No More Learning

D.


_379. To his Readers_

PRISCOS cum haberes, quos probares, indices,
lector, placere qui bonis possent modis,
nostri libelli cur retexis paginam
nugis refertam friuolisque sensibus,
et quam tenello tiro lusi uiscere?
set forte doctis si illa cara est auribus
sonat pusilli quae leporis commate
nullo decora in ambitu sententiae,
hanc iure quaeris et libenter incohas,
uelut iocosa si theatra peruoles.


_380. The Garden of Eugetus_

HORTVS, quo faciles fluunt Napaeae,
quo ludunt Dryades choro uirente,
quo fouet teneras Diana Nymphas;
quo Venus roseos recondit artus,
quo fessus teretes Cupido flammas
suspensis reficit puer pharetris,
quo ferunt se Heliconides puellae;
cui numquam minus est amoena frondis,
cui semper redolent amoma uerni,
cui fons perspicuis tener fluentis
muscoso riguus salit meatu,
quo dulcis auium canor resultans
* * *
quidquid per Tyrias refertur urbis,
hoc uno famulans loco subaptat.


_381. A Rose with a hundred Petals_

HANC puto de proprio tinxit Sol aureus ortu
aut unum ex radiis maluit esse suis;
uel, si etiam centum foliis rosa Cypridis exstat,
fluxit in hanc omni sanguine tota Venus.
haec florum sidus, haec Lucifer almus in agris,
huic odor et color est dignus honore poli.


_382. A Water Urn with a Figure of Cupid_

IGNE salutifero Veneris puer omnia flammans
pro facibus facilis arte ministrat aquas.


_383. His Book's proper Place_

PARVVS nobilium cum liber ad domos
pomposique fori scrinia publica
cinctus multifido ueneris agmine,
nostri defugiens pauperiem laris,
quo dudum modico sordidus angulo
squalebas, tineis iam prope debitus,
si te despiciet turba legentium
inter Romulidas et Tyrias manus,
isto pro exsequiis claudere disticho:
contentos propriis esse decet focis,
quos laudis facile est inuidiam pati.




PHOCAS

circa 500 A. D. (? ).


_384. Poetry and Time_

(Prefixed to his Life of Vergil)

O VETVSTATIS ueneranda custos,
regios actus simul et fugacis
temporum cursus docilis referre,
aurea Clio,
tu nihil magnum sinis interire,
nil mori clarum pateris, reseruans
posteris prisci monumenta saecli
condita libris.
sola fucatis uariare dictis
paginas nescis, set aperta quicquid
ueritas prodit, recinis per aeuum
simplice lingua.
tu senescentis titulos auorum
flore durantis reparas iuuentae;
militat uirtus tibi: te notante
crimina pallent.
tu fori turbas strepitusque litis
effugis dulci moderata cantu,
nec retardari pateris loquellas
conpede metri.
his faue dictis: retegenda uita est
uatis Etrusci, modo qui perenne
Romulae uoci decus adrogauit
carmine sacro.




TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS


The Selection that follows needs some explanation. I have made no
systematic search in the literature of translation: and it is likely
enough that I have omitted renderings more beautiful, or more
interesting, than some which I have included. I have not tried to do
more than to collect together a few old 'favourites' of my own. Moreover
I have--save for one or two examples--confined myself to the four
principal Latin poets.

I have interpreted the word 'Imitations' rather widely. It is quite
possible, for example, that Clough never read Vergil's _Lines Written in
a Lecture-Room_ (Catalepton V): yet the poem of Clough which I have
brought into connexion with this piece is, I think, a truer translation
of it than could be found elsewhere. I will venture to hope, again, that
I may be readily forgiven for placing beside Statius' famous _Invocation
to Sleep_ six sonnets on a like subject from six English masters of the
sonnet-form.

I have to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to
reprint copyright pieces: Messrs. G. Bell & Sons (four versions by
Calverley, Nos. 67, 82, 145, 149), Prof. D. A. Slater (versions of
Lucretius, Nos. 66, 69, and Catullus, No. 97), Messrs. Blackwood (two
pieces by the late Sir Theodore Martin, Nos. 92, 136), Prof. Ellis and
Mr. John Murray (version of Catullus, No. 85), The Syndics of the
Cambridge University Press and the Executors of the late Sir R. C. Jebb
(version of Catullus, No. 74), Mr. L. J. Latham and Messrs. Smith Elder
(version of Propertius, No. 179, from Mr. Latham's _Odes of Horace and
Other Verses_), Messrs. George Allen (version of Horace from the
_Ionica_ of the late William Cory, No. 148), Mr. John Murray (version of
Horace by Mr. Gladstone, No. 126), Dr. T. H. Warren and Mr. John Murray
(version of Vergil, No. 110), Mr. James Rhoades and Messrs. Kegan Paul
(version of Vergil, No. 119), Mr. W. H. Fyfe (version of Statius, No.
262).


