VIRGIL AND LUCRETIUS
VIRGIL & LUCRETIUS
PASSAGES TRANSLATED BY
WILLIAM STEBBING
HON. FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
AUTHOR OF
‘SIR WALTER RALEGH: A BIOGRAPHY’
‘FIVE CENTURIES OF ENGLISH VERSE: IMPRESSIONS’
‘TRUTHS OR TRUISMS’
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1917
Contents
PAGE
_VIRGIL_
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 3
PRAISE OF ITALY 14
HAPPY HUSBANDMEN 17
A TARENTINE GARDEN 25
A GOLDEN AGE 29
LIMBO AND TARTARUS 36
ELYSIUM 72
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 90
THE GATES 91
THE GHOSTS 92
EURYALUS AND PALLAS 93
THINGS 94
_LUCRETIUS_
_‘DE RERUM NATURA’_
HYMN TO VENUS 97
PHILOSOPHY 101
‘MUSICAL AS IS APOLLO’S LUTE’ 105
THE FEAR OF DEATH 107
EARTH’S DECAY 121
PRIMEVAL MAN 124
IPHIGENIA 139
MATERNAL LOVE 142
ECHO 144
THE SEASONS 147
VIRGIL
Orpheus and Eurydice
P. VIRGILII MARONIS Georgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 453-527
This is the tale old Proteus by the sea
Erst told of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Virgil at Parthenope overheard,
And has resung it, if not word by word.
Orpheus had been espoused but one short hour,
And went to gather roses for the bower,
When a rejected wooer, mad with love,
Sprang upon the light-footed nymph, and strove
For an embrace; she, heeding nought, alas!
Trod on a serpent sleeping in the grass;
And when on the instant, answering her cries,
Her Bridegroom knelt there, kissing her closed eyes,
Half fainting with the sense of all her charms,
Sudden he woke, a dead Bride in his arms!
Not his alone the woe and misery;
Nor he sole mourner for Eurydice;
From Rhodope to Pangæa’s peaks, above
The cave where Boreas hid his Attic love,
Through the fierce realm of Rhesus, echo bore
The wail to the wild Getes, to the shore
Of Hebrus, while in forest, hill, and dale
The tuneful Dryads told the tearful tale.
But how conjure by the best ordered show
Of grief an irremediable woe!
Orpheus fled Pity, and neighbourly Care;
All human fellowship but his despair.
With but that and his lyre communion still
He held, from dawn to sunset, then until
The planets rose and sank, banishing sleep,
Keeping sad vigils by the moaning deep,
Thinking each shadow on the desert shore
Was his lost Bride restored to life once more.
And was it days, weeks, months, or years?—at last
From the ghost-haunted waters coastward passed—
Whether Goddess, or Woman—a pale shape,
That beckoned to the far Laconian Cape
Of Tænarus, where the dread cavern draws
Each generation down its hungry jaws.
At the first touch of his lyre opened wide
The lofty gates of Hell; he paced inside
The grove impenetrable by but him;
A darkness that might be felt, stark, and grim,
Where bide the awful ministers of Dis,
With hearts that never beat at prayer but his.
And still the notes rose bravely; and still he
Came, calling on his lost Eurydice;
On her, sole burden of his love-lorn cries—
One theme informing countless melodies.
At the sweet sorrowing, awhile a hush—
Amazement—throughout Hades; then a rush—
A quick rustling rather, as when a flight
Of birds seeks where to sleep at fall of night,
Or, cow’ring, courts, against an icy breeze,
Multitudinous foliage of trees.
Thus—for the jailers ceased from watch and ward,
Witched themselves by the wailing, wandering bard—
Flocked, from the unamiable swamp, which feeds
Nothing on its black slime but grisly reeds—
Where steams and groans Cocytus, and Styx holds
Prisoners within its nine coils and folds—
A legion of the newly dead, entombed
In Limbo, till ripe to be tried and doomed;
A fearful gathering, bodies stripped of life,
Yet moving; some in pairs, husband and wife,
Girls who had virgins died, and beardless youths,
With parents’ kisses warm upon their mouths;
And some though freed from flesh ignorant where
Their dwelling fixed, sad phantoms, thin as air.
Each waiting judgment; now forgetting all
Griefs in a greater, in the musical
Challenge to Dis to yield its prey; while, on
And on, the chant rolled, till its way it won
Past the black realms of ancient Erebus,
Past too the torture cells of Tartarus,
Where cold-blue snakes, the Furies’ locks that tied,
By the trespassing strain, charmed, stupefied,
Drew in their fangs, Ixion’s wheel made pause,
And, one shocked wide gape, stood Cerberus’s triple jaws.
At last, at last! a Palace flaming high
With angry flashes from a mocking sky;
And, seated on twin thrones, the King and Queen,
Garbed in life-which-is-death’s Infernal sheen;
Both silent; but, as whispered soft and low
The lyre, stern Proserpine remembered how
A girl plucked flowers. As nursery rhymes
On dying ears, returned old happy times,
Sunshine, and the sweet thought, if mixed with pain,
A mother’s toil to have her child again.
Paradise for Hell’s Queen once more to know
That She had heart to feel for others’ woe!—
For her Lord to see, transfigured, ere a crown
Burned on her brow, the maid he had brought down
To Hell; and she answering his eyes, cried:
“Minstrel, depart in peace, and with thy Bride!”
The Manes registered the high decree,
Adding that, since no mortal eyes may see
Spirit take flesh, Orpheus must be resigned,
Till Earth was reached, never to look behind.
And as they wrote and sealed what their Queen spoke,
From unseen instruments weird music broke,—
An owlet’s hooting, a swan’s dying cry—
A rapture near akin to agony.
