Then they
remember
the heroes of ancient days, and the women,
Singing their hymn; and the tribes of mortal men are enchanted.
Singing their hymn; and the tribes of mortal men are enchanted.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
I would that I might call
A man like him my husband, dwelling here.
And here content to dwell. Now hasten, maids,
And set before the stranger food and wine. "
## p. 7575 (#385) ###########################################
HOMER
She spake; they heard and cheerfully obeyed,
And set before Ulysses food and wine.
The patient chief Ulysses ate and drank
Full eagerly, for he had fasted long.
White-armed Nausicaa then had other cares.
She placed the smoothly folded robes within
The sumptuous chariot, yoked the firm-hoofed mules,
And mounted to her place, and from the seat
Spake kindly, counseling Ulysses thus:-
IV. - Book vi. , 255-331. Translation of Philip Worsley
"STRANGER, bestir thyself to seek the town,
That to my father's mansion I may lead
Thee following, there to meet the flower and crown
Of the Phæacian people. But take heed
(Not senseless dost thou seem in word or deed),
While 'mid the fields and works of men we go,
After the mules, in the wain's track, to speed,
Girt with this virgin company, and lo!
I will myself drive first, and all the road will show.
"When we the city reach - a castled crown
Of wall encircles it from end to end,
And a fair haven, on each side the town,
Framed with fine entrance, doth our barks defend,
Which, where the terrace by the shore doth wend,
Line the long coast; to all and each large space,
Docks, and deep shelter, doth that haven lend;
There, paved with marble, our great market-place
Doth with its arms Poseidon's beauteous fane embrace.
"All instruments marine they fashion there,
Cordage and canvas and the tapering oar;
Since not for bow nor quiver do they care,
But masts and well-poised ships and naval store,
Wherewith the foam-white ocean they explore
Rejoicing. There I fear for my good name,
For in the land dwell babblers evermore,
Proud, supercilious, who might work me shame
Hereafter with sharp tongues of cavil and quick blame.
"Haply would ask some losel, meeting me,
'Where did she find this stranger tall and brave
Who is it? He then will her husband be-
Perchance some far-off foreigner - whom the wave
(For none dwell near us) on our island drave.
7575
1
## p. 7576 (#386) ###########################################
7576
HOMER
Or have her long prayers made a god come down,
Whom all her life she shall for husband have?
Wisely she sought him, for she spurns our town,
Though wooed by many a chief of high worth and renown. '
"So will they speak this slander to my shame;
Yea, if another made the like display,
Her I myself should be the first to blame,
If in the public streets she should essay
To mix with men before her marriage day,
Against her father's and her mother's will.
Now, stranger, well remember what I say,
So mayst thou haply in good haste fulfill
Thy journey, with safe-conduct, by my father's will:-
"Hard by the roadside an illustrious grove,
Athene's, all of poplar, thou shalt find.
Through it a streaming rivulet doth rove,
And the rich meadow-lands around it wind.
There the estate lies to my sire assigned,
There his fat vineyards-from the town so far
As a man's shout may travel. There reclined
Tarry such while, and thy approach debar,
Till we belike within my father's mansion are.
"Then to the town Phæacian, and inquire
(Plain is the house, a child might be thy guide)
Where dwells Alcinous my large-hearted sire.
Not like the houses reared on every side
Stands that wherein Alcinous doth abide,
But easy to be known. But when the wall
And court inclose thee, with an eager stride
Move through the noble spaces of the hall,
And with firm eye seek out my mother first of all.
"She in the firelight near the hearth doth twine,
Sitting, the purpled yarn; her maids are seen
Behind her; there my sire, enthroned, his wine
Quaffs like a god; both on the pillar lean.
Him passing urge thy supplication keen,
My mother's knees enclasping. If but she
Think kindness in her heart, good hope, I ween,
Remains, however far thy bourne may be,
That country, friends, and home thou yet shalt live to
see. "
## p. 7577 (#387) ###########################################
HOMER
She ended, and the mules with glittering lash
Plied, who soon leave the river in their rear.
Onward continuously their swift feet flash.
She like an understanding charioteer
Scourged them with judgment, and their course did steer
So to precede Odysseus and the rest.
And the sun fell and they the grove came near.
There on the earth sat down with anxious breast
Odysseus, and in prayer the child of Zeus addressed:
«<
"Virgin, whose eyelids slumber not nor sleep,
Hear, child of Zeus! who in the time forepast
Heardest me not, when in the ruinous deep
Poseidon whirled me with his angry blast.
Let me find pity in this land at last! »
So prayed he, and Athene heard: but she
Not yet revealed herself in form; so vast
Loomed in her eyes her uncle's fierce decree
Against divine Odysseus, ere his land he see.
There the much-toiled divine Odysseus prayed.
She onward passed to the Phæacian town,
Drawn by the mules. But when the royal maid
Came to her father's halls of high renown,
-
She by the porch drew rein. Thither came down
Her brothers, circling her, a lucid ring;
They of Phæacian youth the flower and crown,
Like gods to look at. Soon unharnessing
The mules, into the house the raiment clean they bring.
V. - Book vii. , 1-13. Same Translation
SHE to her chamber straight ascended. There
Eurymedusa old, the chamber dame,
Kindled the fire- who o'er the ocean mere
Borne in swift ships from land Apeira came,
Thenceforth assigned by right of regal claim
To King Alcinous, like a god revered
In his own land, the first in name and fame.
She in the halls white-armed Nausicaa reared,
And now the fire lit well, and sweet repast prepared.
7577
## p. 7578 (#388) ###########################################
7578
HOMER
[A final glimpse of Nausicaa is accorded to Odysseus, and to us, at night-
fall of the following day. ]
VI. - Book viii. , 454–468. Same Translation
HIM then the maidens bathe and rub with oil,
And in rich robe and tunic clothe with care.
He from the bath, cleansed from the dust of toil,
Passed to the drinkers; and Nausicaa there
Stood, molded by the gods exceeding fair.
She, on the roof-tree pillar leaning, heard
Odysseus; turning she beheld him near.
Deep in her breast admiring wonder stirred,
And in a low sweet voice she spake this winged word:-
"Hail, stranger guest! when fatherland and wife
Thou shalt revisit, then remember me,
Since to me first thou owest the price of life. "
And to the royal virgin answered he:-
"Child of a generous sire, if willed it be
By Thunderer Zeus, who all dominion hath,
That I my home and dear return yet see,
There at thy shrine will I devote my breath,
There worship thee, dear maid, my savior from dark death. "
## p. 7579 (#389) ###########################################
7579
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
J
UST as "Esop" was credited with almost any popular fable
which ascribed human reasoning to animals, even so nearly
every archaic or mock-archaic hexameter poem floating
about unclaimed was assigned by the Greeks of historical times to
"Homer. " As to the ignoble riddles and bits of autobiographical
invention, they may be at once relegated to a late date, and to an
obscure corner of the anthology. The fragmentary Strife of Frogs
and Mice' (Batrachomyomachia) is a rather spirited Homeric parody.
The names of the chief combatants, in particular, with their sires',
are comically appropriate on the one hand, and on the other amus-
ingly like Homer's "Achilles, offspring of Peleus," or "the son of
knightly Tydeus, Diomedes. " That the origin of the skit is relatively
late, need hardly be added. Farther back than the fifth century B. C.
its defenders rarely attempt to set it.
The didactic epic of Hesiod's school may be regarded as also
Homeric; that is, as an offshoot inspired by the great Ionic epics.
In metre, in dialect, and even by open mention of Homer's name,
the early philosophers who use the dactylic metre betray the same
filial relation. Empedocles here offers the best illustration. Aside
from the learned revival of the Homeric dialect and style in Alexan-
drian epic by Apollonius Rhodius and his school, there are still two
important masses of verse best discussed as "Homeric. "
Of the Cyclic epics, indeed, very little remains. These were, in
part at least, written expressly to piece out the story which the Iliad
and Odyssey left half told. They were probably not based upon any
well-settled folk legend current among the Greeks. Rather we get
the impression that each poet draws some hints from Homer, and
more from his own ingenious fancy.
Perhaps the most famous of all the lost epics is the 'Cypria,' or
lay of Aphrodite, planned to give a statelier approach and adequate
explanation leading up to the Trojan tragedy. To this poet, rather
than to the author of the Iliad, we probably owe the tale of the
strife over the prize of beauty, the judgment of Paris, etc. The
opening lines of this epic are preserved:-
"Once on a time was Earth by the races of men made weary,
Who were wandering numberless over the breadth of her bosom.
## p. 7580 (#390) ###########################################
7580
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Zeus with pity beheld it, and took in his wise heart counsel
How to relieve of her burden the Earth, life-giver to all things,
Fanning to flame that terrible struggle, the war upon Troia.
So should the burden by death be removed; - and they in the Troad
Perished: the heroes: the counsel of Zeus was brought to fulfillment. "
Many famous legends-for instance, Iphigenia's sacrifice, Philocte-
tes's desertion in Lemnos, etc. —seem to have been first told in the
'Cypria,' and thence borrowed by later dramatist, lyric poet, and
chronicler. It is perhaps from the same source that the Catalogue of
Ships was transferred to our Iliad. The poem was said to have been
Homer's wedding gift to his son-in-law Stasinus of Cyprus, who was
evidently to sing it as his own; a tale which looks like an awkward
compromise between two theories of authorship.
