When loose epistles violate chaste eyes,

She half consents, who silently denies.

How dares a stranger, with designs so vain,

Marriage and hospitable rights prophane?

Was it for this, your fleet did shelter find

From swelling seas, and every faithless wind?

For though a distant country brought you forth,

Your usage here was equal to your worth.

Does this deserve to be rewarded so?

Did you come here a stranger, or a foe?

Your partial judgment may perhaps complain,

And think me barbarous for my just disdain;

Ill-bred then let me be, but not unchaste,

Nor my clear fame with any spot defaced.

Though in my face there's no affected frown,

Nor in my carriage a feigned niceness shown,

I keep my honour still without a stain,

Nor has my love made any coxcomb vain.

Your boldness I with admiration see;

What hope had you to gain a queen like me?

Because a hero forced me once away,

Am I thought fit to be a second prey?

Had I been won, I had deserved your blame,

But sure my part was nothing but the shame.

Yet the base theft to him no fruit did bear,

I 'scaped unhurt by any thing but fear.

Rude force might some unwilling kisses gain;

But that was all he ever could obtain.

You on such terms would ne'er have let me go;

Were he like you, we had not parted so.

Untouched the youth restored me to my friends,

And modest usage made me some amends.

'Tis virtue to repent a vicious deed;

Did he repent, that Paris might succeed?

Sure 'tis some fate that sets me above wrongs,

Yet still exposes me to busy tongues.

I'll not complain; for who's displeased with love,

If it sincere, discreet, and constant prove?

But that I fear; not that I think you base,

Or doubt the blooming beauties of my face;

But all your sex is subject to deceive,

And ours, alas! too willing to believe.

Yet others yield; and love o'ercomes the best;

But why should I not shine above the rest?

Fair Leda's story seems at first to be

A fit example, ready formed for me.

But she was cozened by a borrowed shape,

And under harmless feathers felt a rape.

If I should yield, what reason could I use?

By what mistake the loving crime excuse?

Her fault was in her powerful lover lost;

But of what Jupiter have I to boast?

Though you to heroes and to kings succeed,

Our famous race does no addition need;

And great alliances but useless prove,

To one that comes herself from mighty Jove.

Go then, and boast, in some less haughty place,

Your Phrygian blood, and Priam's ancient race;

Which I would shew I valued, if I durst;

You are the fifth from Jove, but I the first.

The crown of Troy is powerful, I confess;

But I have reason to think ours no less.

Your letter, filled with promises of all

That men can good, and women pleasant call,

Gives expectation such an ample field,

As would move goddesses themselves to yield.

But if I e'er offend great Juno's laws,

Yourself shall be the dear, the only cause;

Either my honour I'll to death maintain,

Or follow you, without mean thoughts of gain.

Not that so fair a present I despise;

We like the gift, when we the giver prize:

But 'tis your love moves me, which made you take

Such pains, and run such hazards for my sake.

I have perceived, though I dissembled too,

A thousand things that love has made you do.

Your eager eyes would almost dazzle mine,

In which, wild man, your wanton thoughts would shine.

Sometimes you'd sigh, sometimes disordered stand,

And with unusual ardour press my hand;

Contrive just after me to take the glass,

Nor would you let the least occasion pass;

When oft I feared, I did not mind alone,

And blushing sate for things which you have done;

Then murmured to myself,--he'll for my sake

Do any thing;--I hope 'twas no mistake.

Oft have I read within this pleasing grove,

Under my name, those charming words,--I love.

I, frowning, seemed not to believe your flame;

But now, alas! am come to write the same.

If I were capable to do amiss,

I could not but be sensible of this.

For oh! your face has such peculiar charms,

That who can hold from flying to your arms!

But what I ne'er can have without offence,

May some blest maid possess with innocence.

Pleasure may tempt, but virtue more should move;

O learn of me to want the thing you love.

What you desire is sought by all mankind;

As you have eyes, so others are not blind.

Like you they see, like you my charms adore;

They wish not less, but you dare venture more.

Oh! had you then upon our coasts been brought,

My virgin-love when thousand rivals sought,

You had I seen, you should have had my voice,

Nor could my husband justly blame my choice.

For both our hopes, alas! you come too late;

Another now is master of my fate.

More to my wish I could have lived with you,

And yet my present lot can undergo.

Cease to solicit a weak woman's will,

And urge not her you love to so much ill;

But let me live contented as I may,

And make not my unspotted fame your prey.

Some right you claim, since naked to your eyes

Three goddesses disputed beauty's prize;

One offered valour, t'other crowns; but she

Obtained her cause, who, smiling, promised me.

But first I am not of belief so light,

To think such nymphs would shew you such a sight;

Yet granting this, the other part is feigned;

A bribe so mean your sentence had not gained.

With partial eyes I should myself regard,

To think that Venus made me her reward.

I humbly am content with human praise;

A Goddess's applause would envy raise.

But be it as you say; for, 'tis confest,

The men, who flatter highest, please us best.

That I suspect it, ought not to displease;

For miracles are not believed with ease.

One joy I have, that I had Venus' voice;

A greater yet, that you confirmed her choice;

That proffered laurels, promised sovereignty,

Juno and Pallas, you contemned for me.

Am I your empire, then, and your renown?

What heart of rock, but must by this be won?

And yet bear witness, O you Powers above,

How rude I am in all the arts of love!

My hand is yet untaught to write to men;

This is the essay of my unpractised pen.

Happy those nymphs, whom use has perfect made!

I think all crime, and tremble at a shade.

E'en while I write, my fearful conscious eyes

Look often back, misdoubting a surprise.

For now the rumour spreads among the crowd,

At court in whispers, but in town aloud.

Dissemble you, whate'er you hear them say; }

To leave off loving were your better way; }

Yet if you will dissemble it, you may. }

Love secretly; the absence of my lord

More freedom gives, but does not all afford;

Long is his journey, long will be his stay,

Called by affairs of consequence away.

To go, or not, when unresolved he stood,

I bid him make what swift return he could;

Then kissing me, he said, I recommend

All to thy care, but most my Trojan friend.

I smiled at what he innocently said,

And only answered, "You shall be obeyed."

Propitious winds have borne him far from hence,

But let not this secure your confidence.

Absent he is, yet absent he commands;

You know the proverb, "Princes have long hands."

My fame's my burden; for the more I'm praised,

A juster ground of jealousy is raised.

Were I less fair, I might have been more blest;

Great beauty through great danger is possest.

To leave me here his venture was not hard,

Because he thought my virtue was my guard.

He feared my face, but trusted to my life;

The beauty doubted, but believed the wife.

You bid me use the occasion while I can,

Put in our hands by the good easy man.

I would, and yet I doubt, 'twixt love and fear;

One draws me from you, and one brings me near.

Our flames are mutual, and my husband's gone;

The nights are long; I fear to lie alone.

One house contains us, and weak walls divide,

And you're too pressing to be long denied.

Let me not live, but every thing conspires

To join our loves, and yet my fear retires.

You court with words, when you should force employ;

A rape is requisite to shame-faced joy.

Indulgent to the wrongs which we receive,

Our sex can suffer what we dare not give.--

What have I said? for both of us 'twere best,

Our kindling fire if each of us supprest.

The faith of strangers is too prone to change,

And, like themselves, their wandering passions range.

Hypsipile, and the fond Minonian[14] maid,

Were both by trusting of their guests betrayed.

How can I doubt that other men deceive,

When you yourself did fair Œnone[15] leave?

But lest I should upbraid your treachery,

You make a merit of that crime to me.

Yet grant you were to faithful love inclined,

Your weary Trojans wait but for a wind;

Should you prevail, while I assign the night,

Your sails are hoisted, and you take your flight;

Some bawling mariner our love destroys,

And breaks asunder our unfinished joys.

But I with you may leave the Spartan port,

To view the Trojan wealth and Priam's court;

Shown while I see, I shall expose my fame,

And fill a foreign country with my shame.

In Asia what reception shall I find?

And what dishonour leave in Greece behind?

What will your brothers, Priam, Hecuba,

And what will all your modest matrons say?

E'en you, when on this action you reflect,

My future conduct justly may suspect;

And whate'er stranger lands upon your coast,

Conclude me, by your own example, lost.

I from your rage a strumpet's name shall hear,

While you forget what part in it you bear.

You, my crime's author, will my crime upbraid;--

Deep under ground, oh, let me first be laid!

You boast the pomp and plenty of your land,

And promise all shall be at my command;

Your Trojan wealth, believe me, I despise;

My own poor native land has dearer ties.

Should I be injured on your Phrygian shore,

What help of kindred could I there implore?

Medea was by Jason's flattery won;

I may, like her, believe, and be undone.

Plain honest hearts, like mine, suspect no cheat,

And love contributes to its own deceit;

The ships, about whose sides loud tempests roar,

With gentle winds were wafted from the shore.

Your teeming mother dreamed, a flaming brand,

Sprung from her womb, consumed the Trojan land;

To second this, old prophecies conspire,

That Ilium shall be burnt with Grecian fire:

Both give me fear; nor is it much allayed,

That Venus is obliged our loves to aid.

For they, who lost their cause, revenge will take;

And for one friend two enemies you make.

Nor can I doubt, but, should I follow you,

The sword would soon our fatal crime pursue.

A wrong so great my husband's rage would rouse,

And my relations would his cause espouse.

You boast your strength and courage; but, alas!

Your words receive small credit from your face.

Let heroes in the dusty field delight,

Those limbs were fashioned for another fight.

Bid Hector sally from the walls of Troy;

A sweeter quarrel should your arms employ.

Yet fears like these should not my mind perplex,

Were I as wise as many of my sex;

But time and you may bolder thoughts inspire,

And I, perhaps, may yield to your desire.

You last demand a private conference;

These are your words, but I can guess your sense.

Your unripe hopes their harvest must attend;

Be ruled by me, and time may be your friend.

This is enough to let you understand;

For now my pen has tired my tender hand.

My woman knows the secret of my heart,

And may hereafter better news impart.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] This epistle was partly translated by Lord Mulgrave.

[14] Ariadne.

[15] A Phrygian nymph, seduced and deserted by Paris before his

Spartan expedition.

DIDO TO ÆNEAS.

EPIST. VII.

THE ARGUMENT.

_Æneas, the son of Venus and Anchises, having, at the destruction of

Troy, saved his Gods, his father, and son Ascanius, from the fire,

put to sea with twenty sail of ships; and, having been long tost with

tempests, was at last cast upon the shore of Libya, where queen Dido

(flying from the cruelty of Pygmalion, her brother, who had killed her

husband Sichæus) had lately built Carthage. She entertained Æneas and

his fleet with great civility, fell passionately in love with him, and

in the end denied him not the last favours. But Mercury admonishing

Æneas to go in search of Italy, (a kingdom promised him by the Gods,)

he readily prepared to follow him. Dido soon perceived it, and, having

in vain tried all other means to engage him to stay, at last, in

despair, writes to him as follows._

So, on Mæander's banks, when death is nigh,

The mournful swan sings her own elegy.

Not that I hope (for, oh, that hope were vain!)

By words your lost affection to regain;

But, having lost whate'er was worth my care,

Why should I fear to lose a dying prayer?

'Tis then resolved poor Dido must be left,

Of life, of honour, and of love bereft!

While you, with loosened sails, and vows, prepare

To seek a land that flies the searcher's care;

Nor can my rising towers your flight restrain,

Nor my new empire, offered you in vain.

Built walls you shun, unbuilt you seek; that land

Is yet to conquer, but you this command.

Suppose you landed where your wish designed,

Think what reception foreigners would find.

What people is so void of common sense,

To vote succession from a native prince?

Yet there new sceptres and new loves you seek,

New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.

When will your towers the height of Carthage know?

Or when your eyes discern such crowds below?

If such a town and subjects you could see,

Still would you want a wife who loved like me.

For, oh, I burn, like fires with incense bright;

Not holy tapers flame with purer light.

Æneas is my thoughts' perpetual theme,

Their daily longing, and their nightly dream.

Yet he's ungrateful and obdurate still;

Fool that I am to place my heart so ill!

Myself I cannot to myself restore;

Still I complain, and still I love him more.

Have pity, Cupid, on my bleeding heart,

And pierce thy brother's with an equal dart.

I rave; nor canst thou Venus' offspring be,

Love's mother could not bear a son like thee.

From hardened oak, or from a rock's cold womb,

At least thou art from some fierce tigress come;

Or on rough seas, from their foundation torn,

Got by the winds, and in a tempest born:

Like that, which now thy trembling sailors fear;

Like that, whose rage should still detain thee here.

Behold how high the foamy billows ride!

The winds and waves are on the juster side.

To winter weather, and a stormy sea,

I'll owe what rather I would owe to thee.