Orpheus turned, or was led; more felt than heard—
Passing the gates—as when a babe has stirred,
Dreaming—a sigh; but, venturing no glance
Anywhere, or speech, walked as in a trance.
Save, as if strings snapt, the lyre stammered out
A spasm of jarred notes wandering about,
Nor glad nor sad; the harper scarce aware
Of the music that he made; or how far
He had gone, through what scenes of bale or bliss,
Since he quitted the royal halls of Dis;
Trembling only lest the whole dream might take
Flight, like his rapt girl-Bride, and he awake
To find himself, widowed, lost, as before,
Companionless upon the wild sea-shore.
And yet. Was it not breath, a woman’s breath,
Fanning his cheeks? Could even unkind Death
Have the heart to cheat, with the goal so near?
Was not the light he saw day’s, warm and clear?
And, sure, the landscape spread before his view
Was of meadows and woods, all which he knew?
Phantoms, begone! Here was his spring-tide come,
And his Bride with him, out of Hades, home!
Sudden, an avalanche—compound—Earth, Hell—
Long chained—irresistible passion—fell,
Defying thought, fear! his hand left the string
But just caressed; his throat forbore to sing—
That he might clasp and kiss;—one look behind!
A world of travail scattered to the wind!
Heav’n forgives seven sins if love the cause;
The plea doubles guilt when Hell’s the brok’n laws.
Hark how the grinning host of demons howls!
And oh! the crash pealing over Hell’s pools!
Naught heard he, but that cried Eurydice,—
Regained, re-lost:
“Alas! for Me and Thee!
I feel hands, the inexorable Fates,
Speeding back within the Infernal gates;
My swimming eyes, just tasting of Earth’s light,
I know are being sealed by a large Night.
See! how I stretch vain arms around, and grope
For thee in darkness, hoping without hope!
E’en now how lightly should I life resign,
Could I remember I had once been thine!”
Silence! From sight, hearing, passed she apart,
Leaving measureless void within his heart.
He ran, striving to clutch a ghost in vain;
Pursuing with vain words; never again
Looked he upon her; nor could he prevail
Upon Hell’s Ferryman to let him scale
The walls, swimming the moat, and again win,
By weeping, or by music, his way in,
Then move or force its warders to restore
His stolen Bride to his fond arms once more.
Poor Ghost! No third time destined she to float
Over foul Styx in Charon’s crazy boat!
But, hapless, doomed to swell the cavalcades
Of lifeless bodies, and of fleshless shades;
Nor one, nor other she; just borne along,
Drift on the tide—refrain to an old song—
Yet, flickering, like shadows on a wall,
Or rainbow gleaming from a water-fall,
A throb, a thrill, a joy though set in dole—
For Lethe could not wash away the whole—
That she reward had been of each sharp pang
By Orpheus borne, theme of each song he sang.
Conscious if voiceless, she. And he? The lyre
Which, while its master hoped, had quenched its fire,
Was ever confidant of his despair,
The instrument commissioned to declare
His wrongs. They tell who know, that in a cave
Humid and bare, desolate as new grave,
At the foot of a tall cliff, hung with ice,
By Strymon’s gloomy waters, for full twice
A hundred days and nights, singing he wept;
Like a nightingale cruelly bereft
Of all her young ones in the poplar grove,
With nothing for her any more to love,
Or live for, but to gaze upon her nest,
And mourn, the night through, all she once possessed,
Till overflows the wood where she complains,
With the sweet melancholy of her strains.
So longed he, and so played; changing at times
To lands yet lonelier, and harsher climes;
Arctic ice-fields crossed, forded snowy Don,
Camped on Scythian heaths, where yews keep-on
Eternal pall of frost;—always in quest
Of postern into Hell, whence he might wrest
Audience of its Lords, and with his tale
Of unreal gifts, all pre-ordained to fail,
Oblige them to repeat for very shame
A boon Hell granted only to reclaim.
No more than this? This his one hope and theme?
This, sum of his powers? And this a dream!
A dream? And yet the key—magic of Art!—
Which could unlock at will a tiger’s heart,
And, as notes rose and fell in cadence, made
Triumphal arches of each sylvan glade;
For true passion a hearing aye commands,
And speaks a tongue all Nature understands.
No more than that it had killed care to bless
More than one life, and left a wilderness!
And that it fell on Virgil to recall
A legend—would that it lied!—how, when all
The land’s women, Bacchus-fired, and distraught
By hymns that Orpheus in glad days had taught,
Had pressed him into the wild dance they led
Nightly through torch-lit forests, and he fled
In horror, as at treason to his love,
They, infuriate more the more he strove,
Followed, reckless of all but the mad chase,
Down to the Hebrus from the hills of Thrace,
And tore him limb from limb: but still the tongue,
As the wild current rolled the head along,
Called on “Eurydice”; and till the sea
Received it, bank to bank returned “Eurydice”!
Pardon, my Master, if I’ve dared re-think
A thought, or, standing on the outer brink
Of a deep pool, would with a pebble thrown
Measure your depth of feeling by my own.
But You the cause, the tempter;—who could read
A tale like yours, and not pursue each deed
From impulse to the act—complete a scene
With such small details as there may have been?
So cunningly you made romance to live—
I trespassed on your stage; You must forgive!
Praise of Italy
P. VIRGILII MARONIS Georgicon, Bk. II. vv. 136-176
This our world has beauties everywhere;
Grand are your forests, Medes, and wondrous fair;
Travellers to Blest Araby have told
Of sands that grow frankincense, streams of gold;
Strange legends run of bulls with fire for breath,
Dragons sowing plains with myriad teeth,
Till in the place of harvest’s yellow ears
A battle field gleamed with steel helms and spears.
