are most marred by this mistake. In the earlier books there are, no doubt, some ill- judged adaptations of Homeric incident, some labored reproduc tions of Homeric formulae, but for the most part the events are really noble and pathetic, — are such as possess permanent inter est for civilized men. The three last books, on the other hand, which have come down to us in a crude and unpruned condi tion, contain large tracts immediately imitated from Homer, and almost devoid of independent value.
Besides these defects in matter, the latter part of the poem illustrates the metrical dangers to which Latin hexameters suc cumbed almost as soon as Virgil was gone. The types on which they could be composed were limited in number and were be coming exhausted. Many of the lines in the later books are modeled upon lines in the earlier ones. Many passages show that peculiar form of bald artificiality into which this difficult meter so readily sinks ; nay, some of the tibicines, or stop-gaps, suggest a grotesque resemblance to the well-known style of the fourth-form boy. Other more ambitious passages give the painful impression of just missing the effect at which they aim.
ODES OF HORACE.
Translated by CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY.
[Quiirrus Horatius Flaccus, the most popular of Roman poets, was born b. o. 05 ; superbly educated ; at eighteen joined Brutus' army, and fought at Philippi ; had his estate confiscated, but through Virgil's intercession with Maecenas received it again, and gained Augustus' friendship as well as that of Maecenas, who presented him with the immortal " Sabine Farm. " He died b. c. 8. His odes are enduringly valued for their charm of style and genial Epicureanism of philosophy. ]
Book Ode To Thcdiarchus.
One dazzling mass of solid snow Soracte stands the bent woods fret Beneath their load and, sharpest-set
With frost, the streams have ceased to flow.
;
;
I. ,
9.
340
ODES OP HORACE.
Pile on great fagots and break up
The ice : let influence more benign Enter with four-years-treasured wine,
Fetched in the ponderous Sabine cup :
Leave to the gods all else. When they Have once bid rest the winds that war Over the passionate seas, no more
Gray ash and cypress rock and sway.
Ask not what future suns shall bring. Count to-day gain, whate'er it chance
To be : nor, young man, scorn the dance,
Nor deem sweet Love an idle thing,
Ere time thy April youth hath changed To sourness. Park and public walk Attract thee now, and whispered talk
At twilight meetings prearranged ;
Hear now the pretty laugh that tells In what dim corner lurks thy love ; And snatch a bracelet or a glove
From wrist or hand that scarce rebels.
Ode 11.
To LeuconOe.
Seek not, for thou shalt not find what my end, what thine shall be;
Ask not of Chaldaea's science what God wills, Leuconoe
Better far, what comes, to bear it. Haply many wintry blast Waits thee still and this, may be, Jove ordains to be thy last, Which flings now the flagging sea wave on the obstinate sandstone
reef.
Be thou wise fill up the wine cup shortening, since the time
brief,
Hopes that reach into the future. While speak, hath stolen away
Jealous Time.
Mistrust To-morrow, catch the blossom of To-day.
Book III. , Ode 1.
scorn and shun the rabble's noise. Abstain from idle talk. A thing
That ear hath not yet heard,
The Muses' priest, to maids and boys.
sing,
I
; I
I:
;
is
it
it,
a
:
ODES OF HORACE.
To Jove the flocks which great kings sway, To Jove great kings allegiance owe. Praise him : he laid the giants low :
All things that are, his nod obey.
This man may plant in broader lines
His fruit trees: that, the pride of race Enlists a candidate for place :
In worth, in fame, a third outshines
His mates ; or, thronged with clients, claims Precedence. Even-handed Fate
Hath but one law for small and great :
That ample urn holds all men's names.
He o'er whose doomed neck hangs the sword Unsheathed, the dainties of the South Shall lack their sweetness in his mouth :
No note of bird or harpsichord
Shall bring him Sleep. Yet Sleep is kind, Nor scorns the huts of laboring men ; The bank where shadows play, the glen
Of Tempe dancing in the wind.
He, who but asks " Enough," defies
Wild waves to rob him of his ease ;
He fears no rude shocks, when he sees
Arcturus set or Haedus rise :
When hailstones lash his vines, or fails His farm its promise, now of rains And now of stars that parch the plains
Complaining, or unkindly gales.
— In straitened seas the fish are pent ; For dams are sunk into the deep : Pile upon pile the builders heap,
And he, whom earth could not content,
The Master. Yet shall Fear and Hate
Climb where the Master climbs : nor e'er From the armed trireme parts black Care;
He sits behind, the horseman's mate.
And if red marble shall not ease
The heartache ; nor the shell that shines Star-bright ; nor all Falernum's vines,
All scents that charmed Achaemenes :
342
ODES OF HORACE.