_44_

By the side of this Epitaph may be placed Pope's Epitaph upon Mrs.
Corbet, with Johnson's comment:

HERE rests a woman good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason and with sober sense.
No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired,
No arts essayed but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that Virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so composed a mind,
So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustained it, but the woman died.

'The subject of it', says Johnson, 'is a character not discriminated by
any shining or eminent peculiarities: yet that which really makes,
though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every
wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor
of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted
from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character,
which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value
should be made known and the dignity established. '


_66_

(Beginning at the third paragraph, _Illud in his rebus. . . _)

BUT here's the rub. There soon may come a time
You'll count right reason treason and the prime
Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft
In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.

Think how at Aulis to the Trivian Maid
The hero-kings of Greece their homage paid,
The flower of men, whose impious piety
Iphianassa on the altar laid.

Behold the bride! upon her head the crown
Of ritual, that from either cheek let down
An equal streamer. But cold rapture hers
As on her father's face she marked the frown:

A frown of anguish: at his side the men
Of doom, and in their hands, screened from her ken,
Death; and her countrymen shed tears to see
The lamb, poor victim, in the lions' den.

Then dumb with fear, not tongue-tied with delight,
She drooped to earth. What profited it her plight
She was her father's first-born? Not the less
They took her. Death, not Love, ordained the rite.

His were the bridesmen, and the altar his
To which with quaking limbs in fearfulness
Uplifted then, sans song, sans ritual due,
She was brought home--but not to wedded bliss,

A maid, but marred not married, in the spring
Of life and love's sweet prime, to yield the king
A victim, and the fleet fair voyaging:
Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring.

D. A. SLATER.


_67_

SWEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths
by the storm-winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment:
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves
are exempt from.
Sweet too 'tis to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war hosts
Arm them for some great battle, one's self
unscathed by the danger:--
Yet still happier this: to possess, impregnably guarded,
Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom:
Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way
Wander amidst Life's path, poor stragglers seeking a highway:
Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon:
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun
and the starlight,
Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.
O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eye-sight!
'Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers
Move ye thro' this thing Life, this fragment! Fools that ye hear not
Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only: that, all pain
Parted and passed from the body, the mind too bask in a blissful
Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over!
Now as regards man's body, a few things only are needful,
(Few, tho' we sum up all), to remove all misery from him,
Aye, and to strew in his path such a lib'ral carpet of pleasures
That scarce Nature herself would at times ask happiness greater.
Statues of youth and of beauty may not gleam golden around him,
(Each in his right hand bearing a great lamp lustrously burning,
Whence to the midnight revel a light may be furnishëd always),
Silver may not shine softly, nor gold blaze bright, in his mansion,
Nor to the noise of the tabret his halls gold-cornicëd echo:--
Yet still he, with his fellow, reposed on the velvety greensward,
Near to a rippling stream, by a tall tree canopied over,
Shall, though they lack great riches, enjoy all bodily pleasure:
Chiefliest then when above them a fair sky smiles,
and the young year
Flings with a bounteous hand over each green meadow
the wild-flowers:--
Not more quickly depart from his bosom fiery fevers,
Who beneath crimson hangings and pictures cunningly broidered
Tosses about, than from him who must lie in beggarly raiment.
Therefore, since to the body avail not riches, avails not
Heraldry's utmost boast, nor the pomp and pride of an empire;
Next shall you own that the mind needs likewise
nothing of these things;
Unless--when, peradventure, your armies over the champaign
Spread with a stir and a ferment and bid War's image awaken,
Or when with stir and with ferment a fleet sails forth upon ocean--
Cowed before these brave sights, pale Superstition abandon
Straightway your mind as you gaze, Death seem no longer alarming,
Trouble vacate your bosom and Peace hold holiday in you.
But if (again) all this be a vain impossible fiction,
If of a truth men's fears and the cares which hourly beset them
Heed not the javelin's fury, regard not clashing of broad-swords,
But all boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers of empires
Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling glare
of the red gold,
Not from the pomp of the monarch who walks forth purple-apparelled:
These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of reason:
Think too that all man's life through a great Dark laboureth onward.
For as a young boy trembles and in that mystery, Darkness,
Sees all terrible things: so do we too, ev'n in the daylight,
Ofttimes shudder at that which is not more really alarming
Than boys' fears when they waken and say some danger is o'er them.
So this panic of mind, these clouds which gather around us,
Fly not the bright sunbeam, nor the ivory shafts of the daylight:
Nature, rightly revealed, and the Reason only, dispel them.