Leave me the land I live in, where kind earth
Yields real grain, a hundredfold at a birth;
And purple grapes of every laden vine
Laugh with the girls that tread them into wine.
Glad all life! In the olive, as each day
Ripens its juices; cattle, as they play
Amid rich herbage; the warrior steed,
Curvetting with arched neck about the mead.
Even the snow-white ram, and mighty bull,
Joy, as, Clitumnus, on them dashes full
Thy hallowed flood, to be chosen to escort
A Roman Triumph to Jove’s Temple-Court.
Ever; from young Spring, that, keeping the doors
Of Winter and of Summer, with soft show’rs
Melts March frosts, and returning with a gay,
Late Zephyr laughs the Dog-star’s heats away;
To Summer, that at call, whate’er the Hour,
Re-stocks the fold, and bids the orchard flow’r.
Fruitfulness everywhere—all things good;
No savage lions, tigers mad for blood,
No scaly pythons, gathered, coil on coil,
Into one orb, to hurl it on the spoil;
No wolf’s-bane, with its mystic-purple bloom
Tempting rash herb-collectors to their doom;
But Nature, kind in that which She denies,
Kind above all whenever She allies
With human effort.—
Mark how She has filled
The vales with rocks that cry: “Come, take, and build!”
How, to crown the work, She has bid beside
Each citadel’s sheer walls a river glide.
No Libyan desert ours, but a land
Of many streams, where in cool shadows stand
Knee-deep the still kine; and of lakes good store,
Como’s to Garda’s sea-imitating roar;
Of highways for her navies, east and west,
To circulate, world-through, Rome’s high behest;
Glorious service theirs, though the salt waves,
Sulking outside new ports in echoing caves,
Affect to murmur at decrees they know,
When Cæsar sets them bounds, they must allow.
Even for silver, brass and gold itself,
If Italy deigned boast of vulgar pelf,
She might just claims to be considered raise.
But she has titles, nobler far, to praise.
Hers the seed-bed, harvest, ever have been
Of men, of fighters, hardened, sharp, and keen,
Bred north and south, east and west, with, from Rome,
Chiefs to lead forth, and bring them victors home.
Band of mighty Shades! Ah! mightiest Thou
Who schoolest the insolent Hindoo now,
How weak is strength, valour no better than
Cowardice, when our Cæsar leads the van!
Hail to Giver of wane, and oil, and corn!
Hail, Shrine of ancient peace, ere Jove was born!
Hail, Mother of Men, real Men, source and spring
Of precious arts I love, of all I sing!
At thy call, my Italy, parent, nurse,
Unsealing primal well-heads, I rehearse
Pure rustic themes long since discoursed upon
Myrtle-clad slopes of musical Helicon!
Happy Husbandmen
Georgicon, Bk. II. vv. 458-540
Of all rewards that Heav’n bestows on toil,
Which is the peer of yours who till the soil!
Would you exchange with them who sue the great
For place or alms? Read, as they pass the gate,
On this face wrath, envy on that, and gall;
And, worst, the death of self-respect on all.
’Tis yours to breathe an atmosphere of peace,
Suitors of earth that knows not of caprice;
That grieves to disappoint a hope, and pours
Into expectant laps a choice of stores,
Sounding changes high and low, grave and gay,
On the vast organ Nature loves to play.
Learn from a farm to work, and never tire;
An acre is various as a shire;
Labour and rest there alternating meet,
Each indistinguishably good and sweet;
Ah! the murmurous quiet in the wide
Homesteads, where, in the intervals, beside
Bubbling brooks, in cool valleys, ’neath green boughs
You slumber, lullabied by lowing cows.
Winter anon, earth’s holiday; and then
To rouse the wild boar in his fenny den:
Sport dear to youth’s blood racing fast and pure,
Content with simple joys, trained to endure.
Nor at one season, but throughout the year,
Be sure the Gods fail not of love and fear:
While no chimney corner but makes a shrine
Where to tend a grandsire all but divine.
If Justice has not yet forsaken Earth,
’Tis that she lingers on some cottage hearth!
Ancestral guardians of my home forgive,
Pan, too, and Sylvan, if I do not live
The life I praise; but ere I knew its charms,
The choir of Muses wooed me to their arms,
Taught me an eager child their sacred lore,
Arts I still love; and fain had taught me more—
To map Heav’n’s paths, number its stars, and trace
Why wanes the moon; when veils the sun his face,
Hastes purple-clad to sink on Ocean’s breast,
And stays Night’s course for him and Man to rest;
Where growling earthquakes breed; and why seas feign
To roar in wrath, and straightway laugh again.—
Something I learned; and blest had been my state,
If gifted with the will and powers by Fate
To follow Nature to her primal cause,
And coax from her the meaning of her laws;
Like him, too early lost, who told us how
To spurn at all it is not Man’s to know,
To count it shame to dread Death, as to weep
At putting off our shoes to go to sleep.
But my blood chills—poor thing, it cannot find
Air it may breathe—where soars aloft sheer Mind.
Yet why lament that the Seer’s part is not
For me, when mine the sweet, if humbler, lot—
To light and feed a poet’s holy fire;
Rapt from myself to feel a God inspire
The visions that I see, the words I pen—
The message that I bring my fellow men—
Bound, if the Muse decrees, to soar away
Where rolls Spercheios, or girls dance and play
On Spartan hills, or to some forest dell
Of snowy Hæmus; while, I know it well,
That far so ever as I seem to roam,
My spirit always will return to home,
Predestined to no inglorious themes—
My native fields, and woods, and sparkling streams,
And the race no less that those vales frequent,
Simple husbandmen, wholly innocent
Of ill, though shrewd, keen to resent a wrong;
For whom I meditate my pastoral song.
