Addison’s Poetical Works
Poems on Several Occasions
To Mr Dryden
How long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?
Can neither injuries of time, nor age,
Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?
Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote;
Grief chilled his breast, and checked his rising thought;
Pensive and sad, his drooping Muse betrays
The Roman genius in its last decays.
Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possess’d,
And second youth is kindled in thy breast;
_10
Thou mak’st the beauties of the Romans known,
And England boasts of riches not her own;
Thy lines have heightened Virgil’s majesty,
And Horace wonders at himself in thee.
Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers, and a clearer style;
And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,
Edges his satire, and improves his rage.
Thy copy casts a fairer light on all,
And still outshines the bright original.
_20
Now Ovid boasts the advantage of thy song,
And tells his story in the British tongue;
Thy charming verse and fair translations show
How thy own laurel first began to grow;
How wild Lycaon, changed by angry gods,
And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods.
Oh, mayst thou still the noble task prolong,
Nor age nor sickness interrupt thy song!
Then may we wondering read, how human limbs
Have watered kingdoms, and dissolved in streams;
_30
Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mould
Turned yellow by degrees, and ripened into gold:
How some in feathers, or a ragged hide,
Have lived a second life, and different natures tried.
Then will thy Ovid, thus transformed, reveal
A nobler change than he himself can tell.
Mag. Coll. Oxon, June 2, 1693.
The Author’s age, 22.
A Poem to His Majesty, Presented to the Lord Keeper
To the Right Honourable Sir John Somers
Lokd Keeper of the Great Seal
If yet your thoughts are loose from state affairs,
Nor feel the burden of a kingdom’s cares,
If yet your time and actions are your own,
Receive the present of a Muse unknown:
A Muse that in adventurous numbers sings
The rout of armies, and the fall of kings,
Britain advanced, and Europe’s peace restored,
By Somers’ counsels, and by Nassau’s sword.
To you, my lord, these daring thoughts belong,
Who helped to raise the subject of my song;
_10
To you the hero of my verse reveals
His great designs; to you in council tells
His inmost thoughts, determining the doom
Of towns unstormed, and battles yet to come.
And well could you, in your immortal strains,
Describe his conduct, and reward his pains:
But since the state has all your cares engross’d,
And poetry in higher thoughts is lost,
Attend to what a lesser Muse indites,
Pardon her faults and countenance her flights.
_20
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait,
And from your judgment must expect my fate,
Who, free from vulgar passions, are above
Degrading envy, or misguided love;
If you, well pleased, shall smile upon my lays,
Secure of fame, my voice I’ll boldly raise;
For next to what you write, is what you praise.
To the King
When now the business of the field is o’er,
The trumpets sleep, and cannons cease to roar;
When every dismal echo is decay’d,
And all the thunder of the battle laid;
Attend, auspicious prince, and let the Muse
In humble accents milder thoughts infuse.
Others, in bold prophetic numbers skill’d,
Set thee in arms, and led thee to the field;
My Muse, expecting, on the British strand
Waits thy return, and welcomes thee to land:
_10
She oft has seen thee pressing on the foe,
When Europe was concerned in every blow;
But durst not in heroic strains rejoice; is
The trumpets, drums, and cannons drowned her voice:
She saw the Boyne run thick with human gore,
And floating corps lie beating on the shore:
She saw thee climb the banks, but tried in vain
To trace her hero through the dusty plain,
When through the thick embattled lines he broke,
Now plunged amidst the foes, now lost in clouds of smoke.
_20
Oh that some Muse, renowned for lofty verse,
In daring numbers would thy toils rehearse!
Draw thee beloved in peace, and feared in wars,
Inured to noonday sweats, and midnight cares!
But still the godlike man, by some hard fate,
Receives the glory of his toils too late;
Too late the verse the mighty act succeeds;
One age the hero, one the poet breeds.
A thousand years in full succession ran
Ere Virgil raised his voice, and sung the man
_30
Who, driven by stress of fate, such dangers bore
On stormy seas and a disastrous shore,
Before he settled in the promised earth,
And gave the empire of the world its birth.
Troy long had found the Grecians bold and fierce,
Ere Homer mustered up their troops in verse;
Long had Achilles quelled the Trojans’ lust,
And laid the labour of the gods in dust,
Before the towering Muse began her flight,
And drew the hero raging in the fight,
_40
Engaged in tented fields and rolling floods,
Or slaughtering mortals, or a match for gods.
And here, perhaps, by fate’s unerring doom,
Some mighty bard lies hid in years to come,
That shall in William’s godlike acts engage,
And with his battles warm a future age.
Hibernian fields shall here thy conquests show,
And Boyne be sung when it has ceased to flow;
Here Gallic labours shall advance thy fame,
And here Seneffe[3] shall wear another name.
_50
Our late posterity, with secret dread,
Shall view thy battles, and with pleasure read
How, in the bloody field, too near advanced,
The guiltless bullet on thy shoulder glanced.
The race of Nassaus was by Heaven design’d
To curb the proud oppressors of mankind,
To bind the tyrants of the earth with laws,
And fight in every injured nation’s cause,
The world’s great patriots; they for justice call,
And, as they favour, kingdoms rise or fall.
_60
Our British youth, unused to rough alarms,
Careless of fame, and negligent of arms,
Had long forgot to meditate the foe,
And heard unwarmed the martial trumpet blow;
But now, inspired by thee, with fresh delight
Their swords they brandish, and require the fight,
Renew their ancient conquests on the main,
And act their fathers’ triumphs o’er again;
Fired, when they hear how Agincourt was strow’d
With Gallic corps and Cressi swam in blood,
_70
With eager warmth they fight, ambitious all
Who first shall storm the breach, or mount the wall.
In vain the thronging enemy by force
Would clear the ramparts, and repel their course;
They break through all, for William leads the way,
Where fires rage most, and loudest engines play.
Namur’s late terrors and destruction show
What William, warmed with just revenge, can do:
Where once a thousand turrets raised on high
Their gilded spires, and glittered in the sky,
_80
An undistinguished heap of dust is found,
And all the pile lies smoking on the ground,
His toils, for no ignoble ends design’d,
Promote the common welfare of mankind;
No wild ambition moves, but Europe’s fears,
The cries of orphans, and the widow’s tears;
Oppressed religion gives the first alarms,
And injured justice sets him in his arms;
His conquests freedom to the world afford,
And nations bless the labours of his sword.
_90
Thus when the forming Muse would copy forth
A perfect pattern of heroic worth,
She sets a man triumphant in the field,
O’er giants cloven down, and monsters kill’d,
Reeking in blood, and smeared with dust and sweat,
Whilst angry gods conspire to make him great.
Thy navy rides on seas before unpress’d,
And strikes a terror through the haughty East;
Algiers and Tunis from their sultry shore
With horror hear the British engines roar;
_100
Fain from the neighbouring dangers would they run,
And wish themselves still nearer to the sun.
The Gallic ships are in their ports confined,
Denied the common use of sea and wind,
Nor dare again the British strength engage;
Still they remember that destructive rage
Which lately made their trembling host retire,
Stunned with the noise, and wrapt in smoke and fire;
The waves with wide unnumbered wrecks were strow’d,
And planks, and arms, and men, promiscuous flow’d.
_110
Spain’s numerous fleet, that perished on our coast,
Could scarce a longer line of battle boast,
The winds could hardly drive them to their fate,
And all the ocean laboured with the weight.
Where’er the waves in restless errors roll,
The sea lies open now to either pole:
Now may we safely use the northern gales,
And in the Polar Circle spread our sails;
Or deep in southern climes, secure from wars,
New lands explore, and sail by other stars;
_120
Fetch uncontrolled each labour of the sun,
And make the product of the world our own.
At length, proud prince, ambitious Louis, cease
To plague mankind, and trouble Europe’s peace;
Think on the structures which thy pride has razed,
On towns unpeopled, and on fields laid waste;
Think on the heaps of corps and streams of blood,
On every guilty plain, and purple flood,
Thy arms have made, and cease an impious war,
Nor waste the lives intrusted to thy care.
_130
Or if no milder thought can calm thy mind,
Behold the great avenger of mankind,
See mighty Nassau through the battle ride,
And see thy subjects gasping by his side:
Fain would the pious prince refuse the alarm,
Fain would he check the fury of his arm;
But when thy cruelties his thoughts engage,
The hero kindles with becoming rage,
Then countries stolen, and captives unrestored,
Give strength to every blow, and edge his sword.
_140
Behold with what resistless force he falls
On towns besieged, and thunders at thy walls!
Ask Villeroy, for Villeroy beheld
The town surrendered, and the treaty seal’d,
With what amazing strength the forts were won,
Whilst the whole power of France stood looking on.
But stop not here: behold where Berkley stands,
And executes his injured king’s commands!
Around thy coast his bursting bombs he pours
On flaming citadels and falling towers;
_150
With hissing streams of fire the air they streak,
And hurl destruction round them where they break;
The skies with long ascending flames are bright,
And all the sea reflects a quivering light.
Thus Ætna, when in fierce eruptions broke,
Fills heaven with ashes, and the earth with smoke;
Here crags of broken rocks are twirled on high,
Here molten stones and scattered cinders fly:
Its fury reaches the remotest coast,
And strows the Asiatic shore with dust.
_160
Now does the sailor from the neighbouring main
Look after Gallic towns and forts in vain;
No more his wonted marks he can descry,
But sees a long unmeasured ruin lie;
Whilst, pointing to the naked coast, he shows
His wondering mates where towns and steeples rose,
Where crowded citizens he lately view’d,
And singles out the place where once St Maloes stood.
Here Russel’s actions should my Muse require;
And, would my strength but second my desire,
_170
I’d all his boundless bravery rehearse,
And draw his cannons thundering in my verse:
High on the deck should the great leader stand,
Wrath in his look, and lightning in his hand;
Like Homer’s Hector, when he flung his fire
Amidst a thousand ships, and made all Greece retire.
But who can run the British triumphs o’er,
And count the flames dispersed on every shore?
Who can describe the scattered victory,
And draw the reader on from sea to sea?
_180
Else who could Ormond’s godlike acts refuse,
Ormond the theme of every Oxford Muse?
Fain would I here his mighty worth proclaim,
Attend him in the noble chase of fame,
Through all the noise and hurry of the fight,
Observe each blow, and keep him still in sight.
Oh, did our British peers thus court renown,
And grace the coats their great forefathers won,
Our arms would then triumphantly advance,
Nor Henry be the last that conquered France!
_190
What might not England hope, if such abroad
Purchased their country’s honour with their blood:
When such, detained at home, support our state
In William’s stead, and bear a kingdom’s weight,
The schemes of Gallic policy o’erthrow,
And blast the counsels of the common foe;
Direct our armies, and distribute right,
And render our Maria’s loss more light.
But stop, my Muse, the ungrateful sound forbear,
Maria’s name still wounds each British ear:
_200
Each British heart Maria still does wound,
And tears burst out unbidden at the sound;
Maria still our rising mirth destroys,
Darkens our triumphs, and forbids our joys.
But see, at length, the British ships appear!
Our Nassau comes! and, as his fleet draws near,
The rising masts advance, the sails grow white,
And all his pompous navy floats in sight.
Come, mighty prince, desired of Britain, come!
May heaven’s propitious gales attend thee home!
_210
Come, and let longing crowds behold that look
Which such confusion and amazement strook
Through Gallic hosts: but, oh! let us descry
Mirth in thy brow, and pleasure in thy eye;
Let nothing dreadful in thy face be found;
But for awhile forget the trumpet’s sound;
Well-pleased, thy people’s loyalty approve,
Accept their duty, and enjoy their love.
For as, when lately moved with fierce delight,
You plunged amidst the tumult of the fight,
_220
Whole heaps of dead encompassed you around,
And steeds o’erturned lay foaming on the ground:
So crowned with laurels now, where’er you go,
Around you blooming joys and peaceful blessings flow.
A Translation of All
Virgil’s Fourth Georgic
Except the Story of Aristæus
Ethereal sweets shall next my Muse engage,
And this, Maecenas, claims your patronage.
Of little creatures’ wondrous acts I treat,
The ranks and mighty leaders of their state,
Their laws, employments, and their wars relate.
A trifling theme provokes my humble lays.
Trifling the theme, not so the poet’s praise,
If great Apollo and the tuneful Nine
First, for your bees a proper station find,
_10
That’s fenced about, and sheltered from the wind;
For winds divert them in their flight, and drive
The swarms, when loaden homeward, from their hive.
Nor sheep, nor goats, must pasture near their stores,
To trample underfoot the springing flowers;
Nor frisking heifers bound about the place,
To spurn the dew-drops off, and bruise the rising grass;
Nor must the lizard’s painted brood appear,
Nor wood-pecks, nor the swallow, harbour near.
They waste the swarms, and, as they fly along,
_20
Convey the tender morsels to their young.