Death thou deserv'st from heaven's avenging laws;

But I'm unwilling to become the cause.

To shun my love, if thou wilt seek thy fate,

'Tis a dear purchase, and a costly hate.

Stay but a little, till the tempest cease,

And the loud winds are lulled into a peace.

May all thy rage, like theirs, inconstant prove!

And so it will, if there be power in love.

Know'st thou not yet what dangers ships sustain?

So often wrecked, how darest thou tempt the main?

Which were it smooth, were every wave asleep,

Ten thousand forms of death are in the deep.

In that abyss the gods their vengeance store,

For broken vows of those who falsely swore;

There winged storms on sea-born Venus wait,

To vindicate the justice of her state.

Thus I to thee the means of safety show;

And, lost myself, would still preserve my foe.

False as thou art, I not thy death design;

O rather live, to be the cause of mine!

Should some avenging storm thy vessel tear,

(But heaven forbid my words should omen bear!)

Then in thy face thy perjured vows would fly,

And my wronged ghost be present to thy eye;

With threatening looks think thou behold'st me stare,

Gasping my mouth, and clotted all my hair.

Then, should forked lightning and red thunder fall,

What couldst thou say, but, I deserved them all?

Lest this should happen, make not haste away;

To shun the danger will be worth thy stay.

Have pity on thy son, if not on me;

My death alone is guilt enough for thee.

What has his youth, what have thy gods deserved,

To sink in seas, who were from fires preserved?

But neither gods nor parent didst thou bear;

Smooth stories all, to please a woman's ear,

False as the tale of thy romantic life.

Nor yet am I thy first-deluded wife;

Left to pursuing foes Creusa stayed,

By thee, base man, forsaken and betrayed.

This, when thou told'st me, struck my tender heart,[16]

That such requital followed such desert.

Nor doubt I but the gods, for crimes like these,

Seven winters kept thee wandering on the seas.

Thy starved companions, cast ashore, I fed,

Thyself admitted to my crown and bed.

To harbour strangers, succour the distrest,

Was kind enough; but, oh, too kind the rest!

Curst be the cave which first my ruin brought,

Where, from the storm, we common shelter sought!

A dreadful howling echoed round the place;

The mountain nymphs, thought I, my nuptials grace.

I thought so then, but now too late I know

The furies yelled my funerals from below.

O chastity and violated fame,

Exact your dues to my dead husband's name!

By death redeem my reputation lost,

And to his arms restore my guilty ghost!

Close by my palace, in a gloomy grove,

Is raised a chapel to my murdered love;

There, wreathed with boughs and wool, his statue stands,

The pious monument of artful hands.

Last night, methought, he called me from the dome,

And thrice, with hollow voice, cried, Dido, come!--

She comes; thy wife thy lawful summons hears,

But comes more slowly, clogged with conscious fears.

Forgive the wrong I offered to thy bed;

Strong were his charms, who my weak faith misled.

His goddess mother, and his aged sire

Borne on his back, did to my fall conspire.

Oh! such he was, and is, that, were he true,

Without a blush I might his love pursue;

But cruel stars my birth-day did attend,

And, as my fortune opened, it must end.

My plighted lord was at the altar slain,

Whose wealth was made my bloody brother's gain;

Friendless, and followed by the murderer's hate,

To foreign countries I removed my fate;

And here, a suppliant, from the natives' hands

I bought the ground on which my city stands,

With all the coast that stretches to the sea,

E'en to the friendly port that sheltered thee;

Then raised these walls, which mount into the air,

At once my neighbours' wonder, and their fear.

For now they arm; and round me leagues are made,

My scarce established empire to invade.

To man my new-built walls I must prepare,

An helpless woman, and unskilled in war.

Yet thousand rivals to my love pretend,

And for my person would my crown defend;

Whose jarring votes in one complaint agree,

That each unjustly is disdained for thee.

To proud Hyarbas give me up a prey,

For that must follow, if thou goest away;

Or to my husband's murderer leave my life,

That to the husband he may add the wife.

Go then, since no complaints can move thy mind;

Go, perjured man, but leave thy gods behind.

Touch not those gods, by whom thou art forsworn,

Who will in impious hands no more be borne;

Thy sacrilegious worship they disdain,

And rather would the Grecian fires sustain.

Perhaps my greatest shame is still to come,

And part of thee lies hid within my womb;

The babe unborn must perish by thy hate,

And perish, guiltless, in his mother's fate.

Some god, thou sayest, thy voyage does command;

Would the same god had barred thee from my land!

The same, I doubt not, thy departure steers,

Who kept thee out at sea so many years;

While thy long labours were a price so great,

As thou, to purchase Troy, would'st not repeat.

But Tyber now thou seek'st, to be at best,

When there arrived, a poor precarious guest.

Yet it deludes thy search; perhaps it will

To thy old age lie undiscovered still.

A ready crown and wealth in dower I bring,

And, without conquering, here thou art a king.

Here thou to Carthage may'st transfer thy Troy;

Here young Ascanius may his arms employ;

And, while we live secure in soft repose,

Bring many laurels home from conquered foes.

By Cupid's arrows, I adjure thee stay!

By all the gods, companions of thy way!

So may thy Trojans, who are yet alive,

Live still, and with no future fortune strive;

So may thy youthful son old age attain,

And thy dead father's bones in peace remain;

As thou hast pity on unhappy me,

Who knew no crime, but too much love of thee.

I am not born from fierce Achilles' line,

Nor did my parents against Troy combine.

To be thy wife if I unworthy prove,

By some inferior name admit my love.

To be secured of still possessing thee,

What would I do, and what would I not be!

Our Libyan coasts their certain seasons know,

When, free from tempests, passengers may go;

But now with northern blasts the billows roar,

And drive the floating sea-weed to the shore.

Leave to my care the time to sail away;

When safe, I will not suffer thee to stay.

Thy weary men would be with ease content;

Their sails are tattered, and their masts are spent.

If by no merit I thy mind can move,

What thou deniest my merit, give my love.

Stay, till I learn my loss to undergo,

And give me time to struggle with my woe:

If not, know this, I will not suffer long;

My life's too loathsome, and my love too strong.

Death holds my pen, and dictates what I say,

While cross my lap the Trojan sword I lay.

My tears flow down; the sharp edge cuts their flood,

And drinks my sorrows, that must drink my blood.

How well thy gift does with my fate agree!

My funeral pomp is cheaply made by thee.

To no new wounds my bosom I display;

The sword but enters where love made the way.

But thou, dear sister, and yet dearer friend,

Shalt my cold ashes to their urn attend.

Sichæus' wife let not the marble boast;

I lost that title, when my fame I lost.

This short inscription only let it bear;

"Unhappy Dido lies in quiet here.

"The cause of death, and sword by which she died,

"Æneas gave; the rest her arm supplied."

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Dryden here misinterprets his author:

_Hæc mihi narrâras, nec me movere_----

The line would have run more justly thus:

This struck not, while thou told'st, my tender heart.

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

DEDICATION

PREFIXED TO THE TRANSLATIONS FROM OVID's METAMORPHOSES.

This Dedication contains abundance of literary and political

controversy. The first heat of the Revolution had been long over, and

the losers began to assume the privilege of talking, without fear that

an established government would think their complaints worthy of much

notice. Dryden, whom the evils of degradation and poverty pressed

severely, was not of a temper to remain silent under them, as soon as

he conceived it safe to utter his grievances. In losing his places of

laureat and historiographer, there was not only dishonour, but great

pecuniary loss; nor was it at all a soothing addition, that his old

enemy Shadwell had obtained the one, and his equivocal friend Rymer

the other, of his appointments. He sets out in extremely bad humour

with the government, under which he had suffered this deprivation;

with those who had risen by his fall; and with himself, for having

cultivated the barren field of poetry, instead of aspiring to the

honours of the gown. At length, after having ventured probably as far

as he thought safe, certainly as far as to excite displeasure, in

flourishes of declamation, which, though expressed against ministers

in general, are obviously levelled against those of the day, he turns

short, and falls with great vehemence upon the whole body of critics,

ancient and modern, as the natural enemies of poets and poetry.

Descending to those of his own day, he singles out Rymer, who, in

a piece, called, "A short View of Tragedy," published in 1692, had

depreciated the modern drama in his deep admiration of the ancients.

The controversy concerning the comparative merits of the ancients and

moderns was now raging in the literary world. Perault had written his

"Parallel," and Sir William Temple his "Essay on Ancient and Modern

Learning." Wotton's "Reflections" were published in 1694, and these

led the way to Swift's "Battle of the Books," in which our author is

treated with great severity.

Rymer had not only espoused the cause of the ancient tragedians in the

general dispute, but, as Dryden complains, had treated him slightly;

and our bard was not famous for patience under such offences. He

therefore retorts in this Dedication, maliciously upbraids Rymer with

the fate of his fallen tragedy "Edgar;" and artfully divides the

comparison between the Grecian and British dramatists, from that which

Perault had instituted between the ancient poets in general and those

of modern France. Our author's good taste, as well as policy, led him

to take a distinction so necessary for the maintenance of his cause.

Having bestowed what he thought an adequate chastisement upon Rymer,

he employs the small remainder of the preface in discussing a few

miscellaneous points of criticism, chiefly relating to translation.

The tone of this Dedication excited, as Dryden himself informs us, the

resentment of the court, who employed Rymer to attack our author's

dramatic reputation; a task which he never accomplished.[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[17] See his letter to Tonson, in which he thus expresses

himself: "About a fortnight ago, I had an intimation from a friend, by

letter, that one of the secretaries, I suppose Trenchard, had informed

the queen, that I had abused her government, (these were his words,)

in my epistle to Lord Radcliffe; and that thereupon she had commanded

her historiographer to fall upon my plays, which he assures me he is

now doing. I doubt not his malice, from a former hint you gave me; and

if he be employed, I am confident 'tis of his own seeking, who, you

know, _has spoken slightly of me in his last critique, and that gave me

occasion to snarl again_."

DEDICATION OF THE THIRD MISCELLANY, 1693,

CONTAINING

TRANSLATIONS FROM OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

LORD RADCLIFFE.[18]

MY LORD,

These Miscellany Poems are by many titles yours. The first they claim,

from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before

some of them were yet in being. The rest are derived from your own

merit, the exactness of your judgment in poetry, and the candour of

your nature; easy to forgive some trivial faults, when they come

accompanied with countervailing beauties. But, after all, though these

are your equitable claims to a dedication from other poets, yet I must

acknowledge a bribe in the case, which is your particular liking of my

verses. It is a vanity common to all writers, to overvalue their own

productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself,

than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent

my life in so unprofitable a study? why am I grown old, in seeking

so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application, which

have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown,

which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty

than myself. No government has ever been, or ever can be, wherein

timeservers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons are

only changed, but the same jugglings in state, the same hypocrisy

in religion, the same self-interest and mismanagement, will remain

for ever. Blood and money will be lavished in all ages, only for the

preferment of new faces, with old consciences. There is too often a

jaundice in the eyes of great men; they see not those whom they raise

in the same colours with other men. All whom they affect look golden to

them, when the gilding is only in their own distempered sight. These

considerations have given me a kind of contempt for those who have

risen by unworthy ways. I am not ashamed to be little, when I see them

so infamously great; neither do I know why the name of poet should be

dishonourable to me, if I am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will

never do any thing that shall dishonour it. The notions of morality are

known to all men; none can pretend ignorance of those ideas which are

inborn in mankind; and if I see one thing, and practise the contrary,

I must be disingenuous not to acknowledge a clear truth, and base to

act against the light of my own conscience. For the reputation of my

honesty, no man can question it, who has any of his own; for that of

my poetry, it shall either stand by its own merit, or fall for want of

it. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they, as the best

poet and the best patron said,

When in the full perfection of decay,

Turn vinegar, and come again in play.[19]

Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic; I mean

of a critic in the general acceptation of this age; for formerly they

were quite another species of men. They were defenders of poets,

and commentators on their works;--to illustrate obscure beauties;

to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from

malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is

not ostentatious of his wit; and, in short, to shield him from the

ill-nature of those fellows, who were then called Zoili and Momi, and

now take upon themselves the venerable name of censors. But neither

Zoilus, nor he who endeavoured to defame Virgil, were ever adopted into

the name of critics by the ancients. What their reputation was then,

we know; and their successors in this age deserve no better. Are our

auxiliary forces turned our enemies? are they, who at best are but wits

of the second order, and whose only credit amongst readers is what

they obtained by being subservient to the fame of writers, are these

become rebels, of slaves, and usurpers, of subjects? or, to speak in

the most honourable terms of them, are they, from our seconds, become

principals against us? Does the ivy undermine the oak, which supports

its weakness? What labour would it cost them to put in a better line,

than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius,

the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed

upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt; he

performed worse in his "Essay of the Civil War" than the author of the

"Pharsalia;" and, avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own.

Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him after the

possession of three thousand years: has he succeeded in his attempt?

he has indeed shown us some of those imperfections in him, which are

incident to human kind; but who had not rather be that Homer than this

Scaliger? You see the same hypercritic, when he endeavours to mend

the beginning of Claudian, (a faulty poet, and living in a barbarous

age,) yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of

his own as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan,

that "he rather seems to bark than sing?" Would any but a dog have made

so snarling a comparison? one would have thought he had learned Latin

as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off, with a _pace

tuâ_,--by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by those outrageous

names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had somewhat more of good

manners than his successors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two

sorts of those gentlemen in our nation; some of them, proceeding with a

seeming moderation and pretence of respect to the dramatic writers of

the last age, only scorn and vilify the present poets, to set up their

predecessors. But this is only in appearance; for their real design is

nothing less than to do honour to any man, besides themselves. Horace

took notice of such men in his age:

_Ingeniis non ille favet plauditque sepultis,

Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit._

It is not with an ultimate intention to pay reverence to the names

of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, that they commend their

writings, but to throw dirt on the writers of this age: their

declaration is one thing, and their practice is another. By a

seeming veneration to our fathers, they would thrust out us, their

lawful issue, and govern us themselves, under a specious pretence of

reformation. If they could compass their intent, what would wit and

learning get by such a change? If we are bad poets, they are worse;

and when any of their woeful pieces come abroad, the difference is so

great betwixt them and good writers, that there need no criticisms on

our part to decide it. When they describe the writers of this age,

they draw such monstrous figures of them, as resemble none of us; our

pretended pictures are so unlike, that it is evident we never sat to

them: they are all grotesque; the products of their wild imaginations,

things out of nature; so far from being copied from us, that they

resemble nothing that ever was, or ever can be. But there is another

sort of insects, more venomous than the former; those who manifestly

aim at the destruction of our poetical church and state; who allow

nothing to their countrymen, either of this or of the former age. These

attack the living by raking up the ashes of the dead; well knowing that

if they can subvert their original title to the stage, we who claim

under them must fall of course. Peace be to the venerable shades of

Shakespeare and Ben Jonson! none of the living will presume to have any

competition with them; as they were our predecessors, so they were

our masters. We trail our plays under them; but as at the funerals of

a Turkish emperor, our ensigns are furled or dragged upon the ground,

in honour to the dead, so we may lawfully advance our own afterwards,

to show that we succeed; if less in dignity, yet on the same foot and

title, which we think too we can maintain against the insolence of our

own janizaries. If I am the man, as I have reason to believe, who am

seemingly courted, and secretly undermined; I think I shall be able to

defend myself, when I am openly attacked; and to show, besides, that

the Greek writers only gave us the rudiments of a stage which they

never finished; that many of the tragedies in the former age amongst

us were without comparison beyond those of Sophocles and Euripides.

But at present, I have neither the leisure, nor the means, for such an

undertaking. It is ill going to law for an estate, with him who is in

possession of it, and enjoys the present profits, to feed his cause.

But the _quantum mutatus_ may be remembered in due time. In the mean

while, I leave the world to judge, who gave the provocation.

This, my lord, is, I confess, a long digression, from miscellany poems

to modern tragedies; but I have the ordinary excuse of an injured man,

who will be telling his tale unseasonably to his betters; though, at

the same time, I am certain you are so good a friend, as to take a

concern in all things which belong to one who so truly honours you. And

besides, being yourself a critic of the genuine sort, who have read

the best authors in their own languages, who perfectly distinguish of

their several merits, and, in general, prefer them to the moderns, yet,

I know, you judge for the English tragedies, against the Greek and

Latin, as well as against the French, Italian, and Spanish, of these

latter ages. Indeed, there is a vast difference betwixt arguing like

Perault, in behalf of the French poets, against Homer and Virgil, and

betwixt giving the English poets their undoubted due, of excelling

Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. For if we, or our greater fathers,

have not yet brought the drama to an absolute perfection, yet at

least we have carried it much farther than those ancient Greeks; who,

beginning from a chorus, could never totally exclude it, as we have

done; who find it an unprofitable incumbrance, without any necessity of

entertaining it amongst us, and without the possibility of establishing

it here, unless it were supported by a public charge. Neither can we

accept of those lay-bishops, as some call them, who, under pretence

of reforming the stage, would intrude themselves upon us, as our

superiors; being indeed incompetent judges of what is manners, what

religion, and, least of all, what is poetry and good sense. I can tell

them, in behalf of all my fellows, that when they come to exercise

a jurisdiction over us, they shall have the stage to themselves, as

they have the laurel. As little can I grant, that the French dramatic

writers excel the English. Our authors as far surpass them in genius,

as our soldiers excel theirs in courage. It is true, in conduct they

surpass us either way; yet that proceeds not so much from their greater

knowledge, as from the difference of tastes in the two nations. They

content themselves with a thin design, without episodes, and managed

by few persons; our audience will not be pleased, but with variety of

accidents, an underplot, and many actors. They follow the ancients too

servilely in the mechanic rules, and we assume too much licence to

ourselves, in keeping them only in view, at too great a distance. But

if our audience had their tastes, our poets could more easily comply

with them, than the French writers could come up to the sublimity of

our thoughts, or to the difficult variety of our designs. However it

be, I dare establish it for a rule of practice on the stage, that we

are bound to please those whom we pretend to entertain; and that at

any price, religion and good manners only excepted; and I care not

much, if I give this handle to our bad illiterate poetasters, for the

defence of their _Scriptions_, as they call them. There is a sort of

merit in delighting the spectators, which is a name more proper for

them, than that of auditors; or else Horace is in the wrong, when he

commends Lucilius for it. But these common places I mean to treat at

greater leisure; in the mean time submitting that little I have said

to your lordship's approbation, or your censure, and chusing rather to

entertain you this way, as you are a judge of writing, than to oppress

your modesty with other commendations; which, though they are your due,

yet would not be equally received in this satirical and censorious age.

That which cannot, without injury, be denied to you, is the easiness

of your conversation, far from affectation or pride; not denying even

to enemies their just praises. And this, if I would dwell on any theme

of this nature, is no vulgar commendation to your lordship. Without

flattery, my lord, you have it in your nature, to be a patron and

encourager of good poets; but your fortune has not yet put into your

hands the opportunity of expressing it. What you will be hereafter,

may be more than guessed, by what you are at present. You maintain

the character of a nobleman, without that haughtiness which generally

attends too many of the nobility; and when you converse with gentlemen,

you forget not that you have been of their order. You are married to

the daughter of a king; who, amongst her other high perfections, has

derived from him a charming behaviour, a winning goodness, and a

majestic person. The Muses and the Graces are the ornaments of your

family; while the Muse sings, the Grace accompanies her voice: Even the

servants of the Muses have sometimes had the happiness to hear her, and

to receive their inspirations from her.[20]

I will not give myself the liberty of going farther; for it is so sweet

to wander in a pleasing way, that I should never arrive at my journey's

end. To keep myself from being belated in my letter, and tiring your

attention, I must return to the place where I was setting out. I humbly

dedicate to your lordship my own labours in this Miscellany; at the

same time, not arrogating to myself the privilege, of inscribing to

you the works of others who are joined with me in this undertaking,

over which I can pretend no right. Your lady and you have done me the

favour to hear me read my translations of Ovid; and you both seemed not

to be displeased with them. Whether it be the partiality of an old man

to his youngest child, I know not; but they appear to me the best of

all my endeavours in this kind. Perhaps this poet is more easy to be

translated than some others whom I have lately attempted; perhaps, too,

he was more according to my genius. He is certainly more palatable to

the reader, than any of the Roman wits; though some of them are more

lofty, some more instructive, and others more correct. He had learning

enough to make him equal to the best; but, as his verse came easily,

he wanted the toil of application to amend it. He is often luxuriant

both in his fancy and expressions, and, as it has lately been observed,

not always natural. If wit be pleasantry, he has it to excess; but if

it be propriety, Lucretius, Horace, and, above all, Virgil, are his

superiors. I have said so much of him already in my preface to his

"Heroical Epistles," that there remains little to be added in this

place: For my own part, I have endeavoured to copy his character, what

I could, in this translation; even, perhaps, farther than I should have

done,--to his very faults. Mr Chapman, in his "Translation of Homer,"

professes to have done it somewhat paraphrastically, and that on set

purpose; his opinion being, that a good poet is to be translated in

that manner. I remember not the reason which he gives for it; but I

suppose it is for fear of omitting any of his excellencies. Sure I am,

that if it be a fault, it is much more pardonable than that of those,

who run into the other extreme of a literal and close translation,

where the poet is confined so straitly to his author's words, that he

wants elbow-room to express his elegancies. He leaves him obscure; he

leaves him prose, where he found him verse; and no better than thus has

Ovid been served by the so-much-admired Sandys. This is at least the

idea which I have remaining of his translation; for I never read him

since I was a boy. They who take him upon content, from the praises

which their fathers gave him, may inform their judgment by reading him

again, and see (if they understand the original) what is become of

Ovid's poetry in his version; whether it be not all, or the greatest

part of it, evaporated. But this proceeded from the wrong judgment of

the age in which he lived. They neither knew good verse, nor loved

it; they were scholars, it is true, but they were pedants; and, for a

just reward of their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be

translated into English.

If I flatter not myself, or if my friends have not flattered me,

I have given my author's sense for the most part truly; for, to

mistake sometimes is incident to all men; and not to follow the Dutch

commentators always, may be forgiven to a man, who thinks them, in the

general, heavy gross-witted fellows, fit only to gloss on their own

dull poets. But I leave a farther satire on their wit, till I have a

better opportunity to show how much I love and honour them. I have

likewise attempted to restore Ovid to his native sweetness, easiness,

and smoothness; and to give my poetry a kind of cadence, and, as we

call it, a run of verse, as like the original, as the English can

come up to the Latin. As he seldom uses any synalephas, so I have

endeavoured to avoid them as often as I could. I have likewise given

him his own turns, both on the words and on the thought; which I cannot

say are inimitable, because I have copied them, and so may others,

if they use the same diligence; but certainly they are wonderfully

graceful in this poet. Since I have named the synalepha, which is

the cutting off one vowel immediately before another, I will give an

example of it from Chapman's "Homer," which lies before me, for the

benefit of those who understand not the _Latin prosodia_. It is in the

first line of the argument to the first Iliad:

Apollo's priest to th' Argive fleet doth bring, &c.

There, we see, he makes it not, _the Argive_, but _th' Argive_, to shun

the shock of the two vowels, immediately following each other; but, in

his second argument, in the same page, he gives a bad example of the

quite contrary kind:

Alpha the prayer of Chryses sings:

The army's plague, the strife of kings.

In these words, _the army's,--the_ ending with a vowel, and _armies_

beginning with another vowel, without cutting off the first, which by

it had been _th' armies_, there remains a most horrible ill-sounding

gap betwixt those words. I cannot say that I have every where observed

the rule of the synalepha in my translation; but wheresoever I have

not, it is a fault in sound. The French and the Italians have made

it an inviolable precept in their versification; therein following

the severe example of the Latin poets. Our countrymen have not yet

reformed their poetry so far, but content themselves with following

the licentious practice of the Greeks; who, though they sometimes use

synalephas, yet make no difficulty, very often, to sound one vowel upon

another; as Homer does, in the very first line of Alpha:

Μήνιν ἄειδε, Θεὰ, Πηληιάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

It is true, indeed, that, in the second line, in these words, μυρὶ

Ἀχαιοῖς, and ἀλγὲ οὒθηκε, the synalepha, in revenge, is twice observed.

But it becomes us, for the sake of euphony, rather _Musas colere

severiores_, with the Romans, than to give into the looseness of the

Grecians.

I have tired myself, and have been summoned by the press to send

away this Dedication, otherwise I had exposed some other faults,

which are daily committed by our English poets; which, with care and

observation, might be amended. For, after all, our language is both

copious, significant, and majestical, and might be reduced into a more

harmonious sound. But, for want of public encouragement, in this iron

age, we are so far from making any progress in the improvement of our

tongue, that in few years we shall speak and write as barbarously as

our neighbours.

