{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_66399/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_66399","id":"gutenberg_66399","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66399","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Classics of Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Latin poetry -- Translations into English","Lucretius Carus, Titus -- Translations into English","Virgil -- Translations into English"],"text":"VIRGIL AND LUCRETIUS\n\n\n\n\n                           VIRGIL & LUCRETIUS\n\n                         PASSAGES TRANSLATED BY\n\n                            WILLIAM STEBBING\n\n                HON. FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD\n                                AUTHOR OF\n                    \u2018SIR WALTER RALEGH: A BIOGRAPHY\u2019\n             \u2018FIVE CENTURIES OF ENGLISH VERSE: IMPRESSIONS\u2019\n                           \u2018TRUTHS OR TRUISMS\u2019\n\n                         LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.\n                       39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON\n                  FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK\n                      BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS\n                                  1917\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n                                   PAGE\n\n                 _VIRGIL_\n\n    ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE              3\n\n    PRAISE OF ITALY                  14\n\n    HAPPY HUSBANDMEN                 17\n\n    A TARENTINE GARDEN               25\n\n    A GOLDEN AGE                     29\n\n    LIMBO AND TARTARUS               36\n\n    ELYSIUM                          72\n\n    TO THE UNKNOWN GOD               90\n\n    THE GATES                        91\n\n    THE GHOSTS                       92\n\n    EURYALUS AND PALLAS              93\n\n    THINGS                           94\n\n                _LUCRETIUS_\n\n            _\u2018DE RERUM NATURA\u2019_\n\n    HYMN TO VENUS                    97\n\n    PHILOSOPHY                      101\n\n    \u2018MUSICAL AS IS APOLLO\u2019S LUTE\u2019   105\n\n    THE FEAR OF DEATH               107\n\n    EARTH\u2019S DECAY                   121\n\n    PRIMEVAL MAN                    124\n\n    IPHIGENIA                       139\n\n    MATERNAL LOVE                   142\n\n    ECHO                            144\n\n    THE SEASONS                     147\n\n\n\n\nVIRGIL\n\n\n\n\nOrpheus and Eurydice\n\nP. VIRGILII MARONIS Georgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 453-527\n\n    This is the tale old Proteus by the sea\n  Erst told of Orpheus and Eurydice.\n  Virgil at Parthenope overheard,\n  And has resung it, if not word by word.\n\n\n    Orpheus had been espoused but one short hour,\n  And went to gather roses for the bower,\n  When a rejected wooer, mad with love,\n  Sprang upon the light-footed nymph, and strove\n  For an embrace; she, heeding nought, alas!\n  Trod on a serpent sleeping in the grass;\n  And when on the instant, answering her cries,\n  Her Bridegroom knelt there, kissing her closed eyes,\n  Half fainting with the sense of all her charms,\n  Sudden he woke, a dead Bride in his arms!\n  Not his alone the woe and misery;\n  Nor he sole mourner for Eurydice;\n  From Rhodope to Pang\u00e6a\u2019s peaks, above\n  The cave where Boreas hid his Attic love,\n  Through the fierce realm of Rhesus, echo bore\n  The wail to the wild Getes, to the shore\n  Of Hebrus, while in forest, hill, and dale\n  The tuneful Dryads told the tearful tale.\n    But how conjure by the best ordered show\n  Of grief an irremediable woe!\n  Orpheus fled Pity, and neighbourly Care;\n  All human fellowship but his despair.\n  With but that and his lyre communion still\n  He held, from dawn to sunset, then until\n  The planets rose and sank, banishing sleep,\n  Keeping sad vigils by the moaning deep,\n  Thinking each shadow on the desert shore\n  Was his lost Bride restored to life once more.\n\n    And was it days, weeks, months, or years?\u2014at last\n  From the ghost-haunted waters coastward passed\u2014\n  Whether Goddess, or Woman\u2014a pale shape,\n  That beckoned to the far Laconian Cape\n  Of T\u00e6narus, where the dread cavern draws\n  Each generation down its hungry jaws.\n  At the first touch of his lyre opened wide\n  The lofty gates of Hell; he paced inside\n  The grove impenetrable by but him;\n  A darkness that might be felt, stark, and grim,\n  Where bide the awful ministers of Dis,\n  With hearts that never beat at prayer but his.\n  And still the notes rose bravely; and still he\n  Came, calling on his lost Eurydice;\n  On her, sole burden of his love-lorn cries\u2014\n  One theme informing countless melodies.\n    At the sweet sorrowing, awhile a hush\u2014\n  Amazement\u2014throughout Hades; then a rush\u2014\n  A quick rustling rather, as when a flight\n  Of birds seeks where to sleep at fall of night,\n  Or, cow\u2019ring, courts, against an icy breeze,\n  Multitudinous foliage of trees.\n  Thus\u2014for the jailers ceased from watch and ward,\n  Witched themselves by the wailing, wandering bard\u2014\n  Flocked, from the unamiable swamp, which feeds\n  Nothing on its black slime but grisly reeds\u2014\n  Where steams and groans Cocytus, and Styx holds\n  Prisoners within its nine coils and folds\u2014\n  A legion of the newly dead, entombed\n  In Limbo, till ripe to be tried and doomed;\n  A fearful gathering, bodies stripped of life,\n  Yet moving; some in pairs, husband and wife,\n  Girls who had virgins died, and beardless youths,\n  With parents\u2019 kisses warm upon their mouths;\n  And some though freed from flesh ignorant where\n  Their dwelling fixed, sad phantoms, thin as air.\n  Each waiting judgment; now forgetting all\n  Griefs in a greater, in the musical\n  Challenge to Dis to yield its prey; while, on\n  And on, the chant rolled, till its way it won\n  Past the black realms of ancient Erebus,\n  Past too the torture cells of Tartarus,\n  Where cold-blue snakes, the Furies\u2019 locks that tied,\n  By the trespassing strain, charmed, stupefied,\n  Drew in their fangs, Ixion\u2019s wheel made pause,\n  And, one shocked wide gape, stood Cerberus\u2019s triple jaws.\n\n    At last, at last! a Palace flaming high\n  With angry flashes from a mocking sky;\n  And, seated on twin thrones, the King and Queen,\n  Garbed in life-which-is-death\u2019s Infernal sheen;\n  Both silent; but, as whispered soft and low\n  The lyre, stern Proserpine remembered how\n  A girl plucked flowers. As nursery rhymes\n  On dying ears, returned old happy times,\n  Sunshine, and the sweet thought, if mixed with pain,\n  A mother\u2019s toil to have her child again.\n  Paradise for Hell\u2019s Queen once more to know\n  That She had heart to feel for others\u2019 woe!\u2014\n  For her Lord to see, transfigured, ere a crown\n  Burned on her brow, the maid he had brought down\n  To Hell; and she answering his eyes, cried:\n  \u201cMinstrel, depart in peace, and with thy Bride!\u201d\n    The Manes registered the high decree,\n  Adding that, since no mortal eyes may see\n  Spirit take flesh, Orpheus must be resigned,\n  Till Earth was reached, never to look behind.\n  And as they wrote and sealed what their Queen spoke,\n  From unseen instruments weird music broke,\u2014\n  An owlet\u2019s hooting, a swan\u2019s dying cry\u2014\n  A rapture near akin to agony.\n\n    Orpheus turned, or was led; more felt than heard\u2014\n  Passing the gates\u2014as when a babe has stirred,\n  Dreaming\u2014a sigh; but, venturing no glance\n  Anywhere, or speech, walked as in a trance.\n  Save, as if strings snapt, the lyre stammered out\n  A spasm of jarred notes wandering about,\n  Nor glad nor sad; the harper scarce aware\n  Of the music that he made; or how far\n  He had gone, through what scenes of bale or bliss,\n  Since he quitted the royal halls of Dis;\n  Trembling only lest the whole dream might take\n  Flight, like his rapt girl-Bride, and he awake\n  To find himself, widowed, lost, as before,\n  Companionless upon the wild sea-shore.\n    And yet. Was it not breath, a woman\u2019s breath,\n  Fanning his cheeks? Could even unkind Death\n  Have the heart to cheat, with the goal so near?\n  Was not the light he saw day\u2019s, warm and clear?\n  And, sure, the landscape spread before his view\n  Was of meadows and woods, all which he knew?\n  Phantoms, begone! Here was his spring-tide come,\n  And his Bride with him, out of Hades, home!\n  Sudden, an avalanche\u2014compound\u2014Earth, Hell\u2014\n  Long chained\u2014irresistible passion\u2014fell,\n  Defying thought, fear! his hand left the string\n  But just caressed; his throat forbore to sing\u2014\n  That he might clasp and kiss;\u2014one look behind!\n  A world of travail scattered to the wind!\n\n    Heav\u2019n forgives seven sins if love the cause;\n  The plea doubles guilt when Hell\u2019s the brok\u2019n laws.\n  Hark how the grinning host of demons howls!\n  And oh! the crash pealing over Hell\u2019s pools!\n  Naught heard he, but that cried Eurydice,\u2014\n  Regained, re-lost:\n                    \u201cAlas! for Me and Thee!\n  I feel hands, the inexorable Fates,\n  Speeding back within the Infernal gates;\n  My swimming eyes, just tasting of Earth\u2019s light,\n  I know are being sealed by a large Night.\n  See! how I stretch vain arms around, and grope\n  For thee in darkness, hoping without hope!\n  E\u2019en now how lightly should I life resign,\n  Could I remember I had once been thine!\u201d\n    Silence! From sight, hearing, passed she apart,\n  Leaving measureless void within his heart.\n  He ran, striving to clutch a ghost in vain;\n  Pursuing with vain words; never again\n  Looked he upon her; nor could he prevail\n  Upon Hell\u2019s Ferryman to let him scale\n  The walls, swimming the moat, and again win,\n  By weeping, or by music, his way in,\n  Then move or force its warders to restore\n  His stolen Bride to his fond arms once more.\n    Poor Ghost! No third time destined she to float\n  Over foul Styx in Charon\u2019s crazy boat!\n  But, hapless, doomed to swell the cavalcades\n  Of lifeless bodies, and of fleshless shades;\n  Nor one, nor other she; just borne along,\n  Drift on the tide\u2014refrain to an old song\u2014\n  Yet, flickering, like shadows on a wall,\n  Or rainbow gleaming from a water-fall,\n  A throb, a thrill, a joy though set in dole\u2014\n  For Lethe could not wash away the whole\u2014\n  That she reward had been of each sharp pang\n  By Orpheus borne, theme of each song he sang.\n\n    Conscious if voiceless, she. And he? The lyre\n  Which, while its master hoped, had quenched its fire,\n  Was ever confidant of his despair,\n  The instrument commissioned to declare\n  His wrongs. They tell who know, that in a cave\n  Humid and bare, desolate as new grave,\n  At the foot of a tall cliff, hung with ice,\n  By Strymon\u2019s gloomy waters, for full twice\n  A hundred days and nights, singing he wept;\n  Like a nightingale cruelly bereft\n  Of all her young ones in the poplar grove,\n  With nothing for her any more to love,\n  Or live for, but to gaze upon her nest,\n  And mourn, the night through, all she once possessed,\n  Till overflows the wood where she complains,\n  With the sweet melancholy of her strains.\n    So longed he, and so played; changing at times\n  To lands yet lonelier, and harsher climes;\n  Arctic ice-fields crossed, forded snowy Don,\n  Camped on Scythian heaths, where yews keep-on\n  Eternal pall of frost;\u2014always in quest\n  Of postern into Hell, whence he might wrest\n  Audience of its Lords, and with his tale\n  Of unreal gifts, all pre-ordained to fail,\n  Oblige them to repeat for very shame\n  A boon Hell granted only to reclaim.\n    No more than this? This his one hope and theme?\n  This, sum of his powers? And this a dream!\n  A dream? And yet the key\u2014magic of Art!\u2014\n  Which could unlock at will a tiger\u2019s heart,\n  And, as notes rose and fell in cadence, made\n  Triumphal arches of each sylvan glade;\n  For true passion a hearing aye commands,\n  And speaks a tongue all Nature understands.\n    No more than that it had killed care to bless\n  More than one life, and left a wilderness!\n  And that it fell on Virgil to recall\n  A legend\u2014would that it lied!\u2014how, when all\n  The land\u2019s women, Bacchus-fired, and distraught\n  By hymns that Orpheus in glad days had taught,\n  Had pressed him into the wild dance they led\n  Nightly through torch-lit forests, and he fled\n  In horror, as at treason to his love,\n  They, infuriate more the more he strove,\n  Followed, reckless of all but the mad chase,\n  Down to the Hebrus from the hills of Thrace,\n  And tore him limb from limb: but still the tongue,\n  As the wild current rolled the head along,\n  Called on \u201cEurydice\u201d; and till the sea\n  Received it, bank to bank returned \u201cEurydice\u201d!\n\n    Pardon, my Master, if I\u2019ve dared re-think\n  A thought, or, standing on the outer brink\n  Of a deep pool, would with a pebble thrown\n  Measure your depth of feeling by my own.\n  But You the cause, the tempter;\u2014who could read\n  A tale like yours, and not pursue each deed\n  From impulse to the act\u2014complete a scene\n  With such small details as there may have been?\n  So cunningly you made romance to live\u2014\n  I trespassed on your stage; You must forgive!\n\n\n\n\nPraise of Italy\n\nP. VIRGILII MARONIS Georgicon, Bk. II. vv. 136-176\n\n\n    This our world has beauties everywhere;\n  Grand are your forests, Medes, and wondrous fair;\n  Travellers to Blest Araby have told\n  Of sands that grow frankincense, streams of gold;\n  Strange legends run of bulls with fire for breath,\n  Dragons sowing plains with myriad teeth,\n  Till in the place of harvest\u2019s yellow ears\n  A battle field gleamed with steel helms and spears.\n    Leave me the land I live in, where kind earth\n  Yields real grain, a hundredfold at a birth;\n  And purple grapes of every laden vine\n  Laugh with the girls that tread them into wine.\n  Glad all life! In the olive, as each day\n  Ripens its juices; cattle, as they play\n  Amid rich herbage; the warrior steed,\n  Curvetting with arched neck about the mead.\n  Even the snow-white ram, and mighty bull,\n  Joy, as, Clitumnus, on them dashes full\n  Thy hallowed flood, to be chosen to escort\n  A Roman Triumph to Jove\u2019s Temple-Court.\n  Ever; from young Spring, that, keeping the doors\n  Of Winter and of Summer, with soft show\u2019rs\n  Melts March frosts, and returning with a gay,\n  Late Zephyr laughs the Dog-star\u2019s heats away;\n  To Summer, that at call, whate\u2019er the Hour,\n  Re-stocks the fold, and bids the orchard flow\u2019r.\n    Fruitfulness everywhere\u2014all things good;\n  No savage lions, tigers mad for blood,\n  No scaly pythons, gathered, coil on coil,\n  Into one orb, to hurl it on the spoil;\n  No wolf\u2019s-bane, with its mystic-purple bloom\n  Tempting rash herb-collectors to their doom;\n  But Nature, kind in that which She denies,\n  Kind above all whenever She allies\n  With human effort.\u2014\n                        Mark how She has filled\n  The vales with rocks that cry: \u201cCome, take, and build!\u201d\n  How, to crown the work, She has bid beside\n  Each citadel\u2019s sheer walls a river glide.\n  No Libyan desert ours, but a land\n  Of many streams, where in cool shadows stand\n  Knee-deep the still kine; and of lakes good store,\n  Como\u2019s to Garda\u2019s sea-imitating roar;\n  Of highways for her navies, east and west,\n  To circulate, world-through, Rome\u2019s high behest;\n  Glorious service theirs, though the salt waves,\n  Sulking outside new ports in echoing caves,\n  Affect to murmur at decrees they know,\n  When C\u00e6sar sets them bounds, they must allow.\n    Even for silver, brass and gold itself,\n  If Italy deigned boast of vulgar pelf,\n  She might just claims to be considered raise.\n  But she has titles, nobler far, to praise.\n  Hers the seed-bed, harvest, ever have been\n  Of men, of fighters, hardened, sharp, and keen,\n  Bred north and south, east and west, with, from Rome,\n  Chiefs to lead forth, and bring them victors home.\n  Band of mighty Shades! Ah! mightiest Thou\n  Who schoolest the insolent Hindoo now,\n  How weak is strength, valour no better than\n  Cowardice, when our C\u00e6sar leads the van!\n    Hail to Giver of wane, and oil, and corn!\n  Hail, Shrine of ancient peace, ere Jove was born!\n  Hail, Mother of Men, real Men, source and spring\n  Of precious arts I love, of all I sing!\n  At thy call, my Italy, parent, nurse,\n  Unsealing primal well-heads, I rehearse\n  Pure rustic themes long since discoursed upon\n  Myrtle-clad slopes of musical Helicon!\n\n\n\n\nHappy Husbandmen\n\nGeorgicon, Bk. II. vv. 458-540\n\n\n    Of all rewards that Heav\u2019n bestows on toil,\n  Which is the peer of yours who till the soil!\n  Would you exchange with them who sue the great\n  For place or alms? Read, as they pass the gate,\n  On this face wrath, envy on that, and gall;\n  And, worst, the death of self-respect on all.\n    \u2019Tis yours to breathe an atmosphere of peace,\n  Suitors of earth that knows not of caprice;\n  That grieves to disappoint a hope, and pours\n  Into expectant laps a choice of stores,\n  Sounding changes high and low, grave and gay,\n  On the vast organ Nature loves to play.\n  Learn from a farm to work, and never tire;\n  An acre is various as a shire;\n  Labour and rest there alternating meet,\n  Each indistinguishably good and sweet;\n  Ah! the murmurous quiet in the wide\n  Homesteads, where, in the intervals, beside\n  Bubbling brooks, in cool valleys, \u2019neath green boughs\n  You slumber, lullabied by lowing cows.\n  Winter anon, earth\u2019s holiday; and then\n  To rouse the wild boar in his fenny den:\n  Sport dear to youth\u2019s blood racing fast and pure,\n  Content with simple joys, trained to endure.\n    Nor at one season, but throughout the year,\n  Be sure the Gods fail not of love and fear:\n  While no chimney corner but makes a shrine\n  Where to tend a grandsire all but divine.\n  If Justice has not yet forsaken Earth,\n  \u2019Tis that she lingers on some cottage hearth!\n\n    Ancestral guardians of my home forgive,\n  Pan, too, and Sylvan, if I do not live\n  The life I praise; but ere I knew its charms,\n  The choir of Muses wooed me to their arms,\n  Taught me an eager child their sacred lore,\n  Arts I still love; and fain had taught me more\u2014\n  To map Heav\u2019n\u2019s paths, number its stars, and trace\n  Why wanes the moon; when veils the sun his face,\n  Hastes purple-clad to sink on Ocean\u2019s breast,\n  And stays Night\u2019s course for him and Man to rest;\n  Where growling earthquakes breed; and why seas feign\n  To roar in wrath, and straightway laugh again.\u2014\n  Something I learned; and blest had been my state,\n  If gifted with the will and powers by Fate\n  To follow Nature to her primal cause,\n  And coax from her the meaning of her laws;\n  Like him, too early lost, who told us how\n  To spurn at all it is not Man\u2019s to know,\n  To count it shame to dread Death, as to weep\n  At putting off our shoes to go to sleep.\n  But my blood chills\u2014poor thing, it cannot find\n  Air it may breathe\u2014where soars aloft sheer Mind.