Again, there were continuations of the Iliad, one of which was so
widely accepted that the quiet closing verse of the elder poem was
mutilated to prepare the way for it. Instead of
"So they made ready the grave for Hector the tamer of horses,»
some read
"So they made ready the grave for Hector: the Amazon straightway
Came, who was daughter to Ares, the haughty destroyer of heroes. "
Similarly in works of art, the mourning Andromache, Hector's
widow, with her funeral urn, stands in the group which welcomes
the arrival of the Amazon queen. To this feeling that the Iliad is
incomplete we also owe the finest book, the second, of Virgil's
Eneid, Goethe's fragmentary 'Achilleis,' and perhaps many an Attic
tragedy, as well as more recent poems like Lang's 'Helen of Troy. '
It is remarkable how much more near and familiar this old Greek
myth has become to ourselves, than any legend of Northern heroism
or of Teutonic divinities. These Cyclic epics probably took shape in
the ninth and eighth centuries B. C. A prose summary of their con-
tents, and a few score of verses in brief extracts, alone survive.
The Homeric Hymns are really akin in dialect and metre to the
Ionic epic. Some are of venerable age. Thucydides (400 B. C. ) quotes
the hymn to Delian Apollo unquestioningly as Homeric. Some are
as late as the Attic period, if not far more recent. They have little
relation to the tale of Iliad or Odyssey. Nearly all have the form of
preludes, in which the rhapsode greets the divinity at whose shrine
or festival he is about to recite from the heroic epics. In some cases
the invocation may have been composed to suit the character of the
following recitation. Most of these poems are extremely brief, and
formal in tone. Others contain a single mythical allusion, or short
## p. 7581 (#391) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7581
tale, perhaps sufficient to justify the independent existence of the
poem. The most notable in this group is the Hymn to Dionysus,
given in full below. As the whole development of drama. in Athens
sprang up about the Dionysus cult, such tales as this about the wine
god probably formed the earliest plots for the mimic scene. More-
over, the transformation of the pirates into dolphins is represented
on the frieze of the only surviving monument which was set up as
the memorial of a victory gained in the Dionysiac theatre,-"the cho-
ragic monument of Lysicrates. "
There are five or six of these Hymns, finally, each several hundred
lines in length, which can hardly have been used as mere preludes
at all. The hymns to Apollo and to Hermes are composite in charac-
ter; and in their present (perhaps interpolated) form, each looks like
a corpus of the chief early myths concerning the divinity in question.
The Aphrodite hymn, like that to Demeter, details with epic breadth
one notable adventure of the goddess. These poems borrow lines and
half-lines very freely from "Homer" and from each other. The text
has many gaps and corruptions. Still, these hymns are the earliest
source for many, if not most, of the notable legends concerning the
Greek gods. It is most surprising, therefore, that they are passed
over in the two best brief popular treatises on Greek poetry, those
by Professor Jebb and the late J. A. Symonds. Professor Mahaffy
gives them moderate space in his larger history of Hellenic literature.
There is a tolerable prose version in the Bohn Library, by Buckley,
bound with the Odyssey; and a far better one, little known, published
by Thynne in Edinburgh. Some of Shelley's delightful paraphrases
in rhymed verse are given below. George Chapman rendered all
save the hymn to Demeter. Upon the whole, however, these hymns
have not received adequate attention. Paley's edition of the Greek
text with English notes is entirely inferior to Göttling's, annotated
in Latin. Göttling includes also the numerous fragments from lost
Hesiodic works.
ORIGIN OF THE LYRE
From the Hymn to Mercury
THE
HE babe was born at the first peep of day;
He began playing on the lyre at noon,
And the same evening did he steal away
Apollo's herds; - the fourth day of the moon
On which him bore the venerable May,
From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,
Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep,
But out to seek Apollo's herds would creep.
## p. 7582 (#392) ###########################################
7582
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Out of the lofty cavern wandering
He found a tortoise, and cried out—“A treasure! "
(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing. )
The beast before the portal at his leisure
The flowery herbage was depasturing,
Moving his feet in a deliberate measure
Over the turf. Jove's profitable son
Eyeing him laught, and laughing thus begun:-
"A useful godsend are you to me now,
King of the dance, companion of the feast,
Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you
Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain beast,
Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know,-
You must come home with me and be my guest;
You will give joy to me, and I will do
All that is in my power to honor you.
"Better to be at home than out of door;-
So come with me, and though it has been said
That you alive defend from magic power,
I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead. "
Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,
Lifting it from the grass on which it fed,
And grasping it in his delighted hold,
His treasured prize into the cavern old.
Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel,
He bored the life and soul out of the beast
Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal
Darts thro' the tumult of a human breast
Which thronging cares annoy-not swifter wheel
The flashes of its torture and unrest
Out of the dizzy eyes-than Maia's son
All that he did devise hath featly done.
And thro' the tortoise's hard stony skin
At proper distances small holes he made,
And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,
And with a piece of leather overlaid
The open space and fixt the cubits in,
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretcht o'er all
Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.
When he had wrought the lovely instrument,
He tried the chords, and made division meet
## p. 7583 (#393) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7583
Preluding with the plectrum, and there went
Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet
Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent
A strain of unpremeditated wit,
Joyous and wild and wanton-such you may
Hear among revelers on a holiday.
Paraphrase by Shelley.
POWER OF APHRODITE
HYMN TO VENUS
M
USE, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
Or earth with her maternal ministry,
Nourish innumerable; thy delight
All seek. O crowned Aphrodite!
Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell.
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
Diana, [clear-voiced] golden-shafted queen,
Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
Of the wild woods, the bow, the
[lyre and
dance],
And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit
Of beasts among waste mountains,- such delight
Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,
Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
Such was the will of ægis-bearing Jove;
But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
And by her mighty father's head she swore
An oath not unperformed, that evermore
A virgin she would live 'mid deities
Divine: her father, for such gentle ties
Renounced, gave glorious gifts; thus in his hall
She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all
In every fane, her honors first arise
From men- the eldest of Divinities.
## p. 7584 (#394) ###########################################
7584
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,
But none beside escape, so well she weaves
Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods
Who live secure in their unseen abodes.
Paraphrase by Shelley.
DIONYSUS AND THE PIRATES
Reprinted by permission, from Three Dramas of Euripides,' by William C.
Lawton: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , 1889.
G
LORIOUS Semele's child I will summon to mind, Dionysus;
How he appeared on the brink of the sea forever-unresting,
On a projecting crag, assuming the guise of a stripling
Blooming in youth; and in beauty his dark hair floated about him.
Purple the cloak he was wearing across his vigorous shoulders;
Presently hove in sight a band of Tyrrhenian pirates,
Borne in a well-rowed vessel along the wine-colored waters.
Hither their evil destiny guided them! When they beheld him,
Unto each other they nodded: then forth they darted, and straightway
Seized him and haled him aboard their vessel, exultant in spirit,
Since they thought him a child of kings who of Zeus are supported.
Then were they eager to bind him in fetters that could not be sun-
dered.
Yet he was held not with bonds, for off and afar did the osiers
Fall from his hands and feet, and left him sitting and smiling
Out of his dusky eyes! But when their pilot beheld it,
Straightway uplifting his voice he shouted aloud to his comrades:-
"Madmen! Who is this god ye would seize and control with your
fetters?
Mighty is he! Our well-rowed ship is unable to hold him.
Verily this is Zeus, or else the archer Apollo,
Or, it may be, Poseidon: - for nowise perishing mortals
Does he resemble, but gods who make their home on Olympus!
Bring him, I pray you, again to the darksome shore, and release him
Straightway! Lay not a finger upon him, lest in his anger
He may arouse the impetuous gusts and the furious storm-wind. "
Thus he spoke, but the captain in words of anger assailed him:---
"Fellow, look to the wind, and draw at the sail of the vessel,
Holding the cordage in hand; we men will care for the captive.
He shall come, as I think, to Egypt, or may be to Cyprus,
Or to the Hyperboreans, or farther, and surely shall tell us
Finally who are his friends, and reveal to us all his possessions,
Name us his brethren too: for a god unto us has betrayed him. "
## p. 7585 (#395) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7585
So had he spoken, and raised his mast and the sail of his vessel.
Fairly upon their sail was blowing a breeze, and the cordage
Tightened; and presently then most wondrous chances befell them!
First of all things, wine through the black impetuous vessel,
Fragrant and sweet to the taste, was trickling: the odor ambrosial
Rose in the air; and terror possessed them all to behold it.
Presently near to the top of the sail vine had extended,
Winding hither and thither, with many a cluster dependent.
Round about their mast an ivy was duskily twining,
Rich in its blossoms, and fair was the fruit that had risen upon it.
Every rowlock a garland wore.
And when they beheld this,
Instantly then to the pilot they shouted to hurry the vessel
Near to the land: but the god appeared as a lion among them,
Terrible, high on the bow, and loudly he roared; and amidships
Made he appear to their eyes a shaggy-necked bear as a portent.
Eagerly rose she erect, and high on the prow was the lion
Eying them grimly askance. To the stern they darted in terror.
There about their pilot, the man of wiser perception,
Dazed and affrighted they stood; and suddenly leaping upon them,
On their captain he seized. They, fleeing from utter destruction,
Into the sacred water plunged, as they saw it, together,
Turning to dolphins. The god, for the pilot having compassion,
Held him back, and gave him happiness, speaking as follows:-
"Have no fear, O innocent supplicant, dear to my spirit.
Semele's offspring am I, Dionysus the leader in revels,
Born of the daughter of Cadmos, to Zeus in wedlock united. "
Greeting, O child of the fair-faced Semele! Never the minstrel
Who is forgetful of thee may fashion a song that is pleasing!
CLOSE OF THE HYMN TO DELIAN APOLLO
EAR all outlooks are unto thee, and the lofty mountains'
Topmost peaks, and the rivers that down to the sea are de-
XIII-475
scending.
More than all, O Phoebus, thy heart is in Delos delighted,
Where in their trailing robes unto thee the Ionians gather,
They themselves and their modest wives as well, and the children.
There they do honor to thee with boxing, dancing, and singing.
So they take their delight, whenever the games are appointed.
One would believe them to be immortal and ageless forever,
Whoso met them, when the Ionians gather together.