Let purling streams, and fountains edged with moss,
And shallow rills run trickling through the grass;
Let branching olives o’er the fountain grow;
Or palms shoot up, and shade the streams below;
That when the youth, led by their princes, shun
The crowded hive and sport it in the sun,
Refreshing springs may tempt them from the heat,
And shady coverts yield a cool retreat.
Whether the neighbouring water stands or runs,
_30
Lay twigs across and bridge it o’er with stones
That if rough storms, or sudden blasts of wind,
Should dip or scatter those that lag behind,
Here they may settle on the friendly stone,
And dry their reeking pinions at the sun.
Plant all the flowery banks with lavender,
With store of savory scent the fragrant air;
Let running betony the field o’erspread,
And fountains soak the violet’s dewy bed.
Though barks or plaited willows make your hive,
_40
A narrow inlet to their cells contrive;
For colds congeal and freeze the liquors up,
And, melted down with heat, the waxen buildings drop.
The bees, of both extremes alike afraid,
Their wax around the whistling crannies spread,
And suck out clammy dews from herbs and flowers,
To smear the chinks, and plaster up the pores;
For this they hoard up glue, whose clinging drops,
Like pitch or bird-lime, hang in stringy ropes.
They oft, ’tis said, in dark retirements dwell,
_50
And work in subterraneous caves their cell;
At other times the industrious insects live
In hollow rocks, or make a tree their hive.
Point all their chinky lodgings round with mud,
And leaves must thinly on your work be strow’d;
But let no baleful yew-tree flourish near,
Nor rotten marshes send out steams of mire;
Nor burning crabs grow red, and crackle in the fire:
Nor neighbouring caves return the dying sound,
Nor echoing rocks the doubled voice rebound.
_60
Things thus prepared——
When the under-world is seized with cold and night,
And summer here descends in streams of light,
The bees through woods and forests take their flight.
They rifle every flower, and lightly skim
The crystal brook, and sip the running stream;
And thus they feed their young with strange delight,
And knead the yielding wax, and work the slimy sweet.
But when on high you see the bees repair,
Borne on the winds through distant tracts of air,
_70
And view the winged cloud all blackening from afar;
While shady coverts and fresh streams they choose,
Milfoil and common honeysuckles bruise,
And sprinkle on their hives the fragrant juice.
On brazen vessels beat a tinkling sound,
And shake the cymbals of the goddess round;
Then all will hastily retreat, and fill
The warm resounding hollow of their cell.
If once two rival kings their right debate,
And factions and cabals embroil the state,
_80
The people’s actions will their thoughts declare;
All their hearts tremble, and beat thick with war;
Hoarse, broken sounds, like trumpets’ harsh alarms,
Run through the hive, and call them to their arms;
All in a hurry spread their shivering wings,
And fit their claws, and point their angry stings:
In crowds before the king’s pavilion meet,
And boldly challenge out the foe to fight:
At last, when all the heavens are warm and fair,
They rush together out, and join; the air
_90
Swarms thick, and echoes with the humming war.
All in a firm round cluster mix, and strow
With heaps of little corps the earth below,
As thick as hailstones from the floor rebound,
Or shaken acorns rattle on the ground.
No sense of danger can their kings control,
Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul:
Each obstinate in arms pursues his blow,
Till shameful flight secures the routed foe.
This hot dispute and all this mighty fray
_100
A little dust flung upward will allay.
But when both kings are settled in their hive,
Mark him who looks the worst, and, lest he live
Idle at home in ease and luxury,
The lazy monarch must be doomed to die;
So let the royal insect rule alone,
And reign without a rival in his throne.
The kings are different; one of better note,
All speck’d with gold, and many a shining spot,
Looks gay, and glistens in a gilded coat;
_110
But love of ease, and sloth, in one prevails,
That scarce his hanging paunch behind him trails:
The people’s looks are different as their kings’,
Some sparkle bright, and glitter in their wings;
Others look loathsome and diseased with sloth,
Like a faint traveller, whose dusty mouth
Grows dry with heat, and spits a mawkish froth.
The first are best——
From their o’erflowing combs you’ll often press
Pure luscious sweets, that mingling in the glass
_120
Correct the harshness of the racy juice,
And a rich flavour through the wine diffuse.
But when they sport abroad, and rove from home,
And leave the cooling hive, and quit the unfinished comb,
Their airy ramblings are with ease confined,
Clip their king’s wings, and if they stay behind
No bold usurper dares invade their right,
Nor sound a march, nor give the sign for flight.
Let flowery banks entice them to their cells,
And gardens all perfumed with native smells;
_130
Where carved Priapus has his fixed abode,
The robber’s terror, and the scarecrow god.
Wild thyme and pine-trees from their barren hill
Transplant, and nurse them in the neighbouring soil,
Set fruit-trees round, nor e’er indulge thy sloth,
But water them, and urge their shady growth.
And here, perhaps, were not I giving o’er,
And striking sail, and making to the shore,
I’d show what art the gardener’s toils require,
Why rosy pæstum blushes twice a year;
_140
What streams the verdant succory supply,
And how the thirsty plant drinks rivers dry;
With what a cheerful green does parsley grace,
And writhes the bellying cucumber along the twisted grass;
Nor would I pass the soft acanthus o’er,
Ivy nor myrtle-trees that love the shore;
Nor daffodils, that late from earth’s slow womb
Unrumple their swoln buds, and show their yellow bloom.
For once I saw in the Tarentine vale,
Where slow Galesus drenched the washy soil,
_150
An old Corician yeoman, who had got
A few neglected acres to his lot,
Where neither corn nor pasture graced the field,
Nor would the vine her purple harvest yield;
But savoury herbs among the thorns were found,
Vervain and poppy-flowers his garden crown’d,
And drooping lilies whitened all the ground.
Blest with these riches he could empires slight,
And when he rested from his toils at night,
The earth unpurchased dainties would afford,
_160
And his own garden furnished out his board:
The spring did first his opening roses blow,
First ripening autumn bent his fruitful bough.
When piercing colds had burst the brittle stone,
And freezing rivers stiffened as they run,
He then would prune the tenderest of his trees,
Chide the late spring, and lingering western breeze:
His bees first swarmed, and made his vessels foam
With the rich squeezing of the juicy comb.
Here lindens and the sappy pine increased;
_170
Here, when gay flowers his smiling orchard dressed,
As many blossoms as the spring could show,
So many dangling apples mellowed on the bough.
In rows his elms and knotty pear-trees bloom,
And thorns ennobled now to bear a plum,
And spreading plane-trees, where, supinely laid,
He now enjoys the cool, and quaffs beneath the shade.
But these for want of room I must omit,
And leave for future poets to recite.
Now I’ll proceed their natures to declare,
_180
Which Jove himself did on the bees confer
Because, invited by the timbrel’s sound,
Lodged in a cave, the almighty babe they found,
And the young god nursed kindly under-ground.
Of all the winged inhabitants of air,
These only make their young the public care;
In well-disposed societies they live,
And laws and statutes regulate their hive;
Nor stray like others unconfined abroad,
But know set stations, and a fixed abode:
_190
Each provident of cold in summer flies
Through fields and woods, to seek for new supplies,
And in the common stock unlades his thighs.
Some watch the food, some in the meadows ply,
Taste every bud, and suck each blossom dry;
Whilst others, labouring in their cells at home,
Temper Narcissus’ clammy tears with gum,
For the first groundwork of the golden comb;
On this they found their waxen works, and raise
The yellow fabric on its gluey base.
_200
Some educate the young, or hatch the seed
With vital warmth, and future nations breed;
Whilst others thicken all the slimy dews,
And into purest honey work the juice;
Then fill the hollows of the comb, and swell
With luscious nectar every flowing cell.
By turns they watch, by turns with curious eyes
Survey the heavens, and search the clouded skies,
To find out breeding storms, and tell what tempests rise.
By turns they ease the loaden swarms, or drive
_210
The drone, a lazy insect, from their hive.
The work is warmly plied through all the cells,
And strong with thyme the new-made honey smells.
So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat,
When with huge strokes the stubborn wedge they beat,
And all the unshapen thunderbolt complete;
Alternately their hammers rise and fall;
Whilst griping tongs turn round the glowing ball.
With puffing bellows some the flames increase,
And some in waters dip the hissing mass;
_220
Their beaten anvils dreadfully resound,
And Ætna shakes all o’er, and thunders under-ground.
Thus, if great things we may with small compare,
The busy swarms their different labours share.
Desire of profit urges all degrees;
The aged insects, by experience wise,
Attend the comb, and fashion every part,
And shape the waxen fret-work out with art:
The young at night, returning from their toils,
Bring home their thighs clogged with the meadows’ spoils.
_230
On lavender and saffron buds they feed,
On bending osiers and the balmy reed,
From purple violets and the teile they bring
Their gathered sweets, and rifle all the spring.
All work together, all together rest,
The morning still renews their labours past;
Then all rush out, their different tasks pursue,
Sit on the bloom, and suck the ripening dew;
Again, when evening warns them to their home,
With weary wings and heavy thighs they come,
_240
And crowd about the chink, and mix a drowsy hum.
Into their cells at length they gently creep,
There all the night their peaceful station keep,
Wrapt up in silence, and dissolved in sleep.
None range abroad when winds and storms are nigh,
Nor trust their bodies to a faithless sky,
But make small journeys with a careful wing,
And fly to water at a neighbouring spring;
And lest their airy bodies should be cast
In restless whirls, the sport of every blast,
_250
They carry stones to poise them in their flight,
As ballast keeps the unsteady vessel right.
But, of all customs that the bees can boast,
’Tis this may challenge admiration most;
That none will Hymen’s softer joys approve,
Nor waste their spirits in luxurious love,
But all a long virginity maintain,
And bring forth young without a mother’s pain:
From herbs and flowers they pick each tender bee,
And cull from plants a buzzing progeny;
_260
From these they choose out subjects, and create
A little monarch of the rising state;
Then build wax kingdoms for the infant prince,
And form a palace for his residence.
But often in their journeys, as they fly,
On flints they tear their silken wings, or lie
Grovelling beneath their flowery load, and die.
Thus love of honey can an insect fire,
And in a fly such generous thoughts inspire.
Yet by repeopling their decaying state,
_270
Though seven short springs conclude their vital date,
Their ancient stocks eternally remain,
And in an endless race their children’s children reign.
No prostrate vassal of the East can more
With slavish fear his haughty prince adore;
His life unites them all; but, when he dies,
All in loud tumults and distractions rise;
They waste their honey and their combs deface,
And wild confusion reigns in every place.
Him all admire, all the great guardian own,
_280
And crowd about his courts, and buzz about his throne.
Oft on their backs their weary prince they bear,
Oft in his cause, embattled in the air,
Pursue a glorious death, in wounds and war.
Some, from such instances as these, have taught,
‘The bees’ extract is heavenly; for they thought
The universe alive; and that a soul,
Diffused throughout the matter of the whole,
To all the vast unbounded frame was given,
And ran through earth, and air, and sea, and all the deep of heaven;
_290
That this first kindled life in man and beast,
Life, that again flows into this at last.
That no compounded animal could die,
But when dissolved, the spirit mounted high,
Dwelt in a star, and settled in the sky.’
Whene’er their balmy sweets you mean to seize,
And take the liquid labours of the bees,
Spurt draughts of water from your mouth, and drive
A loathsome cloud of smoke amidst their hive,
Twice in the year their flowery toils begin,
_300
And twice they fetch their dewy harvest in;
Once, when the lovely Pleiades arise,
And add fresh lustre to the summer skies;
And once, when hastening from the watery sign,
They quit their station, and forbear to shine.
The bees are prone to rage, and often found
To perish for revenge, and die upon the wound
Their venomed sting produces aching pains,
And swells the flesh, and shoots among the veins.
When first a cold hard winter’s storms arrive,
_310
And threaten death or famine to their hive,
If now their sinking state and low affairs
Can move your pity, and provoke your cares,
Fresh burning thyme before their cells convey,
And cut their dry and husky wax away;
For often lizards seize the luscious spoils,
Or drones, that riot on another’s toils:
Oft broods of moths infest the hungry swarms,
And oft the furious wasp their hive alarms
With louder hums, and with unequal arms;
_320
Or else the spider at their entrance sets.
Her snares, and spins her bowels into nets.
When sickness reigns, for they as well as we
Feel all the effects of frail mortality,
By certain marks the new disease is seen,
Their colour changes, and their looks are thin;
Their funeral rites are formed, and every bee
With grief attends the sad solemnity;
The few diseased survivors hang before
Their sickly cells, and droop about the door,
_330
Or slowly in their hives their limbs unfold,
Shrunk up with hunger, and benumbed with cold;
In drawling hums the feeble insects grieve,
And doleful buzzes echo through the hive,
Like winds that softly murmur through the trees,
Like flames pent up, or like retiring seas.
Now lay fresh honey near their empty rooms,
In troughs of hollow reeds, whilst frying gums
Cast round a fragrant mist of spicy fumes.
Thus kindly tempt the famished swarm to eat,
_340
And gently reconcile them to their meat.
Mix juice of galls, and wine, that grow in time
Condensed by fire, and thicken to a slime;
To these, dried roses, thyme, and ccntaury join,
And raisins, ripened on the Psythian vine.