\n    Yet why lament that the Seer\u2019s part is not\n  For me, when mine the sweet, if humbler, lot\u2014\n  To light and feed a poet\u2019s holy fire;\n  Rapt from myself to feel a God inspire\n  The visions that I see, the words I pen\u2014\n  The message that I bring my fellow men\u2014\n  Bound, if the Muse decrees, to soar away\n  Where rolls Spercheios, or girls dance and play\n  On Spartan hills, or to some forest dell\n  Of snowy H\u00e6mus; while, I know it well,\n  That far so ever as I seem to roam,\n  My spirit always will return to home,\n  Predestined to no inglorious themes\u2014\n  My native fields, and woods, and sparkling streams,\n  And the race no less that those vales frequent,\n  Simple husbandmen, wholly innocent\n  Of ill, though shrewd, keen to resent a wrong;\n  For whom I meditate my pastoral song.\n  Fancy will wander oft to lands unknown,\n  But finds the thoughts to dwell on in its own.\n  Italian peasant I, and would rehearse\n  Our peasants\u2019 virtues in Italian verse.\n\n    Let me recall a neighbour good and kind,\n  Loving the ancient methods, disinclined\n  To quit his fathers\u2019 ways; nor bard nor sage;\n  Who just has served the soil from youth to age.\n  No Mysteries for him; enough to adore\n  The rustic Gods his sires revered of yore.\n  All one to him who shall the Consul be\u2014\n  This or that\u2014our Rome stands eternally.\n  He cares not about Kings; so much he knows;\n  Rome crowned; and, when she wills, Rome can depose.\n  Faint echoes reach the country from the Town\n  Of swarms of Dacian pirates rowing down\n  Ister; and of brothers by brothers slain;\n  C\u00e6sar\u2019s charge that\u2014and his to garner grain.\n  Sometimes the calm is broken by the wealth\n  Of courtiers seeking country air for health;\n  Why envy when the whole that they possess\n  Has not distilled a drop of happiness!\n  Or one may stumble by, diseased and old,\n  With scarce a rag to shield him from the cold;\n  The good-man helps; he pities; does not grieve;\n  Is grateful he can give, need not receive.\n    Statesmen will strive, he counts his orchard\u2019s yield,\n  And reaps his harvest from the willing field.\n  A realm may fall, loud lawyers rule the Court,\n  Heirships be changed by some forgot report,\n  Adventurers new seas explore, or rush\n  On foreign swords in thirst for gold, or push\n  Into proud palace halls; while he instead\n  Drives his curved plough, and mows the yellow mead.\n  Hence herds deserving well their ample cheer,\n  With all the genial labours of the year.\n  Hence too the tribute that he gladly brings\n  To his Penates, modest offerings\u2014\n  Kind \u201cLittle People,\u201d blest where\u2019er ye come\n  Compacted of an atmosphere of Home!\n  Hence, above all, what may his native land\n  Of labour, store, nay, of his life demand!\n  True Roman, few as he of Rome so proud;\n  None readier to give her goods and blood!\n    Meantime no season comes without its call;\n  Not one would he away; he loves them all\u2014\n  Cries between laugh and wail from lambs new-born,\n  Sheaves in the close-packed barn of golden corn,\n  Groans of content from home-returning sows,\n  The woodlands\u2019 crackling thuds of severed boughs,\n  Pyramids of red apples, row on row,\n  And vineyards purpling in late Autumn\u2019s glow,\n  Till with the olives\u2019 rendering of oil\n  Winter winds up the victories of toil.\n  Content the master, with glad welcoming eyes,\n  As crop to crop succeeds, each a surprise,\n  Yet taking each its place in order clear,\n  The grand procession of the fruitful year!\n\n    Harmonious whole, made up, hopes and cares,\n  Mind\u2019s, Body\u2019s work, in not unequal shares;\n  With grateful pauses, as when whirlwinds cease\n  To riot in a wood, and there is peace.\n  Thus Eve; Man\u2019s truce, nor his alone, for play;\n  But Nature\u2019s universal holiday.\n  Stall-wards, devious steps, the cattle pass,\n  Their udders richly furnished; on the grass\n  With harmless horns kids wrestle; while a band,\n  Children and Wife, contend to clasp his hand,\n  And kiss his lips; he happy in the pride\n  Of love which chastity has sanctified.\n  And days as well there are, when the farm feasts,\n  The host reclining amid friends, his guests;\n  High flame the hissing logs, wine-cups are crowned,\n  And vows and healths to Gods and men go round;\n  On equal terms master with shepherds vies,\n  As archer, or as wrestler, for a prize.\n    Thus sprang a race, the wonder of the earth,\n  Suckled by Sabine mothers\u2014as, at birth,\n  Their king by wild werewolf\u2014twin strains with those,\n  Blending of Tuscan lords, high Lucumos;\n  Till from Seven Hills, in one wall, see come,\n  Mistress of a world, Imperial Rome!\n  Noblest of Monsters! beautiful as brave,\n  And strong at once to conquer, and to save.\n\n    Yet sometimes dream I legends strange and sweet,\n  Ere Nymphs nursed Jove upon a hill of Crete,\n  Of days when Earth, a garden bright and fair,\n  Gave Man fruits as easily as the air\n  He breathed; when all that trod or flew had part\n  In a large brotherhood of sense and heart,\n  And it could scarce have seemed to human mind\n  More hideous to batten on its kind,\n  Than with as unnatural zest to heap\n  Impious boards with flesh of steer and sheep;\n  When no war-bugle blew its summons shrill,\n  Or forge had fitted hands with swords to kill;\n  When Saturn planted here below his throne\u2014\n  The Age of Gold, when Heaven and Earth were one!\n\n\n\n\nA Tarentine Garden\n\nGeorgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 116-148\n\n\n    My helm points landwards; and yet would I fain\n  Re-commission my Muse, and sail again.\n  The breezes, as I coast by P\u00e6stum, bring\n  Its twice-blowing rosebeds\u2019 scent; I would sing,\n  But for emulous themes, how to inlay\n  A garden\u2019s borders with a rich array\n  Of rainbow-hued gems that a loving care\n  Joys to persuade them in due course to wear.\n  Use and delight will play an equal part,\n  Where\u2019er the garden\u2019s master has a heart.\n  How fresh the curly endive there! how green\n  The parsley on the bank! Almost is seen\n  A melon swell, as with good cheer it fills\n  Itself \u2019mid the grass from glistening rills!\n  Everywhere a hand and head that know,\n  To harvest in its season, we must sow,\n  And from a sense no less of order, will\n  Take heed that the late-blooming daffodil,\n  Pliant acanthus, myrtles from sea-wave\n  Drawing the pungent fragrance that they have,\n  And grey-green ivies, form each its own zone\n  In one plot\u2014many gardens out of one.\n    For I have marked what wonders may be wrought\n  By gardeners mixing seeds and roots with thought.\u2014\n  In shadows craggy Tarentum\u2019s tow\u2019rs throw,\n  An old Cilician, cast up, who knows how,\n  By war, or vagrant mood, had grant, or none\u2014\n  Some waste acres\u2014to live or starve upon.\n  Though black Galeso waters a wide space\n  Of yellow cornfields, and rich gardens grace\n  Villas hard by, the scrub of this poor Stray\n  Would, it might seem, have not sufficed to pay,\n  As rough ploughland, a yoke of oxen\u2019s keep,\n  Or meanly pastured half a dozen sheep.\n  As for potherbs, its thorns as likely would\n  Have brought forth grapes as a man\u2019s simplest food.\n  Yet somehow sprang, to share with them the ground,\n  Colewort, vervain, with, here and there, around,\n  Lilies, and poppies\u2014scant crop; but not great\n  The Stranger\u2019s hopes. At night returning late\n  To the cheerless hut his own hands had raised,\n  Laden with unbought dainties these, he praised\n  His happy fortune from a more grateful breast\n  Than a king seated at his unearned feast!\n\n    I marked how he began; when next I came,\n  Transformed the garden! Gardener the same.\n  His the first roses, though an unkind spring,\n  And ripe apples ere leaves were yellowing.\n  While frost splintered the rocks, and ice and snow\u2014\n  Winter fighting March\u2014bridled Galeso\u2019s flow,\n  He plucked Iris tresses, in mock distress\n  At missing Zephyrs, Summer\u2019s tardiness!\n  Not his hives to fail in queen bees; no swarm\n  Of his was ever known to come to harm;\n  Earliest the honey from his combs pressed;\n  For who judged like him which flow\u2019rs bees love best?\n  Master the old man in tree-craft as well;\n  His, choicest stone-pines, limes; for he could tell\n  By instinct where to plant; and as for yield\n  Of fruit, spring\u2019s promise autumn aye fulfilled!\n  He planted, and transplanted, as he chose\n  Full-grown elms, hardwood pears, plum-grafted sloes;\n  Even a leafy plane he dared to move\u2014\n  Nor hurt\u2014to a fresh home within the grove.\n\n    Two thousand years ago the old man died;\n  And Nature that, with some laws, he defied,\n  Will, patient, not forgetful, at his death\n  Have returned arcades, flow\u2019r beds, to waste heath.\n  Tradition shadows not their place.\u2014\n                                      His name?\n  The Bard has not handed it down to fame.\n  A sudden vision of his youth, no more\n  Than a parenthesis of lines, some score.\n  In words how little we are told;\u2014and yet\n  How impossible for us to forget\n  That haunting figure, in his parterres made\n  Out of the wild with his own brain for spade!\n  For not in Virgil\u2019s verse alone he lives;\n  In all Earth\u2019s gardens the \u201cCorycian\u201d survives!\n\n\n\n\nA Golden Age\n\nBucolica, Ecl. IV. Pollio vv. 1-63\n\n\n  Muses of Sicily, if I rehearse\n  Our peasants\u2019 pleasures, toils, in Latin verse,\n  I owe your idylls that my heart beats true\n  To the kind honest lot that once I knew;\n      And frames visions I have seen,\n      Still, in woods and pastures green.\n\n  Nature, changed, lives. Ages-leaves in a blast\u2014\n  Flutter away, in dreams, all dead and past;\u2014\n  Fleeting, alike ease that pays righteous toll,\n  And triumphs won from agonies of soul.\n      For when Fancy plays at Thought\n      In Dreamland, Time, Space are nought.\n\n  Slumber I, or wake? Is it that the long\n  Iron Age dies, as in the Sibyl\u2019s song?\n  Does Justice return? Saturn wear his crown?\n  From high Heaven does a God-child come down?\n      Does Pollio\u2019s Consulate\n      The Golden Age reinstate?\n\n  Reconciler of old friends! Yours the care\n  To efface bloodstains of the past, prepare\n  For the advent of a Peace-maker, heal\n  Aches\u2014foreboding fresh horrors\u2014that we feel.\n      He comes! be a path paved, meet\n      To be trod by Holy feet!\n\n  A noble task to clear and keep a space\n  Where you shall model a heroic race\n  On yourself\u2014fit, if few, companions made\n  For their future Chief, nor without the aid\n      Of Gods visible, as he\n      In his Paradise shall be.\n\n  In the womb now! and in their charge the Birth,\n  Sun\u2019s, Moon\u2019s, of the most precious Thing on Earth!\n  Not for ten full months must the Babe see light!\n  Keep watch and ward, Day\u2019s Lord, Lady of Night!\n      Be Peace throughout! hold your breath,\n      Thunders above, fires beneath!\n\n  Born! you lie, Babe, lapped in the calm, warm air;\n  Earth laughs with blissfulness to see you there.\n  Goats fain would suckle you; while you are near,\n  They feel they have nought from wild beasts to fear.\n      Snakes die; nightshade bids its root\n      Nurture no fair traitor fruit.\n\n  Touch the ground; flowers of all hues will spring;\n  Of sweetest scent, and with no thorns to sting;\n  Such as the common wayside thickets know,\n  Or nowhere but in palace gardens blow.\n      Ivy, Assyrian nard\n      Sue alike for your regard;\n\n  And grateful you for each; the mean, the rare\n  To your frank childishness as welcome are.\n  Tossing your naked limbs on the glad sod\n  You know not you will be\u2014perhaps are\u2014a God!\n      Yea, Child, who, than you all love,\n      More Divine in Heav\u2019n above!\n\n  Ev\u2019n when babyhood becomes boyhood, still\n  Nature spreads her bounty in sheer good-will.\n  Honey from the sturdy oak, like dew, drips;\n  Briers press purple grapes on thirsting lips;\n      And from unploughed fields are borne\n      Yellow sheaves of beardless corn.\n\n  But stifle human wants with plenty, lust\n  Of unneighbourliness creeps from the dust.\n  Merchants here and there about ocean roam,\n  Snatching subsistence given free at home;\n      Robbers build forts whence to spoil;\n      Shares rend the protesting soil.\n\n  Germs, mixed\u2014crude, human restlessness\u2014its need\n  For peril and adventure\u2014or rank greed,\n  That had hid underground, from shame to break\n  \u201cGod\u2019s Truce,\u201d and keep the wondrous Babe awake,\n      Had been struggling to survive;\n      The spell is lifted; they live.\n\n  A fresh Argo will seek another Fleece;\n  Sin of a second Paris murder peace;\n  A new Achilles set streams in wroth flood\n  Rushing to the sea red with Trojan blood.\n      No more, Boy, know ye of it\n      Than in brave tales poets writ.\n\n  Of Earth, not of it, you move to and fro,\n  A mystery; wherever you may go,\n  Carrying a blessing! Your one main care\n  To learn what Heroes, like your Father, are;\n      What, Virtue;\u2014revealed to them\n      Who prize it ere priced a gem.\n\n  Then, your eyes, a boy\u2019s, that had closed at night\n  On a garden-land bathed in crimson light,\n  Open to find yourself of man\u2019s estate,\n  Named Dictator of a mad world by Fate;\u2014\n      Grasping no steel sword in hand;\n      With no Armies to command.\n\n  My vision is blurred.\n                        As from graves, a host,\n  Chaos, rose, went back at dawn a ghost.\n  But mortal may not, ev\u2019n in sleep, behold\n  Heaven at work Man\u2019s being to remould.\n      Enough to witness when Earth\n      Has undergone its new birth;\n\n  How without pruning hook, or drudging bull,\n  The press ran wine, the granaries were full;\n  And traders finding wares from foreign lands\n  They had risked life to store, left on their hands,\n      Gave up voyaging abroad;\n      Let alone the Ocean road.\n\n  Ah! Joy, the world \u2019twas given me to view!\n  All that\u2019s fair in the Old, kind in the New!\n  How Nature, impelled by but one desire\n  To grant her loved children all they require,\n      Never tires to please them; still\n      Paints the lily at their will,\n\n  Varies the rainbow\u2019s order, gilds the gold\n  On Ebro\u2019s banks, dyes the wool in the fold,\n  Wooes by soft stratagems her nursling, Man,\n  To feel motherliness in all her plan\n      Of change for him, while she shows\n      Her own bliss in a dog-rose!\n\n  Fate has decreed; the Destinies obey\n  Eternal laws, and bid their spindles play:\n  \u201cMarch, Ages, without break!\u201d\n                              Time presses on!\n  You, of race Divine, Jove\u2019s adopted Son,\n    High honours, great tasks await;\n    Swerve not at the call of Fate!\n\n  The arched world bows; the sea\u2019s long currents raise\n  Glad crests; Heaven\u2019s blue depths chant hymns of praise\n  For the good days coming. With one consent\n  The Universe prepares for merriment.\n    Winter was it? Now, \u2019tis Spring;\n    Hark! the woods are carolling!\n\n  \u201cMay it be given me to outstay death\u2014\n  If I but keep so much of life as breath\n  To tell, my Prince, your deeds! My theme, not I,\n  Will Orpheus and Linus in song defy,\n    Though Muse-Mother, and God-Sire\n    Stand by, and their sons inspire.\n\n  Nay, I range in Arcady; and should Pan\n  Grace by a challenge on the pipe a man,\n  I must take up the glove\u2014the meanest clod,\n  On equal terms competing with a God\u2014\n    And win! for I you acclaim;\n    Then, what can he but the same?\u201d\n\n  A smile! and, Babe, I would that I could deem\n  You meant it for pleasure at my Day-dream.\n  I know \u2019tis a return for those on you;\n  And that you can ne\u2019er repay debts thus due.\n    Blest you so to have learned, while\n    In your cradle, how to smile!\n\n  Alas for the child who, by guilt, or guile,\n  Lives disinherited of parents\u2019 smile.\n  For whom no fellowship of Gods or grace,\n  From birth condemned, an outcast of his race!\n    In your Palace, at your call\n    Shall not welcome be for all?\n\n\n\n\n\u00c6neas in Hades\n\nP. VIRGILII MARONIS, \u00c6neidos, Bk. V. vv. 721-754 and 835-871; Bk. VI. vv.\n1-19 and 41-636\n\n\nLIMBO AND TARTARUS\n\n    Sad with thoughts of Carthage, its Lady fair,\n  Weary and worn with wanderings and care,\n  Mourning his father still, \u00c6neas lay\n  Sleepless, when lo! visible as in day,\n  Though up the heavens drove her car black Night,\n  Anchises, lit with an unearthly light:\n    \u201cMy Son,\u201d he said, \u201chere am I by Jove\u2019s grace;\n  He pities, late, the sorrows of our race,\n  And has sent me to comfort and advise.\n  Let a new Troy in Sicily arise,\n  Peopled by many who would stay behind.\n  With the young and bravest, sail thou, and find\n  A realm in Latium; make its rude tribes feel\n  The temper of their Trojan Master\u2019s steel.\n  But, first, thou to the Nether World descend,\n  And traverse from the threshold to the end\n  In search of me; not that I dwell in Dis,\n  With the curst, but the pleasant fields of bliss.\n  Thither, with, for thy guide, the Sibyl, come\n  To learn thy sons\u2019 deeds in their destined home.\n    But past midnight; the horses of the Sun\n  Pant to speed on their course;\u2014I must be gone!\u201d\n    Full well were Jove\u2019s commands he brought obeyed,\n  And the foundations of the city laid\u2014\n  \u201cAcesta\u201d\u2014as its lord, Acestes hailed;\n  And, wept now by those it left, the fleet sailed.\u2014\n    For Italy sailed; there arrived; and moored\n  Off Cum\u00e6;\u2014\n              but with Pilot none on board.\n  Whether marine God, jealous of a skill\n  In seamanship like his, or, spite of will,\n  Worn out with toil, he failed at last to keep\n  His eyelids from the poppy dew of sleep;\n  Who knows? but he woke, rudder in his hand,\n  Drifting, shouts unheard, to an unknown strand.\n\n    Vain to trace Palinurus and his fate!\n  But all knew where the Sibyl kept her state.\n  In a shrine that Latona\u2019s Children hold,\n  Their joint domain, and D\u00e6dalus of old\n  Adorned with various art, a huge cliff-wall\n  Recedes into a cavern; and thence call,\n  Rushing tumultuous through a hundred doors,\n  As many voices. One roar, the whole, pours.\n  \u00c6neas touched the threshold, when a cry\n  Came from within:\n                    \u201cAsk, and I will reply!\n  Hear! the God!\u201d\u2014\n                    And the Sibyl herself there;\n  She, yet not herself; breathing not our air;\n  No mortal accents from a mortal tongue;\n  Visage, complexion changed, fillet unstrung;\n  Breast stormily heaving; heart all but broke\n  In yet untamed resistance to the yoke\n  The God would fix, to break mind\u2014human birth\u2014\n  To bind his messenger from Heav\u2019n to Earth;\n  While She, though pure, adoring, how not repine,\n  Identity lost, e\u2019en to be Divine!\n  \u2019Twas instinct in her that rebelled; not she,\n  The Prophetess, the Sibyl; for now see\n  Her wrathful for her master\u2019s honour:\u2014\n                                          \u201cThou,\n  Trojan at His altar, and not a vow!\n  Deemest mighty mouth of His awful shrine\n  Will open but to answer prayer from thine?\u201d\n    \u00c6neas had kept silence, not from fear,\n  Or shame, but reverence; now he drew near,\n  Entreating from the bottom of his heart:\n  \u201cPh\u0153bus, Troy\u2019s champion, when few took our part;\n  Through whom Achilles died\u2014whose kindly hands\n  Led us o\u2019er false seas, past perilous lands\u2014\n  O turn the shores where we have anchor cast,\n  From the mirage they were to homes at last.