Then he the charms of them all would behold, and delight in their
spirit,
## p. 7586 (#396) ###########################################
7586
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Seeing the men of the race, and the women gracefully girdled.
Fleet are the vessels they bring as well, and many the treasures.
This is a marvel, too, whose glory never may perish,-
Even the Delian maids, attendant on archer Apollo.
When they first have uttered in hymns their praise of Apollo,
Next is Leto's turn, and Artemis, hurler of arrows.
Then they remember the heroes of ancient days, and the women,
Singing their hymn; and the tribes of mortal men are enchanted.
Speech of all mankind, and even their castanets' rattle,
They can mimic, and every man would say that he heard them
Speak his speech; so fairly and well is their minstrelsy fitted.
Come, O Apollo, be thou, together with Artemis, gracious.
Greeting unto you all; and be ye of me hereafter
Mindful, when some other of men that on earth have abiding
Hither may come, an outworn stranger, and ask you the question,
"O ye maidens, and who for you is the sweetest of minstrels,
Whoso hither doth come, in whom ye most are delighted? »
Then do ye all, I pray, with one voice answer and tell him,
"Blind is the man, and in Chios abounding in crags is his dwelling;
He it is whose songs shall all be supreme in the future. »
Yet will I not cease from hymning the archer Apollo,
Lord of the silvern bow, who is offspring of fair-tressed Leto.
Translation of William C. Lawton.
HYMN TO DEMETER
F'
IRST Demeter I sing, that fair-tressed reverend goddess,
Her, and her daughter the slender-ankled, whom once Aidoneus
Stole,- for wide-eyed Zeus, who is lord of the thunder, per-
mitted.
Quite unaware was the mother, Fruitgiver, the Bringer of Springtime.
She, Persephone, played with Oceanos's deep-bosomed daughters,
Plucking the blossoms,― the beautiful violets, roses, and crocus,
Iris, and hyacinth too, that grew in the flowery meadow.
Earth, by command of Zeus, and to please All-welcoming Pluto,
Caused narcissus to grow, as a lure for the lily-faced maiden.
Wonderful was it in beauty. Amazement on all who beheld it
Fell, both mortal men and gods whose life is eternal.
Out of a single root it had grown with clusters an hundred.
All wide Heaven above was filled with delight at the fragrance;
Earth was laughing as well, and the briny swell of the waters.
She, in her wonder, to pluck that beautiful plaything extended
Both her hands; - but that moment the wide-wayed earth underneath
her
## p. 7587 (#397) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7587
Yawned, in the Nysian plain; and the monarch, Receiver of all men,
Many-named son of Kronos, arose, with his horses immortal,—
Seized her against her will, and upon his chariot golden
Bore her lamenting away;-and the hills re-echoed her outcry.
Kronos's son she invoked, most mighty and noble, her father.
None among mortal men, nor the gods whose life is eternal,
Heard her voice,-not even the fruitful Nymphs of the marshland.
Only Perses's daughter, the tender-hearted, had heard her,
Hecatè, she of the gleaming coronet, out of her cavern;
Heard her on Kronides calling, her father: he from immortals
Far was sitting aloof, in a fane where many petitions
Came to him, mingled with sacrifices abundant of mortals.
So, at the bidding of Zeus was reluctant Persephone stolen,
Forced by her father's brother, the Many-named, offspring of Kronos,
Lord and Receiver of all mankind,-with his horses immortal.
While Persephone yet could look upon star-studded heaven,
Gaze on the earth underneath, and the swarming waters unresting,
Seeing the light, so long she had hope that her glorious mother
Yet would descry her, or some from the race of the gods ever-living.
So long hope consoled her courageous spirit in trouble.
Loudly the crests of the mountains and depths of the water resounded
Unto her deathless voice; and her royal mother did hear her.
Keen was the pain at Demeter's heart, and about her ambrosial
Tresses her tender hands were rending her beautiful wimple.
Dusky the garment was that she cast upon both her shoulders.
Like to a bird she darted, and over the lands and the waters
Sped as if frenzied: but yet there was no one willing to tell her
Truthfully, neither of gods nor of human folk who are mortal;
None of the birds would come unto her as a messenger faithful.
So throughout nine days over earth imperial Deo,
Holding in both her hands her flaming torches, was roaming.
Never ambrosia, nor ever delightsome nectar she tasted;
Never she bathed with water her body,- so bitter her sorrow.
Yet when upon her there came for the tenth time glimmering morn-
ing,
Hecatè met her, a shining light in her hands, and addrest her,
Speaking unto her thus, and bringing her news of her daughter:-
"Royal Demeter, our Bountiful Lady, the Giver of Springtime,
Who among mortal men, or who of the gods ever-living,
Brought this grief to your heart by stealing Persephone from you?
Truly her voice did I hear, but yet with my eyes I beheld not
Who committed the deed. Thus all have I truthfully told you. "
## p. 7588 (#398) ###########################################
7588
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
45
So did Hecatè speak; and in words replied not the other,
Fair-tressed Rheia's daughter, but hastily with her she darted,
Hurrying forward, and still in her hands were the glimmering torches.
So they to Helios came, who is watcher of gods and of mortals.
Standing in front of his steeds, she, divine among goddesses, asked
him: :-
"Helios, you as a goddess should hold me in honor, if ever
Either by word or deed I have cheered your heart and your spirit.
I thro' boundless ether have heard the lament of a maiden,
Even of her that I bore, fair blossom, of glorious beauty;
Heard her cry of distress, tho' not with my eyes I beheld her.
Yet do you, who descry all earth and the billowy waters,
Out of the ether resplendent with keen glance watchfully downward
Gazing, report to me truly my child, if perchance you behold her.
Tell me who among men, or of gods, whose life is unending,
Seized, and away from her mother has carried, the maiden unwilling. "
So did she speak; and the son of Hyperion answered her saying:-
"Fair-tressed Rheia's daughter, our royal lady Demeter,
You shall know: for indeed I pity and greatly revere you,
Seeing you grieved for your child, for the graceful Persephone. No
one
Else, save cloud-wrapt Zeus, is to blame among all the immortals.
He as a blooming bride has given your daughter to Hades,
Brother to him and to you; so down to the shadowy darkness
Hades, spite of her cries, has dragged her away with his horses.
Yet, O goddess, abate your grief: it befits you in no wise
Thus insatiate anger to cherish. Nor yet an unworthy
Husband among the immortals is Hades, monarch of all men,
Child of the selfsame father and mother with you; and his honors
Fell to his share, when first amid three was the universe parted.
Still amid those he reigns whose rule unto him was allotted. "
Speaking thus he aroused his steeds; and they at his bidding
Nimbly as long-winged birds with the rushing chariot hastened.
Over Demeter's heart grief fiercer and keener descended.
Then in her anger at Kronos's son, who is lord of the storm-cloud,
Leaving the gathering-place of the gods and spacious Olympus,
Unto the cities of men and the fertile fields she departed.
Translation of William C. Lawton.
## p. 7589 (#399) ###########################################
7589
THOMAS HOOD
(1799-1845)
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
o THOMAS HOOD, more truly than to any other English poet,
belongs the epithet that the Germans love to bestow on
Richter, "the only one. " As a humorist, as a master of
grimace and extravagance, as a thinker, and as a poet, he was no
man's imitator; and the title which he gave his comic miscellany,
"Hood's Own," might have stood as a sort of trade-mark for the
unforced production of his fine genius. Far
too little of this astonishing production was
unforced, however; for Hood, in wretched
health, had wife and weans to feed and
clothe. All his life he drove the pen as
his immortal seamstress her needle. Yet
even his perfunctory jests found prosper-
ity in the ear of the public, while his least
spontaneous poems showed care and con-
science.
This patient, hopeful, undiscouraged poet
of democracy was born in London in the
last year of the eighteenth century. His
father was an engraver, who, determined
that the boy should have a stable and rep-
utable lot, apprenticed him to a mercantile house. What sort of con-
tented, inconspicuous citizen a thrifty, shopkeeping Hood might have.
turned out, was not to be known; for he broke down in health,
was sent off to Scotland for a couple of years, and when he came
back to London at the age of eighteen, tried his hand first at engrav-
ing, to which his strength was unequal, and then, almost accidentally,
at writing. He soon became sub-editor of the London Magazine; a
position poor in pay, but rich in experience and friendships. Charles
Lamb, among other men, took a strong liking to him; discovering a
mental kinship, perhaps, in the delicate, fun-loving, melancholy humor.
of this whimsical new-comer into journalistic literature.