C. S. CALVERLEY


_69_

OUT of the night, out of the blinding night
Thy beacon flashes;--hail, beloved light
Of Greece and Grecian; hail, for in the mirk
Thou dost reveal each valley and each height.

Thou art my leader and the footprints thine,
Wherein I plant my own. Thro' storm and shine
Thy love upholds me. Ne'er was rivalry
'Twixt owl and thrush, 'twixt steeds and shambling kine.

The world was thine to read, and having read,
Before thy children's eyes thou didst outspread
The fruitful page of knowledge, all the wealth
Of wisdom, all her plenty for their bread.

As honey-bees thro' flowery glades in June
Rifle the blossoms, so at our high-noon
Of life we gather in melodious glades
The golden honey of thy deathless rune.

And whoso roams benighted, on his ear,
Out of the darkness strikes an echo clear
Of thy triumphant challenge:--'Ye who quail,
Come unto me, for I have cast out fear. '

Thereat the walls o' the world fade far away
And thou, great Nature's seër, dost display
The miracle of her workings in the void:--
The night is past and reason dawns with day.

Heaven lies about us and we see the hall,
Where never storm-fiend raves nor snow-flakes fall
In webs of winter whiteness to ensnare
The golden summer. Peace is over all;

A canopy of cloudless sky, a glow
Of laughing sunshine; all the flowers that blow
Are there, and there from Nature's teeming breast
Rivers of strength and sweetness ever flow.

The veil of Acheron is rent in twain;
His phantom precincts vanish. Ne'er again
Can Earth conceal the secret:--it is ours;
And all that once was hidden is made plain.

Hail, mighty Master, hail! The world was thine,
For thou hadst read her riddle line by line,
Scroll upon scroll; and now . . . oh, ecstasy
Of awe and rapture,. . . thou hast made her mine.

D. A. SLATER.


_70_

I give a part of this piece in the version of Dryden, beginning from
_Cerberus et furiae_. 'I am not dissatisfied', says Dryden, 'upon the
review of anything I have done in this author. '

AS for the Dog, the Furies and their Snakes,
The gloomy Caverns and the burning Lakes,
And all the vain infernal trumpery,
They neither are, nor were, nor e'er can be.
But here on earth the guilty have in view
The mighty pains to mighty mischiefs due,
Racks, prisons, poisons, the Tarpeian Rock,
Stripes, hangmen, pitch and suffocating smoke,
And, last and most, if these were cast behind,
The avenging horror of a conscious mind,
Whose deadly fear anticipates the blow,
And sees no end of punishment and woe,
But looks for more at the last gasp of breath.
This makes a hell on earth, and life a death.
Meantime, when thoughts of death disturb thy head,
Consider: Ancus great and good is dead;
Ancus, thy better far, was born to die,
And thou, dost _thou_ bewail mortality?
So many monarchs, with their mighty state
Who ruled the world, were over-ruled by Fate.
That haughty King who lorded o'er the main,
And whose stupendous bridge did the wild waves restrain--
In vain they foamed, in vain they threatened wrack,
While his proud legions marched upon their back,--
Him Death, a greater monarch, overcame,
Nor spared his guards the more for their Immortal name.
The Roman chief, the Carthaginian's dread,
Scipio, the Thunder Bolt of War, is dead,
And like a common slave by Fate in triumph led.
The founders of invented arts are lost,
And wits who made eternity their boast.
Where now is Homer, who possessed the throne?
The immortal work remains, the mortal author's gone.

DRYDEN.


_74_

DIANA guardeth our estate,
Girls and boys immaculate;
Boys and maidens pure of stain,
Be Diana our refrain.

O Latonia, pledge of love
Glorious to most glorious Jove,
Near the Delian olive-tree
Latona gave thy life to thee,

That thou should'st be for ever queen
Of mountains and of forests green;
Of every deep glen's mystery;
Of all streams and their melody.

Women in travail ask their peace
From thee, our Lady of Release:
Thou art the Watcher of the Ways:
Thou art the Moon with borrowed rays:

And, as thy full or waning tide
Marks how the monthly seasons glide,
Thou, Goddess, sendest wealth of store
To bless the farmer's thrifty floor.

Whatever name delights thine ear,
By that name be thou hallowed here;
And, as of old, be good to us,
The lineage of Romulus.