\n  And adverse Gods and Goddesses, to all,\n  I pray, if e\u2019er Troy\u2019s glory stirred your gall,\n  Does not down-fallen Pergamus atone\u2014\n  Is Envy not content with heaps of stone\u2014\n  With Priam\u2019s House uprooted? What are we,\n  Mere remnant tossed till now on every sea?\n  Thee also, holy Prophetess, I ask;\n  Free thy God\u2019s cloudy riddles from their mask;\n  In pity for me, who already know\n  I am to rule Ausonia, unveil how,\n  Where, and when, to found my City, replace\n  Troy\u2019s exiled Gods, Genii of our race;\n  Nor trust thy renderings of what Fate weaves\n  To the chance flutterings of autumn leaves;\n  Chant; and be all transcribed; then, when, in pure\n  Marble fanes, thy God is worshipped, be sure\n  Kings after me shall treasure what is writ,\n  And train up scholars to interpret it.\u201d\n    God and Prophetess listened no more;\u2014\n                                          will\n  Was wrestling to be its own mistress still.\n  A woman with a God! In vain she raves;\n  Subduing lips that foam, breast swollen, waves\n  Of inspiration stamp, rolling along,\n  Apollo\u2019s dictates on the Sibyl\u2019s tongue,\n  Till\u2014again the hundred doors open wide\u2014\n  Ph\u0153bus to \u00c6neas by her replied:\n  \u201cThink not thy work is done because at length\n  Ocean\u2019s dangers are escaped. All thy strength\n  Will be tasked on land; though Latium\u2019s lord\n  Prepares to hail the offer of thy sword,\n  Thou\u2019llt wish thyself soon afar! Look! a flood\u2014\n  Tiber foaming to the sea\u2014of men\u2019s blood.\n  Horrors Simois, Xanthus showed might seem\n  Repeated by thy loath fancy in a dream.\n  Nor even wanting to this war\u2014fell war\u2014\n  An Achilles, Goddess born; Troy\u2019s ill star,\n  Queen Juno; and, of worse augury yet\n  For Trojans, or, of snares that Fate has set\n  For thy feet a surer than all beside\u2014\n  A foreign hostess, and a foreign bride.\n  Face trials; turn thy back upon no foe;\n  By paths, however strait, Chance-opened, go.\n  Where wilt thou not in Italy beg aid?\n  If to no purpose, be not thou dismayed.\n  Fortune loves strange means; how but for me have known\n  Thy dawn would break first from forth a Greek town?\u201d\n    \u00c6neas spoke not; for again the jar,\n  Bellowing, shrieking, roaring\u2014civil war\n  Between Spirit, Divine, and human\u2014This,\n  In last contest to stand by what it is;\n  Planning passages that lead nowhere, in or out,\n  Darkening truths, perversities of doubt;\n  Ph\u0153bus, if thundering, resolved and cold,\n  Certain of victory, ne\u2019er quitting hold;\n  The other, a wild mare on a wild plain.\n  You heard the cold calm trainer shake the rein,\n  Tear mutinous mouth with the cruel bit,\n  Mock at the passion that resented it.\n    Then quiet; \u00c6neas once more began:\n  \u201cSpeak not of risks endurable by man;\n  None daunt me; long since I foresaw the whole,\n  Rehearsed what worst could happen in my soul.\n  I fear no ordeal; if Hell\u2019s gate be here,\n  As they say, and it front the darksome mere\u2014\n  Acheron\u2019s wash\u2014I crave it of thy grace,\n  Holy One, to meet my sire face to face.\n  Never had I been parted from his side\n  Till in an evil hour for me he died.\n  Not in the agony of that dread night,\n  Troy\u2019s ruin, did I lose him from my sight;\n  On these shoulders bore I him \u2019mid the wreck,\n  Though all Hell\u2019s hounds were barking at my back.\n  On my voyagings best of comrades he,\n  In mortal terrors, on every sea;\n  Minding nothing how elements might rage\u2014\n  A heart that defied weaknesses of age!\n  Tell me the foemen that I would not dare\n  To see him once more, pain I would not bear.\n  In the dead watches of the night he came,\n  And bade me supplicate Thee in his name\n  To unbar Hell\u2019s gates, and to be my Guide.\n  Oh think that he is kneeling by my side!\n  Thy will is law; whate\u2019er Thou wilt is done;\n  Mercy we pray; rejoin us, Father, Son.\n  Others have been to whom was given the right,\n  Living, to travel through the world of night.\n  Its doors, as Orpheus sounded lute and song,\n  Opened to let the minstrel pass along;\n  Fraternal tenderness has paved a way\n  To and from twilight to radiant day;\n  Alcides\u2014did not friendship bring him down?\n  Theseus also\u2014if but that!\u2014\n                            Me, love\u2019s crown,\n  The noblest, filial piety, draws,\n  Though into Tartarus\u2019s very jaws!\n  By no bare title holdest thou in fee\n  Avernus by gift from great Hecate;\n  Thine leave to grant, with me the right of love\n  To visit Hell\u2014and I too count from Jove!\u201d\n    \u201cEasy,\u201d replied the Sibyl, \u201cthe descent\n  To Avernus; welcome all thither bent;\n  Dis shuts none out; the task is, when the taste\n  For sunshine revives, measure back the waste\n  Wooded wilderness that Cocytus holds\n  In its innumerable black-slime folds.\n  What hope for mortals flesh-clogged to retrace\n  Their way! A few by Jupiter\u2019s good grace,\n  Or saints on earth, with blood Divine to aid,\n  Of brief sojourn there stepping-stones have made\n  To the skies.\u2014\n                  But enough! Well that the sight\n  Of thy Sire is a passionate delight;\n  That thy fond heart\u2019s self-satisfying sense\n  Of duty done is a full recompense\n  For risking the mad liberty to float\n  Twice across noisome Styx in Charon\u2019s boat;\n  And twice view Tartarus,\u2014\n                              Yet first receive\n  The terms on which alone Thou hast thy leave;\n    In a nest of dells retired is a grove,\n  Darkened by shadows of the hills above;\n  And a tree, sun-proof, whose dense branches hold\n  Ever among them one of purest gold;\n  Gold leafage, gold saplings supple, yet tough;\n  Vain for any, though brave, and fond enough,\n  To plunge in the Underworld; unless he\n  Have tracked and plucked the Gold Bough off the Tree.\n  The Queen of Hades, Proserpine the Fair,\n  Chooses offerings thence for her to wear,\n  Never loses the tree glory; instead\n  Of branch plucked a second straightway is bred,\n  Thou, high and low, explore; and, if Thou find,\n  Lay hold on it; should Fate have Thee designed,\n  It will yield with ease, even joy; if not,\n  Nor strength, nor steel could tear it from the spot.\n  And \u2019tis not all; another duty still\n  Rests on thee, and a sadder, to fulfil.\n  While thou would\u2019st learn the future in my cave,\n  A friend has been lying dead, with no grave\u2014\n  To the entire Fleet a reproach, a shame.\n  First give his relics tomb, and rites, they claim.\n  So, may\u2019st thou with clean hands thy way pursue;\n  And realms forbid shall open to thy view.\u201d\n    A tangled maze! With a past bleak and bare,\n  A future of dim hopes, and certain care;\u2014\n  A corse blurring the foreground! And of whom?\n\n    Then, as \u00c6neas paced the shore in gloom,\n  Achates with him, see! a Body there!\n  Misenus, trumpeter, charioteer!\n  He drowned, and how? that horseman tried and good,\n  Hard and intrepid spearman, who had stood\n  The brunt of battle, as of rough sea-wave,\n  Of Hector and \u00c6neas comrade brave\u2014\n  There, like worthless seaweed, see! Misenus dead!\n  In eyes stark staring might almost be read\n  An appeal as if to Heaven, and Fate,\n  Against false friends who left him desolate!\n  And, true, \u2019twas pity touching on remorse,\n  Which swept through the armament, when the corse\n  Was drawn to the encampment on the shore.\n  The first thought, the Prince led, was to deplore\n  A comrade; the next, the pyre, to proceed\n  To raise, as to One who could intercede\n  In Heaven, what an altar might have been.\n  A primeval forest that had never seen\n  Woodman, or, profaning its silence, heard\n  The horn of huntsman chasing beast or bird,\n  Suddenly awoke to the frequent crash\n  Of pitch-pine, ilex, and the mountain-ash,\n  While heart of oak had to admit a wedge,\n  And giants rolled down many a hill ledge.\n    In all the toil none bore sturdier part\n  Than \u00c6neas; for he, and with full heart,\n  Grieved for a loyal ally; but his brain,\n  With that central thought, took a wider train:\n  \u201cForests as this,\u201d he mused, \u201cthe whole land through!\n  How to track to one tree a single bough!\n  Yet\u201d\u2014as of Misenus\u2014\u201ccould the Maid tell\n  Ill news so truly, why not good as well?\u201d\n  And ah! that instant, in his joyful sight,\n  Alighting from blue sky, in soft, smooth flight,\n  On the green turf a pair of milk-white doves\n  Such as flit where his Mother, Venus, moves.\n  \u201cAfter them! Oh! to guess whither they make,\n  And match their speed whatever course they take!\u201d\n  Fain would he think the rate was, as they flew,\n  Ruled for pursuit to keep them just in view,\n  To the dark arbour where a yellow glow\n  Should flicker on the verdant turf below.\n    Hope not in vain; the pair, after brief pause\n  For circling Avernus, and its death-jaws,\n  Tower swiftly aloft; next, in straight line\n  Glide to a tree, settle as by design.\n  The Hero arrives, and with heart aflame\n  Marks, checkering green shadows, a gold gleam.\n  Upon a foreign stem the mistletoe\n  Will in the woods a cluster of sprays grow,\n  With berries saffron-hued in winter\u2019s cold.\n  Thus, on the holm-oak swayed the Branch of Gold,\n  Rustling its slight leafage in the soft wind;\n  Coy\u2014rather than resisting, disinclined\u2014\n  As \u00c6neas plucked, in hot haste to bear\n  His prize, and trust it to the Sibyl\u2019s care.\n    Meanwhile, the Trojans thronged, the Dead to mourn\n  With rites for which no thanks could it return.\n  First, they build, a marvel for bulk, the pyre\u2014\n  Pitch-pine for flame, split oak to feed the fire,\n  Cypress, Death\u2019s tribute, armour to remind\n  Of the warrior, twigs the logs to bind.\n  Vast the heap; but, with oil and incense, soon\n  Fire had done its work; and when it died down,\n  All being gone that of the mass could burn,\n  They closed the ashes, wine-washed, in the urn.\n  Then Chorin\u0153us sprinkled thrice the ring\n  Of mourners with pure water from the spring,\n  And bade the Shade, leaving the world above,\n  Last farewell words of sorrowing and love.\n  Yet was the debt the Prince was proud to owe\n  But half-paid to a friend in weal and woe,\n  Till rose a sepulchre, stately and high,\n  For th\u2019 honoured dust enshrined therein to lie.\n  Topped by oar and horn, sword, and spear, and shield,\n  To proclaim the champion of sea and field,\n  It crowns the airy Cape that boasts the name,\n  And through the ages seals a Trojan\u2019s fame.\n    So, drowned Misenus need not wander more\n  Between two worlds on Styx\u2019s groaning shore,\n  Dragging soulless flesh\u2014choke in a foul fen,\n  Companionless for Shadows, and for Men.\n  No more an unburied suppliant this,\n  But Hero, Pilot trumpeting in bliss!\n  And, their consciences purged, with duties done,\n  All turned to fresh cares, leaving Misenus alone.\n\n    The Prince and men, the Sibyl guiding, went\n  By a rough track until a yawning rent\n  In a grim cliff disclosed a cavern; day\n  Was blocked by a dense grove; and in front lay\n  A dim dark pool; from its black lips a breath\n  Steamed into the arched sky, carrying death.\n  On its banks sounded never a bird\u2019s song;\n  Whence \u201cAvernus,\u201d \u201cbirdless\u201d in the Greek tongue.\n  Hard-by the Sibyl hallowed victims, four\n  Steers dusk-coloured; proceeding first to pour\n  Wine on their heads, and on the altar burn\n  Bristles from between the horns she had shorn;\n  Next, by blood calling Hecate, Divine\n  In Heaven as Hell, to further their design.\n  The Prince then to the Furies\u2019 kith and kin\u2014\n  Vain to try their Three vengeful selves to win\u2014\n  Slaughtered a black-fleeced lamb; to Hades\u2019 Queen\n  A cow untaught what mother\u2019s joys had been;\n  And, lastly, after sunset, to the King\n  Of Tartarus, a vast, rich offering\u2014\n  Whole bulls\u2019 entrails upon the altars thrown,\n  With oil to sting the flames to hiss and groan.\n    But the sun rose, and earth began to growl\n  Underfoot, dogs in the grey dawn to howl,\n  And on wooded heights leaves waved in still air,\n  As Nature felt the Goddess coming there.\n    \u201cAway, unsanctified; far from the grove,\u201d\n  Threatens the Sibyl; \u201cas your lives ye love!\n  Alone, \u00c6neas, sword unsheathed, come Thou;\n  Need for stout heart, for all thy courage now!\u201d\n  Prophetess possessed, she dared the dark cave;\n  Step by step followed he, with soul as brave.\n\n    Gods, whose the Spirit-empire, and, ye, hosts\u2014\n  Chaos, Phlegethon, Powers too\u2014of ghosts,\n  Dumb in a dumb world, grant I may unfold\n  Things, of which my spirit by yours is told.\n  Cloudy must my story needs be to him\n  Who reads. All to the pilgrims\u2019 selves was dim!\n    Phantom-like, and alone with night, they passed\n  Through Dis\u2019s kingdom, lifeless, joyless, waste,\n  As, pale and ghostly will a forest seem,\n  Between pale clouds and the moon\u2019s grudging beam.\n\n    The first stage Orcus, where before the gate,\n  In forecourt, watchful, if with closed eyes, wait\u2014\n  Padlocks on Hell\u2019s jaws\u2014Mourning, vengeful Care,\n  In many aspects; pale Disease and Fear,\n  Age looking back, Hunger counselling ill,\n  With Neediness that numbs the nerve of will:\u2014\n  Forms of terror they all; and, no less dread,\n  Death, and Sleep, his cousin, sharing one bed;\n  Labour with a lash, and ill joys that taste\n  Like honey in the mouth, and lay Mind waste;\n  While in guard-houses opposite lodge War,\n  And Carnage driving a funeral car;\n  The Furies too\u2014each in iron-barred cell\u2014\n  Police-runners on Earth, hangmen in Hell;\n  And mad Discord, wreathing her locks of gore\n  With vipers borrowed from her neighbours\u2019 store.\n    For centre an old elm, immense in girth,\n  Keeps sunless, barren, a wide space of earth.\n  Rumour gives it to idle Dreams, which browze\n  Upon the leaves, and hang from all the boughs.\n  Nor far away in the same region dwells\n  Many a strange freak of whom legend tells;\n  Centaurs in the doorway, Scylla, fish, maid,\n  Briareus hundred-headed, arrayed\n  In flames, Chim\u00e6ra, and, bellowing beast,\n  The Hydra, Harpies that pollute a feast,\n  Gorgons looking cold death, and the Earth-King,\n  Who grew a fresh third body at each fling.\n  No stain on \u00c6neas if monsters made\n  Him grip and wave at the dour crew his blade,\n  Until warned by the Sibyl that they were\n  Bodiless Shades, invulnerable as air.\n    Passing unharmed, they now approached the shore\n  Where Acheron, Styx, Cocytus meet, and pour,\n  In one vast whirlpool, mingled filth and sand,\n  And saw upon the bank old Charon stand.\n  Squalid ferryman, he keeps watch and ward\n  Over all these waters and streams; a beard\n  Shaggy, dirty-white, from his chin flows down;\n  Frowzy his cloak tied by a knot; a frown\n  Sits on his brow, o\u2019er eyes twin pools of fire.\n  The barge, poled, sails to help, is, like the sire,\n  In iron-rusty age, but crude-green, good\n  To ship Shades numberless across the flood.\n  In truth masses rush pell-mell to the bank,\n  Dead of all sorts, without order, or rank;\n  Heroes that in their country\u2019s cause had bled,\n  Aged wives and husbands, boys, girls unwed,\n  Youths leaving parents to inscribe the stone,\n  And linger through unwelcome years alone:\u2014\n  As many as the leaves Autumn\u2019s first frost\n  Brings down; as winged swarms that have ocean crossed\n  To escape in warm lands harsh winter\u2019s blasts.\n  Pitiful the entreaties to be passed\n  Over. Some Charon takes, rejects the rest\u2014\n  Perhaps with \u201csad\u201d heart hid inside that rugged breast!\n    Well might \u00c6neas wonder at the haste\n  To reach o\u2019er those waters yon gloomy waste.\n  \u201cCocytus this,\u201d the Maid, \u201cthat Styx, in whose\n  Name Gods dare not swear, and then break their vows;\n  They mark the boundaries of life and death,\n  Between the world above, the world beneath;\n  Spirit cannot claim to pass either flood\n  While it must drag behind it flesh and blood.\n  A way has been appointed and decreed,\n  By funeral rites, for it to be freed\n  From that now mere burden; who lack them pray\n  The Ferryman in vain; driven away,\n  They tread a hundred years the same dull track,\n  Till, less in hope than apathy straying back,\n  They are\u2014disbodied\u2014afloat! It may be,\n  If rarely, that friendship, or charity,\n  Late informed, or remorse for crime, has laid\n  White bones in earth, and thus a debt repaid.\n    \u00c6neas heard, believed; for by him stood,\n  Witnesses to fortune of storm and flood,\n  And Hell\u2019s hard rules, two whom he recognised\n  As of Troy\u2019s remnant, but at sea surprised;\n  By a wild south wind robbed of life and tomb.\n  Leucaspis, Orontes, they; and in doom\n  Alike, though companionless, save for woe,\n  Palinurus!\u201d\n              Exclaimed \u00c6neas: \u201cSo\n  Diedst?\u201d but Ph\u0153bus promised: \u201cNone lost at sea,\n  And all to disembark in Italy?\u201d\n  \u201cThe Oracle spoke truth;\u201d the Pilot said:\n  \u201cClinging to the helm, the fourth morn I made\n  Italy; the while, by the Seas I swear,\n  I feared not for myself; my only care\n  Was for thy ship, its steersman lost, and helm,\n  A prey for waves and gales to overwhelm.\n  But I landed, began to climb the cliff,\n  When brute shore-men taking me, soaked and stiff,\n  And unarmed, for sea-prize, attacked and slew.\n  Then, stripping my body naked, they threw\n  Into the sea, by turns there to abide,\n  And on the beach, at pleasure of the tide.\n  Oh, by the heaven\u2019s cheerful light and airs,\n  By thy Sire\u2019s memory, thy hopes and cares\n  For thy son! to Velia, returning, steer\u2014\n  My body floats hard-by\u2014give it a bier!\n  Or why, my Prince, not take a shorter mode\n  Of lifting my intolerable load?\n  Whate\u2019er thou wilt, thou canst, with, by thy side,\n  A Divine Mother for thy shield and guide.\n  How else could living mortal hope to pass\n  Such rivers, and the Stygian morass?\n  Let me cross with thee; all my griefs will cease;\n  I shall have died at last, and be at peace;\u201d\u2014\n    \u201cUnburied,\u201d cried the Maid: \u201cwithout command\n  From the Furies, presume to tread their strand!\n  Stop importuning for what Fate denies;\n  Heaven has not forgotten thy death-cries;\n  Thy murderers shall avow their foul crime,\n  And thou be honoured to the end of time;\n  For I can teach thee more, to ease the ache\n  Of waiting:\u2014the Cape o\u2019er thy tomb shall take\n  Thy name; seamen, as, doubling it, they sail,\n  Shall muse upon thy death, and tell the tale.\u201d\n    They parted, he to tramp those marshes drear,\n  Where years are moments, a moment a year.\n  And living spirits to dead bodies bound\n  Pace in a tedious circle round and round;\n  Still, with his pain a joy\u2014\u201cMy Cape, my name!\u201d\n  For Death is ne\u2019er so dead as to be dead to Fame!\n\n    Farewell to him. \u00c6neas, with his Guide,\n  Approached, not unobserved, the black stream\u2019s side\n  Charon was on the watch as they pursued\n  Their way along the sad and silent wood.\n  Scarcely had they emerged when he began\n  To scold, and \u00c6neas first: \u201cHalt, armed man,\n  Whoever thou art! No step further! Why\n  Wouldest thou cross? For ghosts alone I ply\n  Bound for the realms of slumb\u2019rous Night and Sleep.