Shades swarmed, dense, ever denser, in a wood
Which rustled all its bushes with the press—
As of a migrant nation numberless—
Of Spirits emulous to be the first
To reach grey Lethe’s edge, and quench their thirst—
—Thus, in languorous stillness of noontide,
Sudden the slumb’rous calm is swept aside
By an inrush of bees; in wild descent,
Like pirates from the main, on nothing bent
But spoil they seem; yet each has its own flow’r,
To which sure instinct guides it hour by hour,—
Æneas saw the haste, knew not th’ excuse;
For him it seemed to be Hell broken loose.
Even when he heard the marvellous tale
That the myriads gathered in that vale
Were no unwilling, mourning outcasts there,
Condemned to breathe once more the upper air,
But after their secular repose full fain
Flesh to resume, links in an endless chain,
The world-worn hero shuddered none the less
It might be his to count it happiness
To exchange the peace of the myrtle grove
For stark sunshine and gross body above;
To be of those whom Lethe should wash clear
Of all they once had been, and all they were:—
That Elysium’s a waiting-room for life;
Life a dust-heap for trials, failures, strife
That men are Shadows all, expecting doom,
Whether flesh, or to shift it in a tomb.
“Forbear,” replied Anchises, old and wise,
“To measure laws of Fate by earthly eyes.
From the beginning of the sky and land,
The stars where once the Titans held command,
The sun and moon that share the day and night,
Air’s liquid fields;—all owe their charm and light
To eternal Spirit. That feeds the whole,
Breathes into bodies, lifeless else, a soul.
Mankind and beasts, winged Things, and monster strange,
That ’neath the level plains of Ocean range,
Draw hence their fire, the instinct of a birth
Elsewhere;—alas! for the burdensome bulk
Of limbs diseased, and joints that creak and sulk
For the foul lusts they stir, the scares, affrights,
The cowardly griefs, and as vain delights,
The Dark through which flesh stumbles, halt and blind
The dungeon where it keeps shut close the Mind,
Lest at one breath of air it should in scorn
Of earth fly back to Heaven where ’twas born.
Meanwhile an evil partnership for both!—
Spirit incorporate, however loth
To be associate with sores and blains,
Vice’s parasites, must bear fleshly pains
To be cleansed; for death is itself no cure;
Body, Soul with it, share in the Impure.
Some, carcasses, swing, split open, for breeze
To scour and wring, to bleach, and scorch, or freeze
For some a mill-stream whirls a crime about,
Or a furnace roars a rich baseness out.
Just the Judgment, every judgment true;
Each of us bears no more than is his due;
High as the merits of our kith and kin,
None but himself can carry his own sin.
Blest the sharp ordeal for the few who thence
Pass, not in sheer spiritual innocence,
But in no worse than such affections dressed
As leave the pure celestial spark at rest,
And free in these fair fields to dream away
Any chance taint surviving from earth’s clay
To dull the sereneness of the fire giv’n
To infants, that they may remember Heav’n.”
“And now behold the final stage:—
this rout,
Its cycle—a thousand years—being out—
Called by God’s Messenger of Life and Death,
Descends where Lethe, in the cleft beneath,
Will make it, drinking of the troubled flood,
Conscious it once was clothed with flesh and blood.
And yearn to take them back, and to return
Rude air to breathe, and feel a rude sun burn.
Nearer now draw with me, that from this bank
Thou mayest watch the comers rank by rank;
Read, as I point, the future in each face;
See, as I see, the glory of our race—
Great as it was, and greater still to be,
Graft on Troy’s stock, the bud of Italy.
Mark him who leans upon a bloodless spear;
’Tis thy own son; but look upon him here;
On earth Thou wilt not; for, when thy long life
Is all but spent, Lavinia thy Wife
Shall conceive a child, and in full time bear
Silvius in the woods to be thy heir;
King of Alba, like many of his line,
As Procas and Æneas, namesake thine.
And still kings come—I cannot number them,
Each adding to old a fresh diadem!