Besides, there grows a flower in marshy ground,
Its name amellus, easy to be found;
A mighty spring works in its root, and cleaves
The sprouting stalk, and shows itself in leaves:
The flower itself is of a golden hue,
_350
The leaves inclining to a darker blue;
The leaves shoot thick about the flower, and grow
Into a bush, and shade the turf below:
The plant in holy garlands often twines
The altars’ posts, and beautifies the shrines;
Its taste is sharp, in vales new-shorn it grows,
Where Mella’s stream in watery mazes flows.
Take plenty of its roots, and boil them well
In wine, and heap them up before the cell.
But if the whole stock fail, and none survive;
_360
To raise new people, and recruit the hive,
I’ll here the great experiment declare,
That spread the Arcadian shepherd’s name so far.
How bees from blood of slaughtered bulls have fled,
And swarms amidst the red corruption bred.
For where the Egyptians yearly see their bounds
Refreshed with floods, and sail about their grounds,
Where Persia borders, and the rolling Nile
Drives swiftly down the swarthy Indian’s soil,
Till into seven it multiplies its stream,
_370
And fattens Egypt with a fruitful slime:
In this last practice all their hope remains,
And long experience justifies their pains.
First, then, a close contracted space of ground,
With straitened walls and low-built roof, they found;
A narrow shelving light is next assign’d
To all the quarters, one to every wind;
Through these the glancing rays obliquely pierce:
Hither they lead a bull that’s young and fierce,
When two years’ growth of horn he proudly shows,
_380
And shakes the comely terrors of his brows:
His nose and mouth, the avenues of breath,
They muzzle up, and beat his limbs to death;
With violence to life and stifling pain
He flings and spurns, and tries to snort in vain,
Loud heavy blows fall thick on every side,
Till his bruised bowels burst within the hide;
When dead, they leave him rotting on the ground,
With branches, thyme, and cassia, strowed around.
All this is done, when first the western breeze
_390
Becalms the year, and smooths the troubled seas;
Before the chattering swallow builds her nest,
Or fields in spring’s embroidery are dress’d.
Meanwhile the tainted juice ferments within,
And quickens as its works: and now are seen
A wondrous swarm, that o’er the carcase crawls,
Of shapeless, rude, unfinished animals.
No legs at first the insect’s weight sustain,
At length it moves its new-made limbs with pain;
Now strikes the air with quivering wings, and tries
_400
To lift its body up, and learns to rise;
Now bending thighs and gilded wings it wears
Full grown, and all the bee at length appears;
From every side the fruitful carcase pours
Its swarming brood, as thick as summer showers,
Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When twanging strings first shoot them on the foes.
Thus have I sung the nature of the bee;
While Cæsar, towering to divinity,
The frighted Indians with his thunder awed,
_410
And claimed their homage, and commenced a god;
I flourished all the while in arts of peace,
Retired and sheltered in inglorious ease;
I who before the songs of shepherds made,
When gay and young my rural lays I play’d,
And set my Tityrus beneath his shade.
A Song for St Cecilia’s Day, at Oxford
I
Cecilia, whose exalted hymns
With joy and wonder fill the blest,
In choirs of warbling seraphims,
Known and distinguished from the rest,
Attend, harmonious saint, and see
Thy vocal sons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious saint, and hear our prayers;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
And, as thou sing’st thy God, teach us to sing of thee;
Tune every string and every tongue,
Be thou the Muse and subject of our song.
II
Let all Cecilia’s praise proclaim,
Employ the echo in her name,
Hark how the flutes and trumpets raise,
At bright Cecilia’s name, their lays;
The organ labours in her praise.
Cecilia’s name does all our numbers grace,
From every voice the tuneful accents fly,
In soaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base.
Cecilia’s name through all the notes we sing,
The work of every skilful tongue,
The sound of every trembling string,
The sound and triumph of our song.
III
For ever consecrate the day,
To music and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre,
The streams stand still, the stones admire;
The listening savages advance,
The wolf and lamb around him trip,
The bears in awkward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance.
The moving woods attended, as he play’d,
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
IV
Music religious heats inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
The Almighty listens to a tuneful tongue,
And seems well-pleased and courted with a song.
Soft moving sounds and heavenly airs
Give force to every word, and recommend our prayers.
When time itself shall be no more,
And all things in confusion hurled,
Music shall then exert its power,
And sound survive the ruins of the world:
Then saints and angels shall agree
In one eternal jubilee:
All heaven shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure see
The whole creation in a chorus join.
CHORUS.
Consecrate the place and day,
To music and Cecilia.
Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallowed bounds,
Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting sounds.
Nor mournful sigh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on every tongue;
Whilst all, with voice and strings prepared,
Keep up the loud harmonious song,
And imitate the blest above,
In joy, and harmony, and love.
An Ode for St Cecilia’s Day
Set to Music by Mr Daniel Purcell. Performed at Oxford 1699
Prepare the hallowed strain, my Muse,
Thy softest sounds and sweetest numbers choose;
The bright Cecilia’s praise rehearse,
In warbling words, and gliding verse,
That smoothly run into a song,
And gently die away, and melt upon the tongue.
First let the sprightly violin
The joyful melody begin,
And none of all her strings be mute;
While the sharp sound and shriller lay
_10
In sweet harmonious notes decay,
Softened and mellowed by the flute.
‘The flute that sweetly can complain,
Dissolve the frozen nymph’s disdain;
Panting sympathy impart,
Till she partake her lover’s smart.’[4]
CHORUS.
Next, let the solemn organ join
Religious airs, and strains divine,
Such as may lift us to the skies,
And set all Heaven before our eyes:
_20
‘Such as may lift us to the skies;
So far at least till they
Descend with kind surprise,
And meet our pious harmony half-way.’
Let then the trumpet’s piercing sound
Our ravished ears with pleasure wound.
The soul o’erpowering with delight,
As, with a quick uncommon ray,
A streak of lightning clears the day,
And flashes on the sight.
_30
Let Echo too perform her part,
Prolonging every note with art,
And in a low expiring strain
Play all the concert o’er again.
Such were the tuneful notes that hung
On bright Cecilia’s charming tongue:
Notes that sacred heats inspired,
And with religious ardour fired:
The love-sick youth, that long suppress’d
His smothered passion in his breast,
_40
No sooner heard the warbling dame,
But, by the secret influence turn’d,
He felt a new diviner flame,
And with devotion burn’d.
With ravished soul, and looks amazed,
Upon her beauteous face he gazed;
Nor made his amorous complaint:
In vain her eyes his heart had charm’d,
Her heavenly voice her eyes disarm’d,
And changed the lover to a saint.
_50
Grand Chorus
And now the choir complete rejoices,
With trembling strings and melting voices.
The tuneful ferment rises high,
And works with mingled melody:
Quick divisions run their rounds,
A thousand trills and quivering sounds
In airy circles o’er us fly,
Till, wafted by a gentle breeze,
They faint and languish by degrees,
And at a distance die.
_60
An Account of the Greatest English Poets
To Mr Henry Sacheverell. April 3, 1694
Since, dearest Harry, you will needs request
A short account of all the Muse-possess’d,
That, down from Chaucer’s days to Dryden’s times,
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes;
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker’s want of strength,
I’ll try to make their several beauties known,
And show their verses’ worth, though not my own.
Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
_10
Till Chaucer first, the merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscured his wit;
In vain he jests in his unpolished strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amused a barbarous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where’er the poet’s fancy led, pursued
_20
Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleased at distance all the sights
Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights;
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
_30
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote,
O’errun with wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader press;
He more had pleased us, had he pleased us less.
One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes
With silent wonder, but new wonders rise.
As in the milky-way a shining white
O’erflows the heavens with one continued light;
That not a single star can show his rays,
_40
Whilst jointly all promote the common blaze.
Pardon, great poet, that I dare to name
The unnumbered beauties of thy verse with blame;
Thy fault is only wit in its excess,
But wit like thine in any shape will please.
What Muse but thine can equal hints inspire,
And fit the deep-mouthed Pindar to thy lyre;
Pindar, whom others, in a laboured strain
And forced expression, imitate in vain?
Well-pleased in thee he soars with new delight,
_50
And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a nobler flight.
Blest man! whose spotless life and charming lays
Employed the tuneful prelate in thy praise:
Blest man! who now shalt be for ever known
In Sprat’s successful labours and thy own.
But Milton next, with high and haughty stalks,
Unfettered in majestic numbers walks;
No vulgar hero can his Muse engage;
Nor earth’s wide scene confine his hallowed rage.
See! see! he upward springs, and towering high,
_60
Spurns the dull province of mortality,
Shakes heaven’s eternal throne with dire alarms,
And sets the Almighty thunderer in arms.
Whate’er his pen describes I more than see,
Whilst every verse arrayed in majesty,
Bold, and sublime, my whole attention draws,
And seems above the critic’s nicer laws.
How are you struck with terror and delight,
When angel with archangel copes in fight!
When great Messiah’s outspread banner shines,
_70
How does the chariot rattle in his lines!
What sounds of brazen wheels, what thunder, scare,
And stun the reader with the din of war!
With fear my spirits and my blood retire,
To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fire;
But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise,
And view the first gay scenes of Paradise,
What tongue, what words of rapture, can express
A vision so profuse of pleasantness!
Oh, had the poet ne’er profaned his pen,
_80
To varnish o’er the guilt of faithless men,
His other works might have deserved applause;
But now the language can’t support the cause;
While the clean current, though serene and bright,
Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.
But now, my Muse, a softer strain rehearse,
Turn every line with art, and smooth thy verse;
The courtly Waller next commands thy lays:
Muse, tune thy verse with art to Waller’s praise.
While tender airs and lovely dames inspire
_90
Soft melting thoughts, and propagate desire;
So long shall Waller’s strains our passion move,
And Sacharissa’s beauties kindle love.
Thy verse, harmonious bard, and flattering song,
Can make the vanquished great, the coward strong.
Thy verse can show even Cromwell’s innocence,
And compliment the storms that bore him hence.
Oh, had thy Muse not come an age too soon,
But seen great Nassau on the British throne,
How had his triumphs glittered in thy page,
_100
And warmed thee to a more exalted rage!
What scenes of death and horror had we view’d,
And how had Boyne’s wide current reeked in blood!
Or, if Maria’s charms thou wouldst rehearse,
In smoother numbers and a softer verse,
Thy pen had well described her graceful air,
And Gloriana would have seemed more fair.
Nor must Roscommon pass neglected by,
That makes even rules a noble poetry:
Rules, whose deep sense and heavenly numbers show
_110
The best of critics, and of poets too.
Nor, Denham, must we e’er forget thy strains,
While Cooper’s Hill commands the neighbouring plains.
But see where artful Dryden next appears,
Grown old in rhyme, but charming even in years.
Great Dryden next, whose tuneful Muse affords
The sweetest numbers, and the fittest words.
Whether in comic sounds or tragic airs
She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears.
If satire or heroic strains she writes,
_120
Her hero pleases and her satire bites.
From her no harsh unartful numbers fall,
She wears all dresses, and she charms in all.
How might we fear our English poetry,
That long has flourished, should decay with thee;
Did not the Muses’ other hope appear,
Harmonious Congreve, and forbid our fear:
Congreve! whose fancy’s unexhausted store
Has given already much, and promised more.
Congreve shall still preserve thy fame alive,
_130
And Dryden’s Muse shall in his friend survive.
I’m tired with rhyming, and would fain give o’er,
But justice still demands one labour more:
The noble Montague remains unnamed,
For wit, for humour, and for judgment famed;
To Dorset he directs his artful Muse,
In numbers such as Dorset’s self might use.
How negligently graceful he unreins
His verse, and writes in loose familiar strains!
How Nassau’s godlike acts adorn his lines,
_140
And all the hero in full glory shines!
We see his army set in just array,
And Boyne’s dyed waves run purple to the sea.
Nor Simois choked with men, and arms, and blood;
Nor rapid Xanthus’ celebrated flood,
Shall longer be the poet’s highest themes,
Though gods and heroes fought promiscuous in their streams.
But now, to Nassau’s secret councils raised,
He aids the hero, whom before he praised.
I’ve done at length; and now, dear friend, receive
_150
The last poor present that my Muse can give.
I leave the arts of poetry and verse
To them that practise them with more success.
Of greater truths I’ll now prepare to tell,
And so at once, dear friend and Muse, farewell.
A Letter From Italy
To the Right Honourable Charles Lord Halifax, in the Year 1701
Salve magna parens frugum Saturnia tellus,
Magna virûm! tibi res antiquæ laudis et artis
Aggredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.
VIRG., Geor. ii.
While you, my lord, the rural shades admire,
And from Britannia’s public posts retire,
Nor longer, her ungrateful sons to please,
For their advantage sacrifice your ease;
Me into foreign realms my fate conveys,
Through nations fruitful of immortal lays,
Where the soft season and inviting clime
Conspire to trouble your repose with rhyme.