Fancy will wander oft to lands unknown,
But finds the thoughts to dwell on in its own.
Italian peasant I, and would rehearse
Our peasants’ virtues in Italian verse.
Let me recall a neighbour good and kind,
Loving the ancient methods, disinclined
To quit his fathers’ ways; nor bard nor sage;
Who just has served the soil from youth to age.
No Mysteries for him; enough to adore
The rustic Gods his sires revered of yore.
All one to him who shall the Consul be—
This or that—our Rome stands eternally.
He cares not about Kings; so much he knows;
Rome crowned; and, when she wills, Rome can depose.
Faint echoes reach the country from the Town
Of swarms of Dacian pirates rowing down
Ister; and of brothers by brothers slain;
Cæsar’s charge that—and his to garner grain.
Sometimes the calm is broken by the wealth
Of courtiers seeking country air for health;
Why envy when the whole that they possess
Has not distilled a drop of happiness!
Or one may stumble by, diseased and old,
With scarce a rag to shield him from the cold;
The good-man helps; he pities; does not grieve;
Is grateful he can give, need not receive.
Statesmen will strive, he counts his orchard’s yield,
And reaps his harvest from the willing field.
A realm may fall, loud lawyers rule the Court,
Heirships be changed by some forgot report,
Adventurers new seas explore, or rush
On foreign swords in thirst for gold, or push
Into proud palace halls; while he instead
Drives his curved plough, and mows the yellow mead.
Hence herds deserving well their ample cheer,
With all the genial labours of the year.
Hence too the tribute that he gladly brings
To his Penates, modest offerings—
Kind “Little People,” blest where’er ye come
Compacted of an atmosphere of Home!
Hence, above all, what may his native land
Of labour, store, nay, of his life demand!
True Roman, few as he of Rome so proud;
None readier to give her goods and blood!
Meantime no season comes without its call;
Not one would he away; he loves them all—
Cries between laugh and wail from lambs new-born,
Sheaves in the close-packed barn of golden corn,
Groans of content from home-returning sows,
The woodlands’ crackling thuds of severed boughs,
Pyramids of red apples, row on row,
And vineyards purpling in late Autumn’s glow,
Till with the olives’ rendering of oil
Winter winds up the victories of toil.
Content the master, with glad welcoming eyes,
As crop to crop succeeds, each a surprise,
Yet taking each its place in order clear,
The grand procession of the fruitful year!
Harmonious whole, made up, hopes and cares,
Mind’s, Body’s work, in not unequal shares;
With grateful pauses, as when whirlwinds cease
To riot in a wood, and there is peace.
Thus Eve; Man’s truce, nor his alone, for play;
But Nature’s universal holiday.
Stall-wards, devious steps, the cattle pass,
Their udders richly furnished; on the grass
With harmless horns kids wrestle; while a band,
Children and Wife, contend to clasp his hand,
And kiss his lips; he happy in the pride
Of love which chastity has sanctified.
And days as well there are, when the farm feasts,
The host reclining amid friends, his guests;
High flame the hissing logs, wine-cups are crowned,
And vows and healths to Gods and men go round;
On equal terms master with shepherds vies,
As archer, or as wrestler, for a prize.
Thus sprang a race, the wonder of the earth,
Suckled by Sabine mothers—as, at birth,
Their king by wild werewolf—twin strains with those,
Blending of Tuscan lords, high Lucumos;
Till from Seven Hills, in one wall, see come,
Mistress of a world, Imperial Rome!
Noblest of Monsters! beautiful as brave,
And strong at once to conquer, and to save.
Yet sometimes dream I legends strange and sweet,
Ere Nymphs nursed Jove upon a hill of Crete,
Of days when Earth, a garden bright and fair,
Gave Man fruits as easily as the air
He breathed; when all that trod or flew had part
In a large brotherhood of sense and heart,
And it could scarce have seemed to human mind
More hideous to batten on its kind,
Than with as unnatural zest to heap
Impious boards with flesh of steer and sheep;
When no war-bugle blew its summons shrill,
Or forge had fitted hands with swords to kill;
When Saturn planted here below his throne—
The Age of Gold, when Heaven and Earth were one!
A Tarentine Garden
Georgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 116-148
My helm points landwards; and yet would I fain
Re-commission my Muse, and sail again.
The breezes, as I coast by Pæstum, bring
Its twice-blowing rosebeds’ scent; I would sing,
But for emulous themes, how to inlay
A garden’s borders with a rich array
Of rainbow-hued gems that a loving care
Joys to persuade them in due course to wear.
Use and delight will play an equal part,
Where’er the garden’s master has a heart.
How fresh the curly endive there! how green
The parsley on the bank! Almost is seen
A melon swell, as with good cheer it fills
Itself ’mid the grass from glistening rills!
Everywhere a hand and head that know,
To harvest in its season, we must sow,
And from a sense no less of order, will
Take heed that the late-blooming daffodil,
Pliant acanthus, myrtles from sea-wave
Drawing the pungent fragrance that they have,
And grey-green ivies, form each its own zone
In one plot—many gardens out of one.
For I have marked what wonders may be wrought
By gardeners mixing seeds and roots with thought.—
In shadows craggy Tarentum’s tow’rs throw,
An old Cilician, cast up, who knows how,
By war, or vagrant mood, had grant, or none—
Some waste acres—to live or starve upon.
Though black Galeso waters a wide space
Of yellow cornfields, and rich gardens grace
Villas hard by, the scrub of this poor Stray
Would, it might seem, have not sufficed to pay,
As rough ploughland, a yoke of oxen’s keep,
Or meanly pastured half a dozen sheep.
As for potherbs, its thorns as likely would
Have brought forth grapes as a man’s simplest food.