But stay! who advances crested like to Mars—
For whom Jove keeps a place among the stars?
Romulus—City maker? Tenfold more!
From him Earth’s arbiter, matchless in war,
With no limits to empire but the Pole,
And none below Olympus to the soul!—
—As Joys Cybele to have peopled Heav’n,
Rome boasts a breed to which Earth is giv’n!
Turn thy eyes; regard this Company; know
What a full tide of grandeur is to flow
Hence of thy name; how from Thyself, and from
Iulus, in time shall Julius come,
And one as great, long destined to be born
By Fate’s decree—else were Fate’s self forsworn—
That, where King Saturn reigned in days of yore,
Augustus shall the Golden Age restore.
Marches still; already his edicts sway
Where our day is night, and our night is day;
Among the Gætuli; beyond them; far
Outside the orbit, light, of any star;
Outside track of Sun and dancing Hours, where
Atlas swings the world’s axis, with its gear.
Rumours of his approaching overwhelm
Quaking Mæotis and the Caspian realm;
While sevenfold Nile offers fealty,
Trembling for what the Master shall decree.
Have we not heard in legends or romance
How God or Hero has made his advance,
Victor throughout Earth?—
Of him who laid low
Lerna’s fire-breathing Dragon with his bow,
Shot the brazen-footed Hind, and stilled the roar
In Arcady of Erymanthian boar!—
Of Bacchus in tipsy triumph, a yoke
Of spotted tigers in his chariot, broke
To obey, for reins, tendrils of a vine—
His Mænads leaping down the long incline
Of Nysa, wildly singing, their locks curled
With vine leaves, following to win a world?
Yet what in tales of Gods and men can match
For scorn of space, and ardour of despatch,
Delight in braving peril, grasp of mind,
Our Cæsar’s progress to the verge of Ind!
Wilt, Son, in view of all thy future Rome,
With her chiefs destined from thyself to come,
And while ancestral fire of Troy burns high
In thy own veins, put off the hour to try
Valour in act, and hesitate to prove
Thy right to lordship given Thee by Jove?”
“Observe, as they pass by us, one by one,
Those who will glorify thy Rome, my Son.
Illegible to them, for us the whole
Of their careers is writ as on a scroll,
See, the grey-bearded King, the Priest, the Sage,
Of many years, though not bowed down with age,
Whose laws devised to rule a petty town
Will fit it when into an empire grown;
Next, Tullus, warrior-prince, and Ancus, near,
Boasting his wit to catch the popular ear:
Then the proud Tarquins; and, of soul as proud,
Brutus, grudging not Freedom his sons’ blood—
Careless if fainter hearts, a feebler time
Brand a patriot’s sacrifice as crime!
Ah! changes—leaps and bounds—so fast surprise
Brains, toned here to calm, that my aged eyes
Are dazzled as forms pass, and then repass,
And straight are lost—reflections in a glass.
No smoother course for this, thy Rome to be,
Than now, my Son, for Thee in Italy.
A whirl of arms ere the fair land will deign
To grant thy offspring’s right divine to reign;
An age-long wrestle; yet a rope of sand
Makes a poor rival of an iron band.—
Hide from my sight those lictors, and a Son!
But they tell how Latium shall be won.—
A will inflexible, a discipline
Making a religion of a straight line,
A consuming, passionate, red-hot force
Never prisoned in its volcanic source—
Pride in the City of the Seven Hills—
Will merge all other passions, heal all ills.
These the fire inspired, that in fateful war
Gave Cossus and Jove arms of Tuscan Lar.
Maligned and banned Camillus their first call
Brought as through air to save Rome from the Gaul
Fabricius taught the Epirot King
Thus, that Rome wounded rises on the wing.
From them Serranus learned the art to guide
The State, and victor o’er the billows ride
As straight as he his furrow erewhile ploughed.
Regard these visages serene and proud
To do whate’er is Rome’s behest, content
To go whithersoever they are sent.
See, war’s twin thunderbolts, the Scipios,
Their oracle Rome, their one mark her foes.