\n  Not for live bodies do I ferry keep!\n  Do I not well remember how I crossed\n  With Hercules on board, much to my cost?\u2014\n  Think! Zeus\u2019s son, incomparably strong,\n  Fastened Cerberus with a leathern thong,\n  And drew trembling from under Pluto\u2019s throne!\n  Who paid for the sacrilege? I alone.\n  When Theseus and Pirithous dared try\n  To carry off our Queen, who culprit? I!\u201d\n  \u201cWaste wrath!\u201d quoth the Sibyl: \u201cThy hound may save\n  His bark to fright the pale Shades from his cave.\n  Pluto\u2019s honour is safe; feel no alarms;\n  \u2019Tis \u00c6neas famed for piety and arms!\n  Hither has he descended from above\n  To pay his Sire the homage of his love.\n  Though not moved thou by tenderness like his,\n  See the Branch! Render fealty to This!\u201d\n  At the sight rarely seen the anger sank,\n  Awe followed; straight backed Charon for the bank,\n  Clearing bench and deck of many a Shade\n  To make room for \u00c6neas and the Maid.\n  Starting with its unwonted weight once more,\n  The coracle groaned, leaked at every pore;\n  But lasted out, and at the water\u2019s edge,\n  Landed in clammy mud and grey-green sedge.\n  From where against the landing-place he lay,\n  Cerberus opened his three jaws to bay\n  Strangers, when the Sibyl, seeing the snakes\n  Round the neck arching, threw drugged honey-cakes.\n  The ravening throats licked the whole up; then\u2014\n  While the monstrous limbs grovelled o\u2019er the den\u2014\n  Bidding the rivers none re-cross farewell,\n  The Pair are through the gate, and inside Hell.\n\n    The Underworld, an Empire manifold,\n  Is famed within it two main States to hold;\u2014\n  For the Damned, and Fiends to torment them, Dis,\n  The Elysian fields for Saints in bliss.\u2014\n  But Spirits of the Dead, ere they can come\n  Before their Judge to be assigned a home\n  Among the Blest or Sinners, undergo\n  Two stages of probation; first, we know,\n  For it to be on due inspection clear\n  They are qualified as Ghosts; and, next, where\n  To prepare for trial.\u2014\n                          From graves men rise\n  Shadows, bodiless, but as Death\u2019s surprise\n  Caught them; and therefore shadows of the whole,\n  Of Body with its accidents, and Soul.\n  Such\u2014Ghosts\u2014they wake on Acheron\u2019s dark shore:\n  Such by grim Charon are they ferried o\u2019er;\n  As such they show when rapping at Hell\u2019s gate;\n  And are sorted in vestibules to wait.\n    A few mortals, and living, there have been\n  Who, by the Gods\u2019 leave, in a day have seen\n  The whole Nether World; but e\u2019en its wide marge,\n  Reserved for Untried, would take men at large\n  Their lives to traverse. Reckon! the huge space\n  Needed to lodge the dead of human race!\n  Expectants of a summons to be tried\n  For the lives they led, and the deaths they died!\n  On probation for abjuring Earth and Sun\n  When their work above was not fully done!\n  For being here before it had begun!\n  Causes peopling this land of Little Ease\n  Myriad!\n            body\u2019s accidents, disease,\n  A wild beast\u2019s claws, a sudden east-wind\u2019s blight;\n  Riches, poverty; daring and affright;\n  Jealousies of nations, brothers; the smart\n  Of love rejected, and a broken heart:\n  Hope become despair, as past, present schemes\n  Melt all into the fairy-land of dreams.\n  The victims\u2014\u201cLegion\u201d\u2014seeming still alive\u2014\n  Wait here, distributed in Circles five;\n  Creatures of strange aspect, Earth\u2019s rust inlaid\n  On spirit bearing it without flesh to aid.\n  Wanted a world to lodge the whole; and still\n  Continual accretions, plain, vale, hill,\n  Forest, are reclaimed from Immensity,\n  To hold this wreckage of humanity.\n\n    The first Circle to which were drawing near\n  \u00c6neas and his Guide, might force a tear\n  From hearts of iron; for the entire air\n  Was but a storm of infantile despair;\n  One scream\u2014plaints of robbery of the share\n  In sweet life to which each is born an heir.\n  Only, clasped to their mother\u2019s breasts, of all\n  Promised at birth, they have\u2014a funeral!\n    In the next Circle, less by one degree\n  Adverse their lot who died through perjury;\n  For they can claim revision of their cause\n  By eternal justice, if not man\u2019s laws.\n  Minos holds his high Court; sifts hearts and lives;\n  A mute jury through Urns its verdict gives.\n  Acquittal will not breath of life restore;\n  But the appellant shuns his fellow Shades no more.\n    In the third Circle a sad folk abide,\n  Who go always wondering why they died.\n  Their hands are wet and red with blood they spilt;\n  And yet no neighbour charges them with guilt.\n  Accusers, sternest, themselves keep, within;\n  \u201cGuilty,\u201d they plead; unpardonable sin.\n  If a joy, \u2019tis but to avow their shame;\n  The story\u2019s essence always is the same:\n  \u201cFool I! So wholly hateful did it seem\u2014\n  Torture to my eyes\u2014slant of a sun beam;\n  Needs shut it out forthwith\u2014so simply how,\n  As by sending soul, body straight below?\u201d\u2014\n  Next moment!\n                    if penury, mean toil were\n  The price for breathing once more Earth\u2019s free air,\n  Gladly would all accept Man\u2019s vilest lot,\n  But Hell\u2019s and Heaven\u2019s laws permit it not.\n  Slow Acheron is their eternal bound,\n  With unamiable Styx coiled ninefold around!\n\n    A fourth Circle holds within confines wide\n  \u201cI Campi Dolorosi\u201d; therein hide\n  In secluded alleys, and myrtle grove,\n  Those eaten through with leprosy of love.\n  Death kills it not; for a multitude haunt\n  The bowers, melancholy music chant.\n  With Procris, Laodamia, the rest,\n  The wound, unhealed, still bleeding in her breast,\n  Tyrian Dido roamed in a great wood.\n  \u00c6neas in the leafy twilight stood,\n  Uncertain; as, at the month\u2019s dawn, we doubt\n  If it be moon, or cloud flitting about.\n  Soon recognition, love; and, with them both,\n  Tears, shame, remembrance of his plighted troth:\n  \u201cThen, \u2019twas truth,\u201d he cried, \u201cfloated o\u2019er the sea\u2014\n  Dead\u2014and by thy own hand\u2014and, Queen, for Me!\n  But by the Stars, by all the Gods I know,\n  By what Pow\u2019rs punish perjuries below\u2014\n  Against, I swear, my heart\u2019s will, by commands\n  Divine, I left thy shore for other lands.\n  To please, not myself, but because I must,\n  I pace Shadow-land, mouldy with the rust,\n  Miseries, aches of folly and of crime,\u2014\n  Accumulated hoardings of old Time.\n  An instrument I of the Gods\u2019 fixed plan;\n  Yet even thus would have rebelled as man,\n  Faced the penalties, had I been so vain\n  As to imagine the excess of pain\n  My parting would cause thee!\n                              In pity, stay!\n  Whom flyest thou? I have so much to say!\n  And only one poor moment Fate allows!\n  Rob not of this, the last it grants our vows!\u201d\n    As fruitless task to seek by words to slake\n  Fury of a furnace, as to re-make\n  A broken heart, or back to life surprise\n  Killed fondness.\u2014On earth she fixed sullen eyes;\n  Moved by his prayers no more than by a smile\n  Of Venus would be cliff on Paros\u2019 isle.\n  At last, though long his sad remorse pursued,\n  Gathering her strength, she regained the wood.\n\n    Their route resumed, they reached a land where air\n  Had a stir as of life; hither repair\n  War lords; here the heroes of old fights meet\u2014\n  Adrastus, Parthenop\u00e6us; here greet\n  \u00c6neas friends from Ilium, whose doom\n  Himself had witnessed, wept for, at the tomb;\n  And now re-wept, beholding each a Shade,\n  Though, like Id\u00e6us, in bright armour clad,\n  And charioteering.\n                      On left and right,\n  Not with one look content, they throng; delight\n  To find pretexts to keep him, walk beside;\n  Question why he came, and how long might bide.\n  Not so with the Greeks Agamemnon led;\n  Seeing \u00c6neas\u2019s drawn sword, some fled\n  As once to their Fleet; all quaked; some would shout,\n  Mouths gaped, and the cry, a ghost, quavered out.\n    Shamed at the sight, \u00c6neas, gazing there\n  As they shrank before him, became aware\n  Of a Ghost intent upon their dismay\u2014\n  A Shade continuing the disarray\n  In which life had fled; hands, nostrils and ears\n  Lopped off by vengeful, jealous swords and spears;\n  Lace-work of gashes; the Shade shivered o\u2019er\n  Dishonouring wounds, and bent, striving sore\n  To hide them, and himself.\u2014\n                              Hardly, at last\n  \u00c6neas knew; and, with tears flowing fast,\n  Forced him to turn:\n                        \u201cKnight, Prince, Deiphobus,\n  Whose the force, will, to have outraged thee thus?\n  I had heard, on the death-night of our Town,\n  On a pile slain thou laid\u2019st thee dying down.\n  Thy body I found not, but I addressed\n  Thrice farewell, consigning thy soul to rest.\u201d\n    \u201cNo pious kindness,\u201d answered Priam\u2019s son,\n  \u201cFriendship could require, hast thou left undone.\n  To Fate, and the Greek Murderess I owe\n  Horrors I bore on earth, my shame below;\n  She made my flesh my tomb, epitaph writ\n  Thereon, and on my ghost has graven it!\n  Thou knowest\u2014how forget?\u2014the lying joy\n  Of the last, the funeral night of Troy.\n  The Traitress through the festal city led\n  A chorus of Bacchantes, at its head\n  Waving a flaming torch; and, with the cry\n  Of \u2018Evan,\u2019 from the Citadel on high,\n  Summoned her ambushed Argives.\u2014\n                                      I meanwhile,\n  Worn with the day\u2019s cares, unsuspecting guile\u2014\n  Least of all in my new-made Wife\u2014in sleep,\n  Unbroken as quiet death\u2019s self, sweet, deep,\n  Lay in my baleful chamber, whence my Bride\n  Had stolen all arms, even from my side\n  My trusty sword.\u2014\n                      Then she invites within\n  Menelaus\u2014purgation for old sin!\n  Lo! he, and Ulysses, arch fiend, and She,\n  With Me unarmed\u2014Why more?\u2014Dost thou not see?\n    Gods, whom I worshipped, have not I a right\n  To claim like for like? Will Ye not requite?\n    But Thou; say, what mischance on sea or land,\n  Caprice of Fortune, or the Gods\u2019 command,\n  Has sentenced thee in life to wander here,\n  Away from sunlight, and glad household cheer?\u201d\n    A story long to tell; and longer still\n  Had been, were time Below, for good or ill,\n  Not measured for guests from the Upper Air\n  By speed of rosy Dawn\u2019s four horses there.\n  But for \u00c6neas, with half Day\u2019s course run,\n  Not yet had the decisive stage begun.\n  Perforce the Sibyl warned against delay;\n  Nor thought Deiphobus his friend to stay.\n  Though bowed by unimaginable ill,\n  He faded into the Dark, to fulfil\n  His fate, with Adieu; \u201ca high lot enjoy!\n  Be glory thine, and found a greater Troy!\u201d\n\n    The fifth Circle left, they desired by haste\n  To pay time lost in grieving for the past.\n  Where the road forked, they took the right, that led\n  To Elysium; but, turning his head,\n  \u00c6neas stood\u2014bewildered, and in awe;\n  For, backed by a huge range of cliffs, he saw,\n  Extending far, behind a triple wall,\n  A city that one might a kingdom call,\n  Girt by waters\u2014Phlegethon their dread name\u2014\n  That whirl echoing rocks, and floods of flame.\n  Then, if that torrent of fire could be crossed,\n  What of the adamantine gates? Where host\n  Of men, nay, Gods of high Heaven, with pow\u2019r\n  To tear those from their storm-defying tow\u2019r?\n  And, as if this were not enough to keep\n  Dis safe, Tisiphone, who needs no sleep,\n  Sits guard in blood-red robe beside the door,\n  Reckoning each pulsation of the roar,\n  Every whizz of the lash, moan of pain,\n  Grating of iron, rattling of the chain.\n  \u00c6neas heard too; his feet in fear clove\n  To the ground as frozen; he could not move\n  From the spot he trod. \u201cWhat sins punished there,\n  And how? Whose those hoarse wailings of despair?\u201d\n    Repelled\u2014attracted: his unuttered thought\n  She answered:\n                  \u201cAsk not of me to be brought\n  Within; none guiltless enter but, like me,\n  They set in charge under Queen Hecate.\n  Herself, installing me, vouchsafed to tell\n  The system on which Heaven peoples Hell.\n  Committals hither are on sentence giv\u2019n\n  By Rhadamanthus, righteous as Heav\u2019n.\n  A sinner joys in craft that has concealed\n  His crime in life; but here it stands revealed\n  Blazing as the Sun; how vain cunning when\n  Tisiphone hauls the convict, grieved then\n  For old triumphs; in her right hand the scourge,\n  In her left snakes. She screams the while to urge\n  Her savage pair of sisters to make haste\n  From banks of dim Cocytus for a feast!\n    The Trials living men may not attend,\n  Or the dire chastisements in which they end,\n  But\u2014for so much is lawful\u2014thou shalt see\n  The Prison\u2019s threshold.\n                        At a sign from me,\n  Look! Gates of Adamant have opened wide,\n  Shrieking in loud protest; on either side,\n  The Fury, and a Hydra, grisly sight,\n  That hisses from fifty black jaws its spite;\n  While Tartarus beyond them plunges down\n  Full twice the space from red-hot Phlegethon\n  To the blue vault of Ether.\u2014\n                              Mark the twain,\n  And thank thy fate for being spared my pain\n  Of visiting the dungeons they control.\n  Noting unending torturings of soul!\u201d\n\n    \u201cFar from me, were I able, to express\n  Agonies of the Lost, their hopelessness!\n  Enough their names who sinned;\u2014\n                              here, hurled to Dis\n  By lightning at bottom of the abyss\n  Roll Earth\u2019s sons the Titans; and I saw there\n  The Aloeid Twins, who scaled upper air,\n  Piling mount on mount; by brute strength alone\n  Tried to storm Olympus, and Jove dethrone\n  Salmoneus too, and the price his pride\n  Cost him, for choosing impious to ride\n  Mimicking lightnings\u2019 flash, the thunder\u2019s roar\n  Fool! to ape Jove with his steeds as they bore\n  His car through Elis, torches as they cast\n  Their smoky gleams, trumpets\u2019 quavering blast.\n  Brief the trickeries of that crazed career,\n  Joy for man on Earth\u2019s stage to act God\u2019s peer;\n  And swift climax when, amid storms, there fell\n  Bolts that drove the pretender down to Hell!\n  Near him Earth\u2019s nursling, Tityus, I saw,\n  Stretched o\u2019er nine acres, with, to fill its maw,\n  A hook-beaked vulture clawing at his breast\n  For the liver e\u2019er eaten, ne\u2019er at rest;\n  Since growing ever, putting on new flesh;\n  So, the Thing gropes for dainties ever fresh.\n    Myriad Crime\u2019s forms\u2014Dis for all has room.\n  Kinship that should nurse kindness, rings its doom;\n  Virtues that have turned strangers into friends,\n  Oft change brothers and sisters into fiends.\n  Children, instead of vying to maintain\n  Parents, have beaten them, and even slain.\n  A traitor to human nature and hearth\n  Seduces her who owes to him her birth.\n  Lawyers, snapping ties sacred as of blood,\n  Have spun about their clients webs of fraud.\n  Misers have gone on hatching gold from gold\u2014\n  A host of them\u2014refusing to withhold\n  Grains from the hoard, although it were to save\n  Nearest that should be dearest from the grave.\n  Guests\u2014till schooled here\u2014have thought theft of a wife\n  Well worth the risk of forfeiture of life.\n  Liegemen, loved, aggrandized, have drawn the sword,\n  Himself had girded on, to stab their Lord.\n  Statesmen have abused a fond people\u2019s trust,\n  To sell and tread its freedom in the dust.\n  Others, having dammed law-making at the source,\n  Opened, closed locks as gapes or shuts a purse.\n    The course of life cannot be ruled so straight,\n  Homes so pure, opportunities so great,\n  Reasons so full and plain for doing well,\n  But that they may be used as roads to Hell.\n    \u201dPenalties\u201d?\u2014\n                      As manifold, various.\n  The Lapith\u00e6 know it, Pirithous,\n  Tantalus, Ixion. I have held my breath\n  At black rock threatening, not, welcome Death,\n  But\u2014for Shadows may feel\u2014mangled, crushed bones,\n  Dragging eternally over jagged stones.\u2014\n  That, in act to fall, ever seemed in air.\u2014\n  And I have seen Hell\u2019s cooks a feast prepare;\n  Spread couches with purple, and on gold-rests.\n  Then\u2014dainties in view\u2014as the famished guests\n  Seated themselves in hungry haste to sup,\n  The eldest Fury, screaming, started up\n  From where she lay, and, waving torch alight\n  Swept banquet, banqueters, into cold night.\n  On some the doom to push a mass up hill,\n  And, when it slips, as slip it ever will,\n  Still push; for some, e\u2019en worse, the Wheel; and then\u2014\n  Limbs healed\u2014to be broken again, again.\n  There hapless Theseus sits, and will aye sit;\n  Phlegyas there, whose cry\u2014might I deaden it!\u2014\n  Is in mine ears: \u2018Men, be warned! Scorn not Heav\u2019n;\n  Never is sin against the Gods forgiv\u2019n!\u2019\u201d\n\n    \u201cMore\u201d? Yea; had I a hundred mouths; in each\n  A tongue of iron to give forth my speech;\n  And thou weeks to listen, I could not tell\n  Of all the guilt, its chastisements in Hell.\n  Enough for thee to know all there have dared\n  To break God\u2019s laws, and in like kind have fared.\n  The deeds have been done; and now, fast shut in,\n  The doers take the wages of their sin.\n    But time presses; hasten, wouldst thou fulfil\n  Duties charged by Heaven\u2019s grace, thy own good-will.\n  Courage; for we have left behind the Pit\n  Of sin and torture, and are soon to quit\n  Even the melancholy Precincts, where\n  The dead still mourn the Past, the Future fear.\n  Already I see the walls Cyclopian, built\n  To shut off lands of misery and guilt\n  From the happier one to which we wend.\n  Lo the Arch! there must thou thy Branch suspend!\u201d\n\n    Crossing the intervening twilight space,\n  They stood \u2019neath the vault of the gate in face.\n  Then, sprinkled with fresh water from a spring,\n  \u00c6neas hung up his gold offering.\n  Elysium\u2019s doors opened; he was free,\n  Having paid her due to its Deity.\n\n\nELYSIUM\n\n    A land for joyance made; blest for the blest;\n  Happy in being chosen for their rest;\n  For nowhere greener lawns, more bow\u2019ry glades\n  Inviting into more reposeful shades\n  Of arched romantic groves, with, ev\u2019rywhere,\n  Steeped in a purple glow, a larger air\n  Than Earth\u2019s; for the lower world owes no debt\n  To sun or stars with which our skies are set;\n  It has them of its own, as real as ours.\n  Real too its grass, the fragrance of its flow\u2019rs;\n  Real they to Spirit as to them It seems,\n  Though for mortals unsubstantial as are dreams.\n    On turf or yellow sand some test the skill,\n  That earned them fame in life; and is theirs still.\n  The woods are full of revellers, who beat\n  Time to gay dancers and their flying feet;\n  Or banqueting sit, garlanded with bays,\n  Singing in chorus legends of old days;\n  While others proud of battle-fields afar\n  Conduct a mimic spectacle of war;\n  Spears waiting to be snatched, and the broad shield\n  To be slung, chargers harnessed for the field;\u2014\n  Shadows to terrestrial men, who call\n  Earthly things real, when shadows most of all;\u2014\n  Shadows these of the busy lives they led\n  On earth, which pursue them now they are dead;\n  Nought palpable, unless that through a grove\n  Eridanus rolls to the world above.