Notwithstanding my haste, I cannot forbear to tell your lordship, that

there are two fragments of Homer translated in this Miscellany; one by

Mr Congreve, (whom I cannot mention without the honour which is due to

his excellent parts, and that entire affection which I bear him,) and

the other by myself. Both the subjects are pathetical; and I am sure

my friend has added to the tenderness which he found in the original,

and, without flattery, surpassed his author. Yet I must needs say this

in reference to Homer, that he is much more capable of exciting the

manly passions than those of grief and pity. To cause admiration is,

indeed, the proper and adequate design of an epic poem; and in that

he has excelled even Virgil. Yet, without presuming to arraign our

master, I may venture to affirm, that he is somewhat too talkative, and

more than somewhat too digressive. This is so manifest, that it cannot

be denied in that little parcel which I have translated, perhaps too

literally: there Andromache, in the midst of her concernment and fright

for Hector, runs off her bias, to tell him a story of her pedigree,

and of the lamentable death of her father, her mother, and her seven

brothers. The devil was in Hector if he knew not all this matter, as

well as she who told it him; for she had been his bedfellow for many

years together: and if he knew it, then it must be confessed, that

Homer, in this long digression, has rather given us his own character,

than that of the fair lady whom he paints. His dear friends, the

commentators, who never fail him at a pinch, will needs excuse him, by

making the present sorrow of Andromache to occasion the remembrance

of all the past; but others think, that she had enough to do with

that grief which now oppressed her, without running for assistance to

her family. Virgil, I am confident, would have omitted such a work of

supererogation. But Virgil had the gift of expressing much in little,

and sometimes in silence; for, though he yielded much to Homer in

invention, he more excelled him in his admirable judgment. He drew the

passion of Dido for Æneas, in the most lively and most natural colours

that are imaginable. Homer was ambitious enough of moving pity, for he

has attempted twice on the same subject of Hector's death; first, when

Priam and Hecuba beheld his corpse, which was dragged after the chariot

of Achilles; and then in the lamentation which was made over him, when

his body was redeemed by Priam; and the same persons again bewail his

death, with a chorus of others to help the cry. But if this last excite

compassion in you, as I doubt not but it will, you are more obliged to

the translator than the poet; for Homer, as I observed before, can move

rage better than he can pity. He stirs up the irascible appetite, as

our philosophers call it; he provokes to murder, and the destruction

of God's images; he forms and equips those ungodly man-killers, whom

we poets, when we flatter them, call heroes; a race of men who can

never enjoy quiet in themselves, until they have taken it from all the

world. This is Homer's commendation; and, such as it is, the lovers

of peace, or at least of more moderate heroism, will never envy him.

But let Homer and Virgil contend for the prize of honour betwixt

themselves; I am satisfied they will never have a third concurrent. I

wish Mr Congreve had the leisure to translate him, and the world the

good nature and justice to encourage him in that noble design, of which

he is more capable than any man I know. The Earl of Mulgrave and Mr

Waller, two of the best judges of our age, have assured me, that they

could never read over the translation of Chapman, without incredible

pleasure and extreme transport. This admiration of theirs must needs

proceed from the author himself; for the translator has thrown him

down as low as harsh numbers, improper English, and a monstrous length

of verse could carry him. What then would he appear in the harmonious

version of one of the best writers, living in a much better age than

was the last? I mean for versification, and the art of numbers; for

in the drama we have not arrived to the pitch of Shakespeare and Ben

Jonson. But here, my lord, I am forced to break off abruptly, without

endeavouring at a compliment in the close. This Miscellany is, without

dispute, one of the best of the kind which has hitherto been extant

in our tongue; at least, as Sir Samuel Tuke has said before me, a

modest man may praise what is not his own. My fellows have no need of

any protection; but I humbly recommend my part of it, as much as it

deserves, to your patronage and acceptance, and all the rest to your

forgiveness. I am,

My _Lord_,

Your Lordship's most obedient servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Lord Radcliffe was the eldest son of Francis, Earl of

Derwentwater, by Catherine, daughter of Sir William Fenwick. He married

Mary Tudor, a natural daughter of Charles II., by Mary Davies, an

actress, who had the fortune to attract his majesty's attention, by

singing in D'Avenant's "Rivals," the famous mad song,

My lodging is on the cold ground.

Lord Radcliffe succeeded to his father in 1696-7, and died 29th April,

1705.

[19] These lines are quoted from Lord Dorset's address "to Mr

Edward Howard, on his incomparable, incomprehensible poem, called, The

British Princes:"

Wit, like tierce claret, when it 'gins to pall,

Neglected lies, and's of no use at all;

But, in its full perfection of decay,

Turns vinegar, and comes again in play.

[20] The poet apparently speaks of Lady Radcliffe, who probably

inherited those vocal powers, with which her mother, Moll Davies,

charmed Charles II. The Grace might be her daughter.

THE

FIRST BOOK

OF

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

Of bodies changed to various forms I sing:--

Ye gods, from whence these miracles did spring,

Inspire my numbers with celestial heat,

Till I my long laborious work complete;

And add perpetual tenor to my rhymes,

Deduced from nature's birth to Cæsar's times.

Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,

And heaven's high canopy, that covers all,

One was the face of nature, if a face;

Rather a rude and indigested mass;

A lifeless lump, unfashioned, and unframed,

Of jarring seeds, and justly chaos named.

No sun was lighted up the world to view;

No moon did yet her blunted horns renew;

Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky,

Nor, poised, did on her own foundations lie;

Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;

But earth, and air, and water, were in one.

Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,

And water's dark abyss unnavigable.

No certain form on any was imprest;

All were confused, and each disturbed the rest:

For hot and cold were in one body fixed;

And soft with hard, and light with heavy, mixed.

But God or Nature, while they thus contend,

To these intestine discords put an end.

Then earth from air, and seas from earth, were driven,

And grosser air sunk from ætherial heaven.

Thus disembroiled, they take their proper place; }

The next of kin contiguously embrace; }

And foes are sundered by a larger space. }

The force of fire ascended first on high,

And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky.

Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire,

Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.

Earth sinks beneath, and draws a numerous throng,

Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.

About her coasts unruly waters roar,

And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.

Thus when the God, whatever God was he,

Had formed the whole, and made the parts agree,

That no unequal portions might be found,

He moulded earth into a spacious round;

Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,

And bade the congregated waters flow:

He adds the running springs, and standing lakes,

And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.

Some part in earth are swallowed up, the most

In ample oceans, disembogued, are lost:

He shades the woods, the values he restrains

With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

And as five zones the ætherial regions bind,

Five, correspondent, are to earth assigned;

The sun, with rays directly darting down,

Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:

The two beneath the distant poles complain

Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.

Betwixt the extremes, two happier climates hold

The temper that partakes of hot and cold.

The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,

Surround the compass of this earthly ball:

The lighter parts lie next the fires above;

The grosser near the watery surface move:

Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there, }

And thunder's voice, which wretched mortals fear, }

And winds that on their wings cold winter bear. }

Nor were those blustering brethren left at large,

On seas and shores their fury to discharge:

Bound as they are, and circumscribed in place,

They rend the world, resistless, where they pass,

And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;

Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.

First, Eurus to the rising morn is sent,

(The regions of the balmy continent,)

And eastern realms, where early Persians run,

To greet the blest appearance of the sun.

Westward the wanton Zephyr wings his flight,

Pleased with the remnants of departing light;

Fierce Boreas with his offspring issues forth,

To invade the frozen waggon of the North;

While frowning Auster seeks the southern sphere,

And rots, with endless rain, the unwholesome year.

High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,

The God a clearer space for heaven designed;

Where fields of light and liquid æther flow,

Purged from the ponderous dregs of earth below.

Scarce had the Power distinguished these, when straight

The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,

Exert their heads from underneath the mass, }

And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass, }

And with diffusive light adorn the heavenly place. }

Then, every void of nature to supply,

With forms of gods he fills the vacant sky:

New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share; }

New colonies of birds, to people air; }

And to their oozy beds the finny fish repair. }

A creature of a more exalted kind

Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;

Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,

For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest:

Whether with particles of heavenly fire

The God of nature did his soul inspire;

Or earth, but new divided from the sky,

And pliant still, retained the etherial energy;

Which wise Prometheus tempered into paste,

And, mixed with living streams, the godlike image cast.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend

Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,

Man looks aloft, and, with erected eyes,

Beholds his own hereditary skies.--

From such rude principles our form began,

And earth was metamorphosed into man.

THE GOLDEN AGE.

The Golden Age was first; when man, yet new, }

No rule but uncorrupted reason knew; }

And, with a native bent, did good pursue. }

Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,

His words were simple, and his soul sincere.

Needless was written law, where none opprest;

The law of man was written in his breast.

No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared; }

No court erected yet, nor cause was heard; }

But all was safe, for conscience was their guard. }

The mountain trees in distant prospect please,

Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;

Ere sails were spread, new oceans to explore; }

And happy mortals, unconcerned for more, }

Confined their wishes to their native shore. }

No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound;

Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound;

Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,

The soft creation slept away their time.

The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,

And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow:

Content with food, which nature freely bred,

On wildings and on strawberries they fed;

Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,

And falling acorns furnished out a feast.

The flowers, unsown, in fields and meadows reigned;

And western winds immortal spring maintained.

In following years the bearded corn ensued

From earth unasked, nor was that earth renewed.

From veins of vallies milk and nectar broke,

And honey sweating through the pores of oak.

THE SILVER AGE.

But when good Saturn, banished from above,

Was driven to hell, the world was under Jove.

Succeeding times a silver age behold,

Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold.

Then Summer, Autumn, Winter did appear,

And Spring was but a season of the year.

The sun his annual course obliquely made,

Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad.

Then air with sultry heats began to glow,

The wings of winds were clogged with ice and snow;

And shivering mortals, into houses driven,

Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.

Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds,

With twining oziers fenced, and moss their beds.

Then ploughs for seed the fruitful furrows broke,

And oxen laboured first beneath the yoke.

THE BRAZEN AGE.

To this next came in course the Brazen Age:

A warlike offspring prompt to bloody rage,

Not impious yet,----

THE IRON AGE.

----Hard steel succeeded then;

And stubborn as the metal were the men.

Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook;

Fraud, avarice, and force, their places, took.

Then sails were spread to every wind that blew;

Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:

Trees, rudely hollowed, did the waves sustain,

Ere ships in triumph ploughed the watery plain.

Then land-marks limited to each his right;

For all before was common as the light.

Nor was the ground alone required to bear

Her annual income to the crooked share;

But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,

Digged from her entrails first the precious ore;

Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid,

And that alluring ill to sight displayed.

Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,

Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold;

And double death did wretched man invade,

By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed.

Now (brandished weapons glittering in their hands)

Mankind is broken loose from moral bands:

No rights of hospitality remain,

The guest, by him who harboured him, is slain;

The son-in-law pursues the father's life;

The wife her husband murders, he the wife;

The step-dame poison for the son prepares;

The son inquires into his father's years.

Faith flies, and Piety in exile mourns;

And Justice, here oppressed, to heaven returns.

THE GIANT'S WAR.

Nor were the Gods themselves more safe above;

Against beleaguered heaven the Giants move.

Hills piled on hills, on mountains mountains lie,

To make their mad approaches to the sky:

Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time

To avenge with thunder their audacious crime;

Red lightning played along the firmament,

And their demolished works to pieces rent.

Singed with the flames, and with the bolts transfixed,

With native earth their blood the monsters mixed;

The blood, endued with animating heat,

Did in the impregnate earth new sons beget;

They, like the seed from which they sprung, accursed,

Against the gods immortal hatred nursed;

An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood,

Expressing their original from blood.

Which when the King of Gods beheld from high,

(Withal revolving in his memory,

What he himself had found on earth of late,

Lycaon's guilt, and his inhuman treat,)

He sighed, nor longer with his pity strove,

But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove:

Then called a general council of the gods;

Who, summoned, issue from their blest abodes,

And fill the assembly with a shining train.

A way there is in heaven's expanded plain,

Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,

And mortals by the name of milky know.

The ground-work is of stars; through which the road

Lies open to the Thunderer's abode.

The gods of greater nations dwell around,

And on the right and left the palace bound;

The commons where they can; the nobler sort,

With winding doors wide open, front the court.

This place, as far as earth with heaven may vie,

I dare to call the Louvre of the sky.

When all were placed, in seats distinctly known,

And he, their father, had assumed the throne,

Upon his ivory sceptre first he leant,

Then shook his head, that shook the firmament;

Air, earth, and seas, obeyed the almighty nod,

And with a general fear confessed the God.

At length, with indignation, thus he broke

His awful silence, and the Powers bespoke.

I was not more concerned in that debate

Of empire, when our universal state

Was put to hazard, and the giant race

Our captive skies were ready to embrace:

For, though the foe was fierce, the seeds of all

Rebellion sprung from one original;

Now wheresoever ambient waters glide,

All are corrupt, and all must be destroyed.

Let me this holy protestation make,

By hell, and hell's inviolable lake!

I tried whatever in the Godhead lay; }

But gangrened members must be lopt away, }

Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay. }

There dwells below a race of demi-gods,

Of nymphs in waters, and of fauns in woods;

Who, though not worthy yet in heaven to live,

Let them at least enjoy that earth we give.