R. C. JEBB.


_82_

GEM of all isthmuses and isles that lie,
Fresh or salt water's children, in clear lake
Or ampler ocean: with what joy do I
Approach thee, Sirmio! Oh! am I awake,
Or dream that once again my eye beholds
Thee, and has looked its last on Thynian wolds?
Sweetest of sweets to me that pastime seems,
When the mind drops her burden: when--the pain
Of travel past--our own cot we regain,
And nestle on the pillow of our dreams!
'Tis this one thought that cheers us as we roam.
Hail, O fair Sirmio! Joy, thy lord is here!
Joy too, ye waters of the Garda Mere!
And ring out, all ye laughter-peals of home.

C. S. CALVERLEY.


_83_

This beautiful and delicate piece remains the despair of the translator.
I quote a few lines of Cowley's sometimes rather clumsy version
(beginning from _Sic, inquit, mea uita_):

'MY little life, my all,' said she,
'So may we ever servants be
To this best god, and ne'er retain
Our hated liberty again:
So may thy passion last for me
As I a passion have for thee
Greater and fiercer much than can
Be conceived by thee a man.
Into my marrow is it gone,
Fixt and settled in the bone,
It reigns not only in my heart
But runs like fire through every part. '
She spoke: the god of Love aloud
Sneezed again, and all the crowd
Of little Loves that waited by
Bowed and blest the augury.

COWLEY.


_85 b_

So many critics have compared Catullus to Burns that some of them may be
glad to see this North-Italian rendered into the English of the North.

WEEP, weep, ye Loves and Cupids all,
And ilka Man o' decent feelin':
My lassie's lost her wee, wee bird,
And that's a loss, ye'll ken, past healin'.

The lassie lo'ed him like her een:
The darling wee thing lo'ed the ither,
And knew and nestled to her breast,
As ony bairnie to her mither.

Her bosom was his dear, dear haunt--
So dear, he cared na lang to leave it;
He'd nae but gang his ain sma' jaunt,
And flutter piping back bereavit.

The wee thing's gane the shadowy road
That's never travelled back by ony:
Out on ye, Shades! ye're greedy aye
To grab at aught that's brave and bonny.

Puir, foolish, fondling, bonnie bird,
Ye little ken what wark ye're leavin':
Ye've gar'd my lassie's een grow red,
Those bonnie een grow red wi' grievin'.

G. S. DAVIES.

I append the version of Prof. R. Ellis, which preserves the metre of the
original:

WEEP each heavenly Venus, all the Cupids,
Weep all men that have any grace about ye.
Dead the sparrow, in whom my love delighted,
The dear sparrow, in whom my love delighted.

Yea, most precious, above her eyes, she held him,
Sweet, all honey: a bird that ever hail'd her
Lady mistress, as hails the maid a mother;

Nor would move from her arms away: but only
Hopping round her, about her, hence or hither,
Piped his colloquy, piped to none beside her.

Now he wendeth along the mirky pathway,
Whence, they tell us, is hopeless all returning.

Evil on ye, the shades of evil Orcus,
Shades all beauteous happy things devouring,
Such a beauteous happy bird ye took him.

Ah! for pity; but ah! for him the sparrow,
Our poor sparrow, on whom to think my lady's
Eyes do angrily redden all a-weeping.

R. ELLIS.


_86 a_

Langhorne is best known by his translation of Plutarch's _Lives_. But he
was a copious poet; and Catullus has never perhaps been more gracefully
rendered than in the following piece:

LESBIA, live to love and pleasure,
Careless what the grave may say:
When each moment is a treasure
Why should lovers lose a day?

Setting suns shall rise in glory,
But when little life is o'er,
There's an end of all the story--
We shall sleep, and wake no more.

Give me, then, a thousand kisses,
Twice ten thousand more bestow,
Till the sum of boundless blisses
Neither we nor envy know.

J. LANGHORNE.

I append the beginning of Blacklock's version:

THOUGH sour-loquacious Age reprove,
Let _us_, my Lesbia, live for love.
For when the short-lived suns decline
They but retire more bright to shine:
But we, when fleeting life is o'er
And light and love can bless no more,
Are ravished from each dear delight
To sleep one long eternal night.

T. BLACKLOCK.
_86 b_

KISS me, sweet: the wary lover
Can your favours keep, and cover,
When the common courting jay
All your bounties will betray.
Kiss again! no creature comes;
Kiss, and score up wealthy sums
On my lips, thus hardly sundered,
While you breathe. First give a hundred,
Then a thousand, then another
Hundred, then unto the tother
Add a thousand and so more,
Till you equal with the store
All the grass that Rumney yields,
Or the sands in Chelsea fields,
Or the drops in silver Thames,
Or the stars that gild his streams
In the silent summer nights
When Youth plies its stolen delights:
That the curious may not know
How to tell 'em as they flow,
And the envious, when they find
What their number is, be pined.