See them to whom Achaia bows the head,
With Macedon’s monarch in triumph led;—
Avenging on Mycenæ, and the race
Of Atreus, on Achilles, the disgrace
They heaped upon Troy, and the outraged shrine
Of Pallas, their own patroness Divine.
Nor fail note that old man, heeding no jeer,
No hint of blood slow and sluggish, e’en fear:
Resolved throughout of one thing—ne’er, from haste
In clutching popular applause, to waste
A chance on Fortune’s wheel for his Rome’s Shield
To foil War’s cross-eyed Master in the field;
And, near to him, in Britomart’s royal spoils,—
Like a brave boar, trapped in a huntsman’s toils,
Unconquerable else—the battle’s lord—
Confess it, Gaul, Carthage, and Syracuse—Rome’s Sword!
But who is this, Thou askest, in the pride
Of arms and youth, advancing by his side?
Thou mark’st the likeness; well might he be son:
From the same stock he springs, a noble one.
Strange, in the changeless calm of these blest groves
The shadow of a brooding sorrow moves....
Well might I weep, if Spirit could, the fate
Of good as fair, and not more good than great.
Earth will have but seen to lose him!
Heaven,
Wert thou jealous, lest, thinking him given
To this our mighty Rome, not just on loan,
But to live her life, be her very own,
She would wax overweening? Yet the woe
Must surely wake thy pity, when, below,
Thou hear’st the wails numberless for such charms
Borne to their pyre upon the Field of Arms;
And Thou, old Tiber, as thou flowest by
The tomb in which the loved One’s ashes lie,
Wilt not forget how thou hast seen him play
Oft on thy banks young, beautiful, and gay.
Never will hope be raised so high by boy
Blending the blood of Latium and Troy;
And, when shall our earth ever find again
Such loyalty and faith in living men—
A right hand so approved in every art,
On horse, or foot, to do a soldier’s part?
I pity, praise, love!
Arrest but the chain
Of Fate; and lo! Marcellus come again!
—Armfuls of lilies bring; for Soul as sweet!
Spread crimson flow’rs, fit carpet for his feet!
—Grief for a Shadow, from a Shadow grief;
Yet Shadows find a Shadow of relief
For boundless loss in Shadows e’en of grief!”
“But now for the near future—I will show
How to surmount, and how to bear with, woe;
Faint not, endure, and earn renown! On Earth,
What, without store of fame, is living worth!
Weigh not the toils and snares, that, I foresee,
Impend, ere Thou shalt reign in Italy.
Remember thy reward, the noble end
Tow’rds which thy trials and thy hardships tend.
Teach a world-empire how its Founder bears
The load of war, and, worse, intestine cares;
For these must be, though I spare Thee the sight
Of brothers against brothers armed for fight—
Decii, Drusi, Gracchi—each House moved
By jealous passion for the Rome all loved.
And when the All-Conquering shall have hurled
Her legions to the confines of the world,
Lo! Chiefs—allied by blood, and leagued to share
Two continents between them—arm to tear
Their country’s entrails piecemeal! Baleful strife!
Will not one victim serve—Great Cato’s life?
Joy! God grants my prayer! There is brave steel
Of double virtue, both to wound and heal;
And of that heav’nly temper, Youth, is thine,
Second founder of the Julian line!
Hail to Olympian Cæsar! Who would
Not guard dear life at cost of Roman blood;
And ere—too soon—he parts, will choose an heir
Of skill divine the ship of State to steer
Clear of the breakers; Kind and keen to know
His fellow Romans, with the rush and flow,
The genius for sovereignty; their fate
To be Earth’s lords, and Earth’s to stand and wait!
Let others wile the furnace with its heat
To warm the heart within the bronze to beat,
Cunningly lift th’ imprisoning stone away,
And lead nymphs forth to blush in rosy day;
Dissemble truth with nimble tongues; and call
Stars by their names; tell when they rise and fall.
Others Rome’s Arts;—
To speak her mistress will:
Fight if it please her; bid the world keep still!