For wheresoe’er I turn my ravished eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
_10
Poetic fields encompass me around
And still I seem to tread on classic ground;
For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung,
Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows,
And every stream in heavenly numbers flows.
How am I pleased to search the hills and woods
For rising springs and celebrated floods!
To view the Nar, tumultuous in his course,
And trace the smooth Clitumnus to his source,
_20
To see the Mincio draw his watery store
Through the long windings of a fruitful shore,
And hoary Albula’s infected tide
O’er the warm bed of smoking sulphur glide.
Fired with a thousand raptures I survey
Eridanus[5] through flowery meadows stray,
The king of floods! that, rolling o’er the plains,
The towering Alps of half their moisture drains,
And proudly swoln with a whole winter’s snows,
Distributes wealth and plenty where he flows.
_30
Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng
I look for streams immortalised in song,
That lost in silence and oblivion lie,
(Dumb are their fountains and their channels dry,)
Yet run for ever by the Muse’s skill,
And in the smooth description murmur still.
Sometimes to gentle Tiber I retire,
And the famed river’s empty shores admire,
That, destitute of strength, derives its course
From thrifty urns and an unfruitful source,
_40
Yet sung so often in poetic lays,
With scorn the Danube and the Nile surveys;
So high the deathless Muse exalts her theme!
Such was the Boyne, a poor inglorious stream,
That in Hibernian vales obscurely stray’d,
And unobserved in wild meanders play’d;
Till by your lines and Nassau’s sword renowned,
Its rising billows through the world resound,
Where’er the hero’s godlike acts can pierce,
Or where the fame of an immortal verse.
_50
Oh could the Muse my ravished breast inspire
With warmth like yours, and raise an equal fire,
Unnumbered beauties in my verse should shine,
And Virgil’s Italy should yield to mine!
See how the golden groves around me smile,
That shun the coast of Britain’s stormy isle,
Or when transplanted and preserved with care,
Curse the cold clime, and starve in northern air.
Here kindly warmth their mounting juice ferments
To nobler tastes, and more exalted scents:
_60
Even the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom,
And trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
Bear me, some god, to Baia’s gentle seats,
Or cover me in Umbria’s green retreats;
Where western gales eternally reside,
And all the seasons lavish all their pride:
Blossoms, and fruits, and flowers together rise,
And the whole year in gay confusion lies.
Immortal glories in my mind revive,
And in my soul a thousand passions strive,
_70
When Rome’s exalted beauties I descry
Magnificent in piles of ruin lie.
An amphitheatre’s amazing height
Here fills my eye with terror and delight,
That on its public shows unpeopled Rome,
And held uncrowded nations in its womb;
Here pillars rough with sculpture pierce the skies;
And here the proud triumphal arches rise,
Where the old Romans’ deathless acts displayed,
Their base, degenerate progeny upbraid:
_80
Whole rivers here forsake the fields below,
And wondering at their height through airy channels flow.
Still to new scenes my wandering Muse retires,
And the dumb show of breathing rocks admires;
Where the smooth chisel all its force has shown,
And softened into flesh the rugged stone.
In solemn silence, a majestic band,
Heroes, and gods, and Roman consuls stand;
Stern tyrants, whom their cruelties renown,
And emperors in Parian marble frown;
_90
While the bright dames, to whom they humble sued,
Still show the charms that their proud hearts subdued.
Fain would I Raphæl’s godlike art rehearse,
And show the immortal labours in my verse,
Where from the mingled strength of shade and light
A new creation rises to my sight,
Such heavenly figures from his pencil flow,
So warm with life his blended colours glow.
From theme to theme with secret pleasure toss’d,
Amidst the soft variety I’m lost:
_100
Here pleasing airs my ravish’d soul confound
With circling notes and labyrinths of sound;
Here domes and temples rise in distant views,
And opening palaces invite my Muse.
How has kind Heaven adorned the happy land,
And scattered blessings with a wasteful hand!
But what avail her unexhausted stores,
Her blooming mountains and her sunny shores,
With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart,
The smiles of nature, and the charms of art,
_110
While proud oppression in her valleys reigns,
And tyranny usurps her happy plains?
The poor inhabitant beholds in vain
The reddening orange and the swelling grain:
Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines,
And in the myrtle’s fragrant shade repines:
Starves, in the midst of nature’s bounty curs’d,
And in the loaden vineyard dies for thirst.
O Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright,
_120
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eased of her load, subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak’st the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv’st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.
Thee, goddess, thee, Britannia’s isle adores;
How has she oft exhausted all her stores,
How oft in fields of death thy presence sought,
Nor thinks the mighty prize too dearly bought!
_130
On foreign mountains may the sun refine
The grape’s soft juice, and mellow it to wine,
With citron groves adorn a distant soil,
And the fat olive swell with floods of oil:
We envy not the warmer clime, that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies,
Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,
Though o’er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine:
’Tis liberty that crowns Britannia’s isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
_140
Others with towering piles may please the sight,
And in their proud aspiring domes delight;
A nicer touch to the stretched canvas give,
Or teach their animated rocks to live:
’Tis Britain’s care to watch o’er Europe’s fate,
And hold in balance each contending state,
To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war,
And answer her afflicted neighbours’ prayer.
The Dane and Swede, roused up by fierce alarms,
Bless the wise conduct of her pious arms:
_150
Soon as her fleets appear, their terrors cease,
And all the northern world lies hushed in peace.
The ambitious Gaul beholds with secret dread
Her thunder aimed at his aspiring head,
And fain her godlike sons would disunite
By foreign gold, or by domestic spite;
But strives in vain to conquer or divide,
Whom Nassau’s arms defend and counsels guide.
Fired with the name, which I so oft have found
The distant climes and different tongues resound,
_160
I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain.
But I’ve already troubled you too long,
Nor dare attempt a more adventurous song.
My humble verse demands a softer theme,
A painted meadow, or a purling stream;
Unfit for heroes, whom immortal lays,
And lines like Virgil’s, or like yours, should praise.
Milton’s Style Imitated, in a Translation of a Story Out of the Third Æneid
Lost in the gloomy horror of the night,
We struck upon the coast where Ætna lies,
Horrid and waste, its entrails fraught with fire,
That now casts out dark fumes and pitchy clouds,
Vast showers of ashes hovering in the smoke;
Now belches molten stones and ruddy flame,
Incensed, or tears up mountains by the roots,
Or slings a broken rock aloft in air.
The bottom works with smothered fire involved
In pestilential vapours, stench, and smoke.
_10
’Tis said, that thunder-struck Enceladus
Groveling beneath the incumbent mountain’s weight,
Lies stretched supine, eternal prey of flames;
And, when he heaves against the burning load,
Reluctant, to invert his broiling limbs,
A sudden earthquake shoots through all the isle,
And Ætna thunders dreadful under-ground,
Then pours out smoke in wreathing curls convolved,
And shades the sun’s bright orb, and blots out day.
Here in the shelter of the woods we lodged,
_20
And frighted heard strange sounds and dismal yells,
Nor saw from whence they came; for all the night
A murky storm deep lowering o’er our heads
Hung imminent, that with impervious gloom
Opposed itself to Cynthia’s silver ray,
And shaded all beneath. But now the sun
With orient beams had chased the dewy night
From earth and heaven; all nature stood disclosed:
When, looking on the neighbouring woods, we saw
The ghastly visage of a man unknown,
_30
An uncouth feature, meagre, pale, and wild;
Affliction’s foul and terrible dismay
Sat in his looks, his face, impaired and worn
With marks of famine, speaking sore distress;
His locks were tangled, and his shaggy beard
Matted with filth; in all things else a Greek.
He first advanced in haste; but, when he saw
Trojans and Trojan arms, in mid career
Stopp’d short, he back recoiled as one surprised:
But soon recovering speed he ran, he flew
Precipitant, and thus with piteous cries
_40
Our ears assailed: ‘By heaven’s eternal fires,
By every god that sits enthroned on high,
By this good light, relieve a wretch forlorn,
And bear me hence to any distant shore,
So I may shun this savage race accursed.
’Tis true I fought among the Greeks that late
With sword and fire o’erturned Neptunian Troy
And laid the labours of the gods in dust;
For which, if so the sad offence deserves,
_50
Plunged in the deep, for ever let me lie
Whelmed under seas; if death must be my doom,
Let man inflict it, and I die well-pleased.’
He ended here, and now profuse to tears
In suppliant mood fell prostrate at our feet:
We bade him speak from whence and what he was,
And how by stress of fortune sunk thus low;
Anchises too, with friendly aspect mild,
Gave him his hand, sure pledge of amity;
When, thus encouraged, he began his tale.
_60
‘I’m one,’ says he, ‘of poor descent; my name
Is Achæmenides, my country Greece;
Ulysses’ sad compeer, who, whilst he fled
The raging Cyclops, left me here behind,
Disconsolate, forlorn; within the cave
He left me, giant Polypheme’s dark cave;
A dungeon wide and horrible, the walls
On all sides furred with mouldy damps, and hung
With clots of ropy gore, and human limbs,
His dire repast: himself of mighty size,
_70
Hoarse in his voice, and in his visage grim,
Intractable, that riots on the flesh
Of mortal men, and swills the vital blood.
Him did I see snatch up with horrid grasp
Two sprawling Greeks, in either hand a man;
I saw him when with huge, tempestuous sway
He dashed and broke them on the grundsil edge;
The pavement swam in blood, the walls around
Were spattered o’er with brains. He lapp’d the blood,
And chewed the tender flesh still warm with life,
_80
That swelled and heaved itself amidst his teeth
As sensible of pain. Not less meanwhile
Our chief, incensed and studious of revenge,
Plots his destruction, which he thus effects.
The giant, gorged with flesh, and wine, and blood,
Lay stretched at length and snoring in his den,
Belching raw gobbets from his maw, o’ercharged
With purple wine and cruddled gore confused.
We gathered round, and to his single eye,
The single eye that in his forehead glared
_90
Like a full moon, or a broad burnished shield,
A forky staff we dexterously applied,
Which, in the spacious socket turning round,
Scooped out the big round jelly from its orb.
But let me not thus interpose delays;
Fly, mortals, fly this cursed, detested race:
A hundred of the same stupendous size,
A hundred Cyclops live among the hills,
Gigantic brotherhood, that stalk along
With horrid strides o’er the high mountains’ tops,
_100
Enormous in their gait; I oft have heard
Their voice and tread, oft seen them as they passed,
Sculking and cowering down, half dead with fear.
Thrice has the moon washed all her orb in light,
Thrice travelled o’er, in her obscure sojourn,
The realms of night inglorious, since I’ve lived
Amidst these woods, gleaning from thorns and shrubs
A wretched sustenance.’ As thus he spoke,
We saw descending from a neighbouring hill
Blind Polypheme; by weary steps and slow
_110
The groping giant with a trunk of pine
Explored his way; around, his woolly flocks
Attended grazing; to the well-known shore
He bent his course, and on the margin stood,
A hideous monster, terrible, deformed;
Full in the midst of his high front there gaped
The spacious hollow where his eye-ball rolled,
A ghastly orifice: he rinsed the wound,
And washed away the strings and clotted blood
That caked within; then, stalking through the deep,
_120
He fords the ocean, while the topmost wave
Scarce reaches up his middle side; we stood
Amazed, be sure; a sudden horror chill
Ran through each nerve, and thrilled in every vein,
Till, using all the force of winds and oars,
We sped away; he heard us in our course,
And with his outstretched arms around him groped,
But finding nought within his reach, he raised
Such hideous shouts that all the ocean shook.
Even Italy, though many a league remote,
_130
In distant echoes answered; Ætna roared,
Through all its inmost winding caverns roared.
Roused with the sound, the mighty family
Of one-eyed brothers hasten to the shore,
And gather round the bellowing Polypheme,
A dire assembly: we with eager haste
Work every one, and from afar behold
A host of giants covering all the shore.
So stands a forest tall of mountain oaks
Advanced to mighty growth: the traveller
_140
Hears from the humble valley where he rides
The hollow murmurs of the winds that blow
Amidst the boughs, and at the distance sees
The shady tops of trees unnumbered rise,
A stately prospect, waving in the clouds.
The Campaign, a Poem
To His Grace the Duke of Marlborough
Rhení pæator et Istri.
Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit
Ordinibus; læctatur eques, plauditque senator,
Votaque patricio certant plebeia favori.
CLAUD. DE LAUD. STILIC.
Esse aliquam in terris gentem quæ suâ impensâ, suo labore ac periculo bella gerat pro libertate aliorum. Nec hoc finitimis, aut propinquæ vicinitatis hominibus, aut terris continenti junctis præstet. Maria trajiciat: ne quod toto orbe terrarum injustum imperium sit, et ubique jus, fas, lex, potentissima sint. LIV. HIST. lib. 36.
While crowds of princes your deserts proclaim,
Proud in their number to enrol your name;
While emperors to you commit their cause,
And Anna’s praises crown the vast applause;
Accept, great leader, what the Muse recites,
That in ambitious verse attempts your fights.
