The Oxford Book of Latin Verse Part 72

He feeds on fruits, which of their own accord, The willing ground and laden trees afford.

From his lov'd home no lucre him can draw; The senate's mad decrees he never saw: Nor heard, at bawling bars, corrupted law.

Some to the seas, and some to camps, resort; And some with impudence invade the court: In foreign countries, others seek renown; With wars and taxes, others waste their own, And houses burn, and household G.o.ds deface, To drink in bowls which glitt'ring gems enchase, To loll on couches, rich with citron steds, And lay their guilty limbs on Tyrian beds.

This wretch in earth entombs his golden ore, Hov'ring and brooding on his buried store.

Some patriot fools to pop'lar praise aspire Of public speeches, which worse fools admire, While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds, Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.

Some, through ambition, or through thirst of gold, Have slain their brothers, or their country sold, And, leaving their sweet homes, in exile run To lands that lie beneath another sun.

The peasant, innocent of all these ills, With crooked ploughs the fertile fallows tills, And the round year with daily labour fills: And hence the country markets are supplied: Enough remains for household charge beside, His wife and tender children to sustain, And gratefully to feed his dumb deserving train.

Nor cease his labours till the yellow field A full return of bearded harvest yield-- A crop so plenteous, as the land to load, O'ercome the crowded barns, and lodge on ricks abroad.

Thus ev'ry sev'ral season is employ'd, Some spent in toil, and some in ease enjoy'd.

The yeaning ewes prevent the springing year: The laden boughs their fruits in autumn bear: 'Tis then the vine her liquid harvest yields, Bak'd in the sunshine of ascending fields, The winter comes; and then the falling mast For greedy swine provides a full repast: Then olives, ground in mills, their fatness boast, And winter fruits are mellow'd by the frost.

His cares are eas'd with intervals of bliss; His little children, climbing for a kiss, Welcome their father's late return at night; His faithful bed is crown'd with chaste delight.

His kine with swelling udders ready stand, And, lowing for the pail, invite the milker's hand.

His wanton kids, with budding horns prepar'd, Fight harmless battles in his homely yard: Himself in rustic pomp, on holy-days, To rural pow'rs a just oblation pays, And on the green his careless limbs displays.

The hearth is in the midst: the herdsmen, round The cheerful fire, provoke his health in goblets crown'd.

He calls on Bacchus, and propounds the prize: The groom his fellow-groom at b.u.t.ts defies, And bends, and levels with his eyes, Or stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil, And watches, with a trip, his foe to foil.

Such was the life the frugal Sabines led: So Remus and his brother-G.o.d were bred, From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose; And this rude life our homely fathers chose.

Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth (The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth), Which now on sev'n high hills triumphant reigns, And in that compa.s.s all the world contains.

Ere Saturn's rebel son usurp'd the skies, When beasts were only slain for sacrifice, While peaceful Crete enjoy'd her ancient lord, Ere sounding hammers forg'd th' inhuman sword, Ere hollow drums were beat, before the breath Of brazen trumpets rung the peals of death, The good old G.o.d his hunger did a.s.suage, With roots and herbs, and gave the golden age.

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

HAPPY the man, I grant, thrice happy he Who can through gross effects their causes see: Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs, Nor vainly fears inevitable things, But does his walk of virtue calmly go, Through all the allarms of death and h.e.l.l below.

Happy, but next such conquerors, happy they Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way.

They unconcerned from their safe-distant seat Behold the rods and sceptres of the great.

The quarrels of the mighty without fear And the descent of foreign troops they hear.

Nor can ev'n Rome their steddy course misguide With all the l.u.s.tre of her perishing pride.

Them never yet did strife or avarice draw Into the noisy markets of the law, The camps of gowned war, nor do they live By rules or forms that many mad men give.

Duty for Nature's bounty they repay, And her sole laws religiously obey.

COWLEY.

_118_

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

THEN from the deepest deeps of Erebus, Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour Or storms of winter chase them from the hills; Matrons and men, and great heroic frames Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls, Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.

Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed, Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp Of dull dead water, and to pen them fast, Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.

Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death Stood lost in wonderment, the Eumenides, Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined, E'en Cerberus held his triple jaws agape, And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.

And now with homeward footstep he had pa.s.sed All perils scathless, and, at length restored, Eurydice, to realms of upper air Had well-nigh won behind him following-- So Proserpine had ruled it--when his heart A sudden mad desire surprised and seized-- Meet fault to be forgiven, might h.e.l.l forgive.

For at the very threshold of the day, Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve, He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice-- His own once more. But even with the look, Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard Three times like thunder in the meres of h.e.l.l.

'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep Closes my swimming eyes. And now, farewell: Girt with enormous night I am borne away, Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more, These helpless hands.' She spoke, and suddenly, Like smoke dissolving into empty air, Pa.s.sed and was sundered from his sight; nor him, Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak, Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time h.e.l.l's boatman lists he pa.s.s the watery bar.

JAMES RHOADES

_119 a_

ONCE a slender silvan reed Answered all my shepherd's need; Once to farmer lads I told All the lore of field and fold: Well they liked me, for the soil Beyond their dreams repaid their toil.

Ah! who am I, 'mid war's alarms, To 'sing the hero and his arms'?

H.W.G.

_121_

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

THINK not those strains can e'er expire, Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre I sing with arts unknown before.

Though Homer fill the foremost throne, Yet grave Stesichorus still can please, And fierce Alcaeus holds his own With Pindar and Simonides.

The songs of Teos are not mute, And Sappho's love is breathing still: She told her secret to the lute, And still its chords with pa.s.sion thrill.

Not Sparta's queen alone was fired By broidered robe and braided tress, And all the splendours that attired Her lover's guilty loveliness: Not only Teucer to the field His arrows brought, not Ilion Beneath a single conqueror reeled: Not Crete's majestic lord alone, Or Sthenelus, earned the Muses' crown: Not Hector first for child and wife, Or brave Deiphobus, laid down The burden of a manly life.

Before Atrides men were brave, But ah! oblivion dark and long Has locked them in a tearless grave, For lack of consecrating song.

'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death, What difference? _You_ shall ne'er be dumb, While strains of mine have voice and breath: The dull neglect of days to come Those hard-won honours shall not blight: No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright When Fortune smiles and when she lowers: To greed and rapine still severe, Spurning the gain men find so sweet: A consul not of one brief year, But oft as on the judgement-seat You bend the expedient to the right, Turn haughty eyes from bribes array, Or bear your banners through the fight, Scattering the foeman's firm array.

The lord of countless revenues Salute not him as happy: no, Call him the happy who can use The bounty that the G.o.ds bestow, Can bear the load of poverty, And tremble not at death, but sin: No recreant he when called to die In cause of country or of kin.

J. CONINGTON.

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

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

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

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!

They had no poet, and they died.

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!

They had no poet, and are dead.

POPE.

_124_

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

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

H.W.G.

_125_

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

MILTON.

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

WITH whom spend'st thou thy evening hours Amid the sweets of breathing flowers?