THOMAS HOOD
From the London Magazine Hood went to the New Monthly; and
one after another he edited the Comic Annual, Hood's Own, and
## p. 7590 (#400) ###########################################
7590
THOMAS HOOD
lastly Hood's Magazine, established not many months before his early
death in 1845. Thus, for twenty-four years he was never out of har-
ness; the four years that he spent on the Continent, to economize,
being crowded with work for various periodicals. He had begun to
write in the vein of the Elizabethans, with his 'Hero and Leander'
after the manner of Venus and Adonis,' and his 'Plea of the Mid-
summer Fairies' after the 'Fairy Queen. ' Before 1830 he had written
also what Dobson calls "the galloping anapæsts" of "Lycus the Cen-
taur,' the perfect ballad of 'Fair Ines,' the 'Dream of Eugene Aram'
with its ghastly fascination, many fine sonnets, and not a few of the
most beloved of his lyrics, as I remember, I remember,' 'Farewell,
Life,' 'Ruth,' and 'The Death-Bed. '
These poems, therefore, and others like them, may be taken as
the expression of his true genius. But in the very beginning he had
lavished his extraordinary and original comicalities on the London
public, and these things that public would have, and no other,—or at
least it would pay for no other. The fountain of his fun was really
inexhaustible, since he drew from it without ceasing for a quarter of
a century. But at intervals in later years the waters ran thin and
flat, without sparkle or effervescence. Yet no humorist ever wrote
so much with so large a remainder of excellence. His puns are not
mere verbal sleight of hand, but brilliant verbal wit. Not even
Charles Lamb has so mastered the subtlety and the imagery of the
pun. Hood goes beyond the analogy of sound and catches the analogy
of meaning. But leaving out of the question this inimitable control
of words, his drollery is still unrivaled, because it is the whimsical
expression, not of the trifler but of the thinker, even of the moralist,
and always of the imaginative poet. In the whirl of his absurdities
suddenly appears a glimpse of everlasting truth. The merry-andrew
rattles his hoop and grins, but in his jests there is a hint of whole-
some tears. Our most authoritative critic speaks of the "imaginative
mirth" with which, for example, the poem of Miss Kilmansegg' is
charged from beginning to end, making it, as a sustained piece of
metrical humor, absolutely unique. The Moral, like the whole his
tory indeed, is not more an example of the "curious felicity" which
Horace himself might have found in Hood's workmanship, than of
the moralist's turn for preaching:-
-
"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled:
## p. 7591 (#401) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7591
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the church-yard mold;
Price of many a crime untold:
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousandfold!
How widely its agencies vary:
To save to ruin- to curse- to bless
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess
And now of a Bloody Mary. "
'The Tale of the Trumpet,' also, another marvel of verbal wit,
is filled with a solemn moral power; while even a poem like the
'Address to Mrs. Fry,' which is pure fun, has an admirable ethical
conclusion.
So much was it a matter of course, however, to consider Hood a
comic writer, that Thackeray, when he deplored the waste of that
rare genius on joke-cracking, and declared his passion to be a quality
much higher than his humor, found nobody to agree with him. But
the world is gradually conceding that pathos is the crowning gift of
the author of the 'Lay of the Laborer,' the 'Song of the Shirt,' and
above all, of the Bridge of Sighs. ' That achievement, said Thack-
eray, "was his Corunna, his Heights of Abraham: sickly, weak,
wounded, he fell in the full blaze and fame of that great victory. "
The Song of the Shirt' appeared anonymously in Punch for Christ-
mas 1843. No poem ever written was so instantly "learned by heart"
by a whole people. In palaces, princesses dropped over it ineffectual
tears, and street singers chanted the bitter chorus in the darkest slums
of East London. It has the dignity of tragedy, and it makes a single,
commonplace, unheroic figure stand for the universal. The 'Bridge of
Sighs' was written for Hood's Magazine but a little while before the
poet's death. It is because to the tragedy of this is added an element
of the sublime that it becomes the greater work.
Always ill, suffering, poor, in debt, anxious for those dependent
on him, Hood was always cheerful, courageous, and manfully inde-
pendent. In his family life he was happy, in friendships he was rich,
and he treated sickness and poverty as mere accidents of time. There
never lived a sweeter nature. Over his grave in Kensal Green Cem-
etery stands a monument raised by the eager contributions of his
countrymen,― princes, gentlemen, scholars, statesmen, millionaires,
artisans, laborers, seamstresses, dressmakers, shop-girls; and on it is
inscribed the epitaph he himself chose "He sang the Song of the
Shirt. "
―
Lucin Richert Bankle
Gilbert
## p. 7592 (#402) ###########################################
7592
THOMAS HOOD
FAITHLESS SALLY BROWN
AN OLD BALLAD
YOUNG
NG Ben he was a nice young man,
A carpenter by trade;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,
That was a lady's-maid.
But as they fetched a walk one day,
They met a press-gang crew;
And Sally she did faint away,
Whilst Ben he was brought to.
The boatswain swore with wicked words,
Enough to shock a saint,
That though she did seem in a fit,
'Twas nothing but a feint.
"Come, girl," said he, "hold up your head-
He'll be as good as me;
For when your swain is in our boat,
A boatswain he will be. "
So when they'd made their game of her,
And taken off her elf,
She roused, and found she only was
A-coming to herself.
"And is he gone? and is he gone? "
She cried and wept outright:
"Then I will to the water-side,
And see him out of sight. "
A waterman came up to her:
"Now, young woman," said he,
"If you weep on so, you will make
Eye-water in the sea. "
"Alas! they've taken my beau Ben
To sail with old Benbow;"
And her woe began to run afresh,
As if she'd said, Gee woe!
Says he, "They've only taken him.
To the Tender-ship, you see:"
## p. 7593 (#403) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7593
"The Tender-ship! " cried Sally Brown,-
"What a hard-ship that must be!
"Oh! would I were a mermaid now,
For then I'd follow him;
But oh! I'm not a fish-woman,
And so I cannot swim.
"Alas! I was not born beneath
The Virgin and the Scales,
So I must curse my cruel stars,
And walk about in Wales. "
Now Ben had sailed to many a place
That's underneath the world;
But in two years the ship came home,
And all her sails were furled.
But when he called on Sally Brown
To see how she got on,
He found she'd got another Ben,
Whose Christian name was John.
"O Sally Brown, O Sally Brown,
How could you serve me so?
I've met with many a breeze before,
But never such a blow! "
Then reading on his 'bacco box,
He heaved a heavy sigh,
And then began to eye his pipe,
And then to pipe his eye.
And then he tried to sing 'All's Well,'
But could not, though he tried;
His head was turned- and so he chewed
His pigtail till he died.
His death, which happened in his berth,
At forty-odd befell;
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton tolled the bell.
## p. 7594 (#404) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7594
AN IRONIC REQUIEM
From A Lament for the Decline of Chivalry›
ELL hast thou said, departed Burke,-
All chivalrous romantic work
Is ended now and past!
That iron age, which some have thought
Of mettle rather overwrought,
Is now all over-cast.
WELL
Ay! where are those heroic knights
Of old those armadillo wights
Who wore the plated vest?
Great Charlemagne and all his peers
Are cold-enjoying with their spears
An everlasting rest.
The bold King Arthur sleepeth sound;
So sleep his knights who gave that Round
Old Table such éclat!
Oh, Time has plucked the plumy brow!
And none engage at turneys now
But those that go to law!
Where are those old and feudal clans,
Their pikes, and bills, and partisans;
Their hauberks, jerkins, buffs?
A battle was a battle then,
A breathing piece of work; but men
Fight now with powder puffs!
The curtal-axe is out of date!
The good old cross-bow bends to Fate;
'Tis gone, the archer's craft!
No tough arm bends the springing yew,
And jolly draymen ride, in lieu
Of Death, upon the shaft.
In cavils when will cavaliers
Set ringing helmets by the ears,
And scatter plumes about?
Or blood-if they are in the vein?
That tap will never run again-
Alas, the casque is out!
-
•
## p. 7595 (#405) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7595
No iron crackling now is scored
By dint of battle-axe or sword,
To find a vital place;
Though certain doctors still pretend,
Awhile, before they kill a friend,
To labor through his case!
Farewell, then, ancient men of might
Crusader, errant squire, and knight!
Our coats and customs soften;
To rise would only make you weep:
Sleep on in rusty iron, sleep
As in a safety coffin!
A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS AND
FIVE MONTHS
HOU happy, happy elf!
THO
(But stop-first let me kiss away that tear)
Thou tiny image of myself!
(My love, he's poking peas into his ear! )
Thou merry, laughing sprite!
With spirits feather-light,
Untouched by sorrow and unsoiled by sin-
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin! )
Thou little tricksy Puck!
With antic toys so funnily bestuck,
Light as the singing bird that wings the air-
(The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair! )
Thou darling of thy sire!
(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire! )
―
Thou imp of mirth and joy!
In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link,
Thou idol of thy parents-(Drat the boy!
There goes my ink! )
Thou cherub-but of earth;
Fit playfellow for fays by moonlight pale,
In harmless sport and mirth —
(That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail! )
Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey
From every blossom in the world that blows,
Singing in youth's Elysium ever sunny-
(Another tumble-that's his precious nose! )
## p. 7596 (#406) ###########################################
7596
THOMAS HOOD
Thy father's pride and hope!
(He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope! )
With pure heart newly stamped from Nature's mint-
(Where did he learn that squint? )
Thou young domestic dove!
(He'll have that jug off with another shove! )
Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest!
(Are those torn clothes his best? )
Little epitome of man!
(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan! )
Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life,—
(He's got a knife! )
Thou enviable being!
No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,
Play on, play on,
My elfin John!
Toss the light ball — bestride the stick-
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick! )
With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk,
With many a lamb-like frisk-
(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown! )
-
Thou pretty opening rose!
(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose! )
Balmy, and breathing music like the south
(He really brings my heart into my mouth! )
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star
(I wish that window had an iron bar! )
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove –
(I'll tell you what, my love,
I cannot write unless he's sent above! )
A NOCTURNAL SKETCH
E
VEN is come; and from the dark Park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain,
Or hear Othello's jealous doubt spout out,
Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade,
Denying to his frantic clutch much touch;
## p. 7597 (#407) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7597
Or else to see Ducrow with wide stride ride
Four horses as no other man can span;
Or in the small Olympic pit, sit split
Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz.
Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung;
The gas upblazes with its bright white light,
And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl
About the streets and take up Pall-Mall Sal,
Who, hasting to her nightly jobs, robs fobs.
Now thieves to enter for your cash, smash, crash,
Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep,
But frightened by Policeman B 3, flee,
And while they're going, whisper low, "No go! "
Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads,
And sleepers waking grumble, "Drat that cat! "
Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls
Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill-will.
Now Bulls of Bashan, of a prize size, rise
In childish dreams, and with a roar gore poor
Georgy, or Charley, or Billy, willy-nilly;
But nursemaid in a nightmare rest, chest-pressed,
Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Games,
And that she hears - what faith is man's!