BEN JONSON.


_92_

CATULLUS, let the wanton go:
No longer play the fool, but deem
For ever lost what thou must know
Is fled for ever like a dream!

O life was once a heaven to thee!
To haunt her steps was rapture then--
That woman loved as loved shall be
No woman ever on earth again.

Then didst thou freely taste the bliss,
On which empassioned lovers feed:
When she repaid thee kiss for kiss,
O, life was then a heaven indeed!

'Tis past: forget as she forgets:
Lament no more, but let her go:
Tear from thy heart its mad regrets,
And into very marble grow!

Girl, fare thee well. Catullus ne'er
Will sue where love is met with scorn:
But, false one, thou with none to care
For thee, shalt pine through days forlorn.

Think, think, how drear thy life will be!
Who'll woo thee now? who praise thy charms?
Who now will be all in all to thee
And live but in thy loving arms?

Ay, who will give thee kiss for kiss,
Whose lip wilt thou in rapture bite?
But thou, Catullus, think of this
And spurn her in thine own despite.

THEODORE MARTIN.


_97_

Of this, one of the most famous and effective of Catullus's poems, I
offer two versions. The first (an adaptation) is by 'knowing Walsh', the
friend of Pope, pronounced by Dryden to be 'the first critic in the
nation': the second is by Prof. Slater of Cardiff:

IS there a pious pleasure that proceeds
From contemplation of our virtuous deeds?
That all mean sordid action we despise,
And scorn to gain a throne by cheats and lies?
Thyrsis, thou hast sure blessings laid in store
From thy just dealing in this curst amour.
What honour can in words or deeds be shown
Which to the fair thou hast not said and done?
On her false heart they all are thrown away:
She only swears more easily to betray.
Ye powers that know the many vows she broke,
Free my just soul from this unequal yoke.
My love boils up, and like a raging flood
Runs through my veins and taints my vital blood.
I do not vainly beg she may grow chaste,
Or with an equal passion burn at last--
The one she cannot practise, though she would,
And I contemn the other, though she should--:
Nor ask I vengeance on the perjured jilt;
'Tis punishment enough to have her guilt.
I beg but balsam for my bleeding breast,
Cure for my wounds and from my labours rest.

W. WALSH.

IF any joy awaits the man
Of generous hand and conscience clean,
Who ne'er has leagued with powers unseen
To wrong the partner of his plan;

Rich store of memories thou hast won
From this thy seeming-fruitless love,
Who all that man may do to prove
His faith by word or deed hast done,

And all in vain. Her thankless heart
Is hardened. Harden then thine own.
Writhe not but part, as stone from stone,
And willy-nilly heal the smart.

'Tis hard, ay, hard to fling aside
A love long cherished. Yet you must.
Be strong, prevail, and from the dust
A conqueror rise, whate'er betide.

Ye gods, who of your mercy give
Force to the fainting, let my life
Of honour win me rest from strife,
And from my blood the canker drive;
Ere yet from limb to limb it steal,
And in black darkness plunge my soul,
Oh, drive it hence and make me whole;
A caitiff wounds, a god may heal.

No more for answering love I sue,
No more that her untruth be true:
Purge but my heart, my strength renew
And doom me not my faith to rue.

D. A. SLATER.


_100_

OVER the mighty world's highway,
City by city, sea by sea,
Brother, thy brother comes to pay
Pitiful offerings unto thee.

I only ask to grace thy bier
With gifts that only give farewell,
To tell to ears that cannot hear
The things that it is vain to tell,

And, idly communing with dust,
To know thy presence still denied,
And ever mourn forever lost
A soul that never should have died.

Yet think not wholly vain to-day
This fashion that our fathers gave
That hither brings me, here to lay
Some gift of sorrow on thy grave.

Take, brother, gifts a brother's tears
Bedewed with sorrow as they fell,
And 'Greeting' to the end of years,
And to the end of years 'Farewell'.

H. W. G.


_101_

FRIEND, if the mute and shrouded dead
Are touched at all by tears,
By love long fled and friendship sped
And the unreturning years,

O then, to her that early died,
O doubt not, bridegroom, to thy bride
Thy love is sweet and sweeteneth
The very bitterness of death.

H. W. G.


_103_

SICK, Cornificius, is thy friend,
Sick to the heart: and sees no end
Of wretched thoughts that gathering fast
Threaten to wear him out at last.