\n    Here ignorantly happy dwell in joy\n  Princes like Dardanus who founded Troy;\n  With Teucer father of a royal race,\n  Gallant as noble, and most fair of face;\n  Ilus, Assaracus, of blood divine,\n  Through whom \u00c6neas proudly traced his line.\n  Here stood showing glorious wounds a band\n  Of heroes fall\u2019n to save its native land;\n  Though other arts could equal entrance gain,\u2014\n  To give life charm, or steal a pang from pain.\n  Priests too, who as they at the altar stood\n  Offered pure lives as well as victims\u2019 blood:\n  And seers, who ne\u2019er falsified Heav\u2019n\u2019s truth,\n  But spoke as they heard from Apollo\u2019s mouth:\u2014\n  A various tribe, yet all alike in this,\n  That, having served, they have deserved their bliss.\n    The Maid led where the white-filleted throng\n  Was thickest; for Mus\u00e6us\u2019s the song,\n  Responsive to the lyre\u2019s seven sweet chords,\n  That vied with all the magic of the words.\n  High he by head and shoulders o\u2019er the ring\n  Around. The Sibyl, when he ceased to sing,\n  Besought him of his courtesy to tell\n  Where might Anchises in that blest land dwell;\n  Their search for him had many labours cost;\n  Dread sights been seen, perilous rivers crossed;\n  Their grace was brief, they must not longer bide;\n  How, clogged with flesh, find him without a guide?\n    Quick answer made the sage: \u201cWe count no home\n  As you on earth; wheresoever we roam\n  At home are we; for our repose at noon,\n  Or eve, no couch can equal with its down\n  A meadow bank, that rills unfailing heap\n  With flow\u2019rs wooing irresistible sleep.\n  But flesh and blood aye move the heart and will,\n  And ye are here their purpose to fulfil;\n  So, follow me beyond this hanging peak,\n  And I will point your path to him you seek.\u201d\n\n    Under his lead they climbed the height, and thence\n  Down into a wide, smiling champaign, whence\n  Opened a wooded valley: in a glade\n  Anchises stood, and deep in thought surveyed\n  A host of hurrying Shades. As he gazed,\n  He heard steps, his Son\u2019s!\n                              Eagerly he raised,\n  Both hands, while eyes and heart joined in the burst\n  Of love and joy; each struggling to be first\n  Its welcome to express: \u201cDearest! at last\n  I see Thee; at what cost of perils passed!\n  Yet never feared I that the utmost pow\u2019rs\n  Of Earth and Hell could bar a love like ours\n  From meeting, as in old times, face to face,\n  In full converse, however brief the space.\n  With trust undoubting traced I to its goal\n  Thy devious course; for well I knew thy soul;\n  Each stage I numbered; tempests on what seas;\n  Unfriendly lands; kindnesses worse than these!\u201d\n    \u201cAnd could\u2019st Thou,\u201d cried \u00c6neas \u201cmore repine,\n  Missing my presence than I longed for thine?\n  Thy image warned me on the island shore,\n  To ask thy counsels, as, on earth, of yore,\n  So, I am here! Once more to feel thy heart\n  Beating to my own!\u2014\n                        Nay; my Father, why,\n  When I would clasp hands, kiss thy face, deny\n  The embrace I dared Hell\u2019s alarms to gain?\u201d\n    Of no avail his prayers, tears; all vain;\n  Thrice in his arms the image melted away\u2014\n  As flutter of breeze; dream at break of day.\n\n    Near where Anchises and \u00c6neas stood\n  Shades swarmed, dense, ever denser, in a wood\n  Which rustled all its bushes with the press\u2014\n  As of a migrant nation numberless\u2014\n  Of Spirits emulous to be the first\n  To reach grey Lethe\u2019s edge, and quench their thirst\u2014\n  \u2014Thus, in languorous stillness of noontide,\n  Sudden the slumb\u2019rous calm is swept aside\n  By an inrush of bees; in wild descent,\n  Like pirates from the main, on nothing bent\n  But spoil they seem; yet each has its own flow\u2019r,\n  To which sure instinct guides it hour by hour,\u2014\n    \u00c6neas saw the haste, knew not th\u2019 excuse;\n  For him it seemed to be Hell broken loose.\n  Even when he heard the marvellous tale\n  That the myriads gathered in that vale\n  Were no unwilling, mourning outcasts there,\n  Condemned to breathe once more the upper air,\n  But after their secular repose full fain\n  Flesh to resume, links in an endless chain,\n  The world-worn hero shuddered none the less\n  It might be his to count it happiness\n  To exchange the peace of the myrtle grove\n  For stark sunshine and gross body above;\n  To be of those whom Lethe should wash clear\n  Of all they once had been, and all they were:\u2014\n  That Elysium\u2019s a waiting-room for life;\n  Life a dust-heap for trials, failures, strife\n  That men are Shadows all, expecting doom,\n  Whether flesh, or to shift it in a tomb.\n    \u201cForbear,\u201d replied Anchises, old and wise,\n  \u201cTo measure laws of Fate by earthly eyes.\n  From the beginning of the sky and land,\n  The stars where once the Titans held command,\n  The sun and moon that share the day and night,\n  Air\u2019s liquid fields;\u2014all owe their charm and light\n  To eternal Spirit. That feeds the whole,\n  Breathes into bodies, lifeless else, a soul.\n  Mankind and beasts, winged Things, and monster strange,\n  That \u2019neath the level plains of Ocean range,\n  Draw hence their fire, the instinct of a birth\n  Elsewhere;\u2014alas! for the burdensome bulk\n  Of limbs diseased, and joints that creak and sulk\n  For the foul lusts they stir, the scares, affrights,\n  The cowardly griefs, and as vain delights,\n  The Dark through which flesh stumbles, halt and blind\n  The dungeon where it keeps shut close the Mind,\n  Lest at one breath of air it should in scorn\n  Of earth fly back to Heaven where \u2019twas born.\n    Meanwhile an evil partnership for both!\u2014\n  Spirit incorporate, however loth\n  To be associate with sores and blains,\n  Vice\u2019s parasites, must bear fleshly pains\n  To be cleansed; for death is itself no cure;\n  Body, Soul with it, share in the Impure.\n  Some, carcasses, swing, split open, for breeze\n  To scour and wring, to bleach, and scorch, or freeze\n  For some a mill-stream whirls a crime about,\n  Or a furnace roars a rich baseness out.\n  Just the Judgment, every judgment true;\n  Each of us bears no more than is his due;\n  High as the merits of our kith and kin,\n  None but himself can carry his own sin.\n    Blest the sharp ordeal for the few who thence\n  Pass, not in sheer spiritual innocence,\n  But in no worse than such affections dressed\n  As leave the pure celestial spark at rest,\n  And free in these fair fields to dream away\n  Any chance taint surviving from earth\u2019s clay\n  To dull the sereneness of the fire giv\u2019n\n  To infants, that they may remember Heav\u2019n.\u201d\n\n    \u201cAnd now behold the final stage:\u2014\n                                        this rout,\n  Its cycle\u2014a thousand years\u2014being out\u2014\n  Called by God\u2019s Messenger of Life and Death,\n  Descends where Lethe, in the cleft beneath,\n  Will make it, drinking of the troubled flood,\n  Conscious it once was clothed with flesh and blood.\n  And yearn to take them back, and to return\n  Rude air to breathe, and feel a rude sun burn.\n    Nearer now draw with me, that from this bank\n  Thou mayest watch the comers rank by rank;\n  Read, as I point, the future in each face;\n  See, as I see, the glory of our race\u2014\n  Great as it was, and greater still to be,\n  Graft on Troy\u2019s stock, the bud of Italy.\n    Mark him who leans upon a bloodless spear;\n  \u2019Tis thy own son; but look upon him here;\n  On earth Thou wilt not; for, when thy long life\n  Is all but spent, Lavinia thy Wife\n  Shall conceive a child, and in full time bear\n  Silvius in the woods to be thy heir;\n  King of Alba, like many of his line,\n  As Procas and \u00c6neas, namesake thine.\n  And still kings come\u2014I cannot number them,\n  Each adding to old a fresh diadem!\n    But stay! who advances crested like to Mars\u2014\n  For whom Jove keeps a place among the stars?\n  Romulus\u2014City maker? Tenfold more!\n  From him Earth\u2019s arbiter, matchless in war,\n  With no limits to empire but the Pole,\n  And none below Olympus to the soul!\u2014\n  \u2014As Joys Cybele to have peopled Heav\u2019n,\n  Rome boasts a breed to which Earth is giv\u2019n!\n  Turn thy eyes; regard this Company; know\n  What a full tide of grandeur is to flow\n  Hence of thy name; how from Thyself, and from\n  Iulus, in time shall Julius come,\n  And one as great, long destined to be born\n  By Fate\u2019s decree\u2014else were Fate\u2019s self forsworn\u2014\n  That, where King Saturn reigned in days of yore,\n  Augustus shall the Golden Age restore.\n    Marches still; already his edicts sway\n  Where our day is night, and our night is day;\n  Among the G\u00e6tuli; beyond them; far\n  Outside the orbit, light, of any star;\n  Outside track of Sun and dancing Hours, where\n  Atlas swings the world\u2019s axis, with its gear.\n  Rumours of his approaching overwhelm\n  Quaking M\u00e6otis and the Caspian realm;\n  While sevenfold Nile offers fealty,\n  Trembling for what the Master shall decree.\n    Have we not heard in legends or romance\n  How God or Hero has made his advance,\n  Victor throughout Earth?\u2014\n                          Of him who laid low\n  Lerna\u2019s fire-breathing Dragon with his bow,\n  Shot the brazen-footed Hind, and stilled the roar\n  In Arcady of Erymanthian boar!\u2014\n    Of Bacchus in tipsy triumph, a yoke\n  Of spotted tigers in his chariot, broke\n  To obey, for reins, tendrils of a vine\u2014\n  His M\u00e6nads leaping down the long incline\n  Of Nysa, wildly singing, their locks curled\n  With vine leaves, following to win a world?\n    Yet what in tales of Gods and men can match\n  For scorn of space, and ardour of despatch,\n  Delight in braving peril, grasp of mind,\n  Our C\u00e6sar\u2019s progress to the verge of Ind!\n    Wilt, Son, in view of all thy future Rome,\n  With her chiefs destined from thyself to come,\n  And while ancestral fire of Troy burns high\n  In thy own veins, put off the hour to try\n  Valour in act, and hesitate to prove\n  Thy right to lordship given Thee by Jove?\u201d\n\n    \u201cObserve, as they pass by us, one by one,\n  Those who will glorify thy Rome, my Son.\n  Illegible to them, for us the whole\n  Of their careers is writ as on a scroll,\n  See, the grey-bearded King, the Priest, the Sage,\n  Of many years, though not bowed down with age,\n  Whose laws devised to rule a petty town\n  Will fit it when into an empire grown;\n  Next, Tullus, warrior-prince, and Ancus, near,\n  Boasting his wit to catch the popular ear:\n  Then the proud Tarquins; and, of soul as proud,\n  Brutus, grudging not Freedom his sons\u2019 blood\u2014\n  Careless if fainter hearts, a feebler time\n  Brand a patriot\u2019s sacrifice as crime!\n    Ah! changes\u2014leaps and bounds\u2014so fast surprise\n  Brains, toned here to calm, that my aged eyes\n  Are dazzled as forms pass, and then repass,\n  And straight are lost\u2014reflections in a glass.\n  No smoother course for this, thy Rome to be,\n  Than now, my Son, for Thee in Italy.\n  A whirl of arms ere the fair land will deign\n  To grant thy offspring\u2019s right divine to reign;\n  An age-long wrestle; yet a rope of sand\n  Makes a poor rival of an iron band.\u2014\n  Hide from my sight those lictors, and a Son!\n  But they tell how Latium shall be won.\u2014\n  A will inflexible, a discipline\n  Making a religion of a straight line,\n  A consuming, passionate, red-hot force\n  Never prisoned in its volcanic source\u2014\n  Pride in the City of the Seven Hills\u2014\n  Will merge all other passions, heal all ills.\n    These the fire inspired, that in fateful war\n  Gave Cossus and Jove arms of Tuscan Lar.\n  Maligned and banned Camillus their first call\n  Brought as through air to save Rome from the Gaul\n  Fabricius taught the Epirot King\n  Thus, that Rome wounded rises on the wing.\n  From them Serranus learned the art to guide\n  The State, and victor o\u2019er the billows ride\n  As straight as he his furrow erewhile ploughed.\n  Regard these visages serene and proud\n  To do whate\u2019er is Rome\u2019s behest, content\n  To go whithersoever they are sent.\n  See, war\u2019s twin thunderbolts, the Scipios,\n  Their oracle Rome, their one mark her foes.\n  See them to whom Achaia bows the head,\n  With Macedon\u2019s monarch in triumph led;\u2014\n  Avenging on Mycen\u00e6, and the race\n  Of Atreus, on Achilles, the disgrace\n  They heaped upon Troy, and the outraged shrine\n  Of Pallas, their own patroness Divine.\n    Nor fail note that old man, heeding no jeer,\n  No hint of blood slow and sluggish, e\u2019en fear:\n  Resolved throughout of one thing\u2014ne\u2019er, from haste\n  In clutching popular applause, to waste\n  A chance on Fortune\u2019s wheel for his Rome\u2019s Shield\n  To foil War\u2019s cross-eyed Master in the field;\n  And, near to him, in Britomart\u2019s royal spoils,\u2014\n  Like a brave boar, trapped in a huntsman\u2019s toils,\n  Unconquerable else\u2014the battle\u2019s lord\u2014\n  Confess it, Gaul, Carthage, and Syracuse\u2014Rome\u2019s Sword!\n    But who is this, Thou askest, in the pride\n  Of arms and youth, advancing by his side?\n  Thou mark\u2019st the likeness; well might he be son:\n  From the same stock he springs, a noble one.\n    Strange, in the changeless calm of these blest groves\n  The shadow of a brooding sorrow moves....\n  Well might I weep, if Spirit could, the fate\n  Of good as fair, and not more good than great.\n  Earth will have but seen to lose him!\n                                        Heaven,\n  Wert thou jealous, lest, thinking him given\n  To this our mighty Rome, not just on loan,\n  But to live her life, be her very own,\n  She would wax overweening? Yet the woe\n  Must surely wake thy pity, when, below,\n  Thou hear\u2019st the wails numberless for such charms\n  Borne to their pyre upon the Field of Arms;\n  And Thou, old Tiber, as thou flowest by\n  The tomb in which the loved One\u2019s ashes lie,\n  Wilt not forget how thou hast seen him play\n  Oft on thy banks young, beautiful, and gay.\n  Never will hope be raised so high by boy\n  Blending the blood of Latium and Troy;\n  And, when shall our earth ever find again\n  Such loyalty and faith in living men\u2014\n  A right hand so approved in every art,\n  On horse, or foot, to do a soldier\u2019s part?\n  I pity, praise, love!\n                        Arrest but the chain\n  Of Fate; and lo! Marcellus come again!\n  \u2014Armfuls of lilies bring; for Soul as sweet!\n  Spread crimson flow\u2019rs, fit carpet for his feet!\n  \u2014Grief for a Shadow, from a Shadow grief;\n  Yet Shadows find a Shadow of relief\n  For boundless loss in Shadows e\u2019en of grief!\u201d\n\n    \u201cBut now for the near future\u2014I will show\n  How to surmount, and how to bear with, woe;\n  Faint not, endure, and earn renown! On Earth,\n  What, without store of fame, is living worth!\n  Weigh not the toils and snares, that, I foresee,\n  Impend, ere Thou shalt reign in Italy.\n  Remember thy reward, the noble end\n  Tow\u2019rds which thy trials and thy hardships tend.\n  Teach a world-empire how its Founder bears\n  The load of war, and, worse, intestine cares;\n  For these must be, though I spare Thee the sight\n  Of brothers against brothers armed for fight\u2014\n  Decii, Drusi, Gracchi\u2014each House moved\n  By jealous passion for the Rome all loved.\n  And when the All-Conquering shall have hurled\n  Her legions to the confines of the world,\n  Lo! Chiefs\u2014allied by blood, and leagued to share\n  Two continents between them\u2014arm to tear\n  Their country\u2019s entrails piecemeal! Baleful strife!\n  Will not one victim serve\u2014Great Cato\u2019s life?\n    Joy! God grants my prayer! There is brave steel\n  Of double virtue, both to wound and heal;\n  And of that heav\u2019nly temper, Youth, is thine,\n  Second founder of the Julian line!\n  Hail to Olympian C\u00e6sar! Who would\n  Not guard dear life at cost of Roman blood;\n  And ere\u2014too soon\u2014he parts, will choose an heir\n  Of skill divine the ship of State to steer\n  Clear of the breakers; Kind and keen to know\n  His fellow Romans, with the rush and flow,\n  The genius for sovereignty; their fate\n  To be Earth\u2019s lords, and Earth\u2019s to stand and wait!\n    Let others wile the furnace with its heat\n  To warm the heart within the bronze to beat,\n  Cunningly lift th\u2019 imprisoning stone away,\n  And lead nymphs forth to blush in rosy day;\n  Dissemble truth with nimble tongues; and call\n  Stars by their names; tell when they rise and fall.\n  Others Rome\u2019s Arts;\u2014\n                            To speak her mistress will:\n  Fight if it please her; bid the world keep still!\n  See that her vassals nowhere suffer wrong;\n  \u2014Make Pride her Right; be Valiant, and be Strong!\u201d\n\n    Death, and her brother, Sleep, rule side by side\n  Realms that shadowy boundaries divide,\n  Yet none can cross but through gates twain; and these\n  Are in the charge of Death, who keeps the keys.\n  Now and again a Spirit will repair\n  For love or hate back to the upper air,\n  To commune with Spirit, so far as whole\n  Can become two parts, Soul be just a Soul.\n    Of dull, dun horn the gate such use; hard by\n  Gleams the other, perfect of ivory.\n  Thence from the Under-world Imps float above\n  Freaks that in spite or idlesse they have wove,\n  To raid and wilder slumber, let it close\n  Men\u2019s eyes, and cheat their senses of repose.\n    Anchises, for whom Space and Time were nought,\n  Had through the gate of horn \u00c6neas sought\n  By night on the Etruscan sea; he now\n  With last words, and many a longing vow\n  Of love, confessed his child was due to part\u2014\n  Though truer no Son, kinder no Sire\u2019s heart\u2014\n  By the ivory door; the horn gate stood\n  Fast locked and sealed against all flesh and blood.\n  Though soul there\u2014a thistle-down Man, wind-tost\n  With life; a night-mare; less real than a ghost!\n\n\n\n\nVirgil to the Unknown God\n\n\u00c6neidos, Bk. IV. vv. 576-577\n\n_Sequimur te, Sarnie Deorum, Quisquis es_\n\n\n    Thou camest in the Darkness, and the Darkness Light became\u2014\n  Not a word was ever spoken, and yet I heard Thy name,\n  I care not whither I must go; to worship at what shrine;\n  I know but that Thy servant I; that Thou art Master mine.\n  No Priest I need to lead me; for when Thou goest before,\n  How can I aught but follow, to love Thee, and to adore!\n  Who can ever fail to find Thee, or miss of Thy abode?\n  For where Thou art is Holiness,\u2014and Holiness is God!\n\n\n\n\nThe Gates\n\n\u00c6neidos, Bk. VI. vv. 893-898\n\n\n      Sleep, and his Sister, Death;\n  Twins ever with Us; and theirs the keys\n  Of Past and Present, the Above, and the Beneath;\n  And, as Brother and Sister please,\n      Forth flutter Falsehood. Truth,\n  Changed, according as they pass the Gate\n  Of Horn or of Ivory into Joy or Ruth,\n      Even dreamed kindness into Hate!\n\n\n\n\nGhosts\n\n_Ibid._\n\n\n      Ah! We at the behest,\n  Poor human mortals! of numberless shadowy hosts\n  Weaving Men\u2019s dooms to amuse the tedium of Rest!\n      And nought abides but Ghosts!