The Works of Alexander Pope Part 21

[Footnote 28: In the first edition:

I find the shades that did our joys conceal, Not him who made me love those shades so well.]

[Footnote 29: Scrope's translation:

Of Tereus she complains, and I of thee.--WAKEFIELD.

Tereus married Progne, and afterwards fell in love with her sister Philomela. Both sisters conspired to revenge themselves upon him. They killed Itys, his son by Progne, gave him some of the flesh to eat. When, with savage exultation, they revealed the truth to him, and he was about to slay them, Progne was changed into a swallow, and Philomela into a nightingale.]

[Footnote 30: The Sappho of Ovid only says that she laid down upon the bank worn out with weeping. Pope is answerable for the extravagant conceit of "her swelling the flood with her tears." In the next verse Pope calls the Naiad "a watery virgin,"--an expression which borders on the ludicrous.]

[Footnote 31: There was a promontory in Acarnania called Leucate, on the top of which was a little temple dedicated to Apollo. In this temple it was usual for despairing lovers to make their vows in secret, and afterwards to fling themselves from the top of the precipice into the sea; for it was an established opinion that all those who were taken up alive would be cured of their former pa.s.sion. Sappho tried the remedy, but perished in the experiment.--FAWKES.]

[Footnote 32: Aleaeus arrived at the promontory of Leucate that very evening, in order to take the leap on her account; but hearing that her body could not be found, he very generously lamented her fall, and is said to have written his 215th ode on that occasion.--WARTON.

The entire story was probably a legend.]

[Footnote 33: These two lines have been quoted as the most smooth and mellifluous in our language; and they are supposed to derive their sweetness and harmony from the mixture of so many iambics. Pope himself preferred the following line to all he had written, with respect to harmony:

Lo, where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flows.--WARTON.

Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis:

A constant trade-wind will securely blow, And gently lay us on the spicy sh.o.r.e.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 34: In the MS.:

To those steep cliffs, that ocean must I fly.]

[Footnote 35: In the place of this couplet, there were four lines in the MS.:

If thou return thy Sappho too shall stay, Not all the G.o.ds shall force me then away; Nor Love, nor Phoebus, then invoked shall be, For thou alone art all the G.o.ds to me.

Another version ran thus:

Wouldst thou return, oh more than Phoebus, fair No G.o.d like thee could ease thy Sappho's care.]

[Footnote 36: "Liked" seems a very unsuitable expression in the present day. It was a word, however, among our early writers of greater force and significance:

What I that loved, and you that _liked_, Shall we begin to wrangle?

No, no, no; my heart is fixed, And cannot disentangle.

_Old Ballad._--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 37: In the MS.:

Phaon--_my_ Phaon I almost had said-- Is fled, with Phaon your delights are fled.

Cromwell wrote against the last line "recte, non pulchre," and Pope tried three variations of it before he cast them aside for the version in the text:

Is gone, and with him all your pleasures fled.

Is gone, and all that's pleasing with him fled.

Is gone, and with him your delights are fled.]

[Footnote 38: Of ver. 242 and v. 244, Pope says in the MS., "So at first as printed, but objected [against] as tautological. _Sic recte_ as [in the] margin, but carried afterwards as at first." "Sighs" was thought to be too nearly synonymous with "prayers," and Pope altered the lines by erasing the expressions "no sighs" and "my sighs," and affixing the epithet "tender" in both verses to numbers.]

[Footnote 39: In the MS.:

Oh, when shall kinder, more auspicious gales, Waft to these eyes thy long-expected sails.

"Pleonasm," says a note on the ma.n.u.script. "_Kinder_, and _more auspicious_, too much."]

[Footnote 40: This image is very inferior to the original, as it is more vague and general: the picture in the original is strikingly beautiful.

The circ.u.mstances which make it so, are omitted by Pope:

Ipse gubernabit residens in puppe Cupido, Ipse dabit tenera vela legetque manu.--BOWLES.

The objection of Bowles would not have applied to the ma.n.u.script, where this admirable couplet, which Pope unwisely omitted, follows the lines in the text:

Shall take the rudder in his tender hand, And steer thee safe to this forsaken land.