Can these be thought securely lodged below,

When I myself, who no superior know,

I, who have heaven and earth at my command,

Have been attempted by Lycaon's hand?

At this a murmur through the synod went,

And with one voice they vote his punishment.

Thus, when conspiring traitors dared to doom

The fall of Cæsar, and in him of Rome,

The nations trembled with a pious fear,

All anxious for their earthly thunderer;--

Nor was their care, O Cæsar, less esteemed

By thee, than that of heaven for Jove was deemed;

Who with his hand, and voice, did first restrain

Their murmurs, then resumed his speech again.

The Gods to silence were composed, and sat

With reverence due to his superior state.

Cancel your pious cares; already he

Has paid his debt to justice, and to me.

Yet what his crimes, and what my judgments were,

Remains for me thus briefly to declare.

The clamours of this vile degenerate age,

The cries of orphans, and the oppressor's rage,

Had reached the stars; I will descend, said I,

In hope to prove this loud complaint a lie.

Disguised in human shape, I travelled round

The world, and more than what I heard, I found.

O'er Mænalus I took my steepy way,

By caverns infamous for beasts of prey;

Then crossed Cyllene, and the piny shade,

More infamous by curst Lycaon made;

Dark night had covered heaven and earth, before

I entered his inhospitable door.

Just at my entrance, I displayed the sign

That somewhat was approaching of divine.

The prostrate people pray; the tyrant grins;

And, adding profanation to his sins,

I'll try, said he, and if a God appear,

To prove his deity shall cost him dear.

'Twas late; the graceless wretch my death prepares,

When I should soundly sleep, opprest with cares:

This dire experiment he chose, to prove

If I were mortal, or undoubted Jove.

But first he had resolved to taste my power:

Not long before, but in a luckless hour,

Some legates, sent from the Molossian state,

Were on a peaceful errand come to treat;

Of these he murders one, he boils the flesh,

And lays the mangled morsels in a dish;

Some part he roasts; then serves it up so drest,

And bids me welcome to this human feast.

Moved with disdain, the table I o'erturned,

And with avenging flames the palace burned.

The tyrant, in a fright, for shelter gains

The neighbouring fields, and scours along the plains.

Howling he fled, and fain he would have spoke,

But human voice his brutal tongue forsook.

About his lips the gathered foam he churns, }

And, breathing slaughter, still with rage he burns, }

But on the bleating flock his fury turns. }

His mantle, now his hide, with rugged hairs

Cleaves to his back; a famished face he bears;

His arms descend, his shoulders sink away,

To multiply his legs for chace of prey.

He grows a wolf, his hoariness remains,

And the same rage in other members reigns.

His eyes still sparkle in a narrower space,

His jaws retain the grin, and violence of his face.

This was a single ruin, but not one

Deserves so just a punishment alone.

Mankind's a monster, and the ungodly times,

Confederate into guilt, are sworn to crimes.

All are alike involved in ill, and all

Must by the same relentless fury fall.

Thus ended he; the greater gods assent, }

By clamours urging his severe intent; }

The less fill up the cry for punishment. }

Yet still with pity they remember man,

And mourn as much as heavenly spirits can.

They ask, when those were lost of human birth,

What he would do with all his waste of earth?

If his dispeopled world he would resign

To beasts, a mute, and more ignoble line?

Neglected altars must no longer smoke,

If none were left to worship and invoke.

To whom the Father of the Gods replied: }

Lay that unnecessary fear aside; }

Mine be the care new people to provide. }

I will from wonderous principles ordain

A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.

Already had he tossed the flaming brand, }

And rolled the thunder in his spacious hand, }

Preparing to discharge on seas and land; }

But stop'd, for fear, thus violently driven,

The sparks should catch his axle-tree of heaven;

Rememb'ring, in the Fates, a time, when fire

Should to the battlements of heaven aspire,

And all his blazing worlds above should burn,

And all the inferior globe to cinders turn.

His dire artillery thus dismissed, he bent

His thoughts to some securer punishment;

Concludes to pour a watery deluge down,

And, what he durst not burn, resolves to drown.

The Northern breath, that freezes floods, he binds,

With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds;

The South he loosed, who night and horror brings,

And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings.

From his divided beard two streams he pours;

His head and rheumy eyes, distil in showers;

With rain his robe and heavy mantle flow,

And lazy mists are lowring on his brow.

Still as he swept along, with his clenched fist,

He squeezed the clouds; the imprisoned clouds resist;

The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound,

And showers enlarged come pouring on the ground.

Then clad in colours of a various dye,

Junonian Iris breeds a new supply

To feed the clouds: impetuous rain descends;

The bearded corn beneath the burden bends;

Defrauded clowns deplore their perished grain,

And the long labours of the year are vain.

Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone

Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;

Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,

To help him with auxiliary waves.

The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods,

Who roll from mossy caves, their moist abodes;

And with perpetual urns his palace fill:

To whom, in brief, he thus imparts his will.

Small exhortation needs; your powers employ,

And this bad world (so Jove requires) destroy.

Let loose the reins to all your watery store;

Bear down the dams, and open every door.

The floods, by nature enemies to land,

And proudly swelling with their new command,

Remove the living stones that stopped their way,

And, gushing from their source, augment the sea.[21]

Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground; }

With inward trembling earth received the wound, }

And rising streams a ready passage found. }

The expanded waters gather on the plain,

They float the fields, and overtop the grain;

Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway,

Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds, away.

Nor safe their dwellings were; for, sap'd by floods,

Their houses fell upon their household gods.

The solid piles, too strongly built to fall,

High o'er their heads behold a watery wall.

Now seas and earth were in confusion lost;

A world of waters, and without a coast.

One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne,

And ploughs above, where late he sowed his corn.

Others o'er chimney tops and turrets row,

And drop their anchors on the meads below;

Or, downward driven, they bruise the tender vine,

Or, tossed aloft, are knocked against a pine;

And where of late the kids had cropped the grass,

The monsters of the deep now take their place.

Insulting Nereids on the cities ride,

And wondering dolphins o'er the palace glide;

On leaves, and masts of mighty oaks, they brouze;

And their broad fins entangle in the boughs.

The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep;

The yellow lion wanders in the deep;

His rapid force no longer helps the boar;

The stag swims faster than he ran before.[22]

The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,

Despair of land, and drop into the main.

Now hills and vales no more distinction know,

And levelled nature lies oppressed below.

The most of mortals perish in the flood,

The small remainder dies for want of food.

A mountain of stupendous height there stands

Betwixt the Athenian and Bæotian lands,

The bound of fruitful fields, while fields they were,

But then a field of waters did appear:

Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise

Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies.

High on the summit of this dubious cliff,

Deucalion wafting moored his little skiff.

He with his wife were only left behind

Of perished man; they two were human kind.

The mountain-nymphs and Themis they adore,

And from her oracles relief implore.

The most upright of mortal men was he;

The most sincere and holy woman, she.

When Jupiter, surveying earth from high,

Beheld it in a lake of water lie,

That where so many millions lately lived,

But two, the best of either sex, survived,

He loosed the northern wind; fierce Boreas flies

To puff away the clouds, and purge the skies;

Serenely, while he blows, the vapours driven

Discover heaven to earth, and earth to heaven.

The billows fall, while Neptune lays his mace

On the rough sea, and smooths its furrowed face.

Already Triton, at his call, appears }

Above the waves; a Tyrian robe he wears; }

And in his hand a crooked trumpet bears. }

The sovereign bids him peaceful sounds inspire,

And give the waves the signal to retire.

His writhen shell he takes, whose narrow vent

Grows by degrees into a large extent;

Then gives it breath; the blast, with doubling sound,

Runs the wide circuit of the world around.

The sun first heard it, in his early east,

And met the rattling echoes in the west.

The waters, listening to the trumpet's roar,

Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.

A thin circumference of land appears;

And earth, but not at once, her visage rears,

And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds:

The streams, but just contained within their bounds,

By slow degrees into their channels crawl,

And earth increases as the waters fall.

In longer time the tops of trees appear,

Which mud on their dishonoured branches bear.

At length the world was all restored to view,

But desolate, and of a sickly hue:

Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast,

A dismal desert, and a silent waste.

Which when Deucalion, with a piteous look,

Beheld, he wept, and thus to Pyrrha spoke:

Oh wife, oh sister, oh of all thy kind }

The best and only creature left behind, }

By kindred, love, and now by dangers joined; }

Of multitudes, who breathed the common air,

We two remain, a species in a pair:

The rest the seas have swallowed; nor have we

E'en of this wretched life a certainty.

The clouds are still above; and, while I speak,

A second deluge o'er our heads may break.

Should I be snatched from hence, and thou remain, }

Without relief, or partner of thy pain, }

How could'st thou such a wretched life sustain? }

Should I be left, and thou be lost, the sea,

That buried her I loved, should bury me.

Oh could our father his old arts inspire,

And make me heir of his informing fire,

That so I might abolished man retrieve,

And perished people in new souls might live!

But heaven is pleased, nor ought we to complain,

That we, the examples of mankind, remain.--

He said; the careful couple join their tears,

And then invoke the gods, with pious prayers.

Thus in devotion having eased their grief,

From sacred oracles they seek relief,

And to Cephisus' brook their way pursue;

The stream was troubled, but the ford they knew.

With living waters in the fountain bred, }

They sprinkle first their garments, and their head, }

Then took the way which to the temple led. }

The roofs were all defiled with moss and mire,

The desert altars void of solemn fire.

Before the gradual prostrate they adored,

The pavement kissed, and thus the saint implored.

O righteous Themis, if the powers above

By prayers are bent to pity and to love;

If human miseries can move their mind;

If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;

Tell how we may restore, by second birth,

Mankind, and people desolated earth.

Then thus the gracious goddess, nodding, said;

Depart, and with your vestments veil your head:

And stooping lowly down, with loosened zones,

Throw each behind your backs your mighty mother's bones.

Amazed the pair, and mute with wonder, stand,

Till Pyrrha first refused the dire command.

Forbid it heaven, said she, that I should tear

Those holy relics from the sepulchre.

They pondered the mysterious words again,

For some new sense; and long they sought in vain.

At length Deucalion cleared his cloudy brow,

And said; The dark ænigma will allow

A meaning, which, if well I understand,

From sacrilege will free the god's command:

This earth our mighty mother is, the stones

In her capacious body are her bones;

These we must cast behind. With hope, and fear,

The woman did the new solution hear:

The man diffides in his own augury,

And doubts the gods; yet both resolve to try.

Descending from the mount, they first unbind

Their vests, and, veiled, they cast the stones behind:

The stones (a miracle to mortal view,

But long tradition makes it pass for true,)

Did first the rigour of their kind expel,

And suppled into softness as they fell;

Then swelled, and, swelling, by degrees grew warm,

And took the rudiments of human form;

Imperfect shapes, in marble such are seen,

When the rude chisel does the man begin,

While yet the roughness of the stone remains,

Without the rising muscles, and the veins.

The sappy parts, and next resembling juice,

Were turned to moisture, for the body's use;

Supplying humours, blood, and nourishment:

The rest, too solid to receive a bent,

Converts to bones; and what was once a vein,

Its former name and nature did retain.

By help of power divine, in little space, }

What the man threw, assumed a manly face; }

And what the wife, renewed the female race. }

Hence we derive our nature, born to bear

Laborious life, and hardened into care.

The rest of animals, from teeming earth

Produced, in various forms received their birth.

The native moisture, in its close retreat,

Digested by the sun's etherial heat,

As in a kindly womb, began to breed;

Then swelled, and quickened by the vital seed:

And some in less, and some in longer space,

Were ripened into form, and took a several face.

Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,

And seeks with ebbing tides his ancient bed,

The fat manure with heavenly fire is warmed,

And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are formed:

These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find:

Some rude, and yet unfinished in their kind;

Short of their limbs, a lame imperfect birth;

One half alive, and one of lifeless earth.

For, heat and moisture, when in bodies joined,

The temper that results from either kind,

Conception makes; and fighting, till they mix,

Their mingled atoms in each other fix.

Thus nature's hand the genial bed prepares,

With friendly discord, and with fruitful wars.

From hence the surface of the ground, with mud

And slime besmeared, (the fæces of the flood,)

Received the rays of heaven; and sucking in

The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin.

Some were of several sorts produced before;

But of new monsters earth created more.

Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light }

Thee, Python, too, the wondering world to fright, }

And the new nations with so dire a sight; }

So monstrous was his bulk, so large a space

Did his vast body and long train embrace:

Whom Phœbus basking on a bank espied.

Ere now the god his arrows had not tried,

But on the trembling deer, or mountain-goat;

At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.