A man like him my husband, dwelling here.
And here content to dwell. Now hasten, maids,
And set before the stranger food and wine. "
## p. 7575 (#385) ###########################################
HOMER
She spake; they heard and cheerfully obeyed,
And set before Ulysses food and wine.
The patient chief Ulysses ate and drank
Full eagerly, for he had fasted long.
White-armed Nausicaa then had other cares.
She placed the smoothly folded robes within
The sumptuous chariot, yoked the firm-hoofed mules,
And mounted to her place, and from the seat
Spake kindly, counseling Ulysses thus:-
IV. - Book vi. , 255-331. Translation of Philip Worsley
"STRANGER, bestir thyself to seek the town,
That to my father's mansion I may lead
Thee following, there to meet the flower and crown
Of the Phæacian people. But take heed
(Not senseless dost thou seem in word or deed),
While 'mid the fields and works of men we go,
After the mules, in the wain's track, to speed,
Girt with this virgin company, and lo!
I will myself drive first, and all the road will show.
"When we the city reach - a castled crown
Of wall encircles it from end to end,
And a fair haven, on each side the town,
Framed with fine entrance, doth our barks defend,
Which, where the terrace by the shore doth wend,
Line the long coast; to all and each large space,
Docks, and deep shelter, doth that haven lend;
There, paved with marble, our great market-place
Doth with its arms Poseidon's beauteous fane embrace.
"All instruments marine they fashion there,
Cordage and canvas and the tapering oar;
Since not for bow nor quiver do they care,
But masts and well-poised ships and naval store,
Wherewith the foam-white ocean they explore
Rejoicing. There I fear for my good name,
For in the land dwell babblers evermore,
Proud, supercilious, who might work me shame
Hereafter with sharp tongues of cavil and quick blame.
"Haply would ask some losel, meeting me,
'Where did she find this stranger tall and brave
Who is it? He then will her husband be-
Perchance some far-off foreigner - whom the wave
(For none dwell near us) on our island drave.
7575
1
## p. 7576 (#386) ###########################################
7576
HOMER
Or have her long prayers made a god come down,
Whom all her life she shall for husband have?
Wisely she sought him, for she spurns our town,
Though wooed by many a chief of high worth and renown. '
"So will they speak this slander to my shame;
Yea, if another made the like display,
Her I myself should be the first to blame,
If in the public streets she should essay
To mix with men before her marriage day,
Against her father's and her mother's will.
Now, stranger, well remember what I say,
So mayst thou haply in good haste fulfill
Thy journey, with safe-conduct, by my father's will:-
"Hard by the roadside an illustrious grove,
Athene's, all of poplar, thou shalt find.
Through it a streaming rivulet doth rove,
And the rich meadow-lands around it wind.
There the estate lies to my sire assigned,
There his fat vineyards-from the town so far
As a man's shout may travel. There reclined
Tarry such while, and thy approach debar,
Till we belike within my father's mansion are.
"Then to the town Phæacian, and inquire
(Plain is the house, a child might be thy guide)
Where dwells Alcinous my large-hearted sire.
Not like the houses reared on every side
Stands that wherein Alcinous doth abide,
But easy to be known. But when the wall
And court inclose thee, with an eager stride
Move through the noble spaces of the hall,
And with firm eye seek out my mother first of all.
"She in the firelight near the hearth doth twine,
Sitting, the purpled yarn; her maids are seen
Behind her; there my sire, enthroned, his wine
Quaffs like a god; both on the pillar lean.
Him passing urge thy supplication keen,
My mother's knees enclasping. If but she
Think kindness in her heart, good hope, I ween,
Remains, however far thy bourne may be,
That country, friends, and home thou yet shalt live to
see. "
## p. 7577 (#387) ###########################################
HOMER
She ended, and the mules with glittering lash
Plied, who soon leave the river in their rear.
Onward continuously their swift feet flash.
She like an understanding charioteer
Scourged them with judgment, and their course did steer
So to precede Odysseus and the rest.
And the sun fell and they the grove came near.
There on the earth sat down with anxious breast
Odysseus, and in prayer the child of Zeus addressed:
«<
"Virgin, whose eyelids slumber not nor sleep,
Hear, child of Zeus! who in the time forepast
Heardest me not, when in the ruinous deep
Poseidon whirled me with his angry blast.
Let me find pity in this land at last! »
So prayed he, and Athene heard: but she
Not yet revealed herself in form; so vast
Loomed in her eyes her uncle's fierce decree
Against divine Odysseus, ere his land he see.
There the much-toiled divine Odysseus prayed.
She onward passed to the Phæacian town,
Drawn by the mules. But when the royal maid
Came to her father's halls of high renown,
-
She by the porch drew rein. Thither came down
Her brothers, circling her, a lucid ring;
They of Phæacian youth the flower and crown,
Like gods to look at. Soon unharnessing
The mules, into the house the raiment clean they bring.
V. - Book vii. , 1-13. Same Translation
SHE to her chamber straight ascended. There
Eurymedusa old, the chamber dame,
Kindled the fire- who o'er the ocean mere
Borne in swift ships from land Apeira came,
Thenceforth assigned by right of regal claim
To King Alcinous, like a god revered
In his own land, the first in name and fame.
She in the halls white-armed Nausicaa reared,
And now the fire lit well, and sweet repast prepared.
7577
## p. 7578 (#388) ###########################################
7578
HOMER
[A final glimpse of Nausicaa is accorded to Odysseus, and to us, at night-
fall of the following day. ]
VI. - Book viii. , 454–468. Same Translation
HIM then the maidens bathe and rub with oil,
And in rich robe and tunic clothe with care.
He from the bath, cleansed from the dust of toil,
Passed to the drinkers; and Nausicaa there
Stood, molded by the gods exceeding fair.
She, on the roof-tree pillar leaning, heard
Odysseus; turning she beheld him near.
Deep in her breast admiring wonder stirred,
And in a low sweet voice she spake this winged word:-
"Hail, stranger guest! when fatherland and wife
Thou shalt revisit, then remember me,
Since to me first thou owest the price of life. "
And to the royal virgin answered he:-
"Child of a generous sire, if willed it be
By Thunderer Zeus, who all dominion hath,
That I my home and dear return yet see,
There at thy shrine will I devote my breath,
There worship thee, dear maid, my savior from dark death. "
## p. 7579 (#389) ###########################################
7579
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
J
UST as "Esop" was credited with almost any popular fable
which ascribed human reasoning to animals, even so nearly
every archaic or mock-archaic hexameter poem floating
about unclaimed was assigned by the Greeks of historical times to
"Homer. " As to the ignoble riddles and bits of autobiographical
invention, they may be at once relegated to a late date, and to an
obscure corner of the anthology. The fragmentary Strife of Frogs
and Mice' (Batrachomyomachia) is a rather spirited Homeric parody.
The names of the chief combatants, in particular, with their sires',
are comically appropriate on the one hand, and on the other amus-
ingly like Homer's "Achilles, offspring of Peleus," or "the son of
knightly Tydeus, Diomedes. " That the origin of the skit is relatively
late, need hardly be added. Farther back than the fifth century B. C.
its defenders rarely attempt to set it.
The didactic epic of Hesiod's school may be regarded as also
Homeric; that is, as an offshoot inspired by the great Ionic epics.
In metre, in dialect, and even by open mention of Homer's name,
the early philosophers who use the dactylic metre betray the same
filial relation. Empedocles here offers the best illustration. Aside
from the learned revival of the Homeric dialect and style in Alexan-
drian epic by Apollonius Rhodius and his school, there are still two
important masses of verse best discussed as "Homeric. "
Of the Cyclic epics, indeed, very little remains. These were, in
part at least, written expressly to piece out the story which the Iliad
and Odyssey left half told. They were probably not based upon any
well-settled folk legend current among the Greeks. Rather we get
the impression that each poet draws some hints from Homer, and
more from his own ingenious fancy.
Perhaps the most famous of all the lost epics is the 'Cypria,' or
lay of Aphrodite, planned to give a statelier approach and adequate
explanation leading up to the Trojan tragedy. To this poet, rather
than to the author of the Iliad, we probably owe the tale of the
strife over the prize of beauty, the judgment of Paris, etc. The
opening lines of this epic are preserved:-
"Once on a time was Earth by the races of men made weary,
Who were wandering numberless over the breadth of her bosom.
## p. 7580 (#390) ###########################################
7580
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Zeus with pity beheld it, and took in his wise heart counsel
How to relieve of her burden the Earth, life-giver to all things,
Fanning to flame that terrible struggle, the war upon Troia.
So should the burden by death be removed; - and they in the Troad
Perished: the heroes: the counsel of Zeus was brought to fulfillment. "
Many famous legends-for instance, Iphigenia's sacrifice, Philocte-
tes's desertion in Lemnos, etc. —seem to have been first told in the
'Cypria,' and thence borrowed by later dramatist, lyric poet, and
chronicler. It is perhaps from the same source that the Catalogue of
Ships was transferred to our Iliad. The poem was said to have been
Homer's wedding gift to his son-in-law Stasinus of Cyprus, who was
evidently to sing it as his own; a tale which looks like an awkward
compromise between two theories of authorship.
Again, there were continuations of the Iliad, one of which was so
widely accepted that the quiet closing verse of the elder poem was
mutilated to prepare the way for it. Instead of
"So they made ready the grave for Hector the tamer of horses,»
some read
"So they made ready the grave for Hector: the Amazon straightway
Came, who was daughter to Ares, the haughty destroyer of heroes. "
Similarly in works of art, the mourning Andromache, Hector's
widow, with her funeral urn, stands in the group which welcomes
the arrival of the Amazon queen. To this feeling that the Iliad is
incomplete we also owe the finest book, the second, of Virgil's
Eneid, Goethe's fragmentary 'Achilleis,' and perhaps many an Attic
tragedy, as well as more recent poems like Lang's 'Helen of Troy. '
It is remarkable how much more near and familiar this old Greek
myth has become to ourselves, than any legend of Northern heroism
or of Teutonic divinities. These Cyclic epics probably took shape in
the ninth and eighth centuries B. C. A prose summary of their con-
tents, and a few score of verses in brief extracts, alone survive.
