No More Learning

Medea — I gave them birth; and when thou didst pray long life for them, pity entered into my soul to think that these things must be. But the reason of thy coming hither to speak with me is partly told, the rest will I now mention. Since it is the pleasure of the rulers of the land to banish me, and well I know 'twere best for me to stand not in the way of thee or of the rulers by dwelling here, enemy as I am thought unto their house, forth from this land in exile am I going ; but
JASON AND MEDEA. 79
these children, — that they may know thy fostering hand, beg Creon to remit their banishment.
Jason — I doubt whether I can persuade him, yet must I attempt it.
Medea — At least do thou bid thy wife ask her sire this boon, to remit the exile of the children from this land.
Jason — Yea, that will I; and her methinks I shall per suade, since she is a woman like the rest.
Medea — I too will aid thee in this task, for by the chil dren's hand I will send to her gifts that far surpass in beauty, I well know, aught that now is seen 'mongst men, a robe of finest tissue and a chaplet of chased gold. But one of my attendants must haste and bring the ornaments hither. Happy shall she be not once alone but ten thousandfold, for in thee she wins the noblest soul to share her love, and gets these gifts as well which on a day my father's sire, the Sun God, bestowed on his descendants. My children, take in your hands these wedding gifts, and bear them as an offering to the royal maid, the happy bride; for verily the gifts she shall receive are not to be scorned.
Jason — But why so rashly rob thyself of these gifts ? Dost think a royal palace wants for robes or gold ? Keep them, nor give them to another. For well I know that if my lady hold me in esteem, she will set my price above all wealth.
Medea — Say not so; 'tis said that gifts tempt even gods; and o'er men's minds gold holds more potent sway than count less words. Fortune smiles upon thy bride, and heaven now doth swell her triumph; youth is hers and princely power; yet to save my children from exile I would barter life, not dross alone. Children, when ye are come to the rich palace, pray your father's new bride, my mistress, with suppliant voice to save you from exile, offering her these ornaments the while; for it is most needful that she receive the gifts in her own hand. Now go and linger not; may ye succeed and to your mother bring back the glad tidings she fain would hear!
Chorus — Gone, gone is every hope I had that the children yet might live; forth to their doom they now proceed. The hapless bride will take, ay, take the golden crown that is to be her ruin ; with her own hand will she lift and place upon her golden locks the garniture of death. Its grace and sheen divine will tempt her to put on the robe and crown of gold, and in that act will she deck herself to be a bride amid the
80 JASON AND MEDEA.
dead. Such is the snare whereinto she will fall, such is the deadly doom that waits the hapless maid, nor shall she from the curse escape. And thou, poor wretch, who to thy sorrow art wedding a king's daughter, little thinkest of the doom thou art bringing on thy children's life, or of the cruel death that waits thy bride.
Next do I bewail thy sorrows, O mother hapless in thy children, thou who wilt slay thy babes because thou hast a rival, the babes thy husband hath deserted impiously to join him to another bride.
Attendant — Thy children, lady, are from exile freed, and gladly did the royal bride accept thy gifts in her own hands, and so thy children made their peace with her.
Medea — Ah !
Attendant — Why art so disquieted in thy prosperous hour ? Why turnest thou thy cheek away, and hast no welcome for my glad news ?
Attendant — These groans but ill accord with the news I
Woe is thee ! how art thou fallen from thy high estate !
Medea — Ah me !
bring.
Medea — Ah me ! once more I say.
Attendant — Have I unwittingly announced some evil tid
ings ? Have I erred in thinking my news was good ?
I blame thee not.
Attendant — Then why this downcast eye, these floods of
Medea —Thy news is as it is;
tears?
Medea — Old friend, needs must I weep; for the gods and
I with fell intent devised these schemes.
Attendant — Be of good cheer; thou too of a surety shalt
by thy sons yet be brought home again.
Medea — Ere that shall I bring others to their home, ah!
woe is me!