Why should I rear me halls of rare
Design, on proud shafts mounting high ? Why bid my Sabine vale good-by
For doubled wealth and doubled care ?
Ode 2.
Friend ! with a poor man's straits to fight Let warfare teach thy stalwart boy : Let him the Parthian's front annoy
With lance in rest, a dreaded knight :
Live in the field, inure his eye
To danger. From the foeman's wall May the armed tyrant's dame, with all
Her damsels, gaze on him, and sigh,
" Dare not, in war unschooled, to rouse Yon Lion — whom to touch is death, To whom red Anger ever saith,
' Slay and slay on' — O prince, my spouse ! "
— Honored and blest the patriot dies. From death the recreant may not flee : Death shall not spare the faltering knee
And coward back of him that flies.
Valor — unbeat, unsullied still —
Shines with pure luster : all too great To seize or drop the sword of state,
Swayed by a people's veering will.
Valor — to souls too great for death
Heaven opening — treads the untrodden way: And this dull world, this damp cold clay,
On wings of scorn, abandoneth.
— Let too the sealed lip honored be. The babbler, who'd the secrets tell Of holy Ceres, shall not dwell
Where I dwell ; shall not launch with me
A shallop. Heaven full many a time Hath with the unclean slain the just : And halting-footed Vengeance must
O'ertake at last the steps of crime.
ODES OF HORACE.
Book III. , Ode 3.
The just man's single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will
Which is as rock ; not warrior winds
That keep the seas in wild unrest ;
Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled : The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.
Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed, The fiery bastions of the skies ;
Thus Pollux ; with them Caesar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.
Honored for this, by tigers drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before Untamed ; for this War's horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron.
To the pleased gods had Juno said In conclave: "Troy is in the dust; Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange woman prostrated.
" The day Laomedon ignored
His god-pledged word, resigned to me And Pallas ever pure, was she,
Her people, and their traitor lord.
" Now the Greek woman's guilty guest Dazzles no more : Priam's perjured sons Find not against the mighty ones
Of Greece a shield in Hector's breast :
"And, long drawn out by private jars,
The war sleeps. Lo ! my wrath is o'er : And him the Trojan vestal bore
(Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,
"To Mars restore I. His be rest
In halls of light : by him be drained The nectar bowl, his place obtained
In the calm companies of the blest.
ODES OF HORACE.
" While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves A length of ocean, where they will Rise empires for the exiles still :
While Paris's and Priam's graves
" Are trod by kine, and she-wolves breed Securely there, unharmed shall stand Rome's lustrous Capitol, her hand
Curb with proud laws the trampled Mede.
" Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne Her story ; where the central main Europe and Libya parts in twain,
Where full Nile laves a land of corn :
" The buried secret of the mine,
(Best left there) let her dare to spurn, Nor unto man's base uses turn
Profane hands laying on things divine.
a Earth's utmost end, where'er it be,
Let her hosts reach ; careering proud O'er lands where watery rain and cloud,
Or where wild suns hold revelry.
" But, to the warriors of Rome,
Tied by this law, such fates are willed ; That they seek never to rebuild,
Too fond, too bold, their grandsires' home.
" With darkest omens, deadliest strife, Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat
I the victor fleet Shall lead, Jove's sister and his wife.
Her history ;
" Thrice let Apollo rear the wall
Of brass ; and thrice my Greeks shall hew The fabric down : thrice matrons rue
In chains their sons', their husbands' fall. "
Ill my light lyre such notes beseem.
Stay, Muse ; nor, wayward still, rehearse Sayings of Gods in meager verse
That may but mar a mighty theme.
ODES OF HORACE.
Book III. , Ode 5.
Jove we call King, whose bolts rive heaven ; Then a god's presence shall be felt
In Caesar, with whose power the Celt
And Parthian stout in vain have striven.
Could Crassus' men wed alien wives, And greet, as sons-in-law, the foe ? In the foes' land (oh Romans, oh
Lost honor ! ) end, in shame, their lives,
'Neath the Mede's sway ? They, Marsians and Apulians — shields and rank and name Forgot, and that undying flame —
And Jove still reign, and Rome still stand ?
This thing wise Regulus could presage : He brooked not base conditions ; he Set not a precedent to be
The ruin of a coming age :
" No," cried he, " let the captives die, Spare not. I saw Rome's ensigns hung In Punic shrines ; with sabers, flung
Down by Rome's sons ere blood shed. I
" Saw our free citizens with hands
Fast pinioned ; and, through portals now Flung wide, our soldiers troop to plow,
As once they trooped to waste, the lands.
" ' Bought by our gold, our men will fight
But keener. ' What ? To shame would you Add loss ? As wool, its natural hue
Once gone, may not be painted white ;
" True Valor, from her seat once thrust, Is not replaced by meaner wares.