The Homeric Hymns are really akin in dialect and metre to the
Ionic epic. Some are of venerable age. Thucydides (400 B. C. ) quotes
the hymn to Delian Apollo unquestioningly as Homeric. Some are
as late as the Attic period, if not far more recent. They have little
relation to the tale of Iliad or Odyssey. Nearly all have the form of
preludes, in which the rhapsode greets the divinity at whose shrine
or festival he is about to recite from the heroic epics. In some cases
the invocation may have been composed to suit the character of the
following recitation. Most of these poems are extremely brief, and
formal in tone. Others contain a single mythical allusion, or short
## p. 7581 (#391) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7581
tale, perhaps sufficient to justify the independent existence of the
poem. The most notable in this group is the Hymn to Dionysus,
given in full below. As the whole development of drama. in Athens
sprang up about the Dionysus cult, such tales as this about the wine
god probably formed the earliest plots for the mimic scene. More-
over, the transformation of the pirates into dolphins is represented
on the frieze of the only surviving monument which was set up as
the memorial of a victory gained in the Dionysiac theatre,-"the cho-
ragic monument of Lysicrates. "
There are five or six of these Hymns, finally, each several hundred
lines in length, which can hardly have been used as mere preludes
at all. The hymns to Apollo and to Hermes are composite in charac-
ter; and in their present (perhaps interpolated) form, each looks like
a corpus of the chief early myths concerning the divinity in question.
The Aphrodite hymn, like that to Demeter, details with epic breadth
one notable adventure of the goddess. These poems borrow lines and
half-lines very freely from "Homer" and from each other. The text
has many gaps and corruptions. Still, these hymns are the earliest
source for many, if not most, of the notable legends concerning the
Greek gods. It is most surprising, therefore, that they are passed
over in the two best brief popular treatises on Greek poetry, those
by Professor Jebb and the late J. A. Symonds. Professor Mahaffy
gives them moderate space in his larger history of Hellenic literature.
There is a tolerable prose version in the Bohn Library, by Buckley,
bound with the Odyssey; and a far better one, little known, published
by Thynne in Edinburgh. Some of Shelley's delightful paraphrases
in rhymed verse are given below. George Chapman rendered all
save the hymn to Demeter. Upon the whole, however, these hymns
have not received adequate attention. Paley's edition of the Greek
text with English notes is entirely inferior to Göttling's, annotated
in Latin. Göttling includes also the numerous fragments from lost
Hesiodic works.
ORIGIN OF THE LYRE
From the Hymn to Mercury
THE
HE babe was born at the first peep of day;
He began playing on the lyre at noon,
And the same evening did he steal away
Apollo's herds; - the fourth day of the moon
On which him bore the venerable May,
From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,
Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep,
But out to seek Apollo's herds would creep.
## p. 7582 (#392) ###########################################
7582
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Out of the lofty cavern wandering
He found a tortoise, and cried out—“A treasure! "
(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing. )
The beast before the portal at his leisure
The flowery herbage was depasturing,
Moving his feet in a deliberate measure
Over the turf. Jove's profitable son
Eyeing him laught, and laughing thus begun:-
"A useful godsend are you to me now,
King of the dance, companion of the feast,
Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you
Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain beast,
Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know,-
You must come home with me and be my guest;
You will give joy to me, and I will do
All that is in my power to honor you.
"Better to be at home than out of door;-
So come with me, and though it has been said
That you alive defend from magic power,
I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead. "
Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,
Lifting it from the grass on which it fed,
And grasping it in his delighted hold,
His treasured prize into the cavern old.
Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel,
He bored the life and soul out of the beast
Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal
Darts thro' the tumult of a human breast
Which thronging cares annoy-not swifter wheel
The flashes of its torture and unrest
Out of the dizzy eyes-than Maia's son
All that he did devise hath featly done.
And thro' the tortoise's hard stony skin
At proper distances small holes he made,
And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,
And with a piece of leather overlaid
The open space and fixt the cubits in,
Fitting the bridge to both, and stretcht o'er all
Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.
When he had wrought the lovely instrument,
He tried the chords, and made division meet
## p. 7583 (#393) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7583
Preluding with the plectrum, and there went
Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet
Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent
A strain of unpremeditated wit,
Joyous and wild and wanton-such you may
Hear among revelers on a holiday.
Paraphrase by Shelley.
POWER OF APHRODITE
HYMN TO VENUS
M
USE, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
Or earth with her maternal ministry,
Nourish innumerable; thy delight
All seek. O crowned Aphrodite!
Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell.
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
Diana, [clear-voiced] golden-shafted queen,
Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
Of the wild woods, the bow, the
[lyre and
dance],
And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit
Of beasts among waste mountains,- such delight
Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,
Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
Such was the will of ægis-bearing Jove;
But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
And by her mighty father's head she swore
An oath not unperformed, that evermore
A virgin she would live 'mid deities
Divine: her father, for such gentle ties
Renounced, gave glorious gifts; thus in his hall
She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all
In every fane, her honors first arise
From men- the eldest of Divinities.
## p. 7584 (#394) ###########################################
7584
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,
But none beside escape, so well she weaves
Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods
Who live secure in their unseen abodes.
Paraphrase by Shelley.
DIONYSUS AND THE PIRATES
Reprinted by permission, from Three Dramas of Euripides,' by William C.
Lawton: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , 1889.
G
LORIOUS Semele's child I will summon to mind, Dionysus;
How he appeared on the brink of the sea forever-unresting,
On a projecting crag, assuming the guise of a stripling
Blooming in youth; and in beauty his dark hair floated about him.
Purple the cloak he was wearing across his vigorous shoulders;
Presently hove in sight a band of Tyrrhenian pirates,
Borne in a well-rowed vessel along the wine-colored waters.
Hither their evil destiny guided them! When they beheld him,
Unto each other they nodded: then forth they darted, and straightway
Seized him and haled him aboard their vessel, exultant in spirit,
Since they thought him a child of kings who of Zeus are supported.
Then were they eager to bind him in fetters that could not be sun-
dered.
Yet he was held not with bonds, for off and afar did the osiers
Fall from his hands and feet, and left him sitting and smiling
Out of his dusky eyes! But when their pilot beheld it,
Straightway uplifting his voice he shouted aloud to his comrades:-
"Madmen! Who is this god ye would seize and control with your
fetters?
Mighty is he! Our well-rowed ship is unable to hold him.
Verily this is Zeus, or else the archer Apollo,
Or, it may be, Poseidon: - for nowise perishing mortals
Does he resemble, but gods who make their home on Olympus!
Bring him, I pray you, again to the darksome shore, and release him
Straightway! Lay not a finger upon him, lest in his anger
He may arouse the impetuous gusts and the furious storm-wind. "
Thus he spoke, but the captain in words of anger assailed him:---
"Fellow, look to the wind, and draw at the sail of the vessel,
Holding the cordage in hand; we men will care for the captive.
He shall come, as I think, to Egypt, or may be to Cyprus,
Or to the Hyperboreans, or farther, and surely shall tell us
Finally who are his friends, and reveal to us all his possessions,
Name us his brethren too: for a god unto us has betrayed him. "
## p. 7585 (#395) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7585
So had he spoken, and raised his mast and the sail of his vessel.
Fairly upon their sail was blowing a breeze, and the cordage
Tightened; and presently then most wondrous chances befell them!
First of all things, wine through the black impetuous vessel,
Fragrant and sweet to the taste, was trickling: the odor ambrosial
Rose in the air; and terror possessed them all to behold it.
Presently near to the top of the sail vine had extended,
Winding hither and thither, with many a cluster dependent.
Round about their mast an ivy was duskily twining,
Rich in its blossoms, and fair was the fruit that had risen upon it.
Every rowlock a garland wore.
And when they beheld this,
Instantly then to the pilot they shouted to hurry the vessel
Near to the land: but the god appeared as a lion among them,
Terrible, high on the bow, and loudly he roared; and amidships
Made he appear to their eyes a shaggy-necked bear as a portent.
Eagerly rose she erect, and high on the prow was the lion
Eying them grimly askance. To the stern they darted in terror.
There about their pilot, the man of wiser perception,
Dazed and affrighted they stood; and suddenly leaping upon them,
On their captain he seized. They, fleeing from utter destruction,
Into the sacred water plunged, as they saw it, together,
Turning to dolphins. The god, for the pilot having compassion,
Held him back, and gave him happiness, speaking as follows:-
"Have no fear, O innocent supplicant, dear to my spirit.
Semele's offspring am I, Dionysus the leader in revels,
Born of the daughter of Cadmos, to Zeus in wedlock united. "
Greeting, O child of the fair-faced Semele! Never the minstrel
Who is forgetful of thee may fashion a song that is pleasing!
CLOSE OF THE HYMN TO DELIAN APOLLO
EAR all outlooks are unto thee, and the lofty mountains'
Topmost peaks, and the rivers that down to the sea are de-
XIII-475
scending.
More than all, O Phoebus, thy heart is in Delos delighted,
Where in their trailing robes unto thee the Ionians gather,
They themselves and their modest wives as well, and the children.
There they do honor to thee with boxing, dancing, and singing.
So they take their delight, whenever the games are appointed.
One would believe them to be immortal and ageless forever,
Whoso met them, when the Ionians gather together.