Attendant — Thou art not the only mother from thy chil
dren reft. Bear patiently thy troubles as a mortal must. Medea — I will obey; go thou within the house and make the day's provision for the children. O my babes, my babes,
ye have still a city and a home, where far from me and my sad lot you will live your lives, reft of your mother forever; while I must to another land in banishment, or ever I have had my joy of you, or lived to see you happy, or ever I have graced
your marriage
couch, your bride, your bridal bower, or lifted
JASON AND MEDEA. 81
high the wedding torch. Ah me! a victim of my own self- will. So it was all in vain I reared you, O my sons ; in vain did suffer, racked with anguish, enduring the cruel pangs of childbirth. 'Fore Heaven I once had hope, poor me! high hope of ye that you would nurse me in my age and deck my corpse with loving hands, a boon we mortals covet ; but now is my sweet fancy dead and gone ; for I must lose you both and in bitterness and sorrow drag through life. And ye shall never with fond eyes see your mother more, for o'er your life there comes a change. Ah me! ah me! why do ye look at me so, my children? why smile that last sweet smile? Ah me! what am I to do? My heart gives way when I behold my children's laughing eyes. O, I cannot; farewell to all my former schemes; I will take the children from the land, the babes I bore. Why should I wound their sire by wounding them, and get me a twofold measure of sorrow? No, no, I will not do it. Farewell my scheming! And yet what am I coming to? Can I consent to let those foes of mine escape from punishment, and incur their mockery ? I must face this deed. Out upon my craven heart ! to think that I should even have let the soft words escape my soul. Into the house, children ! and whoso feels he must not be present at my sacrifice, must see to it himself; I will not spoil my handiwork. Ah! ah! do not, my heart, O do not do this deed! Let the children go, unhappy lady, spare thy babes ! For if they live, they will cheer thee in thy exile there. Nay, by the fiends of hell's abyss, never, never will I hand my children over to their foes to mock and flout. Die they must in any case, and since 'tis so, why I, the mother who bore them, will give the fatal blow. In any case their doom is fixed and there is no escape. Already the crown is on her head, the robe is round her, and she is dying, the royal bride ; that do I know full well. But now since I have a piteous path to tread, and yet more piteous still the path I send my children on, fain would I say farewell to them. O my babes, my babes, let your mother kiss your hands. Ah ! hands I love so well, O lips most dear to me ! O noble form and features of my children, I wish ye joy, but in that other land, for here your father robs you of your home. O the sweet embrace, the soft young cheek,
I cannot bear to longer look upon ye ; my sorrow wins the day. At last I under
the fragrant breath ! my children ! Go, leave me ;
stand the awful deed I am to do ; but passion, that cause of direst woes to mortal man, hath triumphed o'er my sober thoughts.
vol. n. —6
82 JASON AND MEDEA.
Chorus — Oft ere now have I pursued subtler themes and have faced graver issues than woman's sex should seek to probe; but then e'en we aspire to culture, which dwells with us to teach us wisdom; I say not all; for small is the class amongst women — (one maybe shalt thou find 'mid many) — that is not incapable of culture. And amongst mortals I do assert that they who are wholly without experience and have never had children far surpass in happiness those who are parents. The childless, because they have never proved whether children grow up to be a blessing or curse to men, are removed from all share in many troubles; whilst those who have a sweet race of children growing up in their houses do
I perceive, their whole life through; first with the thought how they may train them up in virtue, next how they shall leave their sons the means to live; and after all this 'tis far from clear whether on good or bad children they bestow their toil. But one last crowning woe for every mortal man I now will name; suppose that they have found sufficient means to live, and seen their children grow to man's estate and walk in virtue's path, still if fortune so befall, comes Death and bears the children's bodies off to Hades. Can it be any profit to the gods to heap upon us mortal men besides our other woes this further grief for children lost, a grief surpass ing all?
wear away, as
Medea — Kind friends, long have I waited expectantly to
know how things would at the palace chance. And lo !
one of Jason's servants coming hither, whose hurried gasps for breath proclaim him the bearer of some fresh tidings.
Messenger — Fly, fly, Medea! who hast wrought an awful deed, transgressing every law; nor leave behind or sea-borne bark or car that scours the plain.
Medea — Why, what hath chanced that calls for such a flight of mine ?
Messenger — The princess is dead, a moment gone, and Creon too, her sire, slain by those drugs of thine.
Medea — Tidings most fair are thine! Henceforth shalt thou be ranked amongst my friends and benefactors.