Do stags, delivered from the snares,
Fight ? Then shall he fight, who did trust
" His life to foes who spoke a lie :
And his sword shatter Carthage yet, Around whose arms the cords have met,
A sluggard soul, that feared to die !
ODES OF HORACE.
" Life, howe'er bought, he treasured : he — Deemed war a thing of trade. Ah fie ! Great art thou, Carthage —towerest high
O'er shamed and ruined Italy ! "
As one uncitizened — men said — He put his wife's pure kiss away. His little children ; and did lay
Stern in the dust his manly head :
Till those unequaled words had lent Strength to the faltering sires of Rome ; Then from his sorrow-stricken home
Went forth to glorious banishment.
Yet knew he, what wild tortures lay Before him : knowing, put aside
His kin, his countrymen —who tried
To bar his path, and bade him stay :
He might be hastening on his way, —
A lawyer freed from business — down To green Venafrum, or a town
Of Sparta, for a holiday. Epode 2.
Alphius.
Translated BY SIR THEODORE MARTIN.
Happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled, Who, living simply, like our sires of old,
Tills the few acres which his father tilled, Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold ;
The shrilling clarion ne'er his slumber mars, Nor quails he at the howl of angry seas ;
He shuns the forum, with its wordy jars,
Nor at a great man's door consents to freeze.
The tender vine-shoots, budding into life, He with the stately poplar tree doth wed,
Lopping the fruitless branches with his knife, And grafting shoots of promise in their stead
ODES OF HORACE.
Or in some valley, up among the hills,
Watches his wandering herds of lowing kine,
Or fragrant jars with liquid honey fills,
Or shears his silly sheep in sunny shine ;
Or when Autumnus o'er the smiling land Lifts up his head with rosy apples crowned,
Joyful he plucks the pears, which erst his hand Graffed on the stem they're weighing to the ground ;
Plucks grapes in noble clusters purple-dyed, A gift for thee, Priapus, and for thee,
Father Sylvanus, where thou dost preside, Warding his bounds beneath thy sacred tree.
Now he may stretch his careless limbs to rest, Where some old ilex spreads its sacred roof ;
Now in the sunshine lie, as likes him best, On grassy turf of close elastic woof.
And streams the while glide on with murmurs low, And birds are singing 'mong the thickets deep,
And fountains babble, sparkling as they flow, And with their noise invite to gentle sleep.
But when grim winter comes, and o'er his grounds Scatters its biting snows with angry roar,
He takes the field, and with a cry of hounds Hunts down into the toils the foaming boar ;
Or seeks the thrush, poor starveling, to ensnare, In filmy net with bait delusive stored,
Entraps the traveled crane, and timorous hare, Rare dainties these to glad his frugal board.
Who amid joys like these would not forget
The pangs which love to all its victims bears,
The fever of the brain, the ceaseless fret,
And all the heart's lamentings and despairs ?
But if a chaste and blooming wife, beside,
The cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills,
Like some stout Sabine, or the sunburnt bride Of the lithe peasant of the Apulian hills
ODES OF HORACE.
Who piles the hearth with logs well dried and old Against the coming of her wearied lord,
And, when at eve the cattle seek the fold,
Drains their full udders of the milky hoard ;
And bringing forth from her well-tended store A jar of wine, the vintage of the year,
Spreads an unpurchased feast, — oh then, not more Could choicest Lucrine oysters give me cheer,
Or the rich turbot, or the dainty char, If ever to our bays the winter's blast
Should drive them in its fury from afar ; Nor were to me a welcomer repast
The Afric hen or the Ionic snipe,
Than olives newly gathered from the tree,
That hangs abroad its clusters rich and ripe, Or sorrel, that doth love the pleasant lea,
Or mallows wholesome for the body's need, Or lamb foredoomed upon some festal day
In offering to the guardian gods to bleed,
Or kidling which the wolf hath marked for prey.
What joy, amidst such feasts, to see the sheep, Full of the pasture, hurrying homewards come ;
To see the wearied oxen, as they creep,
Dragging the upturned plowshare slowly home !
Or, ranged around the bright and blazing hearth, To see the hinds, a house's surest wealth,
Beguile the evening with their simple mirth, And all the cheerfulness of rosy health !
Thus spake the miser Alphius ; and, bent Upon a country life, called in amain
The money he at usury had lent ; —
But ere the month was out, 'twas lent again.
ODES OF HORACE.
Book III. , Ode 29.
To Mcecenas.
Tbamslatbd by TALLMADGE A. LAMBERT.
O thou, Maecenas, who canst trace Descent from 'Truria's royal race, My humble store I pray thee grace
Of unbroached wine,
And at my board resume the place
Forever thine !