See that her vassals nowhere suffer wrong;
—Make Pride her Right; be Valiant, and be Strong!”
Death, and her brother, Sleep, rule side by side
Realms that shadowy boundaries divide,
Yet none can cross but through gates twain; and these
Are in the charge of Death, who keeps the keys.
Now and again a Spirit will repair
For love or hate back to the upper air,
To commune with Spirit, so far as whole
Can become two parts, Soul be just a Soul.
Of dull, dun horn the gate such use; hard by
Gleams the other, perfect of ivory.
Thence from the Under-world Imps float above
Freaks that in spite or idlesse they have wove,
To raid and wilder slumber, let it close
Men’s eyes, and cheat their senses of repose.
Anchises, for whom Space and Time were nought,
Had through the gate of horn Æneas sought
By night on the Etruscan sea; he now
With last words, and many a longing vow
Of love, confessed his child was due to part—
Though truer no Son, kinder no Sire’s heart—
By the ivory door; the horn gate stood
Fast locked and sealed against all flesh and blood.
Though soul there—a thistle-down Man, wind-tost
With life; a night-mare; less real than a ghost!
Virgil to the Unknown God
Æneidos, Bk. IV. vv. 576-577
_Sequimur te, Sarnie Deorum, Quisquis es_
Thou camest in the Darkness, and the Darkness Light became—
Not a word was ever spoken, and yet I heard Thy name,
I care not whither I must go; to worship at what shrine;
I know but that Thy servant I; that Thou art Master mine.
No Priest I need to lead me; for when Thou goest before,
How can I aught but follow, to love Thee, and to adore!
Who can ever fail to find Thee, or miss of Thy abode?
For where Thou art is Holiness,—and Holiness is God!
The Gates
Æneidos, Bk. VI. vv. 893-898
Sleep, and his Sister, Death;
Twins ever with Us; and theirs the keys
Of Past and Present, the Above, and the Beneath;
And, as Brother and Sister please,
Forth flutter Falsehood. Truth,
Changed, according as they pass the Gate
Of Horn or of Ivory into Joy or Ruth,
Even dreamed kindness into Hate!
Ghosts
_Ibid._
Ah! We at the behest,
Poor human mortals! of numberless shadowy hosts
Weaving Men’s dooms to amuse the tedium of Rest!
And nought abides but Ghosts!
Euryalus and Pallas
Æneidos, Bk. IX. vv. 455-457; Bk. XI. vv. 68-71
As a queenly daffodil in the springtide of its bloom,
Falls, whelmed beneath the plough-share, and wondering at its doom;
Or as a scarlet poppy, laying weary neck on earth,
Yields its breath to the full shower it welcomed at its birth;
So, all too fair to die, star of a life, Euryalus
Left for Nisus nought but despair, with dire revenge; and thus
Sank Pallas, young and brave;—as, under a girl’s heedless feet,
Drop violets, soft and shy, or hyacinths, faint and sweet,
Appealing from Fate to Heav’n, with all of their grace and sheen,
Telling—the more that life has fled—of what its charms have been;
Or as Babe on its Mother’s breast, who cannot, will not, think
Rosy lips half open are cold, and presses them to drink.
Things
Æneidos, Bk. I. v. 462
_Sunt lacryma rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_
There is spirit immortal that mounts up on high,
Yet reaches longing hands back to hopes left to die;
There are things that are tears; there are tears that are things;
There are tears that are water, and tears that are wings!
LUCRETIUS
Hymn to Venus
TITI LUCRETII CARI De Rerum Natura, Bk. I. vv. 1-48
Goddess! in whom our Rome is proud to trace
Nursing Mother of an Imperial race;
Who ’neath the constellations, as they range,
Heav’n’s standard-bearers, in soft interchange
Of night’s watches, rulest how, when, and where.
In Ocean’s finny depths, in upper air,
And teeming soil, Life, urgent to be born,
Shall at thy smile burst forth to greet the morn,
All without thee was gusty darkness;
then
A sudden rapture stirs in Gods and Men!