Messenger — Ha ! What ? Art sane ? Art not distraught, lady, who hearest with joy the outrage to our royal house done, and art not at the horrid tale afraid ?
Medea —Somewhat have I, too, to say in answer to thy words. Be not so hasty, friend, but tell the manner of their
I see
JASON AND MEDEA. 88
death, for thou wouldst give me double joy, if so they perished miserably. —
Messenger When the children twain whom thou didst bear came with their father and entered the palace of the bride, right glad were we thralls who had shared thy griefs, for instantly from ear to ear a rumor spread that thou and thy lord had made up your former quarrel. One kissed thy children's hands, another their golden hair, while I for very joy went with them in person to the women's chambers. Our mistress, whom now we do revere in thy room, cast a longing glance at Jason, ere she saw thy children twain ; but then she veiled her eyes and turned her blanching cheek away, disgusted at their coming ; but thy husband tried to check his young bride's angry humor with these words: "O, be not angered 'gainst thy friends; cease from wrath and turn once more thy face this way, counting as friends whomso thy husband counts, and accept these gifts, and for my sake crave thy sire to remit these children's exile. " Soon as she saw the ornaments, no longer she held out, but yielded to her lord in all ; and ere the father and his sons were far from the palace gone, she took the broidered robe and put it on, and set the golden crown about her tresses, arranging her hair at her bright mirror, with many a happy smile at her breathless counterfeit. Then rising from her seat she passed across the chamber, tripping lightly on her fair white foot, exulting in the gift, with many a glance at her uplifted ankle. When lo! a scene of awful horror did ensue. In a moment she turned pale, reeled backwards, trembling in every limb, and sank upon a seat scarce soon enough to save herself from falling to the ground. An aged dame, one of her company, thinking belike it was a fit from Pan or some god sent, raised a cry of prayer, till from her mouth she saw the foam flakes issue, her eyeballs rolling in their sockets, and all the blood her face desert; then did she raise a loud scream far different from her former cry. Forthwith one handmaid rushed to her father's house, another to her new bridegroom to tell his bride's sad fate, and the whole house echoed with their running to and fro. By this time would a quick walker have made the turn in a course of six plethra and reached the goal, when she with one awful shriek awoke, poor sufferer, from her speechless trance and oped her closed eyes, for against her a twofold anguish was warring. The chaplet of gold about her head was sending forth a wondrous stream of ravening flame, while the
JASON AND MEDEA.
fine raiment, thy children's gift, was preying on the hapless maiden's fair white flesh; and she starts from her seat in a blaze and seeks to fly, shaking her hair and head this way and that, to cast the crown therefrom ; but the gold held firm to its fastenings, and the flame, as she shook her locks, blazed forth the more with double fury. Then to the earth she sinks, by the cruel blow o'ercome, past all recognition now save to a father's eye; for her eyes had lost their tranquil gaze, her face no more its natural look preserved, and from the crown of her head blood and fire in mingled stream ran down ; and from her bones the flesh kept peeling off beneath the gnawing of those secret drugs, e'en as when the pine tree weeps its tears of pitch, a fearsome sight to see. And all were afraid to touch the corpse, for we were warned by what had chanced. Anon came her hapless father unto the house, all unwitting of her doom, and stumbles o'er the dead, and loud he cried, and folding his arms about her kissed her, with words like these the while : " O my poor, poor child, which of the gods hath destroyed thee thus foully ? Who is robbing me of thee, old as I am and ripe for death? O my child, alas! would I could die with thee ! " He ceased his sad lament, and would have raised his aged frame, but found himself held fast by the fine-spun robe as ivy that clings to the branches of the bay, and then ensued a fearful struggle. He strove to rise, but she still held him back ; and if ever he pulled with all his might, from off his bones his aged flesh he tore. At last he gave it up, and breathed forth his soul in awful suffering ; for he could no longer master the pain. So there they lie, daughter and aged sire, dead side by side, a grievous sight that calls for tears. And as for thee, I leave thee out of my consideration, for thyself must discover a means to escape punishment. Not now for the first time I think this human life a shadow; yea, and without shrinking I will say that they amongst men who pretend to wisdom and expend deep thought on words do incur a serious charge of folly; for amongst mortals no man is happy; wealth may pour in and make one luckier than another, but none can happy be. —
Chorus This day the deity, it seems, will mass on Jason, as he well deserves, a heavy load of evils. Woe is thee, daughter of Creon! I pity thy sad fate, gone as thou art to Hades' halls as the price of thy marriage with Jason.