Yet somehow sprang, to share with them the ground,
Colewort, vervain, with, here and there, around,
Lilies, and poppies—scant crop; but not great
The Stranger’s hopes. At night returning late
To the cheerless hut his own hands had raised,
Laden with unbought dainties these, he praised
His happy fortune from a more grateful breast
Than a king seated at his unearned feast!
I marked how he began; when next I came,
Transformed the garden! Gardener the same.
His the first roses, though an unkind spring,
And ripe apples ere leaves were yellowing.
While frost splintered the rocks, and ice and snow—
Winter fighting March—bridled Galeso’s flow,
He plucked Iris tresses, in mock distress
At missing Zephyrs, Summer’s tardiness!
Not his hives to fail in queen bees; no swarm
Of his was ever known to come to harm;
Earliest the honey from his combs pressed;
For who judged like him which flow’rs bees love best?
Master the old man in tree-craft as well;
His, choicest stone-pines, limes; for he could tell
By instinct where to plant; and as for yield
Of fruit, spring’s promise autumn aye fulfilled!
He planted, and transplanted, as he chose
Full-grown elms, hardwood pears, plum-grafted sloes;
Even a leafy plane he dared to move—
Nor hurt—to a fresh home within the grove.
Two thousand years ago the old man died;
And Nature that, with some laws, he defied,
Will, patient, not forgetful, at his death
Have returned arcades, flow’r beds, to waste heath.
Tradition shadows not their place.—
His name?
The Bard has not handed it down to fame.
A sudden vision of his youth, no more
Than a parenthesis of lines, some score.
In words how little we are told;—and yet
How impossible for us to forget
That haunting figure, in his parterres made
Out of the wild with his own brain for spade!
For not in Virgil’s verse alone he lives;
In all Earth’s gardens the “Corycian” survives!
A Golden Age
Bucolica, Ecl. IV. Pollio vv. 1-63
Muses of Sicily, if I rehearse
Our peasants’ pleasures, toils, in Latin verse,
I owe your idylls that my heart beats true
To the kind honest lot that once I knew;
And frames visions I have seen,
Still, in woods and pastures green.
Nature, changed, lives. Ages-leaves in a blast—
Flutter away, in dreams, all dead and past;—
Fleeting, alike ease that pays righteous toll,
And triumphs won from agonies of soul.
For when Fancy plays at Thought
In Dreamland, Time, Space are nought.
Slumber I, or wake? Is it that the long
Iron Age dies, as in the Sibyl’s song?
Does Justice return? Saturn wear his crown?
From high Heaven does a God-child come down?
Does Pollio’s Consulate
The Golden Age reinstate?
Reconciler of old friends! Yours the care
To efface bloodstains of the past, prepare
For the advent of a Peace-maker, heal
Aches—foreboding fresh horrors—that we feel.
He comes! be a path paved, meet
To be trod by Holy feet!
A noble task to clear and keep a space
Where you shall model a heroic race
On yourself—fit, if few, companions made
For their future Chief, nor without the aid
Of Gods visible, as he
In his Paradise shall be.
In the womb now! and in their charge the Birth,
Sun’s, Moon’s, of the most precious Thing on Earth!
Not for ten full months must the Babe see light!
Keep watch and ward, Day’s Lord, Lady of Night!
Be Peace throughout! hold your breath,
Thunders above, fires beneath!
Born! you lie, Babe, lapped in the calm, warm air;
Earth laughs with blissfulness to see you there.
Goats fain would suckle you; while you are near,
They feel they have nought from wild beasts to fear.
Snakes die; nightshade bids its root
Nurture no fair traitor fruit.
Touch the ground; flowers of all hues will spring;
Of sweetest scent, and with no thorns to sting;
Such as the common wayside thickets know,
Or nowhere but in palace gardens blow.
Ivy, Assyrian nard
Sue alike for your regard;
And grateful you for each; the mean, the rare
To your frank childishness as welcome are.
Tossing your naked limbs on the glad sod
You know not you will be—perhaps are—a God!
Yea, Child, who, than you all love,
More Divine in Heav’n above!
Ev’n when babyhood becomes boyhood, still
Nature spreads her bounty in sheer good-will.
Honey from the sturdy oak, like dew, drips;
Briers press purple grapes on thirsting lips;
And from unploughed fields are borne
Yellow sheaves of beardless corn.
But stifle human wants with plenty, lust
Of unneighbourliness creeps from the dust.
Merchants here and there about ocean roam,
Snatching subsistence given free at home;
Robbers build forts whence to spoil;
Shares rend the protesting soil.
Germs, mixed—crude, human restlessness—its need
For peril and adventure—or rank greed,
That had hid underground, from shame to break
“God’s Truce,” and keep the wondrous Babe awake,
Had been struggling to survive;
The spell is lifted; they live.
A fresh Argo will seek another Fleece;
Sin of a second Paris murder peace;
A new Achilles set streams in wroth flood
Rushing to the sea red with Trojan blood.
No more, Boy, know ye of it
Than in brave tales poets writ.
Of Earth, not of it, you move to and fro,
A mystery; wherever you may go,
Carrying a blessing! Your one main care
To learn what Heroes, like your Father, are;
What, Virtue;—revealed to them
Who prize it ere priced a gem.
Then, your eyes, a boy’s, that had closed at night
On a garden-land bathed in crimson light,
Open to find yourself of man’s estate,
Named Dictator of a mad world by Fate;—
Grasping no steel sword in hand;
With no Armies to command.
My vision is blurred.
As from graves, a host,
Chaos, rose, went back at dawn a ghost.
But mortal may not, ev’n in sleep, behold
Heaven at work Man’s being to remould.