Then he the charms of them all would behold, and delight in their
spirit,
## p. 7586 (#396) ###########################################
7586
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
Seeing the men of the race, and the women gracefully girdled.
Fleet are the vessels they bring as well, and many the treasures.
This is a marvel, too, whose glory never may perish,-
Even the Delian maids, attendant on archer Apollo.
When they first have uttered in hymns their praise of Apollo,
Next is Leto's turn, and Artemis, hurler of arrows.
Then they remember the heroes of ancient days, and the women,
Singing their hymn; and the tribes of mortal men are enchanted.
Speech of all mankind, and even their castanets' rattle,
They can mimic, and every man would say that he heard them
Speak his speech; so fairly and well is their minstrelsy fitted.
Come, O Apollo, be thou, together with Artemis, gracious.
Greeting unto you all; and be ye of me hereafter
Mindful, when some other of men that on earth have abiding
Hither may come, an outworn stranger, and ask you the question,
"O ye maidens, and who for you is the sweetest of minstrels,
Whoso hither doth come, in whom ye most are delighted? »
Then do ye all, I pray, with one voice answer and tell him,
"Blind is the man, and in Chios abounding in crags is his dwelling;
He it is whose songs shall all be supreme in the future. »
Yet will I not cease from hymning the archer Apollo,
Lord of the silvern bow, who is offspring of fair-tressed Leto.
Translation of William C. Lawton.
HYMN TO DEMETER
F'
IRST Demeter I sing, that fair-tressed reverend goddess,
Her, and her daughter the slender-ankled, whom once Aidoneus
Stole,- for wide-eyed Zeus, who is lord of the thunder, per-
mitted.
Quite unaware was the mother, Fruitgiver, the Bringer of Springtime.
She, Persephone, played with Oceanos's deep-bosomed daughters,
Plucking the blossoms,― the beautiful violets, roses, and crocus,
Iris, and hyacinth too, that grew in the flowery meadow.
Earth, by command of Zeus, and to please All-welcoming Pluto,
Caused narcissus to grow, as a lure for the lily-faced maiden.
Wonderful was it in beauty. Amazement on all who beheld it
Fell, both mortal men and gods whose life is eternal.
Out of a single root it had grown with clusters an hundred.
All wide Heaven above was filled with delight at the fragrance;
Earth was laughing as well, and the briny swell of the waters.
She, in her wonder, to pluck that beautiful plaything extended
Both her hands; - but that moment the wide-wayed earth underneath
her
## p. 7587 (#397) ###########################################
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
7587
Yawned, in the Nysian plain; and the monarch, Receiver of all men,
Many-named son of Kronos, arose, with his horses immortal,—
Seized her against her will, and upon his chariot golden
Bore her lamenting away;-and the hills re-echoed her outcry.
Kronos's son she invoked, most mighty and noble, her father.
None among mortal men, nor the gods whose life is eternal,
Heard her voice,-not even the fruitful Nymphs of the marshland.
Only Perses's daughter, the tender-hearted, had heard her,
Hecatè, she of the gleaming coronet, out of her cavern;
Heard her on Kronides calling, her father: he from immortals
Far was sitting aloof, in a fane where many petitions
Came to him, mingled with sacrifices abundant of mortals.
So, at the bidding of Zeus was reluctant Persephone stolen,
Forced by her father's brother, the Many-named, offspring of Kronos,
Lord and Receiver of all mankind,-with his horses immortal.
While Persephone yet could look upon star-studded heaven,
Gaze on the earth underneath, and the swarming waters unresting,
Seeing the light, so long she had hope that her glorious mother
Yet would descry her, or some from the race of the gods ever-living.
So long hope consoled her courageous spirit in trouble.
Loudly the crests of the mountains and depths of the water resounded
Unto her deathless voice; and her royal mother did hear her.
Keen was the pain at Demeter's heart, and about her ambrosial
Tresses her tender hands were rending her beautiful wimple.
Dusky the garment was that she cast upon both her shoulders.
Like to a bird she darted, and over the lands and the waters
Sped as if frenzied: but yet there was no one willing to tell her
Truthfully, neither of gods nor of human folk who are mortal;
None of the birds would come unto her as a messenger faithful.
So throughout nine days over earth imperial Deo,
Holding in both her hands her flaming torches, was roaming.
Never ambrosia, nor ever delightsome nectar she tasted;
Never she bathed with water her body,- so bitter her sorrow.
Yet when upon her there came for the tenth time glimmering morn-
ing,
Hecatè met her, a shining light in her hands, and addrest her,
Speaking unto her thus, and bringing her news of her daughter:-
"Royal Demeter, our Bountiful Lady, the Giver of Springtime,
Who among mortal men, or who of the gods ever-living,
Brought this grief to your heart by stealing Persephone from you?
Truly her voice did I hear, but yet with my eyes I beheld not
Who committed the deed. Thus all have I truthfully told you. "
## p. 7588 (#398) ###########################################
7588
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
45
So did Hecatè speak; and in words replied not the other,
Fair-tressed Rheia's daughter, but hastily with her she darted,
Hurrying forward, and still in her hands were the glimmering torches.
So they to Helios came, who is watcher of gods and of mortals.
Standing in front of his steeds, she, divine among goddesses, asked
him: :-
"Helios, you as a goddess should hold me in honor, if ever
Either by word or deed I have cheered your heart and your spirit.
I thro' boundless ether have heard the lament of a maiden,
Even of her that I bore, fair blossom, of glorious beauty;
Heard her cry of distress, tho' not with my eyes I beheld her.
Yet do you, who descry all earth and the billowy waters,
Out of the ether resplendent with keen glance watchfully downward
Gazing, report to me truly my child, if perchance you behold her.
Tell me who among men, or of gods, whose life is unending,
Seized, and away from her mother has carried, the maiden unwilling. "
So did she speak; and the son of Hyperion answered her saying:-
"Fair-tressed Rheia's daughter, our royal lady Demeter,
You shall know: for indeed I pity and greatly revere you,
Seeing you grieved for your child, for the graceful Persephone. No
one
Else, save cloud-wrapt Zeus, is to blame among all the immortals.
He as a blooming bride has given your daughter to Hades,
Brother to him and to you; so down to the shadowy darkness
Hades, spite of her cries, has dragged her away with his horses.
Yet, O goddess, abate your grief: it befits you in no wise
Thus insatiate anger to cherish. Nor yet an unworthy
Husband among the immortals is Hades, monarch of all men,
Child of the selfsame father and mother with you; and his honors
Fell to his share, when first amid three was the universe parted.
Still amid those he reigns whose rule unto him was allotted. "
Speaking thus he aroused his steeds; and they at his bidding
Nimbly as long-winged birds with the rushing chariot hastened.
Over Demeter's heart grief fiercer and keener descended.
Then in her anger at Kronos's son, who is lord of the storm-cloud,
Leaving the gathering-place of the gods and spacious Olympus,
Unto the cities of men and the fertile fields she departed.
Translation of William C. Lawton.
## p. 7589 (#399) ###########################################
7589
THOMAS HOOD
(1799-1845)
BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
o THOMAS HOOD, more truly than to any other English poet,
belongs the epithet that the Germans love to bestow on
Richter, "the only one. " As a humorist, as a master of
grimace and extravagance, as a thinker, and as a poet, he was no
man's imitator; and the title which he gave his comic miscellany,
"Hood's Own," might have stood as a sort of trade-mark for the
unforced production of his fine genius. Far
too little of this astonishing production was
unforced, however; for Hood, in wretched
health, had wife and weans to feed and
clothe. All his life he drove the pen as
his immortal seamstress her needle. Yet
even his perfunctory jests found prosper-
ity in the ear of the public, while his least
spontaneous poems showed care and con-
science.
This patient, hopeful, undiscouraged poet
of democracy was born in London in the
last year of the eighteenth century. His
father was an engraver, who, determined
that the boy should have a stable and rep-
utable lot, apprenticed him to a mercantile house. What sort of con-
tented, inconspicuous citizen a thrifty, shopkeeping Hood might have.
turned out, was not to be known; for he broke down in health,
was sent off to Scotland for a couple of years, and when he came
back to London at the age of eighteen, tried his hand first at engrav-
ing, to which his strength was unequal, and then, almost accidentally,
at writing. He soon became sub-editor of the London Magazine; a
position poor in pay, but rich in experience and friendships. Charles
Lamb, among other men, took a strong liking to him; discovering a
mental kinship, perhaps, in the delicate, fun-loving, melancholy humor.
of this whimsical new-comer into journalistic literature.
THOMAS HOOD
From the London Magazine Hood went to the New Monthly; and
one after another he edited the Comic Annual, Hood's Own, and
## p. 7590 (#400) ###########################################
7590
THOMAS HOOD
lastly Hood's Magazine, established not many months before his early
death in 1845. Thus, for twenty-four years he was never out of har-
ness; the four years that he spent on the Continent, to economize,
being crowded with work for various periodicals. He had begun to
write in the vein of the Elizabethans, with his 'Hero and Leander'
after the manner of Venus and Adonis,' and his 'Plea of the Mid-
summer Fairies' after the 'Fairy Queen. ' Before 1830 he had written
also what Dobson calls "the galloping anapæsts" of "Lycus the Cen-
taur,' the perfect ballad of 'Fair Ines,' the 'Dream of Eugene Aram'
with its ghastly fascination, many fine sonnets, and not a few of the
most beloved of his lyrics, as I remember, I remember,' 'Farewell,
Life,' 'Ruth,' and 'The Death-Bed. '
These poems, therefore, and others like them, may be taken as
the expression of his true genius. But in the very beginning he had
lavished his extraordinary and original comicalities on the London
public, and these things that public would have, and no other,—or at
least it would pay for no other. The fountain of his fun was really
inexhaustible, since he drew from it without ceasing for a quarter of
a century. But at intervals in later years the waters ran thin and
flat, without sparkle or effervescence. Yet no humorist ever wrote
so much with so large a remainder of excellence. His puns are not
mere verbal sleight of hand, but brilliant verbal wit. Not even
Charles Lamb has so mastered the subtlety and the imagery of the
pun. Hood goes beyond the analogy of sound and catches the analogy
of meaning. But leaving out of the question this inimitable control
of words, his drollery is still unrivaled, because it is the whimsical
expression, not of the trifler but of the thinker, even of the moralist,
and always of the imaginative poet. In the whirl of his absurdities
suddenly appears a glimpse of everlasting truth. The merry-andrew
rattles his hoop and grins, but in his jests there is a hint of whole-
some tears. Our most authoritative critic speaks of the "imaginative
mirth" with which, for example, the poem of Miss Kilmansegg' is
charged from beginning to end, making it, as a sustained piece of
metrical humor, absolutely unique. The Moral, like the whole his
tory indeed, is not more an example of the "curious felicity" which
Horace himself might have found in Hood's workmanship, than of
the moralist's turn for preaching:-
-
"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled:
## p. 7591 (#401) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7591
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the church-yard mold;
Price of many a crime untold:
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousandfold!