Make no delay, but once again Forsake wet Tibur's moistened plain, And ^Esula, whose fields attain
The hill's steep side,
And Telegon, red with the stain
Of parricide.
Thy cloying wealth and honors proud, Thy palace rearing to the cloud,
And all the sycophantic crowd,
Leave for a time ;
Avoid the din, the smoky shroud
Of Home sublime.
The wealthy ofttimes welcome change ; And oft the farmer's humble grange, Where cleanliness and health arrange
The plain repast,
Restores the brow which cares derange
And overcast.
Bright Cepheus rises in the sky, And Procyon fiercely burns on high, While Leo's star, of lurid dye,
Portends the drouth,
And glowing Phœbus, drawing nigh,
Deserts the south.
The shepherd, now, and panting sheep Close to the thicket's shading keep, And in the cooling streamlet steep
Their languid limbs ;
The sluggish waters onward creep
Uncurled by winds.
ODES OF HORACE.
But thou, engaged in state affairs, And pressed by weight of civic cares, Must needs inquire what best appears
For thine own Rome,
How China, Bactria, Tanais fares,
The Parthian's home.
An all-wise Power conceals from sight Our after fortunes, dark or bright, And o'er them sets a rayless night
Of Stygian shade,
And laughs whenever mortal might
Would fain invade.
Enjoy to-day : as yonder stream Whose waters, smooth-revolving, seem To bear within their depths a gleam
Of Tuscan sea,
So life 'neath fortune's favoring beam
Flows happily.
But like those waters when they sweep, A swollen torrent, broad and deep,
And headlong every stay o'erleap
In mad career,
So life a turbid course will keep,
Impelled by care.
He nobly o'er himself holds sway, And truly lives, who thus can say,
As evening seals each well-spent day :
" I've lived my life !
The Father may arouse the sea
And winds to strife —
" But lo, he cannot render vain
What fleeting Time hath backward ta'en, Nor yet avoid nor change again
That which is past.
Thus, Memory's joys must e'en remain
Unto the last! "
Fair Fortune, pleasing but to grieve, Exciting hope but to deceive, Exulting when she may bereave
With keenest pain,
Neptune Calming the Waves From the Original Statue in the Louvre
ODES OF HORACE.
The transient honors I receive Will take again.
Ipraise her — with me —when Isee Her, fluttering, rise, about to flee ;
I give up all and tranquilly
Behold her go,
And seek undowered poverty
Whence virtues flow.
'Tis not for me, when Afric's blast Bends low the sailless, creaking mast. — 'Tis not for me, with eyes upcast,
To supplicate
That through the storm my ship hold fast
Its precious freight.
Not mine to strive, with bargaining vows, The heavenly deities to rouse,
Lest my rich Cyprian, Tyrian prows
Sink on the deep ;
For griefless poverty allows
Unbroken sleep.
The Twins my trusting course shall guide As o'er the fickle waves I glide,
Assisted by the winds and tide,
In my swift bark ;
And every storm I'll safely ride,
A scathless mark !
Book III. , Ode 28. Neptune and the Sea Goddesses.
How shall I honor Neptune best On his holiday ? Lyde mine,
Bring the hoarded Caecuban out with zest, Break Wisdom's guarded line.
You feel the noontide sun decline, Yet as if the fleet day stood still,
You leave the lingering cask of wine With Consul Bibulus' vintage sign,
Asleep in the cellar's chill.
We will sing by turns of the ocean sire
And the Nereids' tresses green;
HORACE ON CHARITABLE JUDGMENTS.
You first recite to the arching lyre Latona's love, and the arrows dire Of Cynthia, fleet-foot queen ; The carol done, of her be the tale
Whom Cnidus' charms can please, Who swan-borne visits her Paphian vale
And the sun-bright Cyclades ;
And the song of Night in a minor wail
Shall fitly follow these.
HORACE ON CHARITABLE JUDGMENTS. (From the " Satires," L 3. )
Translated by SIR THEODORE MARTIN.
True love, we know, is blind : defects that blight The loved one's charms escape the lover's sight,— Nay, pass for beauties ; as Balbinus shows
A passion for the wen on Agna's nose.
Oh, with our friendships that we did the same, And screened our blindness under virtue's name ! For we are bound to treat a friend's defect
With touch most tender, and a fond respect : Even as a father treats a child's, who hints
The urchin's eyes are roguish, if he squints :
Or if he be as stunted, short, and thick " As Sisyphus the dwarf, will call him "chick !
If crooked all ways, in back, in legs, and thighs, With softening phrases will the flaw disguise.