And yet you never come and bring,
Though 'twere the least and easiest thing,
A comfort in that talk of thine.
You vex me. This to love of mine?

Prithee a little talk, for ease,
Full as the tears of sad Simonides!

LEIGH HUNT.


_110_

AVAUNT, ye vain bombastic crew,
Crickets that swill no Attic dew:
Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow,
Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro:
A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools,
The tinkling cymbals of the schools!
Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye,
With all our pretty company!
I'm sailing for the blissful shore,
Great Siro's high recondite lore,
That haven where my life shall be
From every tyrant passion free.
You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell,
Sweet muses mine, for truth to tell
Sweet were ye once, but now begone;
And yet, and yet, return anon,
And when I write, at whiles be seen
In visits shy and far between.

T. H. WARREN.

I append Clough's _Lines Written in a Lecture Room_. The theme is that
of Vergil inverted. But the mood in either poet is the same--that mood
of passionate revolt against academicism which never comes to some
people and never departs from others:

AWAY, haunt thou not me,
Thou dull Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skiey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?

A. H. CLOUGH.


_116_

Dryden's version of this piece shows him at his best as a translator of
Vergil. 'Methinks I come,' he writes, 'like a malefactor, to make a
speech upon the gallows, and to warn all other poets, by my sad example,
from the sacrilege of translating Vergil. ' But in the _Georgics_, at any
rate, which he reckons 'more perfect in their kind than even the divine
Aeneids,' he can challenge comparison with most of his rivals.

O HAPPY, if he knew his happy state,
The swain, who, free from bus'ness and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature's hand,
And just returns of cultivated land!
No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants,
T' admit the tides of early visitants,
With eager eyes devouring, as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten, from high pedestals;
No Persian arras hides his homely walls,
With antic vests, which, through their shady fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold:
He boasts no wool, whose native white is dy'd
With purple poison of Assyrian pride:
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty, the rich owner bless;
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvex'd with quarrels, undisturb'd with noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys--
Cool grots, and living lakes, the flow'ry pride
Of meads, and streams that through the valley glide,
And shady groves that easy sleep invite,
And, after toilsome days, a sweet repose at night.
Wild beasts of nature in his woods abound;
And youth of labour patient, plough the ground,
Inur'd to hardship, and to homely fare.
Nor venerable age is wanting there,
In great examples to the youthful train;
Nor are the gods ador'd with rites profane.
From hence Astraea took her flight, and here
The prints of her departing steps appear.
Ye sacred muses! with whose beauty fir'd,
My soul is ravish'd, and my brain inspir'd--
Whose priest I am, whose holy fillets wear--
Would you your poet's first petition hear;
Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,
The depths of heav'n above, and earth below:
Teach me the various labours of the moon,
And whence proceed th' eclipses of the sun;
Why flowing tides prevail upon the main,
And in what dark recess they shrink again;
What shakes the solid earth; what cause delays
The summer nights, and shortens winter days.
But if my heavy blood restrain the flight
Of my free soul, aspiring to the height
Of nature, and unclouded fields of light--
My next desire is, void of care and strife,
To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life--
A country cottage near a crystal flood,
A winding valley, and a lofty wood.
Some god conduct me to the sacred shades,
Where Bacchanals are sung by Spartan maids,
Or lift me high to Haemus' hilly crown,
Or in the plains of Tempe lay me down,
Or lead me to some solitary place,
And cover my retreat from human race.
Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause--
His mind possessing in a quiet state,
Fearless of Fortune, and resign'd to Fate!
And happy too is he, who decks the bow'rs
Of sylvans, and adores the rural pow'rs--
Whose mind, unmov'd, the bribes of courts can see,
Their glitt'ring baits, and purple slavery--
Nor hopes the people's praise, nor fears their frown,
Nor, when contending kindred tear the crown,
Will set up one, or pull another down.
Without concern he hears, but hears from far,
Of tumults, and descents, and distant war;
Nor with a superstitious fear is aw'd,
For what befalls at home or what abroad.
Nor envies he the rich their happy store,
Nor his own peace disturbs with pity for the poor.
He feeds on fruits, which of their own accord,
The willing ground and laden trees afford.
From his lov'd home no lucre him can draw;
The senate's mad decrees he never saw:
Nor heard, at bawling bars, corrupted law.
Some to the seas, and some to camps, resort;
And some with impudence invade the court:
In foreign countries, others seek renown;
With wars and taxes, others waste their own,
And houses burn, and household gods deface,
To drink in bowls which glitt'ring gems enchase,
To loll on couches, rich with citron steds,
And lay their guilty limbs on Tyrian beds.
This wretch in earth entombs his golden ore,
Hov'ring and brooding on his buried store.
Some patriot fools to pop'lar praise aspire
Of public speeches, which worse fools admire,
While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds,
Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.
Some, through ambition, or through thirst of gold,
Have slain their brothers, or their country sold,
And, leaving their sweet homes, in exile run
To lands that lie beneath another sun.
The peasant, innocent of all these ills,
With crooked ploughs the fertile fallows tills,
And the round year with daily labour fills:
And hence the country markets are supplied:
Enough remains for household charge beside,
His wife and tender children to sustain,
And gratefully to feed his dumb deserving train.
Nor cease his labours till the yellow field
A full return of bearded harvest yield--
A crop so plenteous, as the land to load,
O'ercome the crowded barns, and lodge on ricks abroad.
Thus ev'ry sev'ral season is employ'd,
Some spent in toil, and some in ease enjoy'd.
The yeaning ewes prevent the springing year:
The laden boughs their fruits in autumn bear:
'Tis then the vine her liquid harvest yields,
Bak'd in the sunshine of ascending fields,
The winter comes; and then the falling mast
For greedy swine provides a full repast:
Then olives, ground in mills, their fatness boast,
And winter fruits are mellow'd by the frost.
His cares are eas'd with intervals of bliss;
His little children, climbing for a kiss,
Welcome their father's late return at night;
His faithful bed is crown'd with chaste delight.
His kine with swelling udders ready stand,
And, lowing for the pail, invite the milker's hand.
His wanton kids, with budding horns prepar'd,
Fight harmless battles in his homely yard:
Himself in rustic pomp, on holy-days,
To rural pow'rs a just oblation pays,
And on the green his careless limbs displays.
The hearth is in the midst: the herdsmen, round
The cheerful fire, provoke his health in goblets crown'd.
He calls on Bacchus, and propounds the prize:
The groom his fellow-groom at butts defies,
And bends, and levels with his eyes,
Or stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil,
And watches, with a trip, his foe to foil.
Such was the life the frugal Sabines led:
So Remus and his brother-god were bred,
From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose;
And this rude life our homely fathers chose.
Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth
(The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth),
Which now on sev'n high hills triumphant reigns,
And in that compass all the world contains.
Ere Saturn's rebel son usurp'd the skies,
When beasts were only slain for sacrifice,
While peaceful Crete enjoy'd her ancient lord,
Ere sounding hammers forg'd th' inhuman sword,
Ere hollow drums were beat, before the breath
Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death,
The good old god his hunger did assuage,
With roots and herbs, and gave the golden age.