\n\n\n\n\nEuryalus and Pallas\n\n\u00c6neidos, Bk. IX. vv. 455-457; Bk. XI. vv. 68-71\n\n\n  As a queenly daffodil in the springtide of its bloom,\n  Falls, whelmed beneath the plough-share, and wondering at its doom;\n  Or as a scarlet poppy, laying weary neck on earth,\n  Yields its breath to the full shower it welcomed at its birth;\n    So, all too fair to die, star of a life, Euryalus\n  Left for Nisus nought but despair, with dire revenge; and thus\n  Sank Pallas, young and brave;\u2014as, under a girl\u2019s heedless feet,\n  Drop violets, soft and shy, or hyacinths, faint and sweet,\n  Appealing from Fate to Heav\u2019n, with all of their grace and sheen,\n  Telling\u2014the more that life has fled\u2014of what its charms have been;\n    Or as Babe on its Mother\u2019s breast, who cannot, will not, think\n  Rosy lips half open are cold, and presses them to drink.\n\n\n\n\nThings\n\n\u00c6neidos, Bk. I. v. 462\n\n_Sunt lacryma rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_\n\n\n    There is spirit immortal that mounts up on high,\n  Yet reaches longing hands back to hopes left to die;\n  There are things that are tears; there are tears that are things;\n  There are tears that are water, and tears that are wings!\n\n\n\n\nLUCRETIUS\n\n\n\n\nHymn to Venus\n\nTITI LUCRETII CARI De Rerum Natura, Bk. I. vv. 1-48\n\n\n    Goddess! in whom our Rome is proud to trace\n  Nursing Mother of an Imperial race;\n  Who \u2019neath the constellations, as they range,\n  Heav\u2019n\u2019s standard-bearers, in soft interchange\n  Of night\u2019s watches, rulest how, when, and where.\n  In Ocean\u2019s finny depths, in upper air,\n  And teeming soil, Life, urgent to be born,\n  Shall at thy smile burst forth to greet the morn,\n  All without thee was gusty darkness;\n                                        then\n  A sudden rapture stirs in Gods and Men!\n  Thou comest! Winds fall; the sky no more low\u2019rs:\n  Earth embroiders herself with fragrant flow\u2019rs;\n  Billows that had been rolling mountains high,\n  Ripple laughter to greet a sapphire sky.\n  Wherever thou art is spring; thine the key\n  That sets the prisoned wanton west-wind free\n  To beat time to thy approach; and note how\n  Birds, thy heralds, by fits skim to and fro;\n  While, more fiercely-smitten, herds that had been\n  Content to graze their pastures rich and green,\n  Toss hoofs and horns, breast headlong streams; and where\n  It pleases Thee follow, whitherso\u2019er!\n    Venus, all provident, and kind, and wise,\n  Nought in sea, torrent, hill escapes thy eyes;\n  No green plain, no tree that invites a nest.\n  With soothing touch in every breathing breast\n  Thou layest seed of love, yet with such skill,\n  A forethought so unerring, and a will\n  So tenderly sure, that never a spark\n  Strays from its order, but knows each its mark;\n  Kind choosing kind, species species, race race,\n  Till Being grows, age to age, in emulous grace!\n    Alone thou steerest Nature on her course!\n  Failing Thee, lost the aye marshalling force\n  To wash blind atoms on the shores of Light,\n  Where each shall take up Life in its due right,\n  To use it at its best, and for the best,\n  Joy for itself, harmony for the rest?\n\n    A theme, which it might well have seemed in vain\n  To attempt with powers of mortal brain;\n  Then least, when Rome\u2014how lately!\u2014claimed of all\n  Her children service at the trumpet\u2019s call.\n  Ev\u2019n still she aches with pangs that she has borne,\n  Glooming dumbly with fear they may return.\n  But, Goddess, I trust! greatly dare to ask:\n  \u201cShed thy eternal charm upon my task:\n  Bid warfare cease; uplift thy sovereign hand;\n  And blissful Peace will brood o\u2019er sea and land.\n  What can resist Thee?\n                          Mars with his alarms?\n  Where lies the God but in thy lovely arms?\n  Slender throat thrown back, see, his hungry eyes\n  Feed upon thine with ever fresh surprise!\n  Queen, he is thine; wound deeply as thou wilt;\n  Sweeter smart than all the blood he has spilt!\n  Cling round him; fold in thy divine embrace;\n  Lift tow\u2019rds his the appeal of thy bright face;\n  Whisper love\u2019s little nothings, till deep calm\n  Steep his whole being in a honeyed balm;\n  And he forget \u2019twas his murderous car\n  Spread frenzy through our streets of civil War!\u201d\n\n    But the fever has abated; so long\n  As it is stayed, I will resume my song;\u2014\n  The more gladly if it be heard by One\n  Whom Venus willed long back a Paragon,\n  Adorned with all the gifts that mortal man\n  Has owed her since Humanity began.\n  A Memmius is by that illustrious name\n  Pledged not to stand aloof from Rome aflame;\n  And thou didst thy part; but, the crisis past,\n  Thou now, my Lord and Friend, art free at last.\n  Yet weigh all well;\n                        I have toiled hard to learn,\n  And with pains equal held it my concern,\n  When I myself was satisfied, to find\n  Means to pass truths into another mind.\n  No less a duty, if thou undertake,\n  Wilt thou betray, if thou should then forsake!\n  Away with mean cares; give, if aught, thy whole\u2014\n  The sum of Reason\u2014that which makes the Soul!\n\n\n\n\nPhilosophy\n\nBk. II. vv. 1-60\n\n\n  \u201cListen! the waves hiss, and loud the winds roar!\n      See! a ship drifts on a lee shore!\n  \u201cHelp!\u201d No help; a whole crew on the beach dead.\n  Alas poor souls! I sleep on a good bed.\n\n  And lo! two hosts in line of battle drawn.\n      Thousands will not wake at next dawn!\n  To be killed, or kill\u2014life or death for those\u2014\n  I wonder which; happy I cannot lose!\u201d\n\n  Count not men Molochs that with passive eyes,\n      They witness neighbours\u2019 agonies.\n  Bodily ills all; how should bodies care\n  For others\u2019 ills? Each has its own to bear.\n\n  Easily flow our tears when others weep;\n      As easily we fall asleep;\n  When Havoc stalks abroad, content we see\n  Other flesh in pain from which ours is free!\n\n  Let flesh be flesh; we by rough ways and bleak\n      Will climb up to the mountain peak;\n  And entering through guarded ramparts there\n  Find peace from flesh in temples stately, fair;\n\n  Work of wise builders, where a welcome waits,\n      With keys to life, within the gates.\n  That riddle many have tried, and not guessed;\n  They wander, spirit in flesh; nowhere rest.\n\n  Spirit trumpets down from tower, spire and hall;\n      They cannot hearken to the call.\n  Smothered in that they worship\u2014wealth, power, birth\u2014\n  Dream they are growing wings, and rot on earth!\n\n  Self-courted woes, suicide of the brain,\n      Dark chos\u2019n for light, tortures in vain\n  Endured; this particle of life we have\u2014\n  A spark at best\u2014o\u2019erdriven to the grave!\n\n  All but to pamper bodies, that, so long\n      As they are painless, hale, and strong,\n  Are warranted by Nature, watch-dog kind,\n  To press no further wants upon the Mind.\n\n  This commonwealth of limbs, together brought\n      To be a tenement for Thought,\n  Asks but to be exempt from fell disease,\n  Joy in mere breath, and feel itself at ease.\n\n  When the lamps\u2019 flame from golden statues gleams,\n      Do the lights vie with the sun\u2019s beams?\n  Must music to stir hearts to leap and bound,\n  From frescoed walls and fretted roofs resound?\n\n  Or if some time hot fever racks the head,\n      Are you, tossing on a sick bed,\n  Easier at all that you chance to lie\n  On cedarn couch purple with Tyrian dye?\n\n  Know you not, wastrels, that what Mind you give\n      To flesh you steal from power to live?\n  The spirit is the root of life; thereby\n  We live; and if we starve it, then we die.\n\n  When spirit-comrades by cool brook recline,\n      Beneath the shade of beech or pine,\n  They reck not which the rich, and which the poor.\n  Nor envious, nor jealous of neighbours\u2019 store.\n\n  Enough to feel the warm blood answering\n      The joyousness of the sweet Spring:\n  While the soft turf, to offer greetings due,\n  Dresses itself in flow\u2019rs of ev\u2019ry hue.\n\n  Sense feels the charm, and Nature all approves;\n      While spirit talks with spirit, as it loves.\n  Ah! know how nought to flesh itself the whole\n  You sell life for; how hateful to the soul!\n\n\n\n\n\u2018Musical as is Apollo\u2019s Lute\u2019\n\nBk. IV. vv. 1-25\n\n\n    I know a dell the Muses haunt; lone scene,\n  Where ne\u2019er ere now had mortal footstep been.\n  Curious they what wand\u2019rer should invade\n  The tuneful solitude, and pray their aid.\n    Ungrateful office his who tries to set\n  Men free from the close meshes of the net\n  In which religions of whatever kind\n  Presume to hold humanity confined.\n  Repulsed by those for whose sakes I pursued\n  A thankless work, I trod ways rough and rude,\n  Until, the track by good chance missed, I came\n  Solitary, out of heart, footsore, lame,\n  To this strange spot where the Nine Sisters camp\n  Out in the wilderness, and light their lamp\n  To guide lost wayfarers thither.\n                                  I asked,\n  And received; the Goddesses even tasked\n  Themselves for my scorned mission, which they dressed\n  In new melodies as an honoured guest;\n  For it unsealing in the sands fresh springs,\n  Inspiring it to lift itself on wings,\n  While they bade flow\u2019rs strange to poesy blow,\n  That they might wreathe a garland for my brow.\n    If I, to emancipate Mind, make use\n  Of verse, does the enlistment need excuse?\n  Ignorance is the babe who drinks all up\n  When doctors sweeten at its brim the cup.\n  No sickness equals spectres of the brain,\n  They enslave till the bondsman hugs his chain.\n  Whose soul should not burn, as like mine, it sees\n  Hale men being treated, as for disease,\n  With drugs that force a nightmare-ridden sleep,\n  When they might bask in sun, and shout, and leap!\n  But the remedy? Reason wears a face\n  Austere, abstracted, void of outward grace.\n  The problems it would solve are deep and high;\n  And the informing light they shed is dry.\n  The crowd, long since besotted, in affright\n  Shrinks to its lazy phantoms from the sight\n  Of Wisdom, grim and grimy, in the mire\n  Calling it to drudge and moil without hire.\n  Whatever means Souls\u2019 doctors can command\n  Should not they use to make men understand\n  That they are free\u2014the more for the consent\n  Of Heav\u2019n\u2019s music to be their instrument?\n    Music interprets Mind; by it I strive\u2014\n  Like physicians by honey from the hive\u2014\n  To clothe bare truths Philosophy has taught\n  In garb that points\u2014not hides\u2014the charms of Thought.\n  All praise be to the Muses that I find\n  Power in their sweet mystery to bind\n  A friend in toils so happy that his soul\n  Will refuse deliverance ere the whole\n  Reveals itself to him of Nature\u2019s plan,\n  Even in our verse, and how good for Man!\n\n\n\n\nThe Fear of Death\n\nBk. III. vv. 883-1107, and Bk. III. vv. 9-30\n\n\n    Men\u2019s Words and Thoughts on Death!\n                                      One will deny\n  His and his dead body\u2019s identity;\n  Yet resent, as if slight to his own worth,\n  Its rotting when deposited in earth;\n  Flame\u2019s outrage, devouring it with his goods;\n  Beasts\u2019, tearing it to pieces in the woods.\n  His proud profession that he does not care\n  For his body\u2019s plight\u2014He will not be there\u2014\n  Rings false; he keeps, secreted in his heart,\n  A nerve which aches, though flesh and feeling part.\n  Not will self be root and branch so wrenched out\n  As that some still shall not be left about;\n  For why contemplate else at all the lot\n  Of the dead flesh he says concerns him not,\n  Unless Self pities Self, and it hurts the Soul\n  That it and flesh make an ill-smelling whole?\n    But, if strange that the sufferer thus made\n  To stand by, share the cruel insult paid\n  The carcase, being flesh and spirit, one,\n  Though feigned to feel, by now is past and gone,\n  And as Nothingness cannot feel it ill\n  For brutes to maul it, is not stranger still\n  The impulse rather to exult than mourn\n  When men foresee they shall hereafter burn\n  Upon a grand funeral pyre, or lie\n  Mummies, stifled, frozen, alternately,\n  On polished slabs of marble, or be hid,\n  Crushed beneath a mountainous pyramid!\n    You grieve: \u201cNo more will echoes of your feet\n  Reach home; no wife and children run to greet\n  Your glad return, and vie for the first kiss,\n  Flooding a heart, too full for speech, with bliss;\n  No more for dear ones will you watch and store;\n  Be their armour, and citadel no more;\u2014\n  Oh! that one day, cruel, accursed, should spoil,\n  The harvesting of a whole lifetime\u2019s toil!\u201d\n    But in these sighs, what cause will you have shown\n  For real tribulation of your own?\n  Rather will not the death that you bewail\n  Be happy ending of a fairy tale?\n  Reduce your cries to words; and they will clear\n  Away a grievance, and assuage a fear.\n  To fall asleep at a fair life\u2019s fair close,\n  And thence till Time shall cease enjoy repose\u2014\n  Where hardship?\n                          If it be to leave behind\n  Boundless sorrow to kindred, ease your mind;\n  The ash-pale face on the funeral pile,\n  Far from forbidding kindly souls to smile,\n  Stands for rest rewarding labour, release\n  From accidents of fortune\u2019s blind caprice!\n    Folly again, when banqueters recline,\n  Brows roses-wreathed, cups in their hands, the wine\n  At their hearts, and\u2014\u201cbrief harvest this of joy\n  For us poor things\u201d, they cry; \u201cthe hour employ!\n  What is is ours; for use; not to recall!\u201d\n  As if of death\u2019s ills, if any, of all\n  Chief were to think of feasting in the past,\n  Feel in the hand the wine cup, and not taste!\n\n    Mere slumber will the night from day divide,\n  And brush life\u2019s merriment and cares aside.\n  Death has infinite force to put asleep\n  Body and Mind, and how can men then keep\n  From craving the fuller, they being one?\n  Is not Death Sleep, but a sleep going on,\n  On eternally\u2014more complete again,\n  While it lasts, than the sleep of living men?\n  Sleep in its own true nature does not quit\n  Its hold so far of sense as to unfit\n  A wakened subject to collect his powers\n  For the due service of his working hours.\n  Much less\u2014if nought with something may compare\u2014\n  Than busy life\u2019s in slumber, is Death\u2019s care\n  For Self! Death owes no duty unto life,\n  Its joys and griefs, its harmony and strife;\n  Dissolves as if intent to negative\n  The utmost art of builder to revive.\n  Did ever man re-tread his native land\n  On whom Death once has laid his icy hand?\n  Yet living men will counterfeit a woe\n  For loss that in their graves they cannot know!\n  Well Nature losing patience might express\n  Herself in plain reproof of fussiness:\n  \u201cWhat ails the man? Why all this waste of breath\n  In fond anger at the approach of Death?\n  Did all thy days in unmixed misery pass?\n  No drop of pleasure moisten the cracked glass?\n  If satiety the fault, better, Guest,\n  Fly a feast too hospitable, and rest.\n  Since the offence a glut of life, the waste\n  Is the worse the longer the life shall last.\n  Why live, when, as each hour is born, and dies,\n  You read its curses in lack-lustre eyes?\n  Off with yourself; nought fresh can I invent;\n  You\u2019ve sampled my whole stock; my wits are spent!\u201d\n  You object: \u201cYour years few; body not chill\n  Or withered with age; your joints supple still?\u201d\n  True, I dare say: yet though you should defy\n  Whole centuries to kill\u2014nay, never die\u2014\n  Nature endures; all would be stale to you!\u2014\n  Plead guilty; for you know the charge is true.\n    Call next appellant\u2014one advanced in years,\n  Who meets Death\u2019s advent with protesting tears.\n  Would not Nature have reason on her side,\n  If high She raised her voice to scold and chide:\n  \u201cBegone! bad jester, peak and pule elsewhere!\n  I will not stand your sickly groanings here.\n  What if, when, as your head you laid just now\n  On the pillow, thinking nought else than how\n  Empty you were, hungering for rich fare,\n  Death entered, bidding you forthwith prepare\n  To follow! You may call it hard, unkind\n  Of the many years which left you behind,\n  Drift-weed, ashore cast by the downward flow,\n  Unsatisfied, forlorn,\n                        \u2014But wherefore so?\n  Did I not range careers for you to choose\u2014\n  This, that\u2014a crowd\u2014while you, from fear to lose\n  A better, let all go?\n                        At last be sage;\n  And cut ambition short to suit your age;\n  Accept complacently the golden rule\u2014\n  What must be must be\u2014\n                        kick; and die a fool!\u201d\n\n    Nature is right to rate a worthless son,\n  Though She may find use for him later on.\n  A battered thing like that, long past its prime,\n  Rusted and cankered with unlovely grime,\n  Out of shape and fashion, is good enough\n  To feed Creation\u2019s furnace with the stuff\n  It is ever craving, supply of fresh\n  Material of mortal mind and flesh.\n  You need not be afraid that you, poor Clown,\n  Will\u2014deserve as you may\u2014be shovelled down\n  Into a bottomless pit, or consigned\n  To Hell, as sport for devils there confined.\n  How unless from old clay could new be born?\n  Dust we were, and must, dust to dust, return;\n  Millions before have fallen to it; thus\n  Will numberless worse, better, fall like us!\n  New pots from old\u2014\n                            just that is Nature\u2019s view;\n  Still the old stuff, although the style be new.\n  \u2014And Man the stuff; no scrap of Self his own;\n  Nothing fee simple; all on lease, or loan!\n\n    So complain not, as if to strike away\n  From life ere extreme age, if then, a day\n  Were robbery. We have, all grant, no right\n  O\u2019er the past; Nature, keeping this in sight,\n  Inquires what better title then have we\n  To stake out a claim in futurity.\n  Past\u2014no beginning\u2014future\u2014no end\u2014are one;\n  Neither heeds when Man comes; when he is gone;\n  And you\u2014when time casts you out, why lament,\n  More than its neglect in the old descent?\n  For grievances a fairer you might choose\n  In the undue postponement of repose.\n  Sleep is prized as a respite from Earth\u2019s strife,\n  Yet is checkered by dreams that mimic life;\n  And death loathed as carrion bird of air,\n  Though sleep\u2019s original, with no nightmare!\n    But, perhaps, not delights of life so much\n  You grieve to lose as that to quit your touch\n  Upon life, is to leave you face to face\n  With Hell\u2019s Powers, and at their cruel grace.\n  Dread not; whatever penalties you owe\n  You will pay to the full, but not Below.\n  Hell\u2019s horrors are mere bugbears; and, as they,\n  Shadows from the realities of day;\n  Warnings as well.\n                    In no drear realm beneath\n  Wanders Tantalus, with fear-frozen breath\n  Lest the huge rock shall snap the slender thread,\n  And thunder down upon his helpless head.\n  It is a parable. The weight of cares,\n  The uncertainties in human affairs\u2014\n  These men attribute to the wrath of God;\n  Charging Heaven with strokes from Fortune\u2019s rod.\n  Never huge Tityos lay chained upon\n  Torturing bank of pitchy Acheron.\n  Had such monster lived, and his writhing bulk\n  Paved, no mere nine acres, a guilt-logged hulk,\n  But the whole Earth\u2019s circle, neither he could\n  Supply vultures groping his breast for food,\n  Nor his nerves endure ages of the strain\n  Of waiting, with the everlasting pain.