There is a second, but inferior rendering:

Shall sit presiding on the painted prore, And steer thy ship to this forsaken sh.o.r.e.

Cromwell applied the words of Horace, "quae desperat nitescere posse, relinquit," which seems intended to intimate that it was impossible to give a poetical translation of the original. Pope deferred to the mistaken criticism.]

THE FABLE OF DRYOPE.[1]

FROM THE NINTH BOOK OF OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

She[2] said, and for her lost Galanthis sighs, When the fair consort of her son[3] replies: Since you a servant's ravished form bemoan,[4]

And kindly sigh for sorrows not your own, Let me (if tears and grief permit) relate 5 A nearer woe, a sister's stranger fate.

No nymph of all Oechalia could compare For beauteous form with Dryope the fair,[5]

Her tender mother's only hope and pride, (Myself the offspring of a second bride.) 10 This nymph compressed by him who rules the day, Whom Delphi and the Delian isle obey, Andraemon loved; and, blessed in all those charms That pleased a G.o.d, succeeded to her arms.[6]

A lake there was, with shelving banks around, 15 Whose verdant summit fragrant myrtles crowned.

These shades, unknowing of the fates, she sought, And to the naiads flow'ry garlands brought; Her smiling babe (a pleasing charge) she pressed Within her arms, and nourished at her breast. 20 Nor distant far a wat'ry lotos grows, The spring was new, and all the verdant boughs, Adorned with blossoms, promised fruits that vie In glowing colours with the Tyrian dye: Of these she cropped to please her infant son, 25 And I myself the same rash act had done: But lo! I saw (as near her side I stood,) The violated blossoms[7] drop with blood; Upon the tree I cast a frightful look; The trembling tree with sudden horror shook. 30 Lotis the nymph (if rural tales be true) As from Priapus' lawless l.u.s.t she flew, Forsook her form; and fixing here, became A flow'ry plant, which still preserves her name.

This change unknown, astonished at the sight, 35 My trembling sister strove to urge her flight: And first the pardon of the nymphs implored, And those offended sylvan pow'rs adored: But when she backward would have fled, she found Her stiff'ning feet were rooted in the ground: 40 In vain to free her fastened feet she strove, And, as she struggles, only moves above; She feels th' encroaching bark around her grow By quick degrees, and cover all below: Surprized at this, her trembling hand she heaves 45 To rend her hair; her hand is filled with leaves: Where late was hair the shooting leaves are seen To rise, and shade her with a sudden green.

The child Amphissus, to her bosom pressed, Perceived a colder and a harder breast, 50 And found the springs, that ne'er till then denied Their milky moisture, on a sudden dried.

I saw, unhappy! what I now relate, And stood the helpless witness of thy fate, Embraced thy boughs, thy rising bark delayed, 55 There wished to grow, and mingle shade with shade.

Behold Andraemon and th' unhappy sire Appear, and for their Dryope inquire: A springing tree for Dryope they find, And print warm kisses on the panting rind; 60 Prostrate, with tears their kindred plant bedew, And close embrace, as[8] to the roots they grew.

The face was all that now remained of thee, No more a woman, nor yet quite a tree;[9]

Thy branches hung with humid pearls appear,[10] 65 From ev'ry leaf distils a trickling tear, And straight a voice, while yet a voice remains, Thus through the trembling boughs in sighs complains.

If to the wretched any faith be giv'n, I swear by all th' unpitying pow'rs of heav'n,[11] 70 No wilful crime this heavy vengeance bred; In mutual innocence[12] our lives we led: If this be false, let these new greens decay, } Let sounding axes lop my limbs away, } And crackling flames on all my honours prey.[13] } 75 But from my branching arms this infant bear, Let some kind nurse supply a mother's care: And to his mother let him oft be led, Sport in her shades, and in her shades be fed; Teach him, when first his infant voice shall frame 80 Imperfect words, and lisp his mother's name, To hail this tree, and say with weeping eyes, Within this plant my helpless parent lies; And when in youth he seeks the shady woods, Oh! let him fly the crystal lakes and floods, 85 Nor touch the fatal flow'rs; but, warned by me, Believe a G.o.ddess shrined in ev'ry tree.

My sire, my sister, and my spouse, farewell![14]