I append a portion of Cowley's unequal paraphrase (beginning from the
words _Felix qui potuit_):

HAPPY the man, I grant, thrice happy he
Who can through gross effects their causes see:
Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs,
Nor vainly fears inevitable things,
But does his walk of virtue calmly go,
Through all the allarms of death and hell below.
Happy, but next such conquerors, happy they
Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way.
They unconcerned from their safe-distant seat
Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.
The quarrels of the mighty without fear
And the descent of foreign troops they hear.
Nor can ev'n Rome their steddy course misguide
With all the lustre of her perishing pride.
Them never yet did strife or avarice draw
Into the noisy markets of the law,
The camps of gownëd war, nor do they live
By rules or forms that many mad men give.
Duty for Nature's bounty they repay,
And her sole laws religiously obey.

COWLEY.


_118_

(Beginning at _At cantu commotae. . . . _)

THEN from the deepest deeps of Erebus,
Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades
Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms
Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie
To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour
Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;
Matrons and men, and great heroic frames
Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,
Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.
Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,
Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp
Of dull dead water, and to pen them fast,
Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.
Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death
Stood lost in wonderment, the Eumenides,
Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined,
E'en Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,
And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.
And now with homeward footstep he had passed
All perils scathless, and, at length restored,
Eurydice, to realms of upper air
Had well-nigh won behind him following--
So Proserpine had ruled it--when his heart
A sudden mad desire surprised and seized--
Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.
For at the very threshold of the day,
Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,
He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice--
His own once more. But even with the look,
Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond
Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard
Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.
'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought
On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again
The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep
Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell:
Girt with enormous night I am borne away,
Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,
These helpless hands. ' She spoke, and suddenly,
Like smoke dissolving into empty air,
Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him,
Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,
Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time
Hell's boatman lists he pass the watery bar.

JAMES RHOADES


_119 a_

ONCE a slender silvan reed
Answered all my shepherd's need;
Once to farmer lads I told
All the lore of field and fold:
Well they liked me, for the soil
Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.
Ah! who am I, 'mid war's alarms,
To 'sing the hero and his arms'?