Though every shaft took place, he spent the store }

Of his full quiver; and 'twas long before }

The expiring serpent wallowed in his gore. }

Then to preserve the fame of such a deed,

For Python slain, he Pythian games decreed,

Where noble youths for mastership should strive,

To quoit, to run, and steeds and chariots drive.

The prize was fame, in witness of renown,

An oaken garland did the victor crown.

The laurel was not yet for triumphs borne; }

But every green alike, by Phœbus worn, }

Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn. }

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DAPHNE INTO A LAUREL.

The first and fairest of his loves was she,

Whom not blind fortune, but the dire decree

Of angry Cupid, forced him to desire;

Daphne her name, and Peneus was her sire.

Swelled with the pride that new success attends,

He sees the stripling, while his bow he bends,

And thus insults him: Thou lascivious boy,

Are arms like these for children to employ?

Know, such atchievements are my proper claim,

Due to my vigour and unerring aim:

Resistless are my shafts, and Python late,

In such a feathered death, has found his fate.

Take up thy torch, and lay my weapons by;

With that the feeble souls of lovers fry.--

To whom the son of Venus thus replied:

Phœbus, thy shafts are sure on all beside;

But mine on Phœbus; mine the fame shall be

Of all thy conquests, when I conquer thee.

He said, and soaring swiftly winged his flight;

Nor stop'd but on Parnassus' airy height.

Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;

One to repel desire, and one to cause.

One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,

To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;

One blunt, and tipt with lead, whose base allay

Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.

The blunted bolt against the nymph he drest;

But with the sharp transfixed Apollo's breast.

The enamoured deity pursues the chace;

The scornful damsel shuns his loathed embrace:

In hunting beasts of prey her youth employs,

And Phœbe rivals in her rural joys.

With naked neck she goes, and shoulders bare,

And with a fillet binds her flowing hair.

By many suitors sought, she mocks their pains,

And still her vowed virginity maintains.

Impatient of a yoke, the name of bride

She shuns, and hates the joys she never tried.

On wilds and woods she fixes her desire;

Nor knows what youth and kindly love inspire.

Her father chides her oft: Thou ow'st, says he,

A husband to thyself, a son to me.

She, like a crime, abhors the nuptial bed;

She glows with blushes, and she hangs her head.

Then, casting round his neck her tender arms,

Sooths him with blandishments, and filial charms:

Give me, my lord, she said, to live and die

A spotless maid, without the marriage-tie.

'Tis but a small request; I beg no more

Than what Diana's father gave before.

The good old sire was softened to consent;

But said her wish would prove her punishment;

For so much youth, and so much beauty joined,

Opposed the state which her desires designed.

The God of Light, aspiring to her bed, }

Hopes what he seeks, with flattering fancies fed, }

And is by his own oracles misled. }

And as in empty fields the stubble burns,

Or nightly travellers, when day returns,

Their useless torches on dry hedges throw,

That catch the flames, and kindle all the row;

So burns the god, consuming in desire,

And feeding in his breast the fruitless fire:

Her well-turned neck he viewed, (her neck was bare,)

And on her shoulders her dishevelled hair:

Oh were it combed, said he, with what a grace

Would every waving curl become her face!

He viewed her eyes, like heavenly lamps that shone;

He viewed her lips, too sweet to view alone;

Her taper fingers, and her panting breast: }

He praises all he sees; and for the rest, }

Believes the beauties yet unseen are best. }

Swift as the wind, the damsel fled away,

Nor did for these alluring speeches stay.

Stay, nymph, he cried; I follow, not a foe:

Thus from the lion trips the trembling doe;

Thus from the wolf the frightened lamb removes, }

And from pursuing falcons fearful doves; }

Thou shun'st a god, and shun'st a god that loves. }

Ah! lest some thorn should pierce thy tender foot,

Or thou should'st fall in flying my pursuit,

To sharp uneven ways thy steps decline,

Abate thy speed, and I will bate of mine.

Yet think from whom thou dost so rashly fly;

Nor basely born, nor shepherd's swain am I.

Perhaps thou know'st not my superior state,

And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.

Me Claros, Delphos, Tenedos, obey;

These hands the Patareian sceptre sway.

The king of gods begot me: what shall be,

Or is, or ever was, in fate, I see.

Mine is the invention of the charming lyre;

Sweet notes, and heavenly numbers, I inspire.

Sure is my bow, unerring is my dart;

But ah! more deadly his, who pierced my heart.

Med'cine is mine, what herbs and simples grow }

In fields and forests, all their powers I know, }

And am the great physician called below. }

Alas, that fields and forests can afford

No remedies to heal their love-sick lord!

To cure the pains of love, no plant avails,

And his own physic the physician fails.

She heard not half, so furiously she flies,

And on her ear the imperfect accent dies.

Fear gave her wings; and as she fled, the wind

Increasing spread her flowing hair behind;

And left her legs and thighs exposed to view,

Which made the god more eager to pursue.

The god was young, and was too hotly bent

To lose his time in empty compliment;

But led by love, and fired by such a sight,

Impetuously pursued his near delight.

As when the impatient greyhound, slipt from far,

Bounds o'er the glebe, to course the fearful hare,

She in her speed does all her safety lay,

And he with double speed pursues the prey;

O'er-runs her at the sitting turn, and licks

His chaps in vain, and blows upon the flix;[23]

She 'scapes, and for the neighbouring covert strives,

And gaining shelter doubts if yet she lives.

If little things with great we may compare,

Such was the god, and such the flying fair:

She, urged by fear, her feet did swiftly move,

But he more swiftly, who was urged by love.

He gathers ground upon her in the chace; }

Now breathes upon her hair, with nearer pace, }

And just is fastening on the wished embrace. }

The nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright,

Spent with the labour of so long a flight,

And now despairing, cast a mournful look

Upon the streams of her paternal brook:

Oh help, she cried, in this extremest need,

If water-gods are deities indeed!

Gape, earth, and this unhappy wretch entomb,

Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come.

Scarce had she finished, when her feet she found

Benumbed with cold, and fastened to the ground;

A filmy rind about her body grows,

Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs;

The nymph is all into a Laurel gone,

The smoothness of her skin remains alone.

Yet Phœbus loves her still, and, casting round

Her bole his arms, some little warmth he found.

The tree still panted in the unfinished part,

Not wholly vegetive, and heaved her heart.

He fixed his lips upon the trembling rind;

It swerved aside, and his embrace declined.

To whom the god: Because thou canst not be

My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree:

Be thou the prize of honour and renown;

The deathless poet, and the poem, crown.

Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,

And, after poets, be by victors worn;

Thou shalt returning Cæsar's triumph grace,

When pomps shall in a long procession pass;

Wreathed on the post before his palace wait,

And be the sacred guardian of the gate:

Secure from thunder, and unharmed by Jove,

Unfading as the immortal powers above;

And as the locks of Phœbus are unshorn,

So shall perpetual green thy boughs adorn.--

The grateful Tree was pleased with what he said,

And shook the shady honours of her head.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF IO INTO AN HEIFER.

An ancient forest in Thessalia grows,

Which Tempe's pleasant valley does inclose;

Through this the rapid Peneus takes his course,

From Pindus rolling with impetuous force;

Mists from the river's mighty fall arise,

And deadly damps inclose the cloudy skies;

Perpetual fogs are hanging o'er the wood,

And sounds of waters deaf the neighbourhood.

Deep in a rocky cave he makes abode;

A mansion proper for a mourning god.

Here he gives audience; issuing out decrees

To rivers, his dependent deities.

On this occasion hither they resort,

To pay their homage, and to make their court;

All doubtful, whether to congratulate

His daughter's honour, or lament her fate.

Sperchæus, crowned with poplar, first appears;

Then old Apidanus came, crowned with years;

Enipeus turbulent, Amphrysos tame,

And Æas, last, with lagging waters came.

Then of his kindred brooks a numerous throng

Condole his loss, and bring their urns along:

Not one was wanting of the watery train,

That filled his flood, or mingled with the main,

But Inachus, who, in his cave alone,

Wept not another's losses, but his own;

For his dear Io, whether strayed, or dead,

To him uncertain, doubtful tears he shed.

He sought her through the world, but sought in vain;

And no where finding, rather feared her slain.

Her, just returning from her father's brook,

Jove had beheld with a desiring look;

And, oh, fair daughter of the flood, he said,

Worthy alone of Jove's imperial bed,

Happy whoever shall those charms possess!

The king of gods, (nor is thy lover less,)

Invites thee to yon cooler shades, to shun

The scorching rays of the meridian sun.

Nor shalt thou tempt the dangers of the grove

Alone without a guide; thy guide is Jove.

No puny power, but he, whose high command }

Is unconfined, who rules the seas and land, }

And tempers thunder in his awful hand. }

Oh fly not!--for she fled from his embrace

O'er Lerna's pastures; he pursued the chace,

Along the shades of the Lyrcæan plain.

At length the god, who never asks in vain,

Involved with vapours, imitating night, }

Both air and earth; and then suppressed her flight, }

And, mingling force with love, enjoyed the full delight. }

Meantime the jealous Juno, from on high,

Surveyed the fruitful fields of Arcady;

And wondered that the mist should over-run

The face of day-light, and obscure the sun.

No natural cause she found, from brooks or bogs,

Or marshy lowlands, to produce the fogs:

Then round the skies she sought for Jupiter,

Her faithless husband; but no Jove was there.

Suspecting now the worst,--Or I, she said,

Am much mistaken, or am much betrayed.

With fury she precipitates her flight, }

Dispels the shadows of dissembled night, }

And to the day restores his native light. }

The almighty lecher, careful to prevent

The consequence, foreseeing her descent,

Transforms his mistress in a trice; and now,

In Io's place, appears a lovely cow.

So sleek her skin, so faultless was her make,

Even Juno did unwilling pleasure take

To see so fair a rival of her love;

And what she was, and whence, enquired of Jove,

Of what fair herd, and from what pedigree?

The god, half-caught, was forced upon a lie,

And said she sprung from earth. She took the word,

And begged the beauteous heifer of her lord.

What should he do? 'twas equal shame to Jove,

Or to relinquish, or betray his love;

Yet to refuse so slight a gift, would be

But more to increase his consort's jealousy.

Thus fear, and love, by turns his heart assailed;

And stronger love had sure at length prevailed,

But some faint hope remained, his jealous queen

Had not the mistress through the heifer seen.

The cautious goddess, of her gift possest,

Yet harboured anxious thoughts within her breast;

As she, who knew the falsehood of her Jove,

And justly feared some new relapse of love;

Which to prevent, and to secure her care,

To trusty Argus she commits the fair.

The head of Argus (as with stars the skies,)

Was compassed round, and wore an hundred eyes.

But two by turns their lids in slumber steep; }

The rest on duty still their station keep; }

Nor could the total constellation sleep. }

Thus, ever present to his eyes and mind,

His charge was still before him, though behind.

In fields he suffered her to feed by day;

But, when the setting sun to night gave way,

The captive cow he summoned with a call,

And drove her back, and tied her to the stall.

On leaves of trees and bitter herbs she fed,

Heaven was her canopy, bare earth her bed,

So hardly lodged; and, to digest her food,

She drank from troubled streams, defiled with mud.

Her woeful story fain she would have told,

With hands upheld, but had no hands to hold.

Her head to her ungentle keeper bowed,

She strove to speak; she spoke not, but she lowed;

Affrighted with the noise, she looked around,

And seemed to inquire the author of the sound.

Once on the banks where often she had played,

(Her father's banks,) she came, and there surveyed

Her altered visage, and her branching head;

And starting from herself, she would have fled.

Her fellow-nymphs, familiar to her eyes,

Beheld, but knew her not in this disguise.

Even Inachus himself was ignorant;

And in his daughter, did his daughter want.

She followed where her fellows went, as she

Were still a partner of the company:

They stroke her neck; the gentle heifer stands,

And her neck offers to their stroking hands.

Her father gave her grass; the grass she took, }

And licked his palms, and cast a piteous look, }

And in the language of her eyes she spoke. }

She would have told her name, and asked relief,

But, wanting words, in tears she tells her grief;

Which with her foot she makes him understand,

And prints the name of Io in the sand.

Ah wretched me! her mournful father cried;

She, with a sigh, to "wretched me!" replied.

About her milk-white neck his arms he threw,

And wept, and then these tender words ensue.

And art thou she, whom I have sought around

The world, and have at length so sadly found?

So found, is worse than lost: with mutual words

Thou answerest not, no voice thy tongue affords;

But sighs are deeply drawn from out thy breast,

And speech, denied, by lowing is expressed.

Unknowing, I prepared thy bridal bed;

With empty hopes of happy issue fed.

But now the husband of a herd must be

Thy mate, and bellowing sons thy progeny.

Oh, were I mortal, death might bring relief!