So, if one friend too close a fist betrays,
Let us ascribe it to his frugal ways ;
Or is another — such we often find —
To flippant jest and braggart talk inclined,
'Tis only from a kindly wish to try
To make the time 'mongst friends go lightly by ; Another's tongue is rough and overfree,
Let's call it bluntness and sincerity ;
Another's choleric — him we must screen,
As cursed with feelings for his peace too keen. This is the course, methinks, that makes a friend, And having made, secures him to the end.
POEMS OF OVID. 353
POEMS OF OVID.
[Publius Ovidiub Naso, the youngest of the great Augustan poets, was born B. C. 43, the year after Caesar's murder, and died a. d. 17, three years after Au gustus. He was of Sulmo in the Apennines, a landholder like Tibullus and Pro- pertius, and, unlike them, kept his estate. He settled at Rome and filled some minor offices, but led an easy, pleasure-seeking life. But he became involved, seemingly, in the dreadful family scandal which clouded Augustus' later years and ruined his political family plans ; his " Art of Love" was regarded as one of the influences which had made Roman society so rotten ; and he was banished to Tomi on the Danube, a barbarous village of Grecized Goths, where he lived the ten remaining years of his life. His "Metamorphoses" have been trans lated, adapted, and used as subjects, in every European language ; his " Fasti " poetized the Roman religious rites ; his Elegies ranked him as one of the great quartet (see Tibullus) ; his Epistles have been brilliantly and repeatedly trans lated. He wrote also " Remedia Amoris," a sort of apology for the " Ars Ama- toria"; a tragedy, "Medea"; the " Heroides," on the old myths ; and others. ]
Sappho to Phaon.
(From the " Epistles " : Pope's translation).
Sat, lovely youth, that doth my heart command, Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand ?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love ?
Ask not the cause that I new members choose, The lute neglected, and the Lyric Muse.
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow, And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.
I burn, I burn, as when through ripened corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne. Phaon to Etna's scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than Etna's fires I No more my soul a charm in music finds,
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds :
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please,
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move, Once the dear objects of my guilty love;
All other loves are lost in only thine,
Ah, youth ungrateful to a flame like mine !
Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise, Those heavenly looks, and dear deluding eyes ?
The harp and bow would you like Phoebus bear,
A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear;
you v. —23
POEMS OF OVID.
Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,
Not Bacchus' self with Phaon could compare :
Yet Phoebus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame,
One Daphne warmed, and one the Cretan dame ; Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,
Than e'en those gods contend in charms with thee. . . Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame
Inspired young Perseus with a generous flame ; Turtles and doves of different hues unite,
And glossy jet is paired with shining white.
If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign,
But such as merit, such as equal thine,
By none, alas ! by none thou canst be moved :
Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved !
Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ ;
Once in her arms you centered all your joy :
No time the dear remembrance can remove,
For, oh ! how vast a memory has love !
My music, then you could not ever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear.
You stopped with kisses my enchanting tongue,
And found my kisses sweeter than my song.
In all I pleased, but most in what was best ;
And the last joy was dearer than the rest.
Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired, You still enjoyed, and yet you still desired,
Till all dissolving in the trance we lay,
And in tumultuous raptures died away. . . .
O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy I
O useful time for lovers to employ !
Pride of thy age and glory of thy race,
Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace ! The vows you never will return, receive ;
And take at least the love you will not give.
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears !
The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Sure 'twas not much to bid one kind adieu ;
(At least to feign was never hard to you ! )
" Farewell, my Lesbian love," you might have said ; Or coldly thus, " Farewell, oh Lesbian maid ! "
No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover's gift your Sappho could confer,
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
POEMS OF OVID.
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
But this, " Be mindful of your loves, and live. "
Now by the Nine, those powers adored by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee,
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale I stood,
Grief chilled my breast, and stopped my freezing blood No sigh to rise, no tear had power to flow,
Fixed in a stupid lethargy of woe :
But when its way the impetuous passion found, I rend my tresses, and my breast I wound ;
I rave, then weep ;
I curse, and then complain ; Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again ; Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame
Whose firstborn infant feeds the funeral flame. . . . Stung with my love, and furious with despair,
All torn my garments, and my bosom bare,
My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim :
Such inconsistent things are love and shame ! 'Tis thou art all my care and my delight,
My daily longing, and my dream by night.
O night, more pleasing than the brightest day, When fancy gives what absence takes away, And dressed in all its visionary charms, Restores my fair deserter to my arms ! . . . But when with day, the sweet delusions fly, And all things wake to life and joy, but I ;
As if once more forsaken, I complain,
And close my eyes to dream of you again.
Laodamia to Protesilaus.
(Translated by Miss E. Garland. )
Ah ! Trojan women (happier far than we), Fain in your lot would I partaker be !