\n  The crazed lover in whose heart desire delves,\n  And lust gnaws, is Tityos for ourselves.\n  Look; spy you not passions everywhere\n  Mounting red-billed from entrails to the air?\n  Not in Hell is the stone pushed up, that will\n  Foil Sisyphus by rolling down the hill.\n  \u2019Tis our Office-badges we see each year\n  Candidates praying, buying leave to wear\u2014\n  Ungrateful burden\u2014and worse, after all,\n  Not be licensed to be the people\u2019s thrall!\n  The Danaids again; who could in truth\n  Believe that in despite of bridal ruth\n  Fifty girls, save one, would shed forth a flood,\n  At their father\u2019s dictate, of kindred blood,\n  Or, if so, have paid for the deed in Hell\n  By drawing, in cracked pitchers, from a well?\n  Myth ill planned; but ponder it he who feeds\n  Cross-grained diseases of the soul, ill weeds,\n  That usurp life\u2019s field, and divert the gaze\n  From joys that might be his for many days,\n  To outbursts as self-mocking as the freak\n  Of pouring water into jars that leak.\n    Cerberus too, the Furies, and the gloom\n  Steaming from black Cocytus, and the boom\n  Of Tartarus, flames and shrieks, horrors seen\n  By none but bards. They never could have been;\n  Yet such were, are, will be, at our own hearth,\n  So long as wrong is rampant on the Earth.\n  Thriving guilt is haunted. As if to mock\n  Its rise, is hurled from the Tarpeian rock,\n  Shivers in dungeons, is scourged, branded, all\n  To stamp sin\u2019s end, and emphasize pride\u2019s fall.\n  If Justice often lags, alas, to find\n  Fit chastisement for crime, and may seem blind,\n  Conscience is keener-sighted; and its goad\n  And whip spare not; no mercy for the load.\n  How cheered would be the sinner could he think\n  Dying cleared accounts; he had but to sink\n  In death, and the weight dropped? Part of his curse\n  Is that fancy paints future torments worse.\n  The Wise assure him Hell is not; in vain;\n  Life, his, is Hell; Eternity of pain.\n    To wrongdoers and wronged too brief a space\n  Human life has seemed to avenge a race\n  On heinous crimes against it; hence rose Dis,\n  Balanced by Elysian fields of bliss.\n  But you, the Multitude, why are you sad\n  That life is short, you, neither good, nor bad?\n  Is it not for an ordinary man\n  Audacious to complain how short his span,\n  When, Ancus, with his royal work to do,\n  Closed his eyes on light, younger than are you?\n  Other kings, and lords many, in the pride\n  Of life, who ruled great nations since have died.\n  By a sudden treason He breathed his last\n  Who paved a road by which his legions passed\n  O\u2019er the sea\u2019s salt pools, scornful of the roar\n  As foot and horsemen crossed from shore to shore.\n  Scipio, thunderbolt of war, at whom\n  Carthage shuddered, messenger of her doom,\n  Gave his bones without protest to the grave\n  As much of course as if a scullion slave.\n  Did they who trained the energies of mind\n  To serve, and exalt, or please, humankind,\n  Pioneered in the Sciences to arm\n  Against gross Dulness, and by Arts to charm,\n  Repine when the summons came to leave off,\n  And not echo it with a glad \u201cEnough\u201d!\n  Ministers of the Muses, with the rest,\n  Peerless Homer, by all their king confessed,\n  Raised not a single murmur, did not plead\n  For one song more before they joined the dead.\n  Democritus, not stooping to complain,\n  When he missed the old readiness of brain,\n  Stayed for no rougher monitors of age;\n  Spared death the toil of posting the last stage,\n    When the sun arises the stars that shone\n  In high Heaven, leave it to flame alone.\n  Epicurus was the sun; in his light\n  Wisdom of other men became as night,\n  His page tracks life to its source; there the whole\n  Is moulded by this father of the soul.\n  Mortal being is a medley; but as bees,\n  Ranging up and down, among flow\u2019rs and trees,\n  In a woodland glade, sip everywhere,\n  Scorning nothing suckled by sunny air,\n  And turn all to honey, so his wise pen\n  Transmutes words into golden sweets for men.\n  As his thought wells up from a mind divine,\n  Terrors bred of animal blood resign\n  Their hold, world\u2019s walls crumble in dust away,\n  I see in light clearer than that of day\n  Earth\u2014above it, through it; but nought to tell\n  Of an Under-world, torture-jail of Hell.\n  Heaven stands revealed; the Gods\u2019 quiet home,\n  Where nor clouds, nor rain and snow-storms dare come,\n  And in large air they breathe immortally,\n  Unknowing sin or grief, content to Be.\n    Ah! the debt that I owe, joy mixed with awe,\n  For all I learned through him of Nature\u2019s law!\n  If lives stretched for goodness, well might his vie\n  For an exemption from the rule to die;\n  Nothing more certain, as his light grew dim,\n  Than his waiver of it, if pressed on him.\n  And You make a fuss at death, fret and fume,\n  When how does your life differ from a tomb?\n  You rid yourself of half of it in sleep;\n  For the other half, when you think you keep\n  Awake, bemused you yawn and snore, a prey\n  To sick nightmares although it is broad day,\n  Chief of your evils being that you fail\n  To extort from them what it is you ail.\n  Cruel the weight, you cry, upon your breast;\n  It wears you out, and robs you of your rest.\n  Seek whence it came, and by what right it took\n  You for pack-horse, and why it is you brook\n  The burden; put it, put your brain and heart\n  To the question. When you and Reason part,\n  The nightmare will be gone, and you will find\n  You have regained possession of your mind.\n    Ignorance of Causes;\u2014that is the main\n  Virus in the pest of which you complain.\n  You rush about with it, are discontent\n  To return no sounder than when you went.\n  Ho! to the villa from the house in Town\u2014\n  As driving a fire engine\u2014headlong down.\n  Doze; with the fury that you galloped down,\n  Gallop up, just to sup alone in Town!\n  Why! to escape yourself\u2014from whom, be sure,\n  You cannot flee out of whatever door.\n  Yourself you loathe for sickness!\n                                  And its Cause?\n  None else than being blind to Nature\u2019s laws.\n  Life-in-death\u2014it fleets! Moments its concern;\n  Yet in them what may not a mortal learn!\n  Study those laws, I say; they keep the key\n  Of the Universe and Eternity;\n  The clue to what hereafter shall be made\n  Of this stuff in which, men, we masquerade.\n\n    Take to heart my counsel; do not from fear\n  For life, shun ills your duty is to bear.\n  The end\u2019s stamped on each mortal lot by Fate;\n  No human force avails to change the date.\n  And why crave to live on? You\u2019ll find nought new;\n  Nothing but the old objects to pursue;\n  No fresh joys from life to be hammered; just\n  Battered failures, and savouring of dust.\n  We covet years, in the hope that they will\n  Be generous beyond the past, and still,\n  Although they be, hope, covet, as at first;\n  So wide-mouthed faith; so unquenchable thirst!\n  Never does it occur to you to glance\n  At Fortune\u2019s caprices, the whims of Chance,\n  To reflect that, if added, years will not,\n  Whatever the number, affect one jot\n  The accounts between life and death.\n                                        No strife\n  Can be, infinite Death with finite Life.\n  What that called \u201cDeath\u201d? A sea beyond, before;\n  Boundless, everlasting; no port, no shore.\n  And \u201cLife\u201d? An accident. Whether at birth it fall,\n  Or in a thousand years, concerns not Death at all!\n\n\n\n\nEarth\u2019s Decay\n\nBk. II. vv. 1145-1175\n\n\n  Ah! the good times, when Earth was young and new,\n  And, day by day, in strength and beauty grew;\n    When out of her bountiful bosom sprang\n  Each instant, some fresh wonder into view.\n\n  Instead, the mournful change! now, day by day,\n  The rule for the old Mother is decay.\n    Ill is the continual drain supplied,\n  As used particles rarefy away.\n\n  It is not as in the primeval age.\n  Nought mattered it to her that at this stage,\n    In the gay effervescence of her youth,\n  Blind forces beat on her; she mocked their rage.\n\n  Her garrison lacks food for its support.\n  Pounded by batteries of ev\u2019ry sort,\n    The walls already are a pile of dust.\n  No hope to hold longer the great World-fort.\n\n  Futurity has ceased to be for Earth\n  As in her prime of jollity and mirth.\n    She is worn out, and weak with motherhood;\n  No more, as once, has vigour to give birth\n\n  To all kinds of being, race after race,\n  Creatures monstrous in size, perfect in grace;\n    All her own make; by no gold cord let down\n  With glory on them from a higher place,\n\n  Or cast up by the lashing, wailing tide.\u2014\n  She bears not, as when laughed on ev\u2019ry side\n    Cattle, corn, pastures, vines, to make hearts glad,\n  Earth\u2019s gifts to Man, her glory, and her pride.\n\n  A changed scene ours; no longer Nature heaps\n  The barns with sheaves; well, if the farmer keeps,\n    After cost of labour and grain he sowed,\n  A balance from the harvest that he reaps.\n\n  His land in ancient days required no toil,\n  Except to clear the corn from off the soil;\n    Much less, an armoury of tools, with beeves,\n  And a train of hirelings to drudge and moil.\n\n  Some aged ploughman will be heard complain,\n  That \u201clabour as he may, how small the gain!\n    Harder times these than those his father knew;\n  A grateful task to be God-fearing then!\n\n  True, that, man for man, a husbandman\u2019s plot\n  Might seem, in measurement, a smaller plot\n    Than is now allowed; but reckon by yield,\n  And how unequal is the present lot!\u201d\n\n  Not without cause the impulse to repine\n  That we live in times of weakness\u2014decline\n    Throughout\u2014in wisdom, honest cheer, and worth\u2014\n  Ev\u2019n in fruitfulness of a shrivelled vine.\n\n  But look at home ere you begin to ring\n  Changes on offence from without; to bring\n    Indictments against Fortune and the Gods;\n  While none\u2019s in fault but Earth herself\u2014poor thing!\n\n\n\n\nPrimeval Man\n\nBk. V. vv. 781-1159\n\n\n    In the beginning Earth at her own will\n  Spread a verdant glitter on plain and hill.\n  Flowery meadows shone, gay, birthday sheen,\n  Many-coloured embroidery of green.\n  Meanwhile fresh germs were nursing strength beyond\n  The modest grass that carpeted the ground.\n  In them all a strange, a wild yearning woke\n  To taste upper air; from the soil trees broke.\n  Ah the sense of liberty, the keen zest\n  Of a roaming instinct that stirred Earth\u2019s breast!\n  Thus she by herself in bush and tall grove\n  Probed the mystery of the realm above;\n  Foliage anticipating in space\n  The down and feathers of a wing\u00e9d race.\n    Next, in many, manifold modes, not come\n  From salt pools, or sky-dropped, but from the womb\u2014\n  Bewildering variety of birth\u2014\n  Of the one universal Mother, Earth,\n  Life, under impulses of rain, heat, light,\n  Found organs of movement, even of flight.\n  Nor yet is her inventiveness outworn;\n  Still, through the same forces, are fresh forms born.\n  But well it may have been that in old days,\n  When Earth was quicker, livelier, in ways,\n  Air larger, the diversity in kind\n  Was more, the size greater, than now we find,\n  Vitality faster in ev\u2019rything.\n  Thus, eggs would be hatched by the sun in Spring,\n  As the cicala strips its body bare\n  Of its fine coat, and needs no mother\u2019s care.\n    And now Earth\u2019s motherliness that had first\n  Found its scope in herbage, in due course nursed\n  Human life itself.\n                        Wombs from moist heat grew\n  Soil-fixed by roots that nutriment thence drew.\n  This children, when they broke forth, sucked, and then,\n  Issuing to air, walked erect as Men.\n  Owing thus to one source\u2014Earth\u2019s breast\u2014their milk,\n  For clothes her breath, for couch turf soft as silk.\n    Fit season for creative pow\u2019rs to wake,\n  When cold did not numb, gusts confusion make,\n  And unlike natures could in peace assume\n  Their just traits, and find, without jostling, room.\n  With fair intervals since the birth of Man,\n  Almost each beast and bird we know began\n  To range mountains and air, although at length\n  Earth, like to mortal mothers, waned in strength.\n  Change is Nature\u2019s prime law; stage follows stage;\n  And the engine by which she works is age.\n  A plant from flower droops into decay;\n  Another from dust blossoms for its day.\n  Earth is in endless flux; she cannot bear\n  Qualities once loved; kinds are not which were.\n    Legend is thus encouraged to relate\n  Tales of wonders in Earth\u2019s creative state.\n  We hear of bodies twofold, each a kind,\n  Bound in one frame, but with a single mind.\n  Inconceivable Centaurs!\n                            At three years\n  A horse is full-grown and all burdens bears;\n  At that age a boy can but play, and rest;\n  Yearns aloud in sleep for his mother\u2019s breast.\n  Hardly is life for the young man begun\n  When the wind-galled steed\u2019s course long since was run.\n  And Scylla? She might have chos\u2019n to be fish,\n  Or to bark as dogs, and have had her wish;\n  But as a pair!\n                    And Chim\u00e6ra again?\n  Well for the Three to work as each is fain;\n  But, however it is with dragons, goat\n  And lion boast not of a flame-proof coat.\n  So, of the new Earth and Heaven\u2014dreams told\n  Of rivers running sudden floods of gold;\n  Trees with gems for flowers; giants of height\n  To wade deep-rushing waters, and a might\n  That could make Olympus a ruined heap;\n  As if, because young Earth was used to keep\n  Elements and seeds dormant, when they came\n  At length to life, they need not be the same!\n    Fancy \u201cimproved\u201d them from real freaks, born,\n  Living, if lives scarce human, and forlorn.\n  From instinct creative, but cross-grained, Earth\n  Brought monsters\u2014aspect and limbs strange\u2014to birth;\n  Abnormal the whole\u2014some with parts too few,\n  Some with more, though all human, than were due.\n  Horse-men, mermaids, dragons, gold-streams, gemmed trees.\n  For Nature are impossibilities.\n  Had they once existed, there is no cause\n  Why the race should have ceased through Nature\u2019s laws.\n  The freaks of Earth were actual, and led\n  Earthly men\u2019s lives; horror, if they had bred,\n  As they might have but for good Nature\u2019s grace!\n  She, guardian of the purity of race,\n  Rejecting them from the kind, by her ban\n  Of Childlessness, saved the descent of Man!\n    Nature works marvels; many are combined,\n  When she plants, and bars trespass on, a kind.\n  First, long experiments will have been tried\n  Before candidates find their way inside.\n  Even with claim allowed, how many have\n  Left, to prove they lived, nothing but a grave!\n  Food may have failed, elbow-room, or good will\n  In new-come neighbours strong to do them ill.\n  Among survivors a part owe their life\n  To native power to outlast long strife.\n  A habit may have been acquired to keep\n  Vigils while the enemies were asleep;\n  Or consciously they set wit against wit,\n  And, with life for stakes, enjoy playing it.\n  That is reynard\u2019s way; lions\u2019, less, resource,\n  Than valiant rage has been the ruling force;\n  And a third quality has saved a race,\n  Agility\u2014deers\u2019 pow\u2019r to devour space.\n  Again, Man is grand destroyer; so breeds,\n  Many, owe survival to his large needs.\n  Dogs might have been classed with wolves; but we prize\n  Them as loyal light sleepers, best allies.\n  Some kinds, beasts of burden, willing or not,\n  Exchange protection, meals, for freedom\u2019s lot.\n  To flocks and herds attack by beasts of prey\n  Was a nightly scare; it has passed away.\n  They are secured from that, or lack of food,\n  Since their extinction would lose Man a good.\n  But kinds that neither can resist a raid,\n  Nor have the right to call Man to their aid,\n  What for them but death, if worth while as spoil,\n  Or sharp riddance, cumberers of the soil?\n  Such final dooms as these may well have struck\n  A multitude of kinds out of life\u2019s book;\n  And Earth, as women, fills not gaps; her stage\n  Of maternity obeys laws of age.\n    Not Man, first-born of Earth, of those that fail;\n  Child of a lusty mother, hard and hale;\n  Built on a frame-work of big, solid bone,\n  With tough sinews to weld the flesh in one;\n  Not made with heat to faint, or cold to freeze,\n  To sicken with strange meat, or by disease.\n  Men led wandering wild beasts\u2019 lives; the sun\n  Had revolutions numberless to run\n  Ere they harrowed fields, guided the curved ploughs,\n  Planted young orchards, or lopped rotting boughs.\n  Meanwhile they gathered Earth\u2019s alms, well content\n  With the chance harvests sunshine, showers sent;\n  Though food on which our ancestors relied\n  Was that the boundless woods of oak supplied.\n  Acorns were their mainstay, with, in large store,\n  Berries that young Earth\u2019s teeming fallows bore.\n  They felt not how miserable they were;\n  For Nature pitied, and gave ample fare.\n  To slake thirst they but had to track the sound\n  Of torrents tumbling from great hills around\u2014\n  A call their fellows, the wild beasts, knew well.\n  And oft a man would linger in some cell\n  Of Wood-Nymph invited by the cool air,\n  Since thence broke springs unfailing. Here and there\n  They bubbled round rocks, loitering to play\n  With each; then would awhile sleep on their way\n  In soft green moss, before all joined, to flow,\n  One easy gliding stream, to the smooth plain below.\n    As yet men had not learned to tan a skin\n  Robbed from some beast, and dress themselves therein.\n  Forest, or mountain cave, was the sole home\u2014\n  If that,\u2014they knew. When, as they chanced to roam,\n  A storm burst, rain, or whirlwind, they would lie,\n  Grimy, in the thick scrub, till it passed by.\n  Each one was for himself; none of them could\n  Rise to an idea of common good;\n  \u201cCustom\u201d, \u201cMorals\u201d, things unknown; and what use\n  In laws, when no act required an excuse?\n  Aught a man saw, and liked, he took; so long\n  As none other saw, liked, and was as strong.\n  The only need, a standard how to test\n  Animal worth\u2014live as fitted that best.\n  Savage love, although not without its storms,\n  Was simpler than ours, direct, free from forms.\n  If two agreed in those natural days,\n  They wedded, as were weddings; went their ways.\n  Were he willing, not she, he won consent\n  With a stick: and she had to be content.\n  When rich the wooer, quick the bargain made,\n  And the price in acorns, or berries paid.\n  In our times, though passion may burn, its flame\n  We call discreetly by some other name;\n  Is it force to warn daughters that to wed\n  Poverty means just a mother\u2019s death bed?\n  And as for a sale of hearts, dare compare\n  A lawyer\u2019s settlements with a swine\u2019s fare!\n  Still, in essence a likeness we may find\n  In our modes to those of the new-world kind.\n    Hunters all, by virtue of speed of foot,\n  Patience no less, they ran down any brute;\n  Hands as dexterous hurled a storm of stones,\n  And wielded clubs that crashed through flesh and bones.\n  Rarely were they baulked, or had to lie low,\n  Hunted, the hunters, by a stronger foe!\n  Sometimes night surprised them, led by the chase\n  Far from their customary haunts. Small case\n  They made of that; strewed leaves, and on the heap\n  Threw themselves, like wild beasts, and were asleep.