But now my godhead but extends my grief;

Prolongs my woes, of which no end I see,

And makes me curse my immortality.--

More had he said, but fearful of her stay,

The starry guardian drove his charge away,

To some fresh pasture; on a hilly height

He sat himself, and kept her still in sight.

THE EYES OF ARGUS TRANSFORMED INTO A PEACOCK'S TRAIN.

Now Jove no longer could her sufferings bear;

But called in haste his airy messenger,

The son of Maïa, with severe decree

To kill the keeper, and to set her free.

With all his harness soon the god was sped;

His flying hat was fastened on his head;

Wings on his heels were hung, and in his hand

He holds the virtue of the snaky wand.

The liquid air his moving pinions wound,

And, in the moment, shoot him on the ground.

Before he came in sight, the crafty god

His wings dismissed, but still retained his rod:

That sleep-procuring wand wise Hermes took,

But made it seem to sight a shepherd's hook.

With this he did a herd of goats controul;

Which by the way he met, and slyly stole.

Clad like a country swain, he piped and sung;

And, playing, drove his jolly troop along.

With pleasure Argus the musician heeds;

But wonders much at those new vocal reeds.

And,--Whosoe'er thou art, my friend, said he, }

Up hither drive thy goats, and play by me; }

This hill has brouze for them, and shade for thee. }

The god, who was with ease induced to climb,

Began discourse to pass away the time;

And still, betwixt, his tuneful pipe he plies,

And watched his hour, to close the keeper's eyes.

With much ado, he partly kept awake;

Not suffering all his eyes repose to take;

And asked the stranger, who did reeds invent,

And whence began so rare an instrument.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SYRINX INTO REEDS.

Then Hermes thus;--A nymph of late there was,

Whose heavenly form her fellows did surpass;

The pride and joy of fair Arcadia's plains,

Beloved by deities, adored by swains;

Syrinx her name, by Sylvans oft pursued,

As oft she did the lustful gods delude:

The rural and the woodland powers disdained;

With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintained;

Like Phœbe clad, even Phœbe's self she seems,

So tall, so straight, such well-proportioned limbs:

The nicest eye did no distinction know, }

But that the goddess bore a golden bow; }

Distinguished thus, the sight she cheated too. }

Descending from Lycæus, Pan admires

The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.

A crown of pine upon his head he wore;

And thus began her pity to implore.

But ere he thus began, she took her flight

So swift, she was already out of sight;

Nor stayed to hear the courtship of the god,

But bent her course to Ladon's gentle flood;

There by the river stopt, and, tired before,

Relief from water-nymphs her prayers implore.

Now while the lustful god, with speedy pace, }

Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace, }

He fills his arms with reeds, new rising on the place. }

And while he sighs his ill success to find,

The tender canes were shaken by the wind;

And breathed a mournful air, unheard before,

That, much surprising Pan, yet pleased him more.

Admiring this new music, thou, he said,

Who canst not be the partner of my bed,

At least shall be the consort of my mind,

And often, often, to my lips be joined.

He formed the reeds, proportioned as they are; }

Unequal in their length, and waxed with care, }

They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair. }

While Hermes piped, and sung, and told his tale,

The keeper's winking eyes began to fail,

And drowsy slumber on the lids to creep,

Till all the watchman was at length asleep.

Then soon the god his voice and song supprest,

And with his powerful rod confirmed his rest;

Without delay his crooked falchion drew,

And at one fatal stroke the keeper slew.

Down from the rock fell the dissevered head,

Opening its eyes in death, and falling bled;

And marked the passage with a crimson trail:

Thus Argus lies in pieces, cold and pale;

And all his hundred eyes, with all their light,

Are closed at once, in one perpetual night.

These Juno takes, that they no more may fail,

And spreads them in her peacock's gaudy tail.

Impatient to revenge her injured bed,

She wreaks her anger on her rival's head;

With furies frights her from her native home,

And drives her gadding round the world to roam:

Nor ceased her madness and her flight, before

She touched the limits of the Pharian shore.

At length, arriving on the banks of Nile,

Wearied with length of ways, and worn with toil,

She laid her down; and leaning on her knees,

Invoked the cause of all her miseries;

And cast her languishing regards above,

For help from heaven, and her ungrateful Jove.

She sighed, she wept, she lowed; 'twas all she could;

And with unkindness seemed to tax the god.

Last, with an humble prayer, she begged repose,

Or death at least to finish all her woes.

Jove heard her vows, and with a flattering look,

In her behalf to jealous Juno spoke.

He cast his arms about her neck, and said;

Dame, rest secure; no more thy nuptial bed

This nymph shall violate; by Styx I swear,

And every oath that binds the Thunderer.

The goddess was appeased; and at the word

Was Io to her former shape restored.

The rugged hair began to fall away;

The sweetness of her eyes did only stay,

Though not so large; her crooked horns decrease;

The wideness of her jaws and nostrils cease;

Her hoofs to hands return, in little space;

The five long taper fingers take their place;

And nothing of the heifer now is seen,

Beside the native whiteness of her skin.

Erected on her feet, she walks again,

And two the duty of the four sustain.

She tries her tongue, her silence softly breaks,

And fears her former lowings when she speaks:

A goddess now through all the Egyptian state,

And served by priests, who in white linen wait.

Her son was Epaphus, at length believed

The son of Jove, and as a god received.

With sacrifice adored, and public prayers,

He common temples with his mother shares.

Equal in years, and rival in renown }

With Epaphus, the youthful Phaeton }

Like honour claims, and boasts his sire the Sun. }

His haughty looks, and his assuming air,

The son of Isis could no longer bear;

Thou tak'st thy mother's word too far, said he,

And hast usurped thy boasted pedigree.

Go, base pretender to a borrowed name!

Thus taxed, he blushed with anger, and with shame;

But shame repressed his rage: the daunted youth

Soon seeks his mother, and enquires the truth.

Mother, said he, this infamy was thrown

By Epaphus on you, and me your son.

He spoke in public, told it to my face,

Nor durst I vindicate the dire disgrace:

Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong,

Restrained by shame, was forced to hold my tongue;

To hear an open slander, is a curse;

But not to find an answer, is a worse.

If I am heaven-begot, assert your son }

By some sure sign, and make my father known, }

To right my honour, and redeem your own. }

He said, and, saying, cast his arms about

Her neck, and begged her to resolve the doubt.

'Tis hard to judge if Climené were moved

More by his prayer, whom she so dearly loved,

Or more with fury fired, to find her name

Traduced, and made the sport of common fame.

She stretched her arms to heaven, and fixed her eyes

On that fair planet that adorns the skies;

Now by those beams, said she, whose holy fires

Consume my breast, and kindle my desires;

By him who sees us both, and cheers our sight,

By him, the public minister of light,

I swear that Sun begot thee; if I lie,

Let him his cheerful influence deny;

Let him no more this perjured creature see,

And shine on all the world but only me.

If still you doubt your mother's innocence,

His eastern mansion is not far from hence;

With little pains you to his levee go,

And from himself your parentage may know.--

With joy the ambitious youth his mother heard,

And, eager for the journey, soon prepared.

He longs the world beneath him to survey,

To guide the chariot, and to give the day.

From Meroe's burning sands he bends his course,

Nor less in India feels his father's force;

His travel urging, till he came in sight,

And saw the palace by the purple light.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] In all our earlier poets, the word _sea_ is occasionally

made to rheme, according to the pronunciation of Hibernia, as if

spelled _say_.

[22] Ovid is not answerable for the speed of the stag's

exertions in the water; he barely says,

_Crura nec ablato prosunt velocia cervo._

[23] See the same image in the "Annus Mirabilis:"

"With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey,

His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies."

Vol. IX. p. 128.

MELEAGER AND ATALANTA,

OUT OF THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

CONNECTION TO THE FORMER STORY.

_Ovid, having told how Theseus had freed Athens from the tribute

of children, which was imposed on them by Minos king of Crete, by

killing the Minotaur, here makes a digression to the story of Meleager

and Atalanta, which is one of the most inartificial connections in

all the Metamorphoses; for he only says, that Theseus obtained such

honour from that combat, that all Greece had recourse to him in their

necessities; and, amongst others, Calydon, though the hero of that

country, prince Meleager, was then living._

From him the Caledonians sought relief;

Though valiant Meleagrus was their chief.

The cause, a boar, who ravaged far and near;

Of Cynthia's wrath, the avenging minister.

For Oenius with autumnal plenty blessed,

By gifts to heaven his gratitude expressed;

Culled sheafs, to Ceres; to Lyæus, wine; }

To Pan and Pales, offered sheep and kine; }

And fat of olives to Minerva's shrine. }

Beginning from the rural gods, his hand

Was liberal to the powers of high command;

Each deity in every kind was blessed,

Till at Diana's fane the invidious honour ceased.

Wrath touches even the gods; the Queen of Night,

Fired with disdain, and jealous of her right,

Unhonoured though I am, at least, said she,

Not unrevenged that impious act shall be.

Swift as the word, she sped the boar away,

With charge on those devoted fields to prey.

No larger bulls the Egyptian pastures feed,

And none so large Sicilian meadows breed:

His eye-balls glare with fire, suffused with blood;

His neck shoots up a thick-set thorny wood;

His bristled back a trench impaled appears,

And stands erected, like a field of spears;

Froth fills his chaps, he sends a grunting sound,

And part he churns, and part befoams the ground;

For tusks with Indian elephants he strove,

And Jove's own thunder from his mouth he drove.

He burns the leaves; the scorching blast invades

The tender corn, and shrivels up the blades;

Or, suffering not their yellow beards to rear,

He tramples down the spikes, and intercepts the year.

In vain the barns expect their promised load,

Nor barns at home, nor ricks are heaped abroad;

In vain the hinds the threshing-floor prepare,

And exercise their flails in empty air.

With olives ever green the ground is strowed,

And grapes ungathered shed their generous blood.

Amid the fold he rages, nor the sheep

Their shepherds, nor the grooms their bulls, can keep.

From fields to walls the frighted rabble run,

Nor think themselves secure within the town;

Till Melegarus, and his chosen crew,

Contemn the danger, and the praise pursue.

Fair Leda's twins, (in time to stars decreed,)

One fought on foot, one curbed the fiery steed;

Then issued forth famed Jason after these,

Who manned the foremost ship that sailed the seas;

Then Theseus, joined with bold Pirithous, came;

A single concord in a double name:

The Thestian sons, Idas, who swiftly ran,

And Ceneus, once a woman, now a man.

Lynceus, with eagle's eyes, and lion's heart;

Leucippus, with his never-erring dart;

Acastus, Phileus, Phœnix, Telamon, }

Echion, Lelex, and Eurytion, }

Achilles' father, and great Phocus' son; }

Dryas the fierce, and Hippasus the strong

With twice-old Iolas, and Nestor then but young;

Laertes active, and Ancæus bold; }

Mopsus the sage, who future things foretold; }

And t'other seer,[24] yet by his wife unsold. }

A thousand others of immortal fame;

Among the rest, fair Atalanta came,

Grace of the woods: a diamond buckle bound

Her vest behind, that else had flow'd upon the ground,

And shew'd her buskin'd legs; her head was bare,

But for her native ornament of hair,

Which in a simple knot was tied above,--

Sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love!

Her sounding quiver on her shoulder tied,

One hand a dart, and one a bow supplied.

Such was her face, as in a nymph displayed }

A fair fierce boy, or in a boy betrayed }

The blushing beauties of a modest maid. }

The Caledonian chief at once the dame

Beheld, at once his heart received the flame,

With heavens averse. O happy youth, he cried,

For whom thy fates reserve so fair a bribe!

He sighed, and had no leisure more to say; }

His honour called his eyes another way, }

And force him to pursue the now neglected prey. }

There stood a forest on the mountain's brow,

Which overlooked the shaded plains below;

No sounding axe presumed those trees to bite,

Coeval with the world, a venerable sight.

The heroes there arrived, some spread around }

The toils, some search the footsteps on the ground, }

Some from the chains the faithful dogs unbound. }

Of action eager, and intent on thought,

The chiefs their honourable danger sought:

A valley stood below; the common drain

Of waters from above, and falling rain;

The bottom was a moist and marshy ground,

Whose edges were with bending osiers crowned;

The knotty bulrush next in order stood,

And all within, of reeds a trembling wood.

From hence the boar was roused, and sprung amain,

Like lightning sudden on the warrior-train;

Beats down the trees before him, shakes the ground, }

The forest echoes to the crackling sound; }

Shout the fierce youth, and clamours ring around. }

All stood with their protended spears prepared,

With broad steel heads the brandished weapons glared.

The beast impetuous with his tusks aside }

Deals glancing wounds; the fearful dogs divide; }

All spend their mouth aloft, but none abide. }

Echion threw the first, but missed his mark,

And stuck his boar-spear on a maple's bark.