If ye must mourn o'er some dead hero's bier, And all the dangers of the war are near,
With you at least the fair and youthful bride May arm her husband, in becoming pride ;
Lift the fierce helmet to his gallant brow,
And, with a trembling hand, his sword bestow : With fingers all unused the weapon brace,
And gaze with fondest love upon his face !
POEMS OF OVID.
How sweet to both this office she will make — How many a kiss receive — how many take! When all equipped she leads him from the door, Her fond commands how oft repeating o'er : —
" Return victorious, and thine arms enshrine — Return, beloved, to these arms of mine ! "
Nor shall these fond commands be all in vain, Her hero-husband will return again.
Amid the battle's din and clashing swords
He still will listen to her parting words ;
And, if more prudent, still, ah ! not less brave, One thought for her and for his home will save.
The Ring.
(Translated by A. A. Brodribb. )
Sign of my too presumptuous flame, To fairest Celia haste, nor linger,
And may she gladly breathe my name, And gayly put thee on her finger !
Suit her as I myself, that she
May fondle thee with murmured blessing;
Caressed by Celia ! Who could be Unenvious of such sweet caressing ?
Had I Medea's magic art,
Or Proteus' power of transformation,
Then would I blithely play thy part, The happiest trinket in creation !
Oh ! on her bosom I would fall,
Her finger guiding all too lightly ;
Or else be magically small, Fearing to be discarded nightly.
And I her ruby lips would kiss
(What mortal's fortune could be better ? )
As oft allowed to seal my bliss As she desires to seal a letter.
Now go, these are delusions bright Of idle Fancy's idlest scheming ;
Tell her to read the token right —
Tell her how sweet is true love's dreaming.
POEMS OF OVID.
Elegy on Tibullus.
(Translated by Professor J. P. Nichol. )
If bright Aurora mourned for Memnon's fate, Or the fair Thetis wept Achilles slain,
And the sad sorrows that on mortals wait Can ever move celestial hearts with pain —
Come, doleful Elegy ! too just a name ! Unbind thy tresses fair, in loose attire, For he, thy bard, the herald of thy fame,
Tibullus, burns upon the funeral pyre.
Ah, lifeless corse ! Lo ! Venus' boy draws near With upturned quiver and with shattered bow;
His torch extinguished, see him toward the bier With drooping wings disconsolately go.
He smites his heaving breast with cruel blow,
Those straggling locks, his neck all streaming round,
Receive the tears that fastly trickling flow, While sobs convulsive from his lips resound.
In guise like this, lulus, when of yore
His dear ^Eneas died, he sorrowing went ;
Now Venus wails as when the raging boar The tender thigh of her Adonis rent.
We bards are named the gods' peculiar care ; Nay, some declare that poets are divine ;
Yet forward death no holy thing can spare, 'Round all his dismal arms he dares entwine.
Did Orpheus' mother aid, or Linus' sire ? That one subdued fierce lions by his song
Availed not ; and, they say, with plaintive lyre
The god mourned Linus, woods and glades among.
Maeonides, from whose perennial lay
Flow the rich fonts of the Pierian wave
To wet the lips of bards, one dismal day
Sent down to Orcus and the gloomy grave —
Him, too, Avernus holds in drear employ ; Only his songs escape the greedy pile ;
POEMS OF OVID.
His work remains — the mighty wars of Troy, And the slow web, unwove by nightly guile.
Live a pure life ; —yet death remains thy doom : Be pious ; — ere from sacred shrines you rise,
Death drags you heedless to the hollow tomb ! Confide in song — lo ! there Tibullus lies.
Scarce of so great a soul, thus lowly laid, Enough remains to fill this little urn ; O holy bard ! were not the flames afraid
That hallowed corse thus ruthlessly to burn ?
These might devour the heavenly halls that shine With gold —they dare a villany so deep :
She turned who holds the Erycinian shrine,
And there are some who say she turned to weep.
Yet did the base soil of a stranger land
Not hold him nameless ; as the spirit fled
His mother closed his eyes with gentle hand, And paid the last sad tribute to the dead.
Here, with thy wretched mother's woe to wait, Thy sister came with loose dishevelled hair ;
Nemesis kisses thee, and thy earlier mate —
They watched the pyre when all had left it bare.
Departing, Delia faltered, " Thou wert true,
The Fates were cheerful then, when I was thine :
The other, " Say, what hast thou here to do ? " Dying, he clasped his failing hand in mine.
Ah, yet, if any part of us remains
But name and shadow, Albius is not dead ;
And thou, Catullus, in Elysian plains, With Calvus see the ivy crown his head.
Thou, Gallus, prodigal of life and blood, If false the charge of amity betrayed,
And aught remains across the Stygian flood, Shalt meet him yonder with thy happy shade.
