Theocritus Bion and Moschus Rendered into English Prose Part 9

IDYL XI--THE CYCLOPS IN LOVE

Nicias, the physician and poet, being in love, Theocritus reminds him that in song lies the only remedy. It was by song, he says, that the Cyclops, Polyphemus, got him some ease, when he was in love with Galatea, the sea-nymph.

The idyl displays, in the most graceful manner, the Alexandrian taste for turning Greek mythology into love stories. No creature could be more remote from love than the original Polyphemus, the cannibal giant of the Odyssey.

There is none other medicine, Nicias, against Love, neither unguent, methinks, nor salve to sprinkle,--none, save the Muses of Pieria!

Now a delicate thing is their minstrelsy in man's life, and a sweet, but hard to procure. Methinks thou know'st this well, who art thyself a leech, and beyond all men art plainly dear to the Muses nine.

'Twas surely thus the Cyclops fleeted his life most easily, he that dwelt among us,--Polyphemus of old time,--when the beard was yet young on his cheek and chin; and he loved Galatea. He loved, not with apples, not roses, nor locks of hair, but with fatal frenzy, and all things else he held but trifles by the way. Many a time from the green pastures would his ewes stray back, self-shepherded, to the fold. But he was singing of Galatea, and pining in his place he sat by the sea-weed of the beach, from the dawn of day, with the direst hurt beneath his breast of mighty Cypris's sending,--the wound of her arrow in his heart!

Yet this remedy he found, and sitting on the crest of the tall cliff, and looking to the deep, 'twas thus he would sing:-

Song of the Cyclops.

O milk-white Galatea, why cast off him that loves thee? More white than is pressed milk to look upon, more delicate than the lamb art thou, than the young calf wantoner, more sleek than the unripened grape! Here dust thou resort, even so, when sweet sleep possesses me, and home straightway dost thou depart when sweet sleep lets me go, fleeing me like an ewe that has seen the grey wolf.

I fell in love with thee, maiden, I, on the day when first thou camest, with my mother, and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from the hill, and I was thy guide on the way. But to leave loving thee, when once I had seen thee, neither afterward, nor now at all, have I the strength, even from that hour. But to thee all this is as nothing, by Zeus, nay, nothing at all!

I know, thou gracious maiden, why it is that thou dust shun me. It is all for the s.h.a.ggy brow that spans all my forehead, from this to the other ear, one long unbroken eyebrow. And but one eye is on my forehead, and broad is the nose that overhangs my lip. Yet I (even such as thou seest me) feed a thousand cattle, and from these I draw and drink the best milk in the world. And cheese I never lack, in summer time or autumn, nay, nor in the dead of winter, but my baskets are always overladen.

Also I am skilled in piping, as none other of the Cyclopes here, and of thee, my love, my sweet-apple, and of myself too I sing, many a time, deep in the night. And for thee I tend eleven fawns, all crescent-browed, {61} and four young whelps of the bear.

Nay, come thou to me, and thou shalt lack nothing that now thou hast.

Leave the grey sea to roll against the land; more sweetly, in this cavern, shalt thou fleet the night with me! Thereby the laurels grow, and there the slender cypresses, there is the ivy dun, and the sweet cl.u.s.tered grapes; there is chill water, that for me deep-wooded AEtna sends down from the white snow, a draught divine! Ah who, in place of these, would choose the sea to dwell in, or the waves of the sea?

But if thou dust refuse because my body seems s.h.a.ggy and rough, well, I have f.a.ggots of oakwood, and beneath the ashes is fire unwearied, and I would endure to let thee burn my very soul, and this my one eye, the dearest thing that is mine.

Ah me, that my mother bore me not a finny thing, so would I have gone down to thee, and kissed thy hand, if thy lips thou would not suffer me to kiss! And I would have brought thee either white lilies, or the soft poppy with its scarlet petals. Nay, these are summer's flowers, and those are flowers of winter, so I could not have brought thee them all at one time.

Now, verily, maiden, now and here will I learn to swim, if perchance some stranger come hither, sailing with his ship, that I may see why it is so dear to thee, to have thy dwelling in the deep.