Enough to witness when Earth
Has undergone its new birth;
How without pruning hook, or drudging bull,
The press ran wine, the granaries were full;
And traders finding wares from foreign lands
They had risked life to store, left on their hands,
Gave up voyaging abroad;
Let alone the Ocean road.
Ah! Joy, the world ’twas given me to view!
All that’s fair in the Old, kind in the New!
How Nature, impelled by but one desire
To grant her loved children all they require,
Never tires to please them; still
Paints the lily at their will,
Varies the rainbow’s order, gilds the gold
On Ebro’s banks, dyes the wool in the fold,
Wooes by soft stratagems her nursling, Man,
To feel motherliness in all her plan
Of change for him, while she shows
Her own bliss in a dog-rose!
Fate has decreed; the Destinies obey
Eternal laws, and bid their spindles play:
“March, Ages, without break!”
Time presses on!
You, of race Divine, Jove’s adopted Son,
High honours, great tasks await;
Swerve not at the call of Fate!
The arched world bows; the sea’s long currents raise
Glad crests; Heaven’s blue depths chant hymns of praise
For the good days coming. With one consent
The Universe prepares for merriment.
Winter was it? Now, ’tis Spring;
Hark! the woods are carolling!
“May it be given me to outstay death—
If I but keep so much of life as breath
To tell, my Prince, your deeds! My theme, not I,
Will Orpheus and Linus in song defy,
Though Muse-Mother, and God-Sire
Stand by, and their sons inspire.
Nay, I range in Arcady; and should Pan
Grace by a challenge on the pipe a man,
I must take up the glove—the meanest clod,
On equal terms competing with a God—
And win! for I you acclaim;
Then, what can he but the same?”
A smile! and, Babe, I would that I could deem
You meant it for pleasure at my Day-dream.
I know ’tis a return for those on you;
And that you can ne’er repay debts thus due.
Blest you so to have learned, while
In your cradle, how to smile!
Alas for the child who, by guilt, or guile,
Lives disinherited of parents’ smile.
For whom no fellowship of Gods or grace,
From birth condemned, an outcast of his race!
In your Palace, at your call
Shall not welcome be for all?
Æneas in Hades
P. VIRGILII MARONIS, Æneidos, Bk. V. vv. 721-754 and 835-871; Bk. VI. vv.
1-19 and 41-636
LIMBO AND TARTARUS
Sad with thoughts of Carthage, its Lady fair,
Weary and worn with wanderings and care,
Mourning his father still, Æneas lay
Sleepless, when lo! visible as in day,
Though up the heavens drove her car black Night,
Anchises, lit with an unearthly light:
“My Son,” he said, “here am I by Jove’s grace;
He pities, late, the sorrows of our race,
And has sent me to comfort and advise.
Let a new Troy in Sicily arise,
Peopled by many who would stay behind.
With the young and bravest, sail thou, and find
A realm in Latium; make its rude tribes feel
The temper of their Trojan Master’s steel.
But, first, thou to the Nether World descend,
And traverse from the threshold to the end
In search of me; not that I dwell in Dis,
With the curst, but the pleasant fields of bliss.
Thither, with, for thy guide, the Sibyl, come
To learn thy sons’ deeds in their destined home.
But past midnight; the horses of the Sun
Pant to speed on their course;—I must be gone!”
Full well were Jove’s commands he brought obeyed,
And the foundations of the city laid—
“Acesta”—as its lord, Acestes hailed;
And, wept now by those it left, the fleet sailed.—
For Italy sailed; there arrived; and moored
Off Cumæ;—
but with Pilot none on board.
Whether marine God, jealous of a skill
In seamanship like his, or, spite of will,
Worn out with toil, he failed at last to keep
His eyelids from the poppy dew of sleep;
Who knows? but he woke, rudder in his hand,
Drifting, shouts unheard, to an unknown strand.
Vain to trace Palinurus and his fate!
But all knew where the Sibyl kept her state.
In a shrine that Latona’s Children hold,
Their joint domain, and Dædalus of old
Adorned with various art, a huge cliff-wall
Recedes into a cavern; and thence call,
Rushing tumultuous through a hundred doors,
As many voices. One roar, the whole, pours.
Æneas touched the threshold, when a cry
Came from within:
“Ask, and I will reply!
Hear! the God!”—
And the Sibyl herself there;
She, yet not herself; breathing not our air;
No mortal accents from a mortal tongue;
Visage, complexion changed, fillet unstrung;
Breast stormily heaving; heart all but broke
In yet untamed resistance to the yoke
The God would fix, to break mind—human birth—
To bind his messenger from Heav’n to Earth;
While She, though pure, adoring, how not repine,
Identity lost, e’en to be Divine!
’Twas instinct in her that rebelled; not she,
The Prophetess, the Sibyl; for now see
Her wrathful for her master’s honour:—
“Thou,
Trojan at His altar, and not a vow!
Deemest mighty mouth of His awful shrine
Will open but to answer prayer from thine?”
Æneas had kept silence, not from fear,
Or shame, but reverence; now he drew near,
Entreating from the bottom of his heart:
“Phœbus, Troy’s champion, when few took our part;
Through whom Achilles died—whose kindly hands
Led us o’er false seas, past perilous lands—
O turn the shores where we have anchor cast,
From the mirage they were to homes at last.
And adverse Gods and Goddesses, to all,
I pray, if e’er Troy’s glory stirred your gall,
Does not down-fallen Pergamus atone—
Is Envy not content with heaps of stone—
With Priam’s House uprooted? What are we,
Mere remnant tossed till now on every sea?