Fired and transported with a theme so new,
Ten thousand wonders opening to my view
Shine forth at once; sieges and storms appear,
And wars and conquests fill the important year,
_10
Rivers of blood I see, and hills of slain,
An Iliad rising out of one campaign.
The haughty Gaul beheld, with towering pride,
His ancient bounds enlarged on every side,
Pirene’s lofty barriers were subdued,
And in the midst of his wide empire stood;
Ausonia’s states, the victor to restrain,
Opposed their Alps and Apennines in vain,
Nor found themselves, with strength of rocks immured,
Behind their everlasting hills secured;
_20
The rising Danube its long race began,
And half its course through the new conquests ran;
Amazed and anxious for her sovereign’s fates,
Germania trembled through a hundred states;
Great Leopold himself was seized with fear;
He gazed around, but saw no succour near;
He gazed, and half abandoned to despair
His hopes on Heaven, and confidence in prayer.
To Britain’s queen the nations turn their eyes,
On her resolves the Western world relies,
_30
Confiding still, amidst its dire alarms,
In Anna’s councils and in Churchill’s arms.
Thrice happy Britain, from the kingdoms rent,
To sit the guardian of the continent!
That sees her bravest son advanced so high,
And flourishing so near her prince’s eye;
Thy favourites grow not up by fortune’s sport,
Or from the crimes or follies of a court;
On the firm basis of desert they rise,
From long-tried, faith, and friendship’s holy ties:
_40
Their sovereign’s well-distinguished smiles they share,
Her ornaments in peace, her strength in war;
The nation thanks them with a public voice,
By showers of blessings Heaven approves their choice;
Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost,
And factions strive who shall applaud them most.
Soon as soft vernal breezes warm the sky,
Britannia’s colours in the zephyrs fly;
Her chief already has his march begun,
Crossing the provinces himself had won,
_50
Till the Moselle, appearing from afar,
Retards the progress of the moving war.
Delightful stream, had Nature bid her fall
In distant climes, far from the perjured Gaul;
But now a purchase to the sword she lies,
Her harvests for uncertain owners rise,
Each vineyard doubtful of its master grows,
And to the victor’s bowl each vintage flows.
The discontented shades of slaughtered hosts,
That wandered on her banks, her heroes’ ghosts,
_60
Hoped, when they saw Britannia’s arms appear,
The vengeance due to their great deaths was near.
Our godlike leader, ere the stream he passed,
The mighty scheme of all his labours cast,
Forming the wondrous year within his thought;
His bosom glowed with battles yet unfought.
The long, laborious march he first surveys,
And joins the distant Danube to the Mæse,
Between whose floods such pathless forests grow,
Such mountains rise, so many rivers flow:
_70
The toil looks lovely in the hero’s eyes,
And danger serves but to enhance the prize.
Big with the fate of Europe, he renews
His dreadful course, and the proud foe pursues:
Infected by the burning Scorpion’s heat,
The sultry gales round his chafed temples beat,
Till on the borders of the Maine he finds
Defensive shadows and refreshing winds.
Our British youth, with inborn freedom bold,
Unnumbered scenes of servitude behold,
_80
Nations of slaves, with tyranny debased,
(Their Maker’s image more than half defaced,)
Hourly instructed, as they urge their toil,
To prize their queen, and love their native soil.
Still to the rising sun they take their way
Through clouds of dust, and gain upon the clay;
When now the Neckar on its friendly coast
With cooling streams revives the fainting host,
That cheerfully its labours past forgets,
The midnight watches, and the noonday heats.
_90
O’er prostrate towns and palaces they pass,
(Now covered o’er with weeds and hid in grass,)
Breathing revenge; whilst anger and disdain
Fire every breast, and boil in every vein:
Here shattered walls, like broken rocks, from far
Rise up in hideous views, the guilt of war,
Whilst here the vine o’er hills of ruin climbs,
Industrious to conceal great Bourbon’s crimes,
At length the fame of England’s hero drew,
Eugenio to the glorious interview.
_100
Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
Demand alliance, and in friendship burn;
A sudden friendship, while with stretched-out rays
They meet each other, mingling blaze with blaze.
Polished in courts, and hardened in the field,
Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled,
Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood
Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood:
Lodged in the soul, with virtue overruled,
Inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled,
_110
In hours of peace content to be unknown,
And only in the field of battle shown:
To souls like these, in mutual friendship joined,
Heaven dares intrust the cause of humankind.
Britannia’s graceful sons appear in arms,
Her harassed troops the hero’s presence warms,
Whilst the high hills and rivers all around
With thundering peals of British shouts resound:
Doubling their speed, they march with fresh delight,
Eager for glory, and require the fight.
_120
So the staunch hound the trembling deer pursues,
And smells his footsteps in the tainted dews,
The tedious track unravelling by degrees:
But when the scent comes warm in every breeze,
Fired at the near approach, he shoots away
On his full stretch, and bears upon his prey.
The march concludes, the various realms are past,
The immortal Schellenberg appears at last:
Like hills the aspiring ramparts rise on high,
Like valleys at their feet the trenches lie;
_130
Batteries on batteries guard each fatal pass,
Threatening destruction; rows of hollow brass,
Tube behind tube, the dreadful entrance keep,
Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep:
Great Churchill owns, charmed with the glorious sight,
His march o’erpaid by such a promised fight.
The western sun now shot a feeble ray,
And faintly scattered the remains of day;
Evening approached; but, oh! what hosts of foes
Were never to behold that evening close!
_140
Thickening their ranks, and wedged in firm array,
The close-compacted Britons win their way:
In vain the cannon their thronged war defaced
With tracts of death, and laid the battle waste;
Still pressing forward to the fight, they broke
Through flames of sulphur, and a night of smoke,
Till slaughtered legions filled the trench below,
And bore their fierce avengers to the foe.
High on the works the mingling hosts engage;
The battle, kindled into tenfold rage
_150
With showers of bullets and with storms of fire,
Burns in full fury; heaps on heaps expire;
Nations with nations mixed confus’dly die,
And lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.
How many generous Britons meet their doom,
New to the field, and heroes in the bloom!
The illustrious youths, that left their native shore
To march where Britons never marched before,
(O fatal love of fame! O glorious heat,
Only destructive to the brave and great!)
_160
After such toils o’ercome, such dangers past,
Stretched on Bavarian ramparts breathe their last.
But hold, my Muse, may no complaints appear,
Nor blot the day with an ungrateful tear:
While Marlborough lives, Britannia’s stars dispense
A friendly light, and shine in innocence.
Plunging through seas of blood his fiery steed
Where’er his friends retire, or foes succeed;
Those he supports, these drives to sudden flight,
And turns the various fortune of the fight.
_170
Forbear, great man, renowned in arms, forbear
To brave the thickest terrors of the war,
Nor hazard thus, confused in crowds of foes,
Britannia’s safety, and the world’s repose;
Let nations, anxious for thy life, abate
This scorn of danger and contempt of fate:
Thou liv’st not for thyself; thy queen demands
Conquest and peace from thy victorious hands;
Kingdoms and empires in thy fortune join,
And Europe’s destiny depends on thine.
_180
At length the long-disputed pass they gain,
By crowded armies fortified in vain;
The war breaks in, the fierce Bavarians yield,
And see their camp with British legions filled.
So Belgian mounds bear on their shattered sides
The sea’s whole weight, increased with swelling tides;
But if the rushing wave a passage finds,
Enraged by watery moons, and warring winds,
The trembling peasant sees his country round
Covered with tempests, and in oceans drowned.
_190
The few surviving foes dispersed in flight,
(Refuse of swords, and gleanings of a fight,)
In every rustling wind the victor hear,
And Marlborough’s form in every shadow fear,
Till the dark cope of night with kind embrace
Befriends the rout, and covers their disgrace.
To Donawert, with unresisted force,
The gay, victorious army bends its course.
The growth of meadows, and the pride of fields,
Whatever spoils Bavaria’s summer yields,
_200
(The Danube’s great increase,) Britannia shares,
The food of armies, and support of wars:
With magazines of death, destructive balls,
And cannons doomed to batter Landau’s walls,
The victor finds each hidden cavern stored,
And turns their fury on their guilty lord.
Deluded prince! how is thy greatness crossed,
And all the gaudy dream of empire lost,
That proudly set thee on a fancied throne,
And made imaginary realms thy own!
_210
Thy troops that now behind the Danube join,
Shall shortly seek for shelter from the Rhine,
Nor find it there: surrounded with alarms,
Thou hopest the assistance of the Gallic arms;
The Gallic arms in safety shall advance,
And crowd thy standards with the power of France,
While to exalt thy doom, the aspiring Gaul
Shares thy destruction, and adorns thy fall.
Unbounded courage and compassion joined,
Tempering each other in the victor’s mind,
_220
Alternately proclaim him good and great,
And make the hero and the man complete.
Long did he strive the obdurate foe to gain
By proffered grace, but long he strove in vain;
Till fired at length, he thinks it vain to spare
His rising wrath, and gives a loose to war.
In vengeance roused, the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land,
A thousand villages to ashes turns,
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burns.
_230
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat,
And mixed with bellowing herds confus’dly bleat;
Their trembling lords the common shade partake,
And cries of infants sound in every brake:
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands,
Loth to obey his leader’s just commands;
The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed,
To see his just commands so well obeyed.
But now the trumpet, terrible from far,
In shriller clangors animates the war,
_240
Confederate drums in fuller consort beat,
And echoing hills the loud alarm repeat:
Gallia’s proud standards, to Bavaria’s joined,
Unfurl their gilded lilies in the wind;
The daring prince his blasted hopes renews,
And while the thick embattled host he views
Stretched out in deep array, and dreadful length,
His heart dilates, and glories in his strength.
The fatal day its mighty course began,
That the grieved world had long desired in vain:
_250
States that their new captivity bemoaned,
Armies of martyrs that in exile groaned,
Sighs from the depth of gloomy dungeons heard,
And prayers in bitterness of soul preferred,
Europe’s loud cries, that Providence assailed,
And Anna’s ardent vows, at length prevailed;
The day was come when heaven designed to show
His care and conduct of the world below.
Behold, in awful march and dread array
The long-expected squadrons shape their way!
_260
Death, in approaching terrible, imparts
An anxious horror to the bravest hearts;
Yet do their beating breasts demand the strife,
And thirst of glory quells the love of life.
No vulgar fears can British minds control:
Heat of revenge and noble pride of soul
O’erlook the foe, advantaged by his post,
Lessen his numbers, and contract his host.
Though fens and floods possessed the middle space,
That unprovoked they would have feared to pass,
_270
Nor fens nor floods can stop Britannia’s bands,
When her proud foe ranged on their borders stands.
But, O my Muse, what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle joined!
Methinks I hear the drum’s tumultuous sound
The victor’s shouts and dying groans confound,
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies,
And all the thunder of the battle rise.
’Twas then great Marlborough’s mighty soul was proved,
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved,
_280
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war;
In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid,
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.
So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed,[6]
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
_290
And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform,
Hides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
But see the haughty household-troops advance!
The dread of Europe, and the pride of France.
The war’s whole art each private soldier knows,
And with a general’s love of conquest glows;
Proudly he marches on, and, void of fear,
Laughs at the shaking of the British spear:
Vain insolence! with native freedom brave,
The meanest Briton scorns the highest slave;
_300
Contempt and fury fire their souls by turns,
Each nation’s glory in each warrior burns,
Each fights, as in his arm the important day
And all the fate of his great monarch lay:
A thousand glorious actions, that might claim
Triumphant laurels, and immortal fame,
Confused in clouds of glorious actions lie,
And troops of heroes undistinguished die.
O Dormer, how can I behold thy fate,
And not the wonders of thy youth relate!
_310
How can I see the gay, the brave, the young,
Fall in the cloud of war and lie unsung!
In joys of conquest he resigns his breath,
And, filled with England’s glory, smiles in death.
The rout begins, the Gallic squadrons run,
Compelled in crowds to meet the fate they shun;
Thousands of fiery steeds with wounds transfixed
Floating in gore, with their dead masters mixed,
Midst heaps of spears and standards driven around,
Lie in the Danube’s bloody whirlpools drowned,
_320
Troops of bold youths, born on the distant Soane,
Or sounding borders of the rapid Rhône,
Or where the Seine her flowery fields divides,
Or where the Loire through winding vineyards glides;
In heaps the rolling billows sweep away,
And into Scythian seas their bloated corps convey.
From Blenheim’s towers the Gaul, with wild affright,
Beholds the various havoc of the fight;
His waving banners, that so oft had stood,
Planted in fields of death, and streams of blood,
_330
So wont the guarded enemy to reach,
And rise triumphant in the fatal breach,
Or pierce the broken foe’s remotest lines,
The hardy veteran with tears resigns.
Unfortunate Tallard![7] Oh, who can name
The pangs of rage, of sorrow, and of shame,
That with mixed tumult in thy bosom swelled!