Medea — My friends, I am resolved upon the deed ; at once
JASON AND MEDEA. 85
will I slay my children and then leave this land, without delaying long enough to hand them over to some more savage
hand to butcher. Needs must they die in any case ; and since they must, I will slay them — I, the mother that bare them. O heart of mine, steel thyself! Why do I hesitate to do the awful deed that must be done? Come, take the sword, thou wretched hand of mine! Take it, and advance to the post whence starts thy life of sorrow! Away with cowardice!
Give not one thought to thy babes, how dear they are or how thou art their mother. This one brief day forget thy children dear, and after that lament; for though thou wilt slay them, yet they were thy darlings still, and I am a lady of sorrows.
Chorus — O earth, O sun whose beam illumines all, look, look upon this lost woman, ere she stretch forth her murderous hand upon her sons for blood ; for lo ! these are scions of thy own golden seed, and the blood of gods is in danger of being shed by man. O light, from Zeus proceeding, stay her, hold her hand, forth from the house chase this fell bloody fiend by demons led. Vainly wasted were the throes thy children cost thee ; vainly hast thou borne, it seems, sweet babes, O thou who hast left behind thee that passage through the blue Sympleg- ades, that strangers justly hate. Ah! hapless one, why doth fierce anger thy soul assail? Why in its place is fell murder growing up? For grievous unto mortal men are pollutions that come of kindred blood poured on the earth, woes to suit each crime hurled from heaven on the murderer's house.
First Son [within] — Ah me, what can I do ? Whither fly to escape my mother's blows ?
Second Son [within] — I know not, sweet brother mine; we are undone.
Chorus — Didst hear, didst hear the children's cry? O lady, born to sorrow, victim of an evil fate ! Shall I enter the house ? For the children's sake I am resolved to ward off the murder.
First Son [within] — Yea, by heaven I adjure you ; help,
your aid is needed. — Second Son [within]
Even now the toils of the sword are
closing round us.
Chorus — O hapless mother, surely thou hast a heart of
stone or steel to slay the offspring of thy womb by such a mur derous doom. Of all the wives of yore I know but one who laid her hand upon her children dear, even Ino, whom the gods
86 JASON AND MEDEA.
did madden in the day that the wife of Zeus drove her wander ing from her home. But she, poor sufferer, flung herself into the sea because of the foul murder of her children, leaping o'er the wave-beat cliff, and in her death was she united to her children twain. Can there be any deed of horror left to follow this? Woe for the wooing of women fraught with disaster! What sorrows hast thou caused for men ere now !
Jason — Ladies, stationed near this house, pray tell me is the author of these hideous deeds, Medea, still within, or hath she fled from hence ? For she must hide beneath the earth or soar on wings towards heaven's vault, if she would avoid the vengeance of the royal house. Is she so sure she will escape her self unpunished from this house, when she hath slain the rulers of the land? But enough of this !
As for her, those whom she hath wronged will do the like by her; but I am come to save the children's life, lest the victims' kin visit their wrath on me, in vengeance for the murder foul, wrought by my children's mother.
Chorus — Unhappy man, thou knowest not the full extent of thy misery, else had thou never said those words.
Jason —How now? Caa she want to kill me too ?
Chorus — Thy sons are dead ; slain by their own mother's
hand. —
Jason O God! what sayest thou? Woman, thou hast
sealed my doom.
Chorus — Thy children are no more; be sure of this.
Jason — Where slew she them; within the palace or out side?
Jason — Haste, ye slaves, loose the bolts, undo the fasten ings, that I may see the sight of twofold woe, my murdered sons and her, whose blood in vengeance I will shed.
[Medea in mid air, on a chariot drawn by dragons; the children's corpses by her.
Medea — Why shake those doors and attempt to loose their bolts, in quest of the dead and me their murderess? From such toil desist. If thou wouldst aught with me, say on, if so thou wilt ; but never shalt thou lay hand on me, so swift the steeds the sun, my father's sire, to me doth give to save me from the hand of my foes.