Thee also, holy Prophetess, I ask;
Free thy God’s cloudy riddles from their mask;
In pity for me, who already know
I am to rule Ausonia, unveil how,
Where, and when, to found my City, replace
Troy’s exiled Gods, Genii of our race;
Nor trust thy renderings of what Fate weaves
To the chance flutterings of autumn leaves;
Chant; and be all transcribed; then, when, in pure
Marble fanes, thy God is worshipped, be sure
Kings after me shall treasure what is writ,
And train up scholars to interpret it.”
God and Prophetess listened no more;—
will
Was wrestling to be its own mistress still.
A woman with a God! In vain she raves;
Subduing lips that foam, breast swollen, waves
Of inspiration stamp, rolling along,
Apollo’s dictates on the Sibyl’s tongue,
Till—again the hundred doors open wide—
Phœbus to Æneas by her replied:
“Think not thy work is done because at length
Ocean’s dangers are escaped. All thy strength
Will be tasked on land; though Latium’s lord
Prepares to hail the offer of thy sword,
Thou’llt wish thyself soon afar! Look! a flood—
Tiber foaming to the sea—of men’s blood.
Horrors Simois, Xanthus showed might seem
Repeated by thy loath fancy in a dream.
Nor even wanting to this war—fell war—
An Achilles, Goddess born; Troy’s ill star,
Queen Juno; and, of worse augury yet
For Trojans, or, of snares that Fate has set
For thy feet a surer than all beside—
A foreign hostess, and a foreign bride.
Face trials; turn thy back upon no foe;
By paths, however strait, Chance-opened, go.
Where wilt thou not in Italy beg aid?
If to no purpose, be not thou dismayed.
Fortune loves strange means; how but for me have known
Thy dawn would break first from forth a Greek town?”
Æneas spoke not; for again the jar,
Bellowing, shrieking, roaring—civil war
Between Spirit, Divine, and human—This,
In last contest to stand by what it is;
Planning passages that lead nowhere, in or out,
Darkening truths, perversities of doubt;
Phœbus, if thundering, resolved and cold,
Certain of victory, ne’er quitting hold;
The other, a wild mare on a wild plain.
You heard the cold calm trainer shake the rein,
Tear mutinous mouth with the cruel bit,
Mock at the passion that resented it.
Then quiet; Æneas once more began:
“Speak not of risks endurable by man;
None daunt me; long since I foresaw the whole,
Rehearsed what worst could happen in my soul.
I fear no ordeal; if Hell’s gate be here,
As they say, and it front the darksome mere—
Acheron’s wash—I crave it of thy grace,
Holy One, to meet my sire face to face.
Never had I been parted from his side
Till in an evil hour for me he died.
Not in the agony of that dread night,
Troy’s ruin, did I lose him from my sight;
On these shoulders bore I him ’mid the wreck,
Though all Hell’s hounds were barking at my back.
On my voyagings best of comrades he,
In mortal terrors, on every sea;
Minding nothing how elements might rage—
A heart that defied weaknesses of age!
Tell me the foemen that I would not dare
To see him once more, pain I would not bear.
In the dead watches of the night he came,
And bade me supplicate Thee in his name
To unbar Hell’s gates, and to be my Guide.
Oh think that he is kneeling by my side!
Thy will is law; whate’er Thou wilt is done;
Mercy we pray; rejoin us, Father, Son.
Others have been to whom was given the right,
Living, to travel through the world of night.
Its doors, as Orpheus sounded lute and song,
Opened to let the minstrel pass along;
Fraternal tenderness has paved a way
To and from twilight to radiant day;
Alcides—did not friendship bring him down?
Theseus also—if but that!—
Me, love’s crown,
The noblest, filial piety, draws,
Though into Tartarus’s very jaws!
By no bare title holdest thou in fee
Avernus by gift from great Hecate;
Thine leave to grant, with me the right of love
To visit Hell—and I too count from Jove!”
“Easy,” replied the Sibyl, “the descent
To Avernus; welcome all thither bent;
Dis shuts none out; the task is, when the taste
For sunshine revives, measure back the waste
Wooded wilderness that Cocytus holds
In its innumerable black-slime folds.
What hope for mortals flesh-clogged to retrace
Their way! A few by Jupiter’s good grace,
Or saints on earth, with blood Divine to aid,
Of brief sojourn there stepping-stones have made
To the skies.—
But enough! Well that the sight
Of thy Sire is a passionate delight;
That thy fond heart’s self-satisfying sense
Of duty done is a full recompense
For risking the mad liberty to float
Twice across noisome Styx in Charon’s boat;
And twice view Tartarus,—
Yet first receive
The terms on which alone Thou hast thy leave;
In a nest of dells retired is a grove,
Darkened by shadows of the hills above;
And a tree, sun-proof, whose dense branches hold
Ever among them one of purest gold;
Gold leafage, gold saplings supple, yet tough;
Vain for any, though brave, and fond enough,
To plunge in the Underworld; unless he
Have tracked and plucked the Gold Bough off the Tree.
The Queen of Hades, Proserpine the Fair,
Chooses offerings thence for her to wear,
Never loses the tree glory; instead
Of branch plucked a second straightway is bred,
Thou, high and low, explore; and, if Thou find,
Lay hold on it; should Fate have Thee designed,
It will yield with ease, even joy; if not,
Nor strength, nor steel could tear it from the spot.
And ’tis not all; another duty still
Rests on thee, and a sadder, to fulfil.
While thou would’st learn the future in my cave,
A friend has been lying dead, with no grave—
To the entire Fleet a reproach, a shame.
First give his relics tomb, and rites, they claim.
So, may’st thou with clean hands thy way pursue;
And realms forbid shall open to thy view.”
A tangled maze! With a past bleak and bare,
A future of dim hopes, and certain care;—
A corse blurring the foreground! And of whom?