When first thou saw’st thy bravest troops repelled,
Thine only son pierced with a deadly wound,
Choked in his blood, and gasping on the ground,
_340
Thyself in bondage by the victor kept!
The chief, the father, and the captive wept.
An English Muse is touched with generous woe,
And in the unhappy man forgets the foe.
Greatly distressed! thy loud complaints forbear,
Blame not the turns of fate, and chance of war;
Give thy brave foes their due, nor blush to own
The fatal field by such great leaders won,
The field whence famed Eugenio bore away
Only the second honours of the day.
_350
With floods of gore that from the vanquished fell,
The marshes stagnate, and the rivers swell.
Mountains of slain lie heaped upon the ground,
Or ’midst the roarings of the Danube drowned;
Whole captive hosts the conqueror detains
In painful bondage and inglorious chains;
Even those who’scape the fetters and the sword,
Nor seek the fortunes of a happier lord,
Their raging king dishonours, to complete
Marlborough’s great work, and finish the defeat.
_360
From Memminghen’s high domes, and Augsburg’s walls,
The distant battle drives the insulting Gauls;
Freed by the terror of the victor’s name,
The rescued states his great protection claim;
Whilst Ulm the approach of her deliverer waits,
And longs to open her obsequious gates.
The hero’s breast still swells with great designs,
In every thought the towering genius shines:
If to the foe his dreadful course he bends,
O’er the wide continent his march extends;
_370
If sieges in his labouring thoughts are formed,
Camps are assaulted, and an army stormed;
If to the fight his active soul is bent,
The fate of Europe turns on its event.
What distant land, what region, can afford
An action worthy his victorious sword?
Where will he next the flying Gaul defeat,
To make the series of his toils complete?
Where the swoln Rhine, rushing with all its force,
Divides the hostile nations in its course,
_380
While each contracts its bounds, or wider grows,
Enlarged or straitened as the river flows,
On Gallia’s side a mighty bulwark stands,
That all the wide extended plain commands;
Twice, since the war was kindled, has it tried
The victor’s rage, and twice has changed its side;
As oft whole armies, with the prize o’erjoyed,
Have the long summer on its walls employed.
Hither our mighty chief his arms directs,
Hence future triumphs from the war expects;
_390
And though the dog-star had its course begun,
Carries his arms still nearer to the sun:
Fixed on the glorious action, he forgets
The change of seasons, and increase of heats:
No toils are painful that can danger show,
No climes unlovely that contain a foe.
The roving Gaul, to his own bounds restrained,
Learns to encamp within his native land,
But soon as the victorious host he spies,
From hill to hill, from stream to stream he flies:
_400
Such dire impressions in his heart remain
Of Marlborough’s sword, and Hochstet’s fatal plain:
In vain Britannia’s mighty chief besets
Their shady coverts, and obscure retreats;
They fly the conqueror’s approaching fame,
That bears the force of armies in his name,
Austria’s young monarch, whose imperial sway
Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey,
Whose boasted ancestry so high extends
That in the pagan gods his lineage ends,
_410
Comes from afar, in gratitude to own
The great supporter of his father’s throne;
What tides of glory to his bosom ran,
Clasped in the embraces of the godlike man!
How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixed
To see such fire with so much sweetness mixed,
Such easy greatness, such a graceful port,
So turned and finished for the camp or court!
Achilles thus was formed with every grace,
And Nireus shone but in the second place;
_420
Thus the great father of almighty Rome
(Divinely flushed with an immortal bloom,
That Cytherea’s fragrant breath bestowed)
In all the charms of his bright mother glowed.
The royal youth by Marlborough’s presence charmed,
Taught by his counsels, by his actions warmed,
On Landau with redoubled fury falls,
Discharges all his thunder on its walls,
O’er mines and caves of death provokes the fight,
And learns to conquer in the hero’s sight.
_430
The British chief, for mighty toils renowned,
Increased in titles, and with conquests crowned,
To Belgian coasts his tedious march renews,
And the long windings of the Rhine pursues,
Clearing its borders from usurping foes,
And blessed by rescued nations as he goes.
Treves fears no more, freed from its dire alarms;
And Trærbach feels the terror of his arms,
Seated on rocks her proud foundations shake,
While Marlborough presses to the bold attack,
_440
Plants all his batteries, bids his cannon roar,
And shows how Landau might have fallen before.
Scared at his near approach, great Louis fears
Vengeance reserved for his declining years,
Forgets his thirst of universal sway,
And scarce can teach his subjects to obey;
His arms he finds on vain attempts employed,
The ambitious projects for his race destroyed,
The work of ages sunk in one campaign,
And lives of millions sacrificed in vain.
_450
Such are the effects of Anna’s royal cares:
By her, Britannia, great in foreign wars,
Ranges through nations, wheresoo’er disjoined,
Without the wonted aid of sea and wind.
By her the unfettered Ister’s states are free,
And taste the sweets of English liberty:
But who can tell the joys of those that lie
Beneath the constant influence of her eye!
Whilst in diffusive showers her bounties fall,
Like heaven’s indulgence, and descend on all,
_460
Secure the happy, succour the distressed,
Make every subject glad, and a whole people blessed.
Thus would I fain Britannia’s wars rehearse,
In the smooth records of a faithful verse;
That, if such numbers can o’er time prevail,
May tell posterity the wondrous tale.
When actions, unadorned, are faint and weak,
Cities and countries must be taught to speak;
Gods may descend in factions from the skies,
And rivers from their oozy beds arise;
_470
Fiction may deck the truth with spurious rays,
And round the hero cast a borrowed blaze.
Marlborough’s exploits appear divinely bright,
And proudly shine in their own native light;
Raised of themselves, their genuine charms they boast,
And those who paint them truest praise them most.
Cowley’s Epitaph on Himself
From life’s superfluous cares enlarged,
His debt of human toil discharged,
Here Cowley lies! beneath this shed,
To every worldly interest dead;
With decent poverty content,
His hours of ease not idly spent;
To fortune’s goods a foe profess’d,
And hating wealth by all caress’d.
’Tis true he’s dead; for oh! how small
A spot of earth is now his all:
_10
Oh! wish that earth may lightly lay,
And every care be far away;
Bring flowers; the short-lived roses bring,
To life deceased, fit offering:
And sweets around the poet strow,
Whilst yet with life his ashes glow.
Prologue to the Tender Husband
Spoken by Mr Wilks
In the first rise and infancy of Farce,
When fools were many, and when plays were scarce,
The raw, unpractised authors could, with ease,
A young and unexperienced audience please:
No single character had e’er been shown,
But the whole herd of fops was all their own;
Rich in originals, they set to view,
In every piece, a coxcomb that was new.
But now our British theatre can boast
Drolls of all kinds, a vast, unthinking host!
_10
Fruitful of folly and of vice, it shows
Cuckolds, and cits, and bawds, and pimps, and beaux;
Rough country knights are found of every shire;
Of every fashion gentle fops appear;
And punks of different characters we meet,
As frequent on the stage as in the pit.
Our modern wits are forced to pick and cull,
And here and there by chance glean up a fool:
Long ere they find the necessary spark,
They search the town, and beat about the Park;
_20
To all his most frequented haunts resort,
Oft dog him to the ring, and oft to court,
As love of pleasure or of place invites;
And sometimes catch him taking snuff at White’s.
Howe’er, to do you right, the present age
Breeds very hopeful monsters for the stage;
That scorn the paths their dull forefathers trod,
And wont be blockheads in the common road.
Do but survey this crowded house to-night:—
Here’s still encouragement for those that write.
_30
Our author, to divert his friends to-day,
Stocks with variety of fools his play;
And that there may be something gay and new,
Two ladies-errant has exposed to view:
The first a damsel, travelled in romance;
The t’other more refined; she comes from France:
Rescue, like courteous knights, the nymph from danger;
And kindly treat, like well-bred men, the stranger.
Epilogue to the British
Enchanters
When Orpheus tuned his lyre with pleasing woe,
Rivers forgot to run, and winds to blow,
While listening forests covered as he played,
The soft musician in a moving shade.
That this night’s strains the same success may find,
The force of magic is to music joined;
Where sounding strings and artful voices fail,
The charming rod and muttered spells prevail.
Let sage Urganda wave the circling wand
On barren mountains, or a waste of sand,
_10
The desert smiles; the woods begin to grow,
The birds to warble, and the springs to flow.
The same dull sights in the same landscape mixed,
Scenes of still life, and points for ever fixed,
A tedious pleasure on the mind bestow,
And pall the sense with one continued show;
But as our two magicians try their skill,
The vision varies, though the place stands still,
While the same spot its gaudy form renews,
Shifting the prospect to a thousand views.
_20
Thus (without unity of place transgressed)
The enchanter turns the critic to a jest.
But howsoe’er, to please your wandering eyes,
Bright objects disappear and brighter rise:
There’s none can make amends for lost delight,
While from that circle we divert your sight.
Prologue to Smith’s Phædra and Hippolitus
Spoken by Mr Wilks
Long has a race of heroes fill’d the stage,
That rant by note, and through the gamut rage;
In songs and airs express their martial fire,
Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire:
While, lull’d by sound, and undisturb’d by wit,
Calm and serene you indolently sit,
And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free,
Hear the facetious fiddle’s repartee:
Our home-spun authors must forsake the field,
And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield.
_10
To your new taste the poet of this day
Was by a friend advised to form his play.
Had Valentini, musically coy,
Shunn’d Phædra’s arms, and scorn’d the proffer’d joy,
It had not moved your wonder to have seen
An eunuch fly from an enamour’d queen:
How would it please, should she in English speak,
And could Hippolitus reply in Greek!
But he, a stranger to your modish way,
By your old rules must stand or fall to-day,
_20
And hopes you will your foreign taste command,
To bear, for once, with what you understand.
Book III
Horace.-Ode III.,
Augustus had a design to rebuild Troy, and make it the metropolis of the Roman empire, having closeted several senators on the project: Horace is supposed to have written the following Ode on this occasion.
The man resolved, and steady to his trust,
Inflexible to ill, and obstinately just,
May the rude rabble’s insolence despise,
Their senseless clamours and tumultuous cries;
The tyrant’s fierceness he beguiles,
And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies,
And with superior greatness smiles.
Not the rough whirlwind, that deforms
Adria’s black gulf, and vexes it with storms,
The stubborn virtue of his soul can move;
_10
Not the red arm of angry Jove,
That flings the thunder from the sky,
And gives it rage to roar, and strength to fly.
Should the whole frame of nature round him break,
In ruin and confusion hurled,
He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,
And stand secure amidst a falling world.
Such were the godlike arts that led
Bright Pollux to the blest abodes;
Such did for great Alcides plead,
_20
And gained a place among the gods;
Where now Augustus, mixed with heroes, lies,
And to his lips the nectar bowl applies:
His ruddy lips the purple tincture show,
And with immortal strains divinely glow.
By arts like these did young Lyæus [11] rise:
His tigers drew him to the skies,
Wild from the desert and unbroke:
In vain they foamed, in vain they stared,
In vain their eyes with fury glared;
_30
He tamed them to the lash, and bent them to the yoke.
Such were the paths that Rome’s great founder trod,
When in a whirlwind snatched on high,
He shook off dull mortality,
And lost the monarch in the god.
Bright Juno then her awful silence broke,
And thus the assembled deities bespoke.
‘Troy,’ says the goddess, ‘perjured Troy has felt
The dire effects of her proud tyrant’s guilt;
The towering pile, and soft abodes,
_40
Walled by the hand of servile gods,
Now spreads its ruins all around,
And lies inglorious on the ground.
An umpire, partial and unjust,
And a lewd woman’s impious lust,
Lay heavy on her head, and sunk her to the dust.
Since false Laomedon’s tyrannic sway,
That durst defraud the immortals of their pay,
Her guardian gods renounced their patronage,
Nor would the fierce invading foe repel;
_50
To my resentment, and Minerva’s rage,
The guilty king and the whole people fell.
And now the long protracted wars are o’er,
The soft adulterer shines no more;
No more does Hector’s force the Trojans shield,
That drove whole armies back, and singly cleared the field.
My vengeance sated, I at length resign
To Mars his offspring of the Trojan line:
Advanced to godhead let him rise,
And take his station in the skies;
_60
There entertain his ravished sight
With scenes of glory, fields of light;
Quaff with the gods immortal wine,
And see adoring nations crowd his shrine:
The thin remains of Troy’s afflicted host,
In distant realms may seats unenvied find,
And flourish on a foreign coast;
But far be Rome from Troy disjoined,
Removed by seas from the disastrous shore;
May endless billows rise between, and storms unnumbered roar.
_70
Still let the cursed, detested place,
Where Priam lies, and Priam’s faithless race,
Be cover’d o’er with weeds, and hid in grass.
There let the wanton flocks unguarded stray;
Or, while the lonely shepherd sings,
Amidst the mighty ruins play,
And frisk upon the tombs of kings.
May tigers there, and all the savage kind,
Sad, solitary haunts and silent deserts find;
In gloomy vaults, and nooks of palaces,
_80
May the unmolested lioness
Her brinded whelps securely lay,
Or couched, in dreadful slumbers waste the day.