Thou comest! Winds fall; the sky no more low’rs:
Earth embroiders herself with fragrant flow’rs;
Billows that had been rolling mountains high,
Ripple laughter to greet a sapphire sky.
Wherever thou art is spring; thine the key
That sets the prisoned wanton west-wind free
To beat time to thy approach; and note how
Birds, thy heralds, by fits skim to and fro;
While, more fiercely-smitten, herds that had been
Content to graze their pastures rich and green,
Toss hoofs and horns, breast headlong streams; and where
It pleases Thee follow, whitherso’er!
Venus, all provident, and kind, and wise,
Nought in sea, torrent, hill escapes thy eyes;
No green plain, no tree that invites a nest.
With soothing touch in every breathing breast
Thou layest seed of love, yet with such skill,
A forethought so unerring, and a will
So tenderly sure, that never a spark
Strays from its order, but knows each its mark;
Kind choosing kind, species species, race race,
Till Being grows, age to age, in emulous grace!
Alone thou steerest Nature on her course!
Failing Thee, lost the aye marshalling force
To wash blind atoms on the shores of Light,
Where each shall take up Life in its due right,
To use it at its best, and for the best,
Joy for itself, harmony for the rest?
A theme, which it might well have seemed in vain
To attempt with powers of mortal brain;
Then least, when Rome—how lately!—claimed of all
Her children service at the trumpet’s call.
Ev’n still she aches with pangs that she has borne,
Glooming dumbly with fear they may return.
But, Goddess, I trust! greatly dare to ask:
“Shed thy eternal charm upon my task:
Bid warfare cease; uplift thy sovereign hand;
And blissful Peace will brood o’er sea and land.
What can resist Thee?
Mars with his alarms?
Where lies the God but in thy lovely arms?
Slender throat thrown back, see, his hungry eyes
Feed upon thine with ever fresh surprise!
Queen, he is thine; wound deeply as thou wilt;
Sweeter smart than all the blood he has spilt!
Cling round him; fold in thy divine embrace;
Lift tow’rds his the appeal of thy bright face;
Whisper love’s little nothings, till deep calm
Steep his whole being in a honeyed balm;
And he forget ’twas his murderous car
Spread frenzy through our streets of civil War!”
But the fever has abated; so long
As it is stayed, I will resume my song;—
The more gladly if it be heard by One
Whom Venus willed long back a Paragon,
Adorned with all the gifts that mortal man
Has owed her since Humanity began.
A Memmius is by that illustrious name
Pledged not to stand aloof from Rome aflame;
And thou didst thy part; but, the crisis past,
Thou now, my Lord and Friend, art free at last.
Yet weigh all well;
I have toiled hard to learn,
And with pains equal held it my concern,
When I myself was satisfied, to find
Means to pass truths into another mind.
No less a duty, if thou undertake,
Wilt thou betray, if thou should then forsake!
Away with mean cares; give, if aught, thy whole—
The sum of Reason—that which makes the Soul!
Philosophy
Bk. II. vv. 1-60
“Listen! the waves hiss, and loud the winds roar!
See! a ship drifts on a lee shore!
“Help!” No help; a whole crew on the beach dead.
Alas poor souls! I sleep on a good bed.
And lo! two hosts in line of battle drawn.
Thousands will not wake at next dawn!
To be killed, or kill—life or death for those—
I wonder which; happy I cannot lose!”
Count not men Molochs that with passive eyes,
They witness neighbours’ agonies.
Bodily ills all; how should bodies care
For others’ ills? Each has its own to bear.
Easily flow our tears when others weep;
As easily we fall asleep;
When Havoc stalks abroad, content we see
Other flesh in pain from which ours is free!
Let flesh be flesh; we by rough ways and bleak
Will climb up to the mountain peak;
And entering through guarded ramparts there
Find peace from flesh in temples stately, fair;
Work of wise builders, where a welcome waits,
With keys to life, within the gates.
That riddle many have tried, and not guessed;
They wander, spirit in flesh; nowhere rest.