Jason — Accursed woman! by gods, by me and all man
I am forgetting her children.
Chorus — Throw wide the doors and see thy children's murdered corpses.
JASON AND MEDEA.
87
kind abhorred as never woman was, who hadst the heart to stab thy babes, thou their mother, leaving me undone and childless ; this hast thou done and still dost gaze upon the sun and earth after this deed most impious? Curses on thee! I now per ceive what then I missed in the day I brought thee, fraught with doom, from thy home in a barbarian land to dwell in Hellas, traitress to thy sire and to the land that nurtured thee. On me the gods have hurled the curse that dogged thy steps, for thou didst slay thy brother at his hearth ere thou cam'st aboard our fair ship Argo. Such was the outset of thy life of crime ; then didst thou wed with me, and having borne me sons to glut thy passion's lust, thou now hast slain them. Not one amongst the wives of Hellas e'er had dared this deed; yet before them all I chose thee for my wife, wedding a foe to be my doom, no woman, but a lioness fiercer than Tyrrhene Scylla in nature. But with reproaches heaped a thousandfold I can not wound thee, so brazen is thy nature. Perish, vile sorceress, murderess of thy babes! Whilst I must mourn my luckless fate, for I shall ne'er enjoy my new-found bride, nor shall I have the children, whom I bred and reared, alive to say the
I have lost them.
last farewell to me ; nay,
Medea — To this thy speech I could have made a long retort,
but Father Zeus knows well all I have done for thee, and the treatment thou hast given me. Yet thou wert not ordained to scorn my love and lead a life of joy in mockery of me, nor was thy royal bride nor Creon, who gave thee a second wife, to thrust me from this land and rue it not. Wherefore, if thou wilt, call me e'en a lioness, and Scylla, whose home is in the Tyrrhene land ; for I in turn have wrung thy heart, as well I might. —
Jason Thou, too, art grieved thyself, and sharest in my sorrow.
Medea — Be well assured I am ; but it relieves my pain to know thou canst not mock at me.
Jason — O my children, how vile a mother ye have found !
Medea — My sons, your father's feeble lust has been your ruin !
Jason — 'Twas not my hand, at any rate, that slew them.
Medea — No, but thy foul treatment of me, and thy new marriage. —
Jason Didst think that marriage cause enough to murder them?
88 JASON AND MEDEA.
Medea — Dost think a woman counts this a trifling injury ?
Jason — So she be self-restrained; but in thy eyes all is evil.
Medea — Thy sons are dead and gone. That will stab thy heart.
Jason — They live, methinks, to bring a curse upon thy head.
Medea — The gods know, whoso of them began this trou blous coil.
Jason — Indeed, they know that hateful heart of thine.
Medea — Thou art as hateful. I am aweary of thy bitter tongue.
Jason — And I likewise of thine. But parting is easy.
Medea —Say how ; what am Ito do ? for Iam fain as thou
togo. —
Jason Give up to me those dead, to bury and lament. Medea —No, never! I will bury them myself, bearing
them to Hera's sacred field, who watches o'er the Cape, that none of their foes may insult them by pulling down their tombs ; and in this land of Sisyphus I will ordain hereafter a solemn feast and mystic rites to atone for this impious murder. Myself will now to the land of Erechtheus, to dwell with iEgeus, Pandion's son. But thou, as well thou mayest, shalt die a caitiff's death, thy head crushed 'neath a shattered relic of Argo, when thou hast seen the bitter ending of my marriage.
Jason — The curse of our sons' avenging spirit and of Justice, that calls for blood, be on thee !
Medea — What god or power divine hears thee, breaker of oaths and every law of hospitality?
Jason — Fie upon thee ! cursed witch ! child murderess ! Medea — To thy house! go, bury thy wife.
Jason — I go, bereft of both my sons.
Medea — Thy grief is yet to come ; wait till old age is with
thee too.
Jason — O my dear, dear children !
Medea — Dear to their mother, not to thee. Jason — And yet thou didst slay them ? Medea — Yea, to vex thy heart.
Jason — One last fond kiss, ah me !
lips imprint.
Medea — Embraces now, and fond farewells for them ; but
then a cold repulse !
I fain would on their
Death Mask of Keats.
THE BACCHANALS.
89
Jason — By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.