While Troy in heaps of ruins lies,
Rome and the Roman Capitol shall rise;
The illustrious exiles unconfined
Shall triumph far and near, and rule mankind.
In vain the sea’s intruding tide
Europe from Afric shall divide,
And part the severed world in two:
_90
Through Afric’s sands their triumphs they shall spread,
And the long train of victories pursue
To Nile’s yet undiscovered head.
Riches the hardy soldier shall despise,
And look on gold with undesiring eyes,
Nor the disbowelled earth explore
In search of the forbidden ore;
Those glittering ills concealed within the mine,
Shall lie untouched, and innocently shine.
To the last bounds that nature sets,
_100
The piercing colds and sultry heats,
The godlike race shall spread their arms;
Now fill the polar circle with alarms,
Till storms and tempests their pursuits confine;
Now sweat for conquest underneath the line.
This only law the victor shall restrain,
On these conditions shall he reign;
If none his guilty hand employ
To build again a second Troy,
If none the rash design pursue,
_110
Nor tempt the vengeance of the gods anew.
A curse there cleaves to the devoted place,
That shall the new foundations raze:
Greece shall in mutual leagues conspire
To storm the rising town with fire,
And at their armies’ head myself will show
What Juno, urged to all her rage, can do.
Thrice should Apollo’s self the city raise,
And line it round with walls of brass,
Thrice should my favourite Greeks his works confound,
_120
And hew the shining fabric to the ground;
Thrice should her captive dames to Greece return,
And their dead sons and slaughtered husbands mourn.’
But hold, my Muse, forbear thy towering flight,
Nor bring the secrets of the gods to light:
In vain would thy presumptuous verse
The immortal rhetoric rehearse;
The mighty strains, in lyric numbers bound,
Forget their majesty, and lose their sound.
The Vestal. From Ovid de Fastis, Lib. III. el. 1
Blanda quies victis furtim subrepit ocellis, &c.
As the fair vestal to the fountain came,
(Let none be startled at a vestal’s name)
Tired with the walk, she laid her down to rest,
And to the winds exposed her glowing breast,
To take the freshness of the morning-air,
And gather’d in a knot her flowing hair;
While thus she rested, on her arm reclined,
The hoary willows waving with the wind,
And feather’d choirs that warbled in the shade,
And purling streams that through the meadow stray’d,
_10
In drowsy murmurs lull’d the gentle maid.
The god of war beheld the virgin lie,
The god beheld her with a lover’s eye;
And by so tempting an occasion press’d,
The beauteous maid, whom he beheld, possess’d:
Conceiving as she slept, her fruitful womb
Swell’d with the founder of immortal Rome.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Book II
The Story of Phæton
The sun’s bright palace, on high columns raised,
With burnished gold and flaming jewels blazed;
The folding gates diffused a silver light,
And with a milder gleam refreshed the sight;
Of polished ivory was the covering wrought:
The matter vied not with the sculptor’s thought,
For in the portal was displayed on high
(The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky;
A waving sea the inferior earth embraced,
And gods and goddesses the waters graced.
_10
Ægeon here a mighty whale bestrode;
Triton, and Proteus, (the deceiving god,)
With Doris here were carved, and all her train,
Some loosely swimming in the figured main,
While some on rocks their dropping hair divide,
And some on fishes through the waters glide:
Though various features did the sisters grace,
A sister’s likeness was in every face.
On earth a different landscape courts the eyes,
Men, towns, and beasts, in distant prospects rise,
_20
And nymphs, and streams, and woods, and rural deities.
O’er all, the heaven’s refulgent image shines;
On either gate were six engraven signs.
Here Phaëton, still gaining on the ascent,
To his suspected father’s palace went,
Till, pressing forward through the bright ahode,
He saw at distance the illustrious god:
He saw at distance, or the dazzling light
Had flashed too strongly on his aching sight.
The god sits high, exalted on a throne
_30
Of blazing gems, with purple garments on:
The Hours, in order ranged on either hand,
And days, and months, and years, and ages, stand.
Here Spring appears with flowery chaplets bound;
Here Summer in her wheaten garland crowned;
Here Autumn the rich trodden grapes besmear;
And hoary Winter shivers in the rear.
Phoebus beheld the youth from off his throne;
That eye, which looks on all, was fixed on one.
He saw the boy’s confusion in his face,
_40
Surprised at all the wonders of the place;
And cries aloud, ‘What wants my son? for know
My son thou art, and I must call thee so.’
‘Light of the world,’ the trembling youth replies,
‘Illustrious parent! since you don’t despise
The parent’s name, some certain token give,
That I may Clymene’s proud boast believe,
Nor longer under false reproaches grieve.’
The tender sire was touched with what he said.
And flung the blaze of glories from his head,
_50
And bid the youth advance: ‘My son,’ said he,
‘Come to thy father’s arms! for Clymene
Has told thee true; a parent’s name I own,
And deem thee worthy to be called my son.
As a sure proof, make some request, and I,
Whate’er it be, with that request comply;
By Styx I swear, whose waves are hid in night,
And roll impervious to my piercing sight.’
The youth transported, asks, without delay,
To guide the Sun’s bright chariot for a day.
_60
The god repented of the oath he took,
For anguish thrice his radiant head he shook;
‘My son,’ says he, ‘some other proof require,
Rash was my promise, rash is thy desire.
I’d fain deny this wish which thou hast made,
Or, what I can’t deny, would fain dissuade.
Too vast and hazardous the task appears,
Nor suited to thy strength, nor to thy years.
Thy lot is mortal, but thy wishes fly
Beyond the province of mortality:
_70
There is not one of all the gods that dares
(However skilled in other great affairs)
To mount the burning axle-tree, but I;
Not Jove himself, the ruler of the sky,
That hurls the three-forked thunder from above,
Dares try his strength; yet who so strong as Jove?
The steeds climb up the first ascent with pain:
And when the middle firmament they gain,
If downward from the heavens my head I bow,
And see the earth and ocean hang below;
_80
Even I am seized with horror and affright,
And my own heart misgives me at the sight.
A mighty downfal steeps the evening stage,
And steady reins must curb the horses’ rage.
Tethys herself has feared to see me driven
Down headlong from the precipice of heaven.
Besides, consider what impetuous force
Turns stars and planets in a different course:
I steer against their motions; nor am I 89
Born back by all the current of the sky.
_90
But how could you resist the orbs that roll
In adverse whirls, and stem the rapid pole?
But you perhaps may hope for pleasing woods,
And stately domes, and cities filled with gods;
While through a thousand snares your progress lies,
Where forms of starry monsters stock the skies:
For, should you hit the doubtful way aright,
The Bull with stooping horns stands opposite;
Next him the bright Hæmonian Bow is strung;
And next, the Lion’s grinning visage hung:
_100
The Scorpion’s claws here clasp a wide extent,
And here the Crab’s in lesser clasps are bent.
Nor would you find it easy to compose
The mettled steeds, when from their nostrils flows
The scorching fire, that in their entrails glows.
Even I their headstrong fury scarce restrain,
When they grow warm and restive to the rein.
Let not my son a fatal gift require,
But, oh! in time recall your rash desire;
You ask a gift that may your parent tell,
_110
Let these my fears your parentage reveal;
And learn a father from a father’s care:
Look on my face; or if my heart lay bare,
Could you but look, you’d read the father there.
Choose out a gift from seas, or earth, or skies,
For open to your wish all nature lies,
Only decline this one unequal task,
For ’tis a mischief, not a gift you ask;
You ask a real mischief, Phaëton:
Nay, hang not thus about my neck, my son:
_120
I grant your wish, and Styx has heard my voice,
Choose what you will, but make a wiser choice.’
Thus did the god the unwary youth advise;
But he still longs to travel through the skies,
When the fond father (for in vain he pleads)
At length to the Vulcanian chariot leads.
A golden axle did the work uphold,
Gold was the beam, the wheels were orbed with gold.
The spokes in rows of silver pleased the sight,
The seat with party-coloured gems was bright;
_130
Apollo shined amid the glare of light.
The youth with secret joy the work surveys;
When now the morn disclosed her purple rays;
The stars were fled; for Lucifer had chased
The stars away, and fled himself at last.
Soon as the father saw the rosy morn,
And the moon shining with a blunter horn,
He bid the nimble Hours without delay
Bring forth the steeds; the nimble Hours obey:
From their full racks the generous steeds retire,
_140
Dropping ambrosial foams and snorting fire.
Still anxious for his son, the god of day,
To make him proof against the burning ray,
His temples with celestial ointment wet,
Of sovereign virtue to repel the heat;
Then fixed the beaming circle on his head,
And fetched a deep, foreboding sigh, and said,
‘Take this at least, this last advice, my son:
Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on:
The coursers of themselves will run too fast,
_150
Your art must be to moderate their haste.
Drive them not on directly through the skies,
But where the Zodiac’s winding circle lies,
Along the midmost zone; but sally forth
Nor to the distant south, nor stormy north.
The horses’ hoofs a beaten track will show,
But neither mount too high nor sink too low,
That no new fires or heaven or earth infest;
Keep the mid-way, the middle way is best.
Nor, where in radiant folds the Serpent twines,
_160
Direct your course, nor where the Altar shines.
Shun both extremes; the rest let Fortune guide,
And better for thee than thyself provide!
See, while I speak the shades disperse away,
Aurora gives the promise of a day;
I’m called, nor can I make a longer stay.
Snatch up the reins; or still the attempt forsake,
And not my chariot, but my counsel take,
While yet securely on the earth you stand;
Nor touch the horses with too rash a hand.
_170
Let me alone to light the world, while you
Enjoy those beams which you may safely view.’
He spoke in vain: the youth with active heat
And sprightly vigour vaults into the seat;
And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives
Those thanks his father with remorse receives.
Meanwhile the restless horses neighed aloud,
Breathing out fire, and pawing where they stood.
Tethys, not knowing what had passed, gave way,
And all the waste of heaven before them lay.
_180
They spring together out, and swiftly bear
The flying youth through clouds and yielding air;
With wingy speed outstrip the eastern wind,
And leave the breezes of the morn behind.
The youth was light, nor could he fill the seat,
Or poise the chariot with its wonted weight:
But as at sea the unballast vessel rides,
Cast to and fro, the sport of winds and tides;
So in the bounding chariot tossed on high,
The youth is hurried headlong through the sky.
_190
Soon as the steeds perceive it, they forsake
Their stated course, and leave the beaten track.
The youth was in a maze, nor did he know
Which way to turn the reins, or where to go;
Nor would the horses, had he known, obey.
Then the Seven Stars first felt Apollo’s ray
And wished to dip in the forbidden sea.
The folded Serpent next the frozen pole,
Stiff and benumbed before, began to roll,
And raged with inward heat, and threatened war,
_200
And shot a redder light from every star;
Nay, and ’tis said, Bootes, too, that fain
Thou wouldst have fled, though cumbered with thy wain.
The unhappy youth then, bending down his head,
Saw earth and ocean far beneath him spread:
His colour changed, he startled at the sight,
And his eyes darkened by too great a light.
Now could he wish the fiery steeds untried,
His birth obscure, and his request denied:
Now would he Merops for his father own,
_210
And quit his boasted kindred to the Sun.
So fares the pilot, when his ship is tossed
In troubled seas, and all its steerage lost,
He gives her to the winds, and in despair
Seeks his last refuge in the gods and prayer.
What could he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
Find a long path he had already passed;
If forward, still a longer path they find:
Both he compares, and measures in his mind;
And sometimes casts an eye upon the east,
_220
And sometimes looks on the forbidden west.
The horses’ names he knew not in the fright:
Nor would he loose the reins, nor could he hold them tight.
Now all the horrors of the heavens he spies,
And monstrous shadows of prodigious size,
That, decked with stars, lie scattered o’er the skies.
There is a place above, where Scorpio, bent
In tail and arms, surrounds a vast extent;
In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines,
And fills the space of two celestial signs.
_230
Soon as the youth beheld him, vexed with heat,
Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat,
Half dead with sudden fear he dropped the reins;
The horses felt them loose upon their manes,
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran uncontrolled where’er their fury drove;
Rushed on the stars, and through a pathless way
Of unknown regions hurried on the day.
And now above, and now below they flew,
And near the earth the burning chariot drew.
_240
The clouds disperse in fumes, the wondering Moon
Beholds her brother’s steeds beneath her own;
The highlands smoke, cleft by the piercing rays,
Or, clad with woods, in their own fuel blaze.
Next o’er the plains, where ripened harvests grow,
The running conflagration spreads below.
But these are trivial ills; whole cities burn,
And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn.
The mountains kindle as the car draws near,
Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear;
_250
Oeagrian Hæmus (then a single name)
And virgin Helicon increase the flame;
Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky,
And Ida, spite of all her fountains, dry.
Eryx, and Othrys, and Cithgeron, glow;
And Rhodope, no longer clothed in snow;
High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus sweat,
And Ætna rages with redoubled heat.