Come forth, Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I that sit here have forgotten, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go shepherding, with me to milk the flocks, and to pour the sharp rennet in, and to fix the cheeses.

There is none that wrongs me but that mother of mine, and her do I blame. Never, nay, never once has she spoken a kind word for me to thee, and that though day by day she beholds me wasting. I will tell her that my head, and both my feet are throbbing, that she may somewhat suffer, since I too am suffering.

O Cyclops, Cyclops, whither are thy wits wandering? Ah that thou wouldst go, and weave thy wicker-work, and gather broken boughs to carry to thy lambs: in faith, if thou didst this, far wiser wouldst thou be!

Milk the ewe that thou hast, why pursue the thing that shuns thee?

Thou wilt find, perchance, another, and a fairer Galatea. Many be the girls that bid me play with them through the night, and softly they all laugh, if perchance I answer them. On land it is plain that I too seem to be somebody!

Lo, thus Polyphemus still shepherded his love with song, and lived lighter than if he had given gold for ease.

IDYL XII--THE Pa.s.sIONATE FRIEND

This is rather a lyric than an idyl, being an expression of that singular pa.s.sion which existed between men in historical Greece. The next idyl, like the Myrmidons of Aeschylus, attributes the same manners to mythical and heroic Greece. It should be unnecessary to say that the affection between Homeric warriors, like Achilles and Patroclus, was only that of companions in arms and was quite unlike the later sentiment.

Hast thou come, dear youth, with the third night and the dawning; hast thou come? but men in longing grow old in a day! As spring than the winter is sweeter, as the apple than the sloe, as the ewe is deeper of fleece than the lamb she bore; as a maiden surpa.s.ses a thrice-wedded wife, as the fawn is nimbler than the calf; nay, by as much as sweetest of all fowls sings the clear-voiced nightingale, so much has thy coming gladdened me! To thee have I hastened as the traveller hastens under the burning sun to the shadow of the ilex tree.

Ah, would that equally the Loves may breathe upon us twain, may we become a song in the ears of all men unborn.

'Lo, a pair were these two friends among the folk of former time,'

the one 'the Knight' (so the Amyclaeans call him), the other, again, 'the Page,' so styled in speech of Thessaly.

'An equal yoke of friendship they bore: ah, surely then there were golden men of old, when friends gave love for love!'

And would, O father Cronides, and would, ye ageless immortals, that this might be; and that when two hundred generations have sped, one might bring these tidings to me by Acheron, the irremeable stream.

'The loving-kindness that was between thee and thy gracious friend, is even now in all men's mouths, and chiefly on the lips of the young.'

Nay, verily, the G.o.ds of heaven will be masters of these things, to rule them as they will, but when I praise thy graciousness no blotch that punishes the perjurer shall spring upon the tip of my nose!

Nay, if ever thou hast somewhat pained me, forthwith thou healest the hurt, giving a double delight, and I depart with my cup full and running over!

Nisaean men of Megara, ye champions of the oars, happily may ye dwell, for that ye honoured above all men the Athenian stranger, even Diodes, the true lover. Always about his tomb the children gather in their companies, at the coming in of the spring, and contend for the prize of kissing. And whoso most sweetly touches lip to lip, laden with garlands he returneth to his mother. Happy is he that judges those kisses of the children; surely he prays most earnestly to bright-faced Ganymedes, that his lips may be as the Lydian touchstone wherewith the money-changers try gold lest, perchance base metal pa.s.s for true.

IDYL XIII--HYLAS AND HERACLES

As in the eleventh Idyl, Nicias is again addressed, by way of introduction to the story of Hylas. This beautiful lad, a favourite companion of Heracles, took part in the Quest of the Fleece of Gold.

As he went to draw water from a fountain, the water-nymphs dragged him down to their home, and Heracles, after a long and vain search, was compelled to follow the heroes of the Quest on foot to Phasis.