Jason — O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young ? Yet so far as I may and can, I raise for them a dirge, and do adjure the gods to witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee slay them after all !
Medea — No, no ! in vain this word has sped its flight.
THE BACCHANALS. By JOHN KEATS.
(From "Endymion. ")
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow — The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips ?
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes ?
Or is 't thy dewy hand the daisy tips ?
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow — The lustrous passion from a falcon eye ?
To give the glowworm light ?
Or on a moonless night,
To tinge, on siren shores, the salt sea spray ?
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow — The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue ?
To give at evening pale
Unto the nightingale,
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among ?
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May ?
— Though he should dance from eve till peep of day
A lover would not tread A cowslip on the head,
—
THE BACCHANALS.
Nor any drooping flower
Held sacred for thy bower, Wherever he may sport himself and play.
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind ;
But cheerly, cheerly,
To Sorrow
She loves me dearly ;
She is so constant to me, and so kind :
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah ! she is so constant and so kind.
Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping : in the whole world wide There was no one to ask me why I wept, —
And so I kept
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears
Cold as my fears.
Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,
sat a weeping : what enamored bride,
But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side ?
And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revelers : the rills Into the wide stream came of purple hue —
'Twas Bacchus and his crew !
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills From kissing cymbals made a merry din —
'Twas Bacchus and his kin !
Like to a moving vintage down they came, Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
To scare thee, Melancholy !
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name !
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon : —
I rushed into the folly !
Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood, Trifling his ivy dart, in dancing mood,
With sidelong laughing ;
THE BACCHANALS.
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white
For Venus' pearly bite :
And near him rode Silenus on his ass, Pelted with flowers as he on did pass
Tipsily quaffing.
Whence came ye, merry Damsels ! whence came ye ! So many, and so many, and such glee ?
Why have ye left your bowers desolate,—
Your lutes, and gentler fate?
"We follow Bacchus ! Bacchus on the wing,
A conquering !
Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide,
We dance before him through kingdoms wide : — Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our wild minstrelsy ! "
Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs ! whence came ye ! So many, and so many, and such glee ?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
" Your nuts in oak-tree cleft ? —
For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree ; For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
And cold mushrooms ;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth ; Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth ! — Come hither, lady fair, and joined " be
To our mad minstrelsy !
Over wide streams and mountains great we went, And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent, Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,
With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads — with song and dance, With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance, Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley rowers' toil :
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
Nor care for wind and tide.
Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes, From rear to van they scour about the plains ;
THE BACCHANALS.
A three days' journey in a moment done :
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn,
On spleenful unicorn.
I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown Before the vine-wreath crown ! I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing
To the silver cymbals' ring !
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
Old Tartary the fierce !
The kings of Inde their jewel scepters vail, And from their treasures scatter pearled hail ; Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,
And all his priesthood moans ; Before young Bacchus' eye wink turning pale. Into these regions came I following him,
Sick hearted, weary — so I took a whim
To stray away into these forests drear
Alone, without a peer :
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear.
Young stranger !
I've been a ranger
In search of pleasure throughout every clime :
Alas, 'tis not for me I
Bewitched I sure must be,
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.
Come then, Sorrow ! Sweetest Sorrow !
Like an own babe
I thought to leave thee
I nurse thee on my breast :
And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.
There is not one,
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid ;
Thou art her mother,
And her brother,
Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade.
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 93
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. By WILLIAM EWABT GLADSTONE.
(From " Juventus Mundi. ")
[William Ewart Gladstone : An English statesman and writer ; born in Liverpool, December 29, 1809 ; died May 19, 1898. He was sent to Eton and then to Oxford, taking the highest honors at the university. He then studied law ; entered Parliament ; became president of the Board of Trade, chancellor of the exchequer ; succeeded Lord Palmerston as leader of the House of Com mons ; in 1868 succeeded Disraeli as first lord of the treasury ; and held many other high offices. He was the greatest statesman in England, and also took a high rank among men of letters. His writings are many and varied, including essays, translations, and works on theology and philology. Among the more notable are: "The State in its Relations with the Church" (1838), "Church Principles considered in their Results" (1840), "Manual of Prayers from the Liturgy" (1845), "On the Place of Homer in Classical Education" (1857), " Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age " (3 vols. , 1858), " 1Ecce Homo' " (1868), "A Chapter of Autobiography" (1868), "Juventus Mundi" (1869), "The Vatican Decrees" (1874), "Homeric Synchronism" (1876), "Homer" (1878), "Gleanings of Past Years" (7 vols. , 1879), "Landmarks of Homeric Study" (1890), "An Introduction to the People's Bible History" (1895), "Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler" (1896), and "On the Condition of Man in a Future Life " (1896). ]
The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.