Even Scythia, through her hoary regions warmed,
In vain with all her native frost was armed.
_260
Covered with flames, the towering Apennine,
And Caucasus, and proud Olympus, shine;
And, where the long extended Alps aspire,
Now stands a huge, continued range of fire.
The astonished youth, where’er his eyes could turn,
Beheld the universe around him burn:
The world was in a blaze; nor could he bear
The sultry vapours and the scorching air,
Which from below as from a furnace flowed,
And now the axle-tree beneath him glowed:
_270
Lost in the whirling clouds, that round him broke,
And white with ashes, hovering in the smoke,
He flew where’er the horses drove, nor knew
Whither the horses drove, or where he flew.
’Twas then, they say, the swarthy Moor begun
To change his hue, and blacken in the sun.
Then Libya first, of all her moisture drained,
Became a barren waste, a wild of sand.
The water-nymphs lament their empty urns,
Boeotia, robbed of silver Dirce, mourns;
_280
Corinth, Pyrene’s wasted spring bewails,
And Argos grieves whilst Aniymone fails.
The floods are drained from every distant coast,
Even Tanaïs, though fixed in ice, was lost.
Enraged Caicus and Lycormas roar,
And Xanthus, fated to be burned once more.
The famed Meeander, that unwearied strays
Through mazy windings, smokes in every maze.
From his loved Babylon Euphrates flies;
The big-swoln Ganges and the Danube rise
_290
In thickening fumes, and darken half the skies.
In flames Ismenos and the Phasis rolled,
And Tagus floating in his melted gold.
The swans, that on Cayster often tried
Their tuneful songs, now sung their last, and died.
The frighted Nile ran off, and under-ground
Concealed his head, nor can it yet be found:
His seven divided currents all are dry,
And where they rolled seven gaping trenches lie.
No more the Rhine or Rhone their course maintain,
_300
Nor Tiber, of his promised empire vain.
The ground, deep cleft, admits the dazzling ray,
And startles Pluto with the flash of day.
The seas shrink in, and to the sight disclose
Wide, naked plains, where once their billows rose;
Their rocks are all discovered, and increase
The number of the scattered Cyclades.
The fish in shoals about the bottom creep,
Nor longer dares the crooked dolphin leap;
Gasping for breath, the unshapen phocæ die,
_310
And on the boiling wave extended lie.
Nereus, and Doris with her virgin train,
Seek out the last recesses of the main;
Beneath unfathomable depths they faint,
And secret in their gloomy regions pant,
Stern Neptune thrice above the waves upheld
His face, and thrice was by the flames repelled.
The Earth at length, on every side embraced
With scalding seas, that floated round her waist,
When now she felt the springs and rivers come,
_320
And crowd within the hollow of her womb.
Uplifted to the heavens her blasted head,
And clapped her hands upon her brows, and said;
(But first, impatient of the sultry heat,
Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat:)
‘If you, great king of gods, my death approve,
And I deserve it, let me die by Jove;
If I must perish by the force of fire,
Let me transfixed with thunderbolts expire.
See, whilst I speak, my breath the vapours choke,
_330
(For now her face lay wrapt in clouds of smoke,)
See my singed hair, behold my faded eye
And withered face, where heaps of cinders lie!
And does the plough for this my body tear?
This the reward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortured with rakes, and harassed all the year?
That herbs for cattle daily I renew,
And food for man, and frankincense for you?
But grant me guilty; what has Neptune done?
Why are his waters boiling in the sun?
_340
The wavy empire, which by lot was given,
Why does it waste, and further shrink from heaven?
If I nor lie your pity can provoke,
See your own heavens, the heavens begin to smoke!
Should once the sparkles catch those bright abodes,
Destruction seizes on the heavens and gods;
Atlas becomes unequal to his freight,
And almost faints beneath the glowing weight.
If heaven, and earth, and sea together burn,
All must again into their chaos turn.
_350
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour nature, e’er it be too late.’
She ceased; for, choked with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.
Jove called to witness every power above,
And even the god whose son the chariot drove,
That what he acts he is compelled to do,
Or universal ruin must ensue.
Straight he ascends the high ethereal throne,
From whence he used to dart his thunder down,
_360
From whence his showers and storms he used to pour,
But now could meet with neither storm nor shower.
Then aiming at the youth, with lifted hand,
Full at his head he hurled the forky brand,
In dreadful thunderings. Thus the almighty sire
Suppressed the raging of the fires with fire.
At once from life and from the chariot driven,
The ambitious boy fell thunder-struck from heaven.
The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
_370
The studded harness from their necks they broke,
Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke,
Here were the beam and axle torn away;
And, scattered o’er the earth, the shining fragments lay.
The breathless Phaëton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot, like a falling star,
That in a summer’s evening from the top
Of heaven drops down, or seems at least to drop;
Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurled,
Far from his country, in the western world.
_380
Phæton’s Sisters Transformed Into Trees
The Latian nymphs came round him, and amazed
On the dead youth, transfixed with thunder, gazed;
And, whilst yet smoking from the bolt he lay,
His shattered body to a tomb convey;
And o’er the tomb an epitaph devise:
‘Here he who drove the Sun’s bright chariot lies;
His father’s fiery steeds he could not guide,
But in the glorious enterprise he died.’
Apollo hid his face, and pined for grief,
And, if the story may deserve belief,
_10
The space of one whole day is said to run,
From morn to wonted even, without a sun:
The burning ruins, with a fainter ray,
Supply the sun, and counterfeit a day,
A day that still did nature’s face disclose:
This comfort from the mighty mischief rose.
But Clymene, enraged with grief, laments,
And, as her grief inspires, her passion vents:
Wild for her son, and frantic in her woes,
With hair dishevelled, round the world she goes,
_20
To seek where’er his body might be cast;
Till, on the borders of the Po, at last
The name inscribed on the new tomb appears:
The dear, dear name she bathes in flowing tears,
Hangs o’er the tomb, unable to depart,
And hugs the marble to her throbbing heart.
Her daughters too lament, and sigh, and mourn,
(A fruitless tribute to their brother’s urn,)
And beat their naked bosoms, and complain,
And call aloud for Phaëton in vain:
_30
All the long night their mournful watch they keep,
And all the day stand round the tomb, and weep.
Four times revolving the full moon returned;
So long the mother and the daughters mourned:
When now the eldest, Phaëthusa, strove
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move;
Lampetia would have helped her, but she found
Herself withheld, and rooted to the ground:
A third in wild affliction, as she grieves,
Would rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves;
_40
One sees her thighs transformed, another views
Her arms shot out, and branching into boughs.
And now their legs and breasts and bodies stood
Crusted with bark, and hardening into wood;
But still above were female heads displayed,
And mouths, that called the mother to their aid.
What could, alas! the weeping mother do?
From this to that with eager haste she flew,
And kissed her sprouting daughters as they grew.
She tears the bark that to each body cleaves,
_50
And from their verdant fingers strips the leaves:
The blood came trickling, where she tore away
The leaves and bark: the maids were heard to say,
‘Forbear, mistaken parent, oh! forbear;
A wounded daughter in each tree you tear;
Farewell for ever.’ Here the bark increased,
Closed on their faces, and their words suppressed.
The new-made trees in tears of amber run,
Which, hardened into value by the sun,
Distil for ever on the streams below:
_60
The limpid streams their radiant treasure show,
Mixed in the sand; whence the rich drops conveyed,
Shine in the dress of the bright Latian maid.
The Transformation of Cycnus Into a Swan
Cycnus beheld the nymphs transformed, allied
To their dead brother on the mortal side,
In friendship and affection nearer bound;
He left the cities and the realms he owned,
Through pathless fields and lonely shores to range,
And woods, made thicker by the sisters’ change.
Whilst here, within the dismal gloom, alone,
The melancholy monarch made his moan,
His voice was lessened, as he tried to speak,
And issued through a long extended neck;
_10
His hair transforms to down, his fingers mee
In skinny films, and shape his oary feet;
From both his sides the wings and feathers break;
And from his mouth proceeds a blunted beak:
All Cycnus now into a swan was turned,
Who, still remembering how his kinsman burned,
To solitary pools and lakes retires,
And loves the waters as opposed to fires.
Meanwhile Apollo, in a gloomy shade
(The native lustre of his brows decayed)
_20
Indulging sorrow, sickens at the sight
Of his own sunshine, and abhors the light:
The hidden griefs, that in his bosom rise,
Sadden his looks, and overcast his eyes,
As when some dusky orb obstructs his ray,
And sullies in a dim eclipse the day.
Now secretly with inward griefs he pined,
Now warm resentments to his grief he joined,
And now renounced his office to mankind.
‘E’er since the birth of time,’ said he, ‘I’ve borne
_30
A long, ungrateful toil without return;
Let now some other manage, if he dare,
The fiery steeds, and mount the burning car;
Or, if none else, let Jove his fortune try,
And learn to lay his murdering thunder by;
Then will he own, perhaps, but own too late,
My son deserved not so severe a fate.’
The gods stand round him, as he mourns, and pray
He would resume the conduct of the day,
Nor let the world be lost in endless night:
_40
Jove too himself descending from his height,
Excuses what had happened, and entreats,
Majestically mixing prayers and threats.
Prevailed upon, at length, again he took
The harnessed steeds, that still with horror shook,
And plies them with the lash, and whips them on,
And, as he whips, upbraids them with his son.
The Story of Calisto
The day was settled in its course; and Jove
Walked the wide circuit of the heavens above,
To search if any cracks or flaws were made;
But all was safe: the earth he then surveyed,
And cast an eye on every different coast,
And every land; but on Arcadia most.
Her fields he clothed, and cheered her blasted face
With running fountains, and with springing grass.
No tracks of heaven’s destructive fire remain,
The fields and woods revive, and nature smiles again.
_10
But as the god walked to and fro the earth,
And raised the plants, and gave the spring its birth,
By chance a fair Arcadian nymph he viewed,
And felt the lovely charmer in his blood.
The nymph nor spun, nor dressed with artful pride;
Her vest was gathered up, her hair was tied;
Now in her hand a slender spear she bore,
Now a light quiver on her shoulders wore;
To chaste Diana from her youth inclined,
The sprightly warriors of the wood she joined.
_20
Diana too the gentle huntress loved,
Nor was there one of all the nymphs that roved
O’er Mænalus, amid the maiden throng,
More favoured once; but favour lasts not long.
The sun now shone in all its strength, and drove
The heated virgin panting to a grove;
The grove around a grateful shadow cast:
She dropped her arrows, and her bow unbraced;
She flung herself on the cool, grassy bed;
And on the painted quiver raised her head.
_30
Jove saw the charming huntress unprepared,
Stretched on the verdant turf, without a guard.
‘Here I am safe,’ he cries, ‘from Juno’s eye;
Or should my jealous queen the theft descry,
Yet would I venture on a theft like this,
And stand her rage for such, for such a bliss!’
Diana’s shape and habit straight he took,
Softened his brows, and smoothed his awful look,
And mildly in a female accent spoke.
‘How fares my girl? How went the morning chase?’
_40
To whom the virgin, starting from the grass,
‘All hail, bright deity, whom I prefer
To Jove himself, though Jove himself were here.’
The god was nearer than she thought, and heard,
Well-pleased, himself before himself preferr’d.
He then salutes her with a warm embrace,
And, ere she half had told the morning chase,
With love inflamed, and eager on his bliss,
Smothered her words, and stopped her with a kiss;
His kisses with unwonted ardour glow’d,
_50
Nor could Diana’s shape conceal the god.
The virgin did whate’er a virgin could;
(Sure Juno must have pardoned, had she view’d;)
With all her might against his force she strove;
But how can mortal maids contend with Jove!
Possessed at length of what his heart desired,
Back to his heavens the exulting god retired.
The lovely huntress, rising from the grass,
With downcast eyes, and with a blushing face
By shame confounded, and by fear dismay’d,
_60
Flew from the covert of the guilty shade,
And almost, in the tumult of her mind,
Left her forgotten bow and shafts behind.
But now Diana, with a sprightly train
Of quivered virgins, bounding over the plain,
Called to the nymph; the nymph began to fear
A second fraud, a Jove disguised in her;
But, when she saw the sister nymphs, suppress’d
Her rising fears, and mingled with the rest.
How in the look does conscious guilt appear!
_70
Slowly she moved, and loitered in the rear;
Nor slightly tripped, nor by the goddess ran,
As once she used, the foremost of the train.
Her looks were flushed, and sullen was her mien,
That sure the virgin goddess (had she been
Aught but a virgin) must the guilt have seen.
’Tis said the nymphs saw all, and guessed aright:
And now the moon had nine times lost her light,
When Dian, fainting in the mid-day beams,
Found a cool covert, and refreshing streams
_80
That in soft murmurs through the forest flow’d,
And a smooth bed of shining gravel show’d.
A covert so obscure, and streams so clear,
The goddess praised: ‘And now no spies are near,
Let’s strip, my gentle maids, and wash,’ she cries.
Pleased with the motion, every maid complies;