H. W. G.


_121_

I give first the version of Conington--an excellent specimen of his
skill and its limitations; and I add Pope's imitation--a piece as
graceful as anything he wrote:

THINK not those strains can e'er expire,
Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar
Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre
I sing with arts unknown before.
Though Homer fill the foremost throne,
Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,
And fierce Alcaeus holds his own
With Pindar and Simonides.
The songs of Teos are not mute,
And Sappho's love is breathing still:
She told her secret to the lute,
And still its chords with passion thrill.
Not Sparta's queen alone was fired
By broidered robe and braided tress,
And all the splendours that attired
Her lover's guilty loveliness:
Not only Teucer to the field
His arrows brought, not Ilion
Beneath a single conqueror reeled:
Not Crete's majestic lord alone,
Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown:
Not Hector first for child and wife,
Or brave Deiphobus, laid down
The burden of a manly life.
Before Atrides men were brave,
But ah! oblivion dark and long
Has locked them in a tearless grave,
For lack of consecrating song.
'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,
What difference? _You_ shall ne'er be dumb,
While strains of mine have voice and breath:
The dull neglect of days to come
Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours
Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
When Fortune smiles and when she lowers:
To greed and rapine still severe,
Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
A consul not of one brief year,
But oft as on the judgement-seat
You bend the expedient to the right,
Turn haughty eyes from bribes array,
Or bear your banners through the fight,
Scattering the foeman's firm array.
The lord of countless revenues
Salute not him as happy: no,
Call him the happy who can use
The bounty that the gods bestow,
Can bear the load of poverty,
And tremble not at death, but sin:
No recreant he when called to die
In cause of country or of kin.

J. CONINGTON.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of Truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay--

Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Caesar was, or Newton, named;
Those raised new empires o'er the earth,
And these new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.

POPE.


_124_

ANGEL of Love, high-thronëd in Cnidos,
Regent of Paphos, no more repine:
Leave thy loved Cyprus; too long denied us
Visit our soberly censëd shrine.

Haste, and thine Imp, the fiery-hearted,
Follow, and Hermes; and with thee haste
The Nymphs and Graces with robe disparted,
And, save thou chasten him, Youth too chaste.

H. W. G.


_125_

WHAT slender youth bedewed with liquid odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha, for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain: and seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they
To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed
Picture the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dripping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.

MILTON.

Milton's version has been a good deal criticized. Yet, though it lacks
the lightness of its original, it remains a nobler version than any
other. Of other versions the most interesting is, perhaps, that of
Chatterton (made from a literal English translation), and the most
graceful that of William Hamilton of Bangour. Of the latter I quote a
few lines:

WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours
Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?
For whom retired to secret shade,
Soft on thy panting bosom laid,
Set'st thou thy looks with nicest care,
O neatly plain? How oft shall he
Bewail thy false inconstancy!
Condemned perpetual frowns to prove,
How often weep thy altered love,
Who thee, too credulous, hopes to find,
As now, still golden and still kind!

W. HAMILTON.


_126_

Of this often-translated poem I give first the version of Herrick and
then that of Gladstone. There is an amusing adaptation in the Poems of
Soame Jenyns, _Dialogue between the Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham and Modern
Popularity_.

_Hor. _ WHILE, Lydia, I was lov'd of thee,
Nor any was preferr'd 'fore me
To hug thy whitest neck: than I,
The Persian King liv'd not more happily.

_Lyd. _ While thou no other didst affect,
Nor Cloe was of more respect;
Then Lydia, far-fam'd Lydia,
I flourish't more than Roman Ilia.

_Hor. _ Now Thracian Cloe governs me,
Skilfull i' th' Harpe, and Melodie:
For whose affection, Lydia, I
(So Fate spares her) am well content to die.

_Lyd. _ My heart now set on fire is
By Ornithes sonne, young Calais;
For whose commutuall flames here I
(To save his life) twice am content to die.

_Hor. _ Say our first loves we sho'd revoke,
And sever'd, joyne in brazen yoke:
Admit I Cloe put away,
And love again love-cast-off Lydia?

_Lyd. _ Though mine be brighter than the Star;
Thou lighter than the Cork by far;
Rough as th' Adratick sea, yet I
Will live with thee, or else for thee will die.

HERRICK.

_Hor. _ WHILE no more welcome arms could twine
Around thy snowy neck than mine,
Thy smile, thy heart while I possessed,
Not Persia's monarch lived as blessed.

_Lyd.