Then, as Æneas paced the shore in gloom,
Achates with him, see! a Body there!
Misenus, trumpeter, charioteer!
He drowned, and how? that horseman tried and good,
Hard and intrepid spearman, who had stood
The brunt of battle, as of rough sea-wave,
Of Hector and Æneas comrade brave—
There, like worthless seaweed, see! Misenus dead!
In eyes stark staring might almost be read
An appeal as if to Heaven, and Fate,
Against false friends who left him desolate!
And, true, ’twas pity touching on remorse,
Which swept through the armament, when the corse
Was drawn to the encampment on the shore.
The first thought, the Prince led, was to deplore
A comrade; the next, the pyre, to proceed
To raise, as to One who could intercede
In Heaven, what an altar might have been.
A primeval forest that had never seen
Woodman, or, profaning its silence, heard
The horn of huntsman chasing beast or bird,
Suddenly awoke to the frequent crash
Of pitch-pine, ilex, and the mountain-ash,
While heart of oak had to admit a wedge,
And giants rolled down many a hill ledge.
In all the toil none bore sturdier part
Than Æneas; for he, and with full heart,
Grieved for a loyal ally; but his brain,
With that central thought, took a wider train:
“Forests as this,” he mused, “the whole land through!
How to track to one tree a single bough!
Yet”—as of Misenus—“could the Maid tell
Ill news so truly, why not good as well?”
And ah! that instant, in his joyful sight,
Alighting from blue sky, in soft, smooth flight,
On the green turf a pair of milk-white doves
Such as flit where his Mother, Venus, moves.
“After them! Oh! to guess whither they make,
And match their speed whatever course they take!”
Fain would he think the rate was, as they flew,
Ruled for pursuit to keep them just in view,
To the dark arbour where a yellow glow
Should flicker on the verdant turf below.
Hope not in vain; the pair, after brief pause
For circling Avernus, and its death-jaws,
Tower swiftly aloft; next, in straight line
Glide to a tree, settle as by design.
The Hero arrives, and with heart aflame
Marks, checkering green shadows, a gold gleam.
Upon a foreign stem the mistletoe
Will in the woods a cluster of sprays grow,
With berries saffron-hued in winter’s cold.
Thus, on the holm-oak swayed the Branch of Gold,
Rustling its slight leafage in the soft wind;
Coy—rather than resisting, disinclined—
As Æneas plucked, in hot haste to bear
His prize, and trust it to the Sibyl’s care.
Meanwhile, the Trojans thronged, the Dead to mourn
With rites for which no thanks could it return.
First, they build, a marvel for bulk, the pyre—
Pitch-pine for flame, split oak to feed the fire,
Cypress, Death’s tribute, armour to remind
Of the warrior, twigs the logs to bind.
Vast the heap; but, with oil and incense, soon
Fire had done its work; and when it died down,
All being gone that of the mass could burn,
They closed the ashes, wine-washed, in the urn.
Then Chorinœus sprinkled thrice the ring
Of mourners with pure water from the spring,
And bade the Shade, leaving the world above,
Last farewell words of sorrowing and love.
Yet was the debt the Prince was proud to owe
But half-paid to a friend in weal and woe,
Till rose a sepulchre, stately and high,
For th’ honoured dust enshrined therein to lie.
Topped by oar and horn, sword, and spear, and shield,
To proclaim the champion of sea and field,
It crowns the airy Cape that boasts the name,
And through the ages seals a Trojan’s fame.
So, drowned Misenus need not wander more
Between two worlds on Styx’s groaning shore,
Dragging soulless flesh—choke in a foul fen,
Companionless for Shadows, and for Men.
No more an unburied suppliant this,
But Hero, Pilot trumpeting in bliss!
And, their consciences purged, with duties done,
All turned to fresh cares, leaving Misenus alone.
The Prince and men, the Sibyl guiding, went
By a rough track until a yawning rent
In a grim cliff disclosed a cavern; day
Was blocked by a dense grove; and in front lay
A dim dark pool; from its black lips a breath
Steamed into the arched sky, carrying death.
On its banks sounded never a bird’s song;
Whence “Avernus,” “birdless” in the Greek tongue.
Hard-by the Sibyl hallowed victims, four
Steers dusk-coloured; proceeding first to pour
Wine on their heads, and on the altar burn
Bristles from between the horns she had shorn;
Next, by blood calling Hecate, Divine
In Heaven as Hell, to further their design.
The Prince then to the Furies’ kith and kin—
Vain to try their Three vengeful selves to win—
Slaughtered a black-fleeced lamb; to Hades’ Queen
A cow untaught what mother’s joys had been;
And, lastly, after sunset, to the King
Of Tartarus, a vast, rich offering—
Whole bulls’ entrails upon the altars thrown,
With oil to sting the flames to hiss and groan.
But the sun rose, and earth began to growl
Underfoot, dogs in the grey dawn to howl,
And on wooded heights leaves waved in still air,
As Nature felt the Goddess coming there.
“Away, unsanctified; far from the grove,”
Threatens the Sibyl; “as your lives ye love!
Alone, Æneas, sword unsheathed, come Thou;
Need for stout heart, for all thy courage now!”
Prophetess possessed, she dared the dark cave;
Step by step followed he, with soul as brave.
Gods, whose the Spirit-empire, and, ye, hosts—
Chaos, Phlegethon, Powers too—of ghosts,
Dumb in a dumb world, grant I may unfold
Things, of which my spirit by yours is told.
Cloudy must my story needs be to him
Who reads. All to the pilgrims’ selves was dim!
Phantom-like, and alone with night, they passed
Through Dis’s kingdom, lifeless, joyless, waste,
As, pale and ghostly will a forest seem,
Between pale clouds and the moon’s grudging beam.