They are prevalent in Olympus ; and they constitute an
amiable feature in the portraiture even of deities who have
nothing else to recommend them. Not only does Poseidon
care for the brutal Polyphemus, and Zeus for the noble and
gallant Sarpedon, but Ares for Ascalaphus, and Aphrodite for
jEneas.
morality ; but parental affection is vehement in the characters, somewhat relaxed as they are in fiber, both of Priam and of Hecuba. Odysseus chooses for the title, by which he would be known, that of the Father of Telemachus. The single por traiture of Penelope, ever yearning through twenty years for her absent husband, and then praying to be removed from life, that she may never gladden the spirit of a meaner man, could not have been designed or drawn, except in a country where the standard, in this great branch of morality, was a high one. This is the palmary and all-sufficient instance. Others might be mentioned to follow, though none can equal it.
Perhaps even beyond other cases of domestic relation, the
In the Trojan royal family there is little of the higher
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natural sentiment, as between parents and children, was pro foundly ingrained in the morality of the heroic age. The feel ing of Achilles for Peleus, of Odysseus for his father Laertes and his mother Anticlea, exhibits an affection alike deep and tender. Those who die young, like Simoisius by the hand of Ajax, die before they have had time to repay to their parents their threptra, the pains and care of rearing them. Phoenix, in the height of wrath with his father, and in a country where homicide was thought a calamity far more than a crime, is restrained from offering him any violence, lest he should be branded, among the Achaians, with the stamp of Parricide. All this was reciprocated on the side of parents : even in Troy, as we may judge from the conduct and words of Hector, of Andromache, of Priam. While the father of Odysseus pined on earth for his return, his mother died of a broken heart for his absence. And the Shade of Achilles in the Underworld only craves to know whether Peleus is still held in honor ; and a momentary streak of light and joy gilds his dreary and gloomy existence, when he learns that his son Neoptolemus has proved himself worthy of his sire, and has attained to fame in war. The very selfish nature of Agamemnon does not prevent his feeling a watchful anxiety for his brother Menelaus. Where human interests spread and ramify by this tenacity of domestic affections, there the generations of men are firmly knit together ; concern for the future becomes a spring of noble action ; affec tion for the past engenders an emulation of its greatness ; and as it is in history that these sentiments find their means of sub sistence, the primitive poet of such a country scarcely can but be an historian.
We do not find, indeed, that relationships are traced in Homer by name beyond the degree of first cousins. But that the tie of blood was much more widely recognized, we may judge from the passage in the Second Iliad, which shows that the divisions of the army were subdivided into tribes and clans. Guestship likewise descended through generations : Diomed and Glaucus exchange arms, and agree to avoid one another in fight, because their grandfathers had been xenoi.