Spirit trumpets down from tower, spire and hall;
They cannot hearken to the call.
Smothered in that they worship—wealth, power, birth—
Dream they are growing wings, and rot on earth!
Self-courted woes, suicide of the brain,
Dark chos’n for light, tortures in vain
Endured; this particle of life we have—
A spark at best—o’erdriven to the grave!
All but to pamper bodies, that, so long
As they are painless, hale, and strong,
Are warranted by Nature, watch-dog kind,
To press no further wants upon the Mind.
This commonwealth of limbs, together brought
To be a tenement for Thought,
Asks but to be exempt from fell disease,
Joy in mere breath, and feel itself at ease.
When the lamps’ flame from golden statues gleams,
Do the lights vie with the sun’s beams?
Must music to stir hearts to leap and bound,
From frescoed walls and fretted roofs resound?
Or if some time hot fever racks the head,
Are you, tossing on a sick bed,
Easier at all that you chance to lie
On cedarn couch purple with Tyrian dye?
Know you not, wastrels, that what Mind you give
To flesh you steal from power to live?
The spirit is the root of life; thereby
We live; and if we starve it, then we die.
When spirit-comrades by cool brook recline,
Beneath the shade of beech or pine,
They reck not which the rich, and which the poor.
Nor envious, nor jealous of neighbours’ store.
Enough to feel the warm blood answering
The joyousness of the sweet Spring:
While the soft turf, to offer greetings due,
Dresses itself in flow’rs of ev’ry hue.
Sense feels the charm, and Nature all approves;
While spirit talks with spirit, as it loves.
Ah! know how nought to flesh itself the whole
You sell life for; how hateful to the soul!
‘Musical as is Apollo’s Lute’
Bk. IV. vv. 1-25
I know a dell the Muses haunt; lone scene,
Where ne’er ere now had mortal footstep been.
Curious they what wand’rer should invade
The tuneful solitude, and pray their aid.
Ungrateful office his who tries to set
Men free from the close meshes of the net
In which religions of whatever kind
Presume to hold humanity confined.
Repulsed by those for whose sakes I pursued
A thankless work, I trod ways rough and rude,
Until, the track by good chance missed, I came
Solitary, out of heart, footsore, lame,
To this strange spot where the Nine Sisters camp
Out in the wilderness, and light their lamp
To guide lost wayfarers thither.
I asked,
And received; the Goddesses even tasked
Themselves for my scorned mission, which they dressed
In new melodies as an honoured guest;
For it unsealing in the sands fresh springs,
Inspiring it to lift itself on wings,
While they bade flow’rs strange to poesy blow,
That they might wreathe a garland for my brow.
If I, to emancipate Mind, make use
Of verse, does the enlistment need excuse?
Ignorance is the babe who drinks all up
When doctors sweeten at its brim the cup.
No sickness equals spectres of the brain,
They enslave till the bondsman hugs his chain.
Whose soul should not burn, as like mine, it sees
Hale men being treated, as for disease,
With drugs that force a nightmare-ridden sleep,
When they might bask in sun, and shout, and leap!
But the remedy? Reason wears a face
Austere, abstracted, void of outward grace.
The problems it would solve are deep and high;
And the informing light they shed is dry.
The crowd, long since besotted, in affright
Shrinks to its lazy phantoms from the sight
Of Wisdom, grim and grimy, in the mire
Calling it to drudge and moil without hire.
Whatever means Souls’ doctors can command
Should not they use to make men understand
That they are free—the more for the consent
Of Heav’n’s music to be their instrument?
Music interprets Mind; by it I strive—
Like physicians by honey from the hive—
To clothe bare truths Philosophy has taught
In garb that points—not hides—the charms of Thought.
All praise be to the Muses that I find
Power in their sweet mystery to bind
A friend in toils so happy that his soul
Will refuse deliverance ere the whole
Reveals itself to him of Nature’s plan,
Even in our verse, and how good for Man!
The Fear of Death
Bk. III. vv. 883-1107, and Bk. III. vv. 9-30