Not for us only, Nicias, as we were used to deem, was Love begotten, by whomsoever of the G.o.ds was the father of the child; not first to us seemed beauty beautiful, to us that are mortal men and look not on the morrow. Nay, but the son of Amphitryon, that heart of bronze, who abode the wild lion's onset, loved a lad, beautiful Hylas--Hylas of the braided locks, and he taught him all things as a father teaches his child, all whereby himself became a mighty man, and renowned in minstrelsy. Never was he apart from Hylas, not when midnoon was high in heaven, not when Dawn with her white horses speeds upwards to the dwelling of Zeus, not when the twittering nestlings look towards the perch, while their mother flaps her wings above the smoke-browned beam; and all this that the lad might be fashioned to his mind, and might drive a straight furrow, and come to the true measure of man.

But when Iason, Aeson's son, was sailing after the fleece of gold (and with him followed the champions, the first chosen out of all the cities, they that were of most avail), to rich Iolcos too came the mighty man and adventurous, the son of the woman of Midea, n.o.ble Alcmene. With him went down Hylas also, to Argo of the goodly benches, the ship that grazed not on the clashing rocks Cyanean, but through she sped and ran into deep Phasis, as an eagle over the mighty gulf of the sea. And the clashing rocks stand fixed, even from that hour!

Now at the rising of the Pleiades, when the upland fields begin to pasture the young lambs, and when spring is already on the wane, then the flower divine of Heroes bethought them of sea-faring. On board the hollow Argo they sat down to the oars, and to the h.e.l.lespont they came when the south wind had been for three days blowing, and made their haven within Propontis, where the oxen of the Cianes wear bright the ploughshare, as they widen the furrows. Then they went forth upon the sh.o.r.e, and each couple busily got ready supper in the late evening, and many as they were one bed they strewed lowly on the ground, for they found a meadow lying, rich in couches of strown gra.s.s and leaves. Thence they cut them pointed flag-leaves, and deep marsh-galingale. And Hylas of the yellow hair, with a vessel of bronze in his hand, went to draw water against suppertime, for Heracles himself, and the steadfast Telamon, for these comrades twain supped ever at one table. Soon was he ware of a spring, in a hollow land, and the rushes grew thickly round it, and dark swallow-wort, and green maiden-hair, and blooming parsley, and deer-gra.s.s spreading through the marshy land. In the midst of the water the nymphs were arraying their dances, the sleepless nymphs, dread G.o.ddesses of the country people, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia, with her April eyes.

And now the boy was holding out the wide-mouthed pitcher to the water, intent on dipping it, but the nymphs all clung to his hand, for love of the Argive lad had fluttered the soft hearts of all of them. Then down he sank into the black water, headlong all, as when a star shoots flaming from the sky, plumb in the deep it falls, and a mate shouts out to the seamen, 'Up with the gear, my lads, the wind is fair for sailing.'

Then the nymphs held the weeping boy on their laps, and with gentle words were striving to comfort him. But the son of Amphitryon was troubled about the lad, and went forth, carrying his bended bow in Scythian fashion, and the club that is ever grasped in his right hand. Thrice he shouted 'Hylas!' as loud as his deep throat could call, and thrice again the boy heard him, and thin came his voice from the water, and, hard by though he was, he seemed very far away.

And as when a bearded lion, a ravening lion on the hills, hears the bleating of a fawn afar off, and rushes forth from his lair to seize it, his readiest meal, even so the mighty Heracles, in longing for the lad, sped through the trackless briars, and ranged over much country.

Reckless are lovers: great toils did Heracles bear, in hills and thickets wandering, and Iason's quest was all postponed to this. Now the ship abode with her tackling aloft, and the company gathered there, {70} but at midnight the young men were lowering the sails again, awaiting Heracles. But he wheresoever his feet might lead him went wandering in his fury, for the cruel G.o.ddess of love was rending his heart within him.

Thus loveliest Hylas is numbered with the Blessed, but for a runaway they girded at Heracles, the heroes, because he roamed from Argo of the sixty oarsmen. But on foot he came to Colchis and inhospitable Phasis.

IDYL XIV