\n  Pity not that beneath no roof they lay,\n  As darkness followed on the close of day.\n  They wailed not, doubting its return, for light,\n  Till with rosy torch the Sun banished night.\n  The two had from their childhood come and gone;\n  Why fear the Dark, unwatched, might rule alone?\n  To them who never knew of locks and bars,\n  A roof seemed a worse guardian than the stars.\n  Rather it was when they had sought repose\n  In caves they met most danger from their foes.\n  It might occur to some wandering beast,\n  Making the night hideous, to infest\n  A recess it passed: and, however glad\n  The tenant to buy life with all he had,\n  His fate would be to glut a lion\u2019s maw.\n  Plunged live in a live tomb by tooth and claw;\n  Though worse their doom, who, with huge gobbets jagged\n  From the bleeding flesh, about the woods dragged\n  Noisome centres of horror and pest\u2014palms\n  Trembling o\u2019er sores for which they knew no balms;\n  Calling with agonizing cries on death\n  To sink their remains to the world beneath.\n    Alas!\n            Though measure age with age; nor let\n  Us in compassion for a few forget\n  How hosts that, eagles gleaming, marched to war,\n  Return, less thousands weltering in gore;\n  A navy that rode yesterday the waves,\n  To-day is matchwood, corpses robbed of graves.\n  Ocean in Earth\u2019s infancy swelled with pride,\n  And lightly laid its empty threats aside;\n  Laughing tides might mean treachery, or not;\n  Mortals could plead no wreck to prove a plot;\n  Famine slew a good few in the Age of Flint;\n  Surfeit\u2019s as homicidal as is stint;\n  For themselves poisoned meats rude nomads dressed;\n  With polished art we serve them to a guest!\n    A stage on; huts, plaited boughs; men therein\n  Who stripped for clothes their prey of fur and skin.\n  Chief of all discoveries theirs to learn\n  How the thing we call \u201cFire\u201d will flame and burn.\n  First, lightning brought it, darting from above;\n  Though men might watch its birth in any grove,\n  For when gales blow, the old trees sway about,\n  And from the boughs in friction sparks flash out.\n  The sun taught many uses; how the heat\u2014\n  Repeated rays\u2014will gradually beat\n  Hardness mellow, and, with fire\u2019s aid, prepare\n  The soil\u2019s crude fruits and grain for human fare.\n  Thus, from a hearth and rough shed, rose a home,\n  With revolutions many thence to come;\n  And when stop?\n                    With comfort, unknown of old,\n  Men grew impatient of rude toil and cold.\n  Plenty and leisure stirred the torpid heart;\n  And love and tenderness required their part.\n  Marriage fought free-love; couples plighted troth;\n  And offspring were the property of both.\n  Pledges of love, they had power to warm\n  Beyond the circle where they were life\u2019s charm.\n  How could a father keep a heart of stone,\n  When he felt a child\u2019s throbbing on his own?\n  Tenderness breeds tenderness; men at length\n  Recognized binding duties owed by strength\n  To weakness\u2014assuming what it has willed\n  Must be done\u2014in the stammer of a child\n  Dictating to its father. From the hearth\n  Sympathy with helplessness spread through Earth.\n  Right of the weak was the keystone whereon\n  Neighbours that would not do or see wrong done,\n  Founded their leagues; AND THOUGH SOME BASE WAR-LORD\n  WOULD HERE AND THERE BE FALSE TO HIS SWORN WORD,\n  THE BEST, THE MAIN PART, STOOD BY THEIRS, PURE, CHASTE:\u2014\n  Else, mankind had perished, Earth been a waste!\n\n    Throughout it all, Mankind was being taught\n  To voice the rising requirements of Thought.\n  Gradual process! Gesture was first stage;\n  The fingers point a want in infant age.\n  Each creature feels what force the best to spend\n  To indicate a need, and gain an end.\n  An angry calf soon after it is born,\n  Butts with forehead not armed as yet with horn;\n  Whelps of panthers, and cubs of lions treat\n  As weapons teeth to be, and clawless feet.\n  Chickens ruffle spread-wings, as at a foe,\n  Threatening trespassers things they might do.\n  What emotion will not all beasts succeed\n  In expressing, though without speech, at need?\n  Your Molossian draws back his large, soft lips,\n  And shews his hard teeth! Strangers, ware, he grips!\n  Then comes an old friend of the Master\u2019s\u2014hark!\n  With frolic round and round, the joyous bark!\n  So with the whole tribe; whether in a glow\n  Of love they lick their pups; or to and fro\n  Roll them\u2014mimic rage\u2014and bare, as to glut\n  Cannibal hunger, teeth in jaws half shut.\n  All who know but a little of the kind,\n  And listen to the scolding match, will find\n  Worlds of difference from the doleful bay\n  Of hound deserted, whipt, cow\u2019ring away.\n  Horses, again; does not the rule apply?\n  You tell by a steed\u2019s neigh that mares are nigh;\n  Straightway he feels the spur of wing\u00e9d love;\n  They interpret his challenge to the drove.\n  But\u2014nostrils spread, the neigh become a snort;\n  War steeds, jangling armour, pass\u2014he would join the sport!\n  Nor are birds, ospreys, gulls, without their choice\n  Of vents for feeling; all unlike the voice,\n  In wooing, to the hunger-scream of strife,\n  Or victor\u2019s, grappling sea fish for its life.\n  Even, it is believed, some kinds that ride\n  The air have means by varied cries to guide\n  Men\u2019s acts. Rough throated rooks and crows are said\n  By secular sign-reading to have bred\n  An instinct when winds, floods, rain they would have,\n  To warn of weather coming that they crave.\n    Thus, ears attest the ways that have been found\n  By lower races to converse by sound,\n  Strange if Man, Nature\u2019s first-born, built not speech\n  On sounds for meanings diverse, one for each!\n  Fond fable that one knew all names, and then\n  Distributed them to dumb fellow men!\n  Before common use, by what means learned he\n  Articulate speech had utility?\n  How urge men as good as deaf\u2014so, the rule,\n  Sulky\u2014for no clear gain, to go to school,\n  When Nature had already, by design\n  For them, through combining powers, to reign,\n  Giv\u2019n versatility of voice and tongue\n  To plan, to act, and drive the world along!\n    Strength in union; this the great, first law,\n  From which, and its self-sacrifice, men draw\n  Sovereignty in Nature; thence learned to bow\n  To chiefs in mind and heart, who taught them how\n  To change forms of living and life for new.\n  From acceptance of son after sire grew\n  Kingship and kings; with cities in due course,\n  And citadels as centres of armed force,\n  Or royal refuges in civil strife;\n  For complex soon became national life.\n  Wealth counted first by cattle, and by land;\n  And the State\u2019s part was at the King\u2019s command.\n  By his own standard he apportioned it,\n  For strength or beauty; sometimes mother-wit.\n  Laws of inheritance grew fixed; and great\n  Landowners vied with kings to rule a State.\n  Gold came; race, steel, charm, acres ceased to reign;\n  All gave gold way, and followed in its train.\n    An owner used it to earn rule and fame;\n  Less for themselves\u2014not e\u2019en so high his aim\u2014\n  Than that he sought to hide some stain of earth.\n  None blushed to rank by accidents of birth;\n  But rank through money! Rich men would disguise\n  That flaw by vouching aught else for their rise,\n  They wished wealth for enjoyment, yet to shun\n  Odium for it behind honours won.\n  Vain! each peak climbed breeds on its own account\n  Envy with traps to trip you as you mount;\n  The more, and loftier, surer the flash\n  Of a bolt, and for you, amid the crash,\n  To find yourself contemptuously hurled\n  Into the foul pit of the Underworld.\n  Flee gold and power, both; neither is one\n  With happiness; or sheds bliss on a throne.\n  Few who have touched the goal aver the good\n  Equals the price they paid in sweat of blood.\n  Better it satisfies to be of those\n  That obey than to sway realms, and crush foes.\n  Hear Reason, and know wealth, absolute, whole,\n  Is so to live that means disturb not soul.\n  You wish to forbid Penury your door?\n  Then adjust your house-keeping to your store.\n  Ambition exalts to abase; your eyes,\n  If they see, will teach you its lures are lies.\n\n    Earth\u2019s masters despised these truths; they who had\n  Supremacy and wealth went drunk and mad\n  With licence; worms could bear no more; and crown,\n  And lordship\u2014heads with them\u2014came tumbling down.\n  Majesty was a ball for mobs to spurn;\n  Awe\u2019s excess was matched by excess of scorn.\n  It was the dregs\u2019 orgy; rule of brute force;\n  And each man\u2019s fury followed its full course.\n  Guilt will, whatever an offence, appear\n  Less heinous to third persons than seen near.\n  Trial now was before a Court of one;\u2014\n  Judge, suitor, he to whom the hurt was done.\n  Vengeance extreme would rouse convict, or kin,\n  To redress disproportioned to the sin,\n  And, unindulged, leave on the other side\n  A balance owing, and unsatisfied;\n  Enmeshing in either case a wide swarm\n  Of households pledged to work each other harm.\n  A blood-feud chokes enterprise;\u2014earn reward\n  For deeds, when hangs over the door a sword!\n  Then, in all ages, let him who shall dare\n  Set rolling stones of civil feud, beware!\n  Whatever lives earlier it may spoil,\n  It will not miss him out; it must recoil,\n  No peace at home for one who has, the first,\n  Poisoned man\u2019s faith in man; he is accurst.\n  Skulk as he may, himself does not believe\n  He shall for aye be able to deceive;\n  In sleep, fever-raging, he will proclaim\n  His sin, and roam clad in the sheet of shame!\n    Drear this \u201cmid passage\u201d, when, as themselves thought,\n  Emancipated, men were sold and bought;\n  Bondsmen to cunning demagogues, who saw\n  Their gain in putting off the reign of Law.\n  But ev\u2019n the Multitude will not endure\n  Chaos, save as interlude. Hence the cure.\n  Mankind wearies of frauds; of vengeful deeds,\n  Infinitely renewing, like ill weeds.\n  From lassitude it lets the wise and good\n  Enlist strong arms to stem the turbid flood.\n  In time some sage arises to extract\n  Ideas of right, that laws condense to act.\n  Youth long since was past; Nature stood aside,\n  Leaving Man to face problems, and replies provide.\n\n\n\n\nIphigenia\n\nBk. I. vv. 80-102\n\n\n  Think not I, and in Reason\u2019s name, blaspheme\n  Holy truths. Nay, for this would ill beseem\n    My purpose. To bring home impious deeds\n  Done as for Religion\u2014that is my theme.\n\n  Who knows not of Aulis\u2014the Chiefs arrayed\n  About the Altar of the Trivian Maid\u2014\n    Lords, chosen of Ach\u00e6a, kings of men,\n  Reluctant murderers, ashamed, afraid.\n\n  And lo! though startled, with no fear at all\u2014\n  For how suspect ill in her loved sire\u2019s call!\u2014\n    A girl, young; yet ripe for marriage; perhaps,\n  Summoned to adorn that high festival!\n\n  What if some tremor? In her flow\u2019r of days,\n  Brought hither for the host of Greeks to gaze,\n    And admire the Fair, a young hero\u2019s bride.\n  Hark! is not that the wedding chant they raise?\n\n  Courage! Faint not; here are brave friends will bear\n  Thee to the Altar; all await thee there!\n    \u201cWho, and for what?\u201d She knows not, but a steam,\n  A blood offering, scents she in the air.\n\n  In a trance she moves; round her a void space.\n  Awed as if at Death\u2019s halo on Youth\u2019s grace,\n    Warriors shrink as on the Princess comes,\n  Abashed to look their victim in the face.\n\n  A priest\u2019s touch\u2014the tresses in which maids bind\n  Their waving hair have found themselves confined\n    By a sacrificial fillet, the ends\n  Circling each cheek, and flowing down behind.\n\n  She wakes. Flash on her soul\u2014the Fleet\u2019s delay\u2014\n  Her Mother\u2019s despair as she went her way\u2014\n    The wrath of Artemis, Her gory rites\u2014\n  Basilisk glance as Calchas passed that day!\n\n  And her sire\u2014not once to have turned and smiled\n  Upon his best beloved, his first-born child\u2014\n    The gleam from a ray on a Thing ill veiled\u2014\n  And a swell of sobs that could not be stilled!\n\n  Her knees fail her; and how not? how sustain\n  The horror! her father to will to stain\n    His dagger with her blood! to breathe beneath\n  A load of inextinguishable pain!\n\n  So, shed Iphianassa her pure life,\n  Borne in shuddering arms to a Sire\u2019s knife:\n    Printing with chaste blood incestuous stains,\n  Re-dyed later by a foul, vengeful wife!\n\n  The whole to verify a priest\u2019s surmise,\n  Prove privity with Heav\u2019n in vulgar eyes!\n    No matter how Gods\u2019 credit was abused,\n  Or sweet innocence sacrificed to lies.\n\n\n\n\nMaternal Love\n\nBk. II. vv. 342-380\n\n\n  Admire how Nature, with her jealous care\n  For purity in kind, still schemes to pair\n    Mother and child by features that forbid\n  Confusion in the common home all share.\n\n  Members of a kind insomuch agree;\n  Yet each is itself; whence diversity.\n    Mutual recognition rests on that;\n  Family ties without it could not be.\n\n  No human convention; dumb cattle can\n  Be sure where love is due, no less than Man.\n    An universal instinct\u2014and, for guide,\n  A sense of differences\u2014Nature\u2019s plan.\n\n  A calf may its innocent life resign\n  On the altar before some stately shrine,\n    Shedding a flood of warm blood \u2019mid the steam\n  Of incense, and libations of red wine.\n\n  And the Mother! in many a green glade\n  She tracks the lost by prints his feet have made.\n    Each spot she studies, in the fond belief\n  The faith of love can never be gainsaid.\n\n  Then, from the woods that her moans overflow,\n  An impulse drives her to renew her woe\n    At the stall, where a passionate regret,\n  Piercing her heart, tosses her to and fro.\n\n  Not willow saplings, dewy grass, nor sight\n  Of brimming rivers, with, in warm noon light,\n    Cool pools to stand in, banish pain and ache,\n  Much less, yield an interval of delight.\n\n  A calf at play impose on her belief!\n  Be accepted as hers, and bring relief!\n    Numberless signs attest it not her own;\n  Both like and unlike aggravate her grief.\n\n  \u2019Tis given not to flocks alone and herds\n  To mark diversities, but wild beasts, birds,\n    Joying in lonely groves, and streams, and lakes,\n  Even fish that understand without words,\n\n  As they swim the deep, paint in shells the shore,\u2014\n  Nay, grains of corn themselves, an endless store,\n    Remain distinguishable, one and all;\n  Are known apart by learn\u00e9d in such lore.\n\n  Art works after one pattern, and by rule;\n  Nature as the mood inspires, not a school.\n    She is certain in idea; diverse\n  In embodiment; never same and dull.\n\n\n\n\nEcho\n\nBk. IV. vv. 525-536, 549-596\n\n\n  Sound, voice are bodies. Though not for the hand\n  To grasp, sense feels them, acts at their command.\n    They wind into the ear, and strike the drum;\n  Hark! response, as to a conductor\u2019s wand.\n\n  The voice even can hurt, as fist, or saw.\n  In full volume, hoarse, grating on the jaw,\n    Jostling its way in haste to worry through,\n  It leaves the path it travels rough and raw.\n\n  And no less bodily a spoken word;\n  When moulded, and dressed, to be rightly heard,\n    And winged by that arch modeller, the tongue,\n  It slips through the lips, and careers, a bird.\n\n  If the length to be traversed is unfair,\n  Symmetry is marred; speakers must prepare\n    For dazed confusion in their audience,\n  And only a blurred rumbling in the air.\n\n  Then set a Herald in a market place.\n  For him thousands of eyes gaze from one face;\n    And he flings at the whole a single word,\n  That each will drink-in as his special grace.\n\n  It multiplies, and with the hearers; all\n  Receive stamped facsimiles, to recall\n    Both form and sound, distinct, as that went forth;\n  Each can claim his own for original.\n\n  Human ears are the goal; and when no ear\n  Is reached, after roaming everywhere\n    In vain for shelter, the poor thing expires,\n  To flit a ghostly leaf, dead, shrunk and sere.\n\n  Or chance may be that it collides with rock;\n  When\u2014as with pebble that recoils\u2014the shock\n    Returns the voice thither whence it had come,\n  And so unchanged that it appears to mock.\n\n  Natural the cause, effect; the surprise,\n  When in lone spots a company\u2019s loud cries\n    After stragglers on dark hills, bring back nought\n  But old words in old order as replies.\n\n  Where a height faced height, I have known a shout\n  To gambol between in a joyous rout,\n    And six or seven times reverberate;\n  Like ball thrown to and fro in play about.\n\n  Nothing is out of Nature\u2019s course, the mode\n  In which She acts; but Fancy loves to load\n    Being with mysteries; not learn the laws\n  Within our ken that rule Earth, our abode.\n\n  Thus, a charmed husbandman will vigils keep,\n  Imagining far echoes breaking sleep,\n    \u2019Mid silences that seem to hold their breath,\n  To be Pan come, half God, half Beast, with leap,\n\n  And rustle of his bristly, pine-wreathed head\u2014\n  Drawn lip running o\u2019er shrilling pipe\u2014to lead\n    His troop, goat-footed Satyrs, Nymphs, and Fauns,\n  Till cliffs and caves reply to chords and reed.\n\n  He deems that shy Powers, as falls the Dark,\n  In solitudes\u2014no prying crowds to mark\u2014\n    Fill woods and hills with music, wind and stringed,\n  That he hears till the day-star wakes the lark.\n\n  For ears hear as they list.\n                              The world is wide,\n  With wildernesses wherein few abide.\n    Remote from busy marts these joy to dream\n  Some Gods do not disdain to dwell beside!\n\n\n\n\nThe Seasons\n\nBk. V. vv. 736-746\n\n\n    The pageant of the Seasons! Venus comes; She brings with her,\n  As leader of the revel, winged Zephyr, Spring\u2019s harbinger.\n  And Flora has spread a carpet, finer was never wove,\n  All hues and fragrances, to be trod by the Queen of Love.\n  Next enters red-hot Summer; but its droughts are lightly borne\n  By good Goddess Ceres; for they ripen the standing corn\n  Nought ashamed is She of the dusty sweat upon her brow.\n  Foreseeing her sheaves, how more and heavier they shall grow;\n  Nor even scolds the North-wind; it steels the straw to sustain,\n  By its rough embraces, the weight of the hardening grain.\n  Autumn steps close after; and it too with a God for guide;\n  Hark! shout the vineyards, \u201cBacchus! Hail to Bacchus!\u201d far and wide.\n    And now Earth\u2019s \u201cNo-man\u2019s land!\u201d Spring, Autumn, Summer here and there;\n  While up and down dance the Winds in the Kingdom of the Air.\n  South-easters roar through woods where green leaves whispered yesterday;\n  And thunders the South on meadows that wear the bloom of May.\n  But the Year is waning; in the long chilly Dark it sits;\n  No more, though by mere spasms, it breaks out into merry fits.\n  Sulky and dull it mumbles its tempers in fog and sleet;\n  Its joints are stiff with age; it totters on frost-bitten feet.\n  \u2019Tis Winter, with a train pinched like itself, and short of breath,\n  That shivers, and, as it moves, rattles its remains of teeth.\n\n\nGLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.","title":"Virgil & Lucretius: Passages translated by William Stebbing","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":24623}