How widely its agencies vary:
To save to ruin- to curse- to bless
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess
And now of a Bloody Mary. "
'The Tale of the Trumpet,' also, another marvel of verbal wit,
is filled with a solemn moral power; while even a poem like the
'Address to Mrs. Fry,' which is pure fun, has an admirable ethical
conclusion.
So much was it a matter of course, however, to consider Hood a
comic writer, that Thackeray, when he deplored the waste of that
rare genius on joke-cracking, and declared his passion to be a quality
much higher than his humor, found nobody to agree with him. But
the world is gradually conceding that pathos is the crowning gift of
the author of the 'Lay of the Laborer,' the 'Song of the Shirt,' and
above all, of the Bridge of Sighs. ' That achievement, said Thack-
eray, "was his Corunna, his Heights of Abraham: sickly, weak,
wounded, he fell in the full blaze and fame of that great victory. "
The Song of the Shirt' appeared anonymously in Punch for Christ-
mas 1843. No poem ever written was so instantly "learned by heart"
by a whole people. In palaces, princesses dropped over it ineffectual
tears, and street singers chanted the bitter chorus in the darkest slums
of East London. It has the dignity of tragedy, and it makes a single,
commonplace, unheroic figure stand for the universal. The 'Bridge of
Sighs' was written for Hood's Magazine but a little while before the
poet's death. It is because to the tragedy of this is added an element
of the sublime that it becomes the greater work.
Always ill, suffering, poor, in debt, anxious for those dependent
on him, Hood was always cheerful, courageous, and manfully inde-
pendent. In his family life he was happy, in friendships he was rich,
and he treated sickness and poverty as mere accidents of time. There
never lived a sweeter nature. Over his grave in Kensal Green Cem-
etery stands a monument raised by the eager contributions of his
countrymen,― princes, gentlemen, scholars, statesmen, millionaires,
artisans, laborers, seamstresses, dressmakers, shop-girls; and on it is
inscribed the epitaph he himself chose "He sang the Song of the
Shirt. "
―
Lucin Richert Bankle
Gilbert
## p. 7592 (#402) ###########################################
7592
THOMAS HOOD
FAITHLESS SALLY BROWN
AN OLD BALLAD
YOUNG
NG Ben he was a nice young man,
A carpenter by trade;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,
That was a lady's-maid.
But as they fetched a walk one day,
They met a press-gang crew;
And Sally she did faint away,
Whilst Ben he was brought to.
The boatswain swore with wicked words,
Enough to shock a saint,
That though she did seem in a fit,
'Twas nothing but a feint.
"Come, girl," said he, "hold up your head-
He'll be as good as me;
For when your swain is in our boat,
A boatswain he will be. "
So when they'd made their game of her,
And taken off her elf,
She roused, and found she only was
A-coming to herself.
"And is he gone? and is he gone? "
She cried and wept outright:
"Then I will to the water-side,
And see him out of sight. "
A waterman came up to her:
"Now, young woman," said he,
"If you weep on so, you will make
Eye-water in the sea. "
"Alas! they've taken my beau Ben
To sail with old Benbow;"
And her woe began to run afresh,
As if she'd said, Gee woe!
Says he, "They've only taken him.
To the Tender-ship, you see:"
## p. 7593 (#403) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7593
"The Tender-ship! " cried Sally Brown,-
"What a hard-ship that must be!
"Oh! would I were a mermaid now,
For then I'd follow him;
But oh! I'm not a fish-woman,
And so I cannot swim.
"Alas! I was not born beneath
The Virgin and the Scales,
So I must curse my cruel stars,
And walk about in Wales. "
Now Ben had sailed to many a place
That's underneath the world;
But in two years the ship came home,
And all her sails were furled.
But when he called on Sally Brown
To see how she got on,
He found she'd got another Ben,
Whose Christian name was John.
"O Sally Brown, O Sally Brown,
How could you serve me so?
I've met with many a breeze before,
But never such a blow! "
Then reading on his 'bacco box,
He heaved a heavy sigh,
And then began to eye his pipe,
And then to pipe his eye.
And then he tried to sing 'All's Well,'
But could not, though he tried;
His head was turned- and so he chewed
His pigtail till he died.
His death, which happened in his berth,
At forty-odd befell;
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton tolled the bell.
## p. 7594 (#404) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7594
AN IRONIC REQUIEM
From A Lament for the Decline of Chivalry›
ELL hast thou said, departed Burke,-
All chivalrous romantic work
Is ended now and past!
That iron age, which some have thought
Of mettle rather overwrought,
Is now all over-cast.
WELL
Ay! where are those heroic knights
Of old those armadillo wights
Who wore the plated vest?
Great Charlemagne and all his peers
Are cold-enjoying with their spears
An everlasting rest.
The bold King Arthur sleepeth sound;
So sleep his knights who gave that Round
Old Table such éclat!
Oh, Time has plucked the plumy brow!
And none engage at turneys now
But those that go to law!
Where are those old and feudal clans,
Their pikes, and bills, and partisans;
Their hauberks, jerkins, buffs?
A battle was a battle then,
A breathing piece of work; but men
Fight now with powder puffs!
The curtal-axe is out of date!
The good old cross-bow bends to Fate;
'Tis gone, the archer's craft!
No tough arm bends the springing yew,
And jolly draymen ride, in lieu
Of Death, upon the shaft.
In cavils when will cavaliers
Set ringing helmets by the ears,
And scatter plumes about?
Or blood-if they are in the vein?
That tap will never run again-
Alas, the casque is out!
-
•
## p. 7595 (#405) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7595
No iron crackling now is scored
By dint of battle-axe or sword,
To find a vital place;
Though certain doctors still pretend,
Awhile, before they kill a friend,
To labor through his case!
Farewell, then, ancient men of might
Crusader, errant squire, and knight!
Our coats and customs soften;
To rise would only make you weep:
Sleep on in rusty iron, sleep
As in a safety coffin!
A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS AND
FIVE MONTHS
HOU happy, happy elf!
THO
(But stop-first let me kiss away that tear)
Thou tiny image of myself!
(My love, he's poking peas into his ear! )
Thou merry, laughing sprite!
With spirits feather-light,
Untouched by sorrow and unsoiled by sin-
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin! )
Thou little tricksy Puck!
With antic toys so funnily bestuck,
Light as the singing bird that wings the air-
(The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair! )
Thou darling of thy sire!
(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire! )
―
Thou imp of mirth and joy!
In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link,
Thou idol of thy parents-(Drat the boy!
There goes my ink! )
Thou cherub-but of earth;
Fit playfellow for fays by moonlight pale,
In harmless sport and mirth —
(That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail! )
Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey
From every blossom in the world that blows,
Singing in youth's Elysium ever sunny-
(Another tumble-that's his precious nose! )
## p. 7596 (#406) ###########################################
7596
THOMAS HOOD
Thy father's pride and hope!
(He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope! )
With pure heart newly stamped from Nature's mint-
(Where did he learn that squint? )
Thou young domestic dove!
(He'll have that jug off with another shove! )
Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest!
(Are those torn clothes his best? )
Little epitome of man!
(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan! )
Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life,—
(He's got a knife! )
Thou enviable being!
No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,
Play on, play on,
My elfin John!
Toss the light ball — bestride the stick-
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick! )
With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk,
With many a lamb-like frisk-
(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown! )
-
Thou pretty opening rose!
(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose! )
Balmy, and breathing music like the south
(He really brings my heart into my mouth! )
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star
(I wish that window had an iron bar! )
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove –
(I'll tell you what, my love,
I cannot write unless he's sent above! )
A NOCTURNAL SKETCH
E
VEN is come; and from the dark Park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain,
Or hear Othello's jealous doubt spout out,
Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade,
Denying to his frantic clutch much touch;
## p. 7597 (#407) ###########################################
THOMAS HOOD
7597
Or else to see Ducrow with wide stride ride
Four horses as no other man can span;
Or in the small Olympic pit, sit split
Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz.
Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things
Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung;
The gas upblazes with its bright white light,
And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl
About the streets and take up Pall-Mall Sal,
Who, hasting to her nightly jobs, robs fobs.
Now thieves to enter for your cash, smash, crash,
Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep,
But frightened by Policeman B 3, flee,
And while they're going, whisper low, "No go! "
Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads,
And sleepers waking grumble, "Drat that cat! "
Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls
Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill-will.
Now Bulls of Bashan, of a prize size, rise
In childish dreams, and with a roar gore poor
Georgy, or Charley, or Billy, willy-nilly;
But nursemaid in a nightmare rest, chest-pressed,
Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Games,
And that she hears - what faith is man's!