Refined Tibullus ! thou art joined to those Living in calm communion with the blest ;
In peaceful urn thy quiet bones repose — May earth lie lightly where thy ashes rest !
THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA. 359
Acis and Galatea.
(From the " Metamorphoses " : Dryden's translation. )
Acis, the lovely youth, whose loss I mourn, From Faunus and the nymph Symethis born, Was both his parents' pleasure ; but to me Was all that love could make a lover be.
The gods our minds in mutual bands did join : I was his only joy, and he was mine.
Now sixteen summers the sweet youth had seen; And doubtful down began to shade his chin: When Polyphemus first disturbed our joy,
I loved the boy.
Ask not which passion in my soul was higher,
And loved me fiercely as
My last aversion, or my first desire :
Nor this the greater was, nor that the less ;
Both were alike, for both were in excess.
Thee, Venus, thee both heaven and earth obey ; Immense thy power, and boundless is thy sway. The Cyclops, who defied th' ethereal throne,
And thought no thunder louder than his own,
The terror of the woods, and wilder far
Than wolves in plains, or bears in forests are,
Th' inhuman host, who made his bloody feasts
On mangled members of his butchered guests,
Yet felt the force of love, and fierce desire,
And burned for me with unrelenting fire :
Forgot his caverns, and his woolly care,
Assumed the softness of a lover's air:
And combed, with teeth of rakes, his rugged hair. Now with a crooked scythe his beard he sleeks, And mows the stubborn stubble of his cheeks : Now in the crystal stream he looks, to try
His simagres, and rolls his glaring eye.
His cruelty and thirst of blood are lost,
And ships securely sail along the coast.
The prophet Telemus (arrived by chance Where ^Etna's summits to the seas advance, Who marked the tracks of every bird that flew, And sure presages from their flying drew) Foretold the Cyclops, that Ulysses' hand
In his broad eye should thrust a flaming brand. The giant, with a scornful grin, replied,
"Vain augur, thou hast falsely prophesied; Already Love his flaming brand has tossed ; Looking on two fair eyes, my sight I lost. "
360 THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA.
Thus, warned in vain, with stalking pace he strode, And stamped the margin of the briny flood
With heavy steps ; and, weary, sought again
The cool retirement of his gloomy den.
A promontory, sharpening by degrees,
Ends in a wedge, and overlooks the seas :
On either side, below, the water flows :
This airy walk the giant lover chose;
Here on the midst he sat; his flocks, unled, Their shepherd followed, and securely fed.
A pine so burly, and of length so vast,
That sailing ships required it for a mast,
He wielded for a staff, his steps to guide :
But laid it by, his whistle while he tried.
A hundred reeds, of a prodigious growth,
Scarce made a pipe proportioned to his mouth : Which when he gave it wind, the rocks around, And watery plains, the dreadful hiss resound.
I heard the ruffian shepherd rudely blow, Where, in a hollow cave, I sat below;
On Acis' bosom I my head reclined :
And"still preserve the poem in my mind.
0 lovely Galatea, whiter far
Than falling snows, and rising lilies are;
More flowery than the meads; as crystal bright: Erect as alders, and of equal height :
More wanton than a kid; more sleek thy skin
Than orient shells, that on the shores are seen :
Than apples fairer, when the boughs they lade; Pleasing as winter suns, or summer shade :
More grateful to the sight than goodly plains;
And softer to the touch than down of swans,
Or curds new turned; and sweeter to the taste
Than swelling grapes, that to the vintage haste :
More clear than ice, or running streams, that stray Through garden plots, but, ah ! more swift than they.
" Yet, Galatea, harder to be broke
Than bullocks, unreclaimed to bear the yoke : And far more stubborn than the knotted oak : Like sliding streams, impossible to hold;
Like them fallacious; like their fountains, cold: More warping than the willow, to decline
My warm embrace; more brittle than the vine; Immovable, and fixed in thy disdain;
Rough as these rocks, and of a harder grain :
THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA. 361
More violent than is the rising flood ;
And the praised peacock is not half so proud : Fierce as the fire, and sharp as thistles are ; And more outrageous than a mother bear : Deaf as the billows to the vows I make ;
And more revengeful than a trodden snake : In swiftness fleeter than the flying hind,
Or driven tempests, or the driving wind.
All other faults with patience I can bear;
But swiftness is the vice I only fear.
" Yet, if you knew me well, you would not shun My love, but to my wished embraces run :
Would languish in your turn, and court my stay; And" much repent of your unwise delay.
My palace, in the living rock, is made
By nature's hand; a spacious pleasing shade; Which neither heat can pierce, nor cold invade. My garden filled with fruits you may behold, And grapes in clusters, imitating gold;
Some blushing bunches of a purple hue :
And these, and those, are all reserved for you. Red strawberries in shades expecting stand Proud to be gathered by so white a hand; Autumnal cornels latter fruit provide,
And plums, to tempt you, turn their glossy side : Not those of common kinds ; but such alone,
As in Phaeacian orchards might have grown :
Nor chestnuts shall be wanting to your food,
Nor garden fruits, nor wildings of the wood ;
The laden boughs for you alone shall bear;
And yours shall be the product of the year.
"The flocks, you see, are all my own; beside The rest that woods and winding valleys hide ; And those that folded in the caves abide.
Ask not the numbers of my growing store ;
Who knows how many, knows he has no more. Nor will I praise my cattle; trust not me,
But judge yourself, and pass your own decree : Behold their swelling dugs; the sweepy weight Of ewes, that sink beneath the milky freight;
In the warm folds their tender lambkins lie ; Apart from kids, that call with human cry.
New milk in nut-brown bowls is duly served
For daily drink; the rest for cheese reserved. Nor are these household dainties all my store :
362 THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA.
The fields and forests will afford us more ;
The deer, the hare, the goat, the savage boar : All sorts of venison; and of birds the best;
A pair of turtles taken from the nest.
I walked the mountains, and two cubs I found, Whose dam had left 'em on the naked ground; So like, that no distinction could be seen;
So pretty, they were presents for a queen;
And so they shall; I took them both away; And"keep, to be companions of your play.
Oh raise, fair nymph, your beauteous face above The waves; nor scorn my presents, and my love. Come, Galatea, come, and view my face;
I late beheld it in the watery glass,
And found it lovelier than I feared it was.
Survey my towering stature, and my size;
Not Jove, the Jove you dream, that rules the skies, Bears such a bulk, or is so largely spread:
My locks (the plenteous harvest of my head)
Hang o'er my manly face; and dangling down,
As with a shady grove, my shoulders crown.
Nor think, because my limbs and body bear
A thick-set underwood of bristling hair,
My shape deformed : what fouler sight can be
Than the bald branches of a leafless tree?
Foul is the steed without a flowing mane,
And birds, without their feathers, and their train. Wool decks the sheep; and man receives a grace From bushy limbs, and from a bearded face.
My forehead with a single eye is filled,
Round as a ball, and ample as a shield.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun,
Is nature's eye ; and she's content with one.
Add, that my father sways your seas, and I,
Like you, am of the watery family.
I make you his, in making you my own ;
You I adore, and kneel to you alone :
Jove, with his fabled thunder, I despise,
And only fear the lightning of your eyes.
Frown not, fair nymph ; yet I could bear to be Disdained, if others were disdained with me.
But to repulse the Cyclops, and prefer
The love of Acis, heavens !
But let the stripling please himself; nay more, Please you, though that's the thing I most abhor;
Icannot bear.
THE STORY OF ACIS, POLYPHEMUS, AND GALATEA. 363
The boy shall find, if e'er we cope in fight,
These giant limbs endued with giant might.
His living bowels from his belly torn,
And scattered limbs, shall on the flood be borne, Thy flood, ungrateful nymph; and fate shall find That way for thee and Acis to be joined,
I burn with love, and thy disdain Augments at once my passion and my pain. Translated Mtna, flames within my heart, And thou, inhuman, wilt not ease my smart. "
For, oh!
Lamenting thus in vain, he rose, and strode With furious paces to the neighboring wood : Restless his feet, distracted was his walk;
Mad were his motions, and confused his talk. Mad as the vanquished bull, when forced to yield His lovely mistress, and forsake the field.
Thus far unseen I saw : when, fatal chance His looks directing, with a sudden glance,
Acis and I were to his sight betrayed;
Where, naught suspecting, we securely played. From his wide mouth a bellowing cry he cast;
I
A roar so loud made . SCtna to rebound;
And all the Cyclops labored in the sound.
Affrighted with his monstrous voice, I fled,
And in the neighboring ocean plunged my head. Poor Acis turned his back, and, "Help," he said, "Help, Galatea! help, my parent gods, "
And take me dying to your deep abodes !
The Cyclops followed; but he sent before
A rib, which from the living rock he tore :
Though but an angle reached him of the stone,
The mighty fragment was enough alone
To crush all Acis; 'twas too late to save,
But what the Fates allowed to give, I gave :
That Acis to his lineage should return,
And roll, among the river gods, his urn.
Straight issued from the stone a stream of blood; Which lost the purple, mingling with the flood. Then like a troubled torrent it appeared;
The torrent too, in little space, was cleared.
The stone was cleft, and through the yawning chink New reeds arose, on the new river's brink.