Then Jason; and his javelin seemed to take,

But failed with over-force, and whizzed above his back.

Mopsus was next; but, ere he threw, addressed

To Phœbus thus: O patron, help thy priest!

If I adore, and ever have adored

Thy power divine, thy present aid afford,

That I may reach the beast!--The god allowed

His prayer, and, smiling, gave him what he could:

He reached the savage, but no blood he drew;

Dian unarmed the javelin as it flew.

This chafed the boar, his nostrils flames expire,

And his red eye-balls roll with living fire.

Whirled from a sling, or from an engine thrown,

Amidst the foes so flies a mighty stone,

As flew the beast: the left wing put to flight,

The chiefs o'erborne, he rushes on the right.

Empalamos and Pelagon he laid

In dust, and next to death, but for their fellows' aid.

Onesimus fared worse, prepared to fly;

The fatal fang drove deep within his thigh,

And cut the nerves; the nerves no more sustain

The bulk; the bulk unprop'd, falls headlong on the plain.

Nestor had failed the fall of Troy to see,

But, leaning on his lance, he vaulted on a tree;

Then, gathering up his feet, looked down with fear,

And thought his monstrous foe was still too near.

Against a stump his tusk the monster grinds,

And in the sharpened edge new vigour finds;

Then, trusting to his arms, young Othrys found,

And ranched his hips with one continued wound.

Now Leda's twins, the future stars, appear;

White were their habits, white their horses were;

Conspicuous both, and both in act to throw,

Their trembling lances brandished at the foe:

Nor had they missed; but he to thickets fled,

Concealed from aiming spears, not pervious to the steed.

But Telamon rushed in, and happed to meet

A rising root, that held his fastened feet;

So down he fell, whom, sprawling on the ground,

His brother from the wooden gyves unbound.

Meantime the virgin-huntress was not slow

To expel the shaft from her contracted bow.

Beneath his ear the fastened arrow stood,

And from the wound appeared the trickling blood.

She blushed for joy: But Meleagrus raised

His voice with loud applause, and the fair archer praised.

He was the first to see, and first to show

His friends the marks of the successful blow.

Nor shall thy valour want the praises due,

He said;--a virtuous envy seized the crew.

They shout; the shouting animates their hearts,

And all at once employ their thronging darts;

But out of order thrown, in air they join,

And multitude makes frustrate the design.

With both his hands the proud Ancæus takes,

And flourishes his double biting axe:

Then forward to his fate, he took a stride

Before the rest, and to his fellows cried,--

Give place, and mark the difference, if you can,

Between a woman-warrior and a man;

The boar is doomed; nor, though Diana lend

Her aid, Diana can her beast defend.--

Thus boasted he; then stretched, on tiptoe stood,

Secure to make his empty promise good;

But the more wary beast prevents the blow,

And upward rips the groin of his audacious foe.

Ancæus falls; his bowels from the wound

Rush out, and clotted blood distains the ground.

Pirithous, no small portion of the war,

Pressed on, and shook his lance; to whom from far,

Thus Theseus cried: O stay, my better part,

My more than mistress; of my heart, the heart!

The strong may fight aloof: Ancæus tried

His force too near, and by presuming died.--

He said, and, while he spake, his javelin threw;

Hissing in air, the unerring weapon flew;

But on an arm of oak, that stood betwixt

The marksman and the mark, his lance he fixt.

Once more bold Jason threw, but failed to wound }

The boar, and slew an undeserving hound; }

And through the dog the dart was nailed to ground. }

Two spears from Meleager's hand were sent,

With equal force, but various in the event;

The first was fixed in earth, the second stood

On the boar's bristled back, and deeply drank his blood.

Now, while the tortured savage turns around,

And flings about his foam, impatient of the wound,

The wound's great author, close at hand, provokes

His rage, and plies him with redoubled strokes;

Wheels as he wheels, and with his pointed dart

Explores the nearest passage to his heart.

Quick, and more quick, he spins in giddy gyres,

Then falls, and in much foam his soul expires.

This act with shouts heaven high the friendly band

Applaud, and strain in theirs the victor's hand.

Then all approach the slain with vast surprise,

Admire on what a breadth of earth he lies;

And, scarce secure, reach out their spears afar,

And blood their points, to prove their partnership of war.

But he, the conquering chief, his foot impressed

On the strong neck of that destructive beast;

And gazing on the nymph with ardent eyes,

Accept, said he, fair Nonacrine, my prize;

And, though inferior, suffer me to join

My labours, and my part of praise, with thine.--

At this presents her with the tusky head

And chine, with rising bristles roughly spread.

Glad, she received the gift; and seemed to take

With double pleasure, for the giver's sake.

The rest were seized with sullen discontent,

And a deaf murmur through the squadron went:

All envied; but the Thestyan brethren showed

The least respect, and thus they vent their spleen aloud:

Lay down those honoured spoils, nor think to share,

Weak woman as thou art, the prize of war;

Ours is the title, thine a foreign claim,

Since Meleagrus from our lineage came.

Trust not thy beauty; but restore the prize,

Which he, besotted on that face and eyes,

Would rend from us.--At this, inflamed with spite,

From her they snatch the gift, from him the giver's right.

But soon the impatient prince his faulchion drew,

And cried,--Ye robbers of another's due,

Now learn the difference, at your proper cost,

Betwixt true valour, and an empty boast.--

At this advanced, and, sudden as the word,

In proud Plexippus' bosom plunged the sword:

Toxeus amazed, and with amazement slow,

Or to revenge, or ward the coming blow,

Stood doubting; and, while doubting thus he stood,

Received the steel bathed in his brother's blood.

Pleased with the first, unknown the second news,

Althæa to the temples pays their dues

For her son's conquest; when at length appear }

Her grisly brethren stretched upon the bier: }

Pale, at the sudden sight, she changed her cheer, }

And with her cheer her robes; but hearing tell

The cause, the manner, and by whom they fell,

'Twas grief no more, or grief and rage were one

Within her soul; at last 'twas rage alone;

Which burning upwards, in succession dries

The tears that stood considering in her eyes.

There lay a log unlighted on the earth:

When she was labouring in the throes of birth

For the unborn chief, the Fatal Sisters came,

And raised it up, and tossed it on the flame;

Then on the rock a scanty measure place

Of vital flax, and turned the wheel apace;

And turning sung,--To this red brand and thee,

O new-born babe, we give an equal destiny;

So vanished out of view. The frighted dame

Sprung hasty from her bed, and quenched the flame;

The log, in secret locked, she kept with care,

And that, while thus preserved, preserved her heir.

This brand she now produced; and first she strows

The hearth with heaps of chips, and after blows;

Thrice heaved her hand, and heaved, she thrice repressed; }

The sister and the mother long contest, }

Two doubtful titles in one tender breast; }

And now her eyes and cheeks with fury glow,

Now pale her cheeks, her eyes with pity flow;

Now lowring looks presage approaching storms,

And now prevailing love her face reforms:

Resolved, she doubts again; the tears, she dried

With blushing rage, are by new tears supplied;

And, as a ship, which winds and waves assail, }

Now with the current drives, now with the gale, }

Both opposite, and neither long prevail, }

She feels a double force; by turns obeys

The imperious tempest, and the impetuous seas:

So fares Althæa's mind; first she relents

With pity, of that pity then repents:

Sister and mother long the scales divide,

But the beam nodded on the sister's side.

Sometimes she softly sighed, then roared aloud;

But sighs were stifled in the cries of blood.

The pious impious wretch at length decreed,

To please her brothers' ghosts, her son should bleed;

And when the funeral flames began to rise,

Receive, she said, a sister's sacrifice;

A mother's bowels burn:--high in her hand,

Thus while she spoke, she held the fatal brand;

Then thrice before the kindled pile she bowed,

And the three Furies thrice invoked aloud:--

Come, come, revenging sisters, come and view

A sister paying her dead brothers' due;

A crime I punish, and a crime commit;

But blood for blood, and death for death, is fit:

Great crimes must be with greater crimes repaid,

And second funerals on the former laid.

Let the whole household in one ruin fall,

And may Diana's curse o'ertake us all.

Shall fate to happy Œneus still allow }

One son, while Thestius stands deprived of two? }

Better three lost, than one unpunished go. }

Take then, dear ghosts, (while yet, admitted new

In hell, you wait my duty,) take your due;

A costly offering on your tomb is laid,

When with my blood the price of yours is paid.

Ah! whither am I hurried? Ah! forgive,

Ye shades, and let your sister's issue live:

A mother cannot give him death; though he

Deserves it, he deserves it not from me.

Then shall the unpunished wretch insult the slain,

Triumphant live? not only live, but reign?

While you, thin shades, the sport of winds, are tost

O'er dreary plains, or tread the burning coast!

I cannot, cannot bear; 'tis past, 'tis done;

Perish this impious, this detested son;

Perish his sire, and perish I withal;

And let the houses heir, and the hoped kingdom fall.

Where is the mother fled, her pious love,

And where the pains with which ten months I strove!

Ah! hadst thou died, my son, in infant years,

Thy little hearse hadst been bedewed with tears.

Thou livest by me; to me thy breath resign;

Mine is the merit, the demerit thine.

Thy life by double title I require;

Once given at birth, and once preserved from fire:

One murder pay, or add one murder more,

And me to them who fell by thee restore.

I would, but cannot: my son's image stands

Before my sight;--and now their angry hands

My brothers hold, and vengeance these exact;

This pleads compassion, and repents the fact.

He pleads in vain, and I pronounce his doom:

My brothers, though unjustly, shall o'ercome;

But having paid their injured ghosts their due,

My son requires my death, and mine shall his pursue.

At this, for the last time, she lifts her hand,

Averts her eyes, and half-unwilling drops the brand.

The brand, amid the flaming fuel thrown,

Or drew, or seemed to draw, a dying groan;

The fires themselves but faintly licked their prey,

Then loathed their impious food, and would have shrunk away.

Just then the hero cast a doleful cry,

And in those absent flames began to fry;

The blind contagion raged within his veins;

But he, with manly patience, bore his pains;

He feared not fate, but only grieved to die

Without an honest wound, and by a death so dry.

Happy Ancæus, thrice aloud he cried,

With what becoming fate in arms he died!

Then called his brothers, sisters, sire, around,

And her to whom his nuptial vows were bound;

Perhaps his mother; a long sigh he drew,

And, his voice failing, took his last adieu;

For, as the flames augment, and as they stay

At their full height, then languish to decay,

They rise, and sink by fits; at last they soar

In one bright blaze, and then descend no more:

Just so his inward heats, at height, impair,

Till the last burning breath shoots out the soul in air.

Now lofty Calydon in ruins lies; }

All ages, all degrees, unsluice their eyes; }

And heaven and earth resound with murmurs, groans, and cries.}

Matrons and maidens beat their breasts, and tear

Their habits, and root up their scattered hair.

The wretched father, father now no more,

With sorrow sunk, lies prostrate on the floor;

Deforms his hoary locks with dust obscene,

And curses age, and loathes a life prolonged with pain.

By steel her stubborn soul his mother freed,

And punished on herself her impious deed.

Had I an hundred tongues, a wit so large

As could their hundred offices discharge;

Had Phœbus all his Helicon bestowed,

In all the streams inspiring all the god;

Those tongues, that wit, those streams, that god in vain

Would offer to describe his sisters' pain;

They beat their breasts with many a bruising blow,

Till they turn livid, and corrupt the snow.

The corps they cherish, while the corps remains,

And exercise and rub with fruitless pains;

And when to funeral flames 'tis borne away,

They kiss the bed on which the body lay;

And when those funeral flames no longer burn,

The dust composed within a pious urn,

Even in that urn their brother they confess,

And hug it in their arms, and to their bosoms press.

His tomb is raised; then, stretched along the ground,

Those living monuments his tomb surround;

Even to his name, inscribed, their tears they pay,

Till tears and kisses wear his name away.

But Cynthia now had all her fury spent,

Not with less ruin, than a race, content;

Excepting Gorge, perished all the seed,

And her whom heaven for Hercules decreed.

Satiate at last, no longer she pursued

The weeping sisters; but with wings endued,

And horny beaks, and sent to flit in air,

Who yearly round the tomb in feathered flocks repair.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Amphialus.

BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.

OUT OF THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

_The author, pursuing the deeds of Theseus, relates how he, with his

friend Pirithous, were invited by Achelous, the River-God, to stay

with him, till his waters were abated. Achelous entertains them with a

relation of his own love to Perimele, who was changed into an island

by Neptune, at his request. Pirithous, being an Atheist, derides

the legend, and denies the power of the Gods to work that miracle.

Lelex, another companion of Theseus, to confirm the story of Achelous,

relates another metamorphosis, of Baucis and Philemon into trees; of

which he was partly an eyewitness._