The intensity of the Poet's admiration for beautiful form is exhibited alike with reference to men, women, and animals. Achilles, his greatest warrior, is also his most beautiful man : Ajax, the second soldier, has also the second place in beauty, according to Odysseus. Nireus, his rival for that place, is
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commemorated for his beauty, though in other respects he is declared to have been an insignificant personage. Odysseus, elderly, if not old, is carried into rapture by the beauty of Nausicaa. Not Helen alone, but his principal women in gen eral, short of positive old age (for Penelope is included), are beautiful. He felt intensely, as appears from many passages, the beauty of the horse. But this admiring sentiment towards all beauty of form appears to have been an entirely pure one. His only licentious episode, that of the Net of Hephsestus, he draws from an Eastern mythology. He recounts it as sung before men only, not women ; and not in Greece, but in Scheria, to an audience of Phoenician extraction and associa tions. It is in Troy that the gloating eyes of the old men fol low Helen as she walks. The only Greeks to whom the like is imputed are the dissolute and hateful Suitors of the Odyssey. The proceedings of Here in the Fourteenth Iliad are strictly subordinated to policy. They are scarcely decent; and a single sentiment of Thetis may be criticised. But the observa tions I would offer are, first that all the questionable incidents of sentiments are in the sphere of the mythology, which in several important respects tended to corrupt, and not to ele vate, mankind. Secondly, how trifling an item do they con tribute to the great Encyclopedia of human life, which is pre sented to us in the Poems. Thirdly, even among the great writers of the Christian ages, how few will abide the applica tion of a rigid test in this respect so well as Homer. And lastly, let us observe the thorough rectitude of purpose which governs the Poems : where Artemis, the severely pure, is com monly represented as an object of veneration, but Aphrodite is as commonly represented in such a manner as to attract aver sion or contempt, and when, among human characters, no licen tious act is ever so exhibited as to confuse or pervert the sense of right and wrong. The Poet's treatment on Paris on earth, whom he has made his only contemptible prince or warrior, is in strict keeping with his treatment of Aphrodite Immortals.
With regard to anything which is unbecoming in the human person, the delicacy of Homer is uniform and perhaps unri valed. In the case of women, there is not a single allusion to it. In the case of men, the only allusions we find are grave and admirably handled. When Odysseus threatens to strip Ther- sites, it is only to make him an object of general and unmitigated
among
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disgust. When Priam foretells the mangling of his own naked corpse by animals, the insult to natural decency thus anticipated serves only to express the intense agony of his mind. The scene in which Odysseus emerges from the sea on the coast of Scheria, is perhaps among the most careful, and yet the most simple and unaffected, exhibitions of true modesty in all liter ature. And the mode in which all this is presented to us suggests that it forms a true picture of the general manners of the nation at the time. That this delicacy long subsisted in Greece, we learn from Thucydides. The morality of the Homeric period is that of the childhood of a race : the morality of the classic times belongs to its manhood. On the side of the latter, it may be urged that two causes in particular tend to raise its level. With regular forms of political and civil organization, there grows up in written law a public testimonial on behalf, in the main, of truth, honesty, and justice. For, while private conduct represents the human mind under the bias of every temptation, the law, as a general rule, speaks that which our perceptions would affirm were there no such bias. But further, with law and order comes the clearer idea and fuller enjoyment of the fruits of labor ; and for the sake of security each man adopts, and in general acts upon, a recogni tion of the rights of property. These are powerful agencies for good in a great department of morals. Besides these, with a more imposing beauty, but probably with less of practical efficacy, the speculative intellect of man goes to work, and establishes abstract theories of virtue, vice, and their conse quences, which by their comprehensiveness and method put out of countenance the indeterminate ethics of remote antiquity. All this is to be laid in one scale. But the other would, I think, predominate, if it were only from the single considera tion that the creed of the Homeric age brought both the sense and the dread of the divine justice to bear in restraint of vice and passion. And upon the whole, after the survey which has been taken, it would in my opinion be somewhat rash to assert that either the duties of men to the deity, or the larger claims of man upon man, were better understood in the age of Pericles or Alexander, of Sylla or Augustus, than in the age of Homer.
Perhaps the following sketch of Greek life in the heroic age may not be far wide of the truth.
The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence of his
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parents, and in desire to emulate their fame ; he shares in manly and in graceful sports ; acquires the use of arms ; hardens himself in the pursuit, then of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts ; gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many- sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plow firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn.
And, when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruc tion and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For, all this time, he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father's domain.
He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand. Human life is cheap ; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel over some childish game with his friend, into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, should some occasion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a wild beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his humanity for the time, until reason has reestablished her control. Short, however, of such a desperate crisis, though he could not for the world rob his friend or his neighbor, yet he might be not unwilling to triumph over him to his cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity ; while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from the individual who has become his enemy, he will ac quire by main force what he can, nor will he scruple to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly injury. He must, however, give liberally to those who are in need ; to the wayfarer, to the poor, to the suppliant who begs from him shelter and protec tion. On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the liberal and open-handed contributions of his neighbors will not be wanting to replace them.
His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it glaring in his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly known ; drunken ness is marked only by its degrading character, and by the evil consequences that flow so straight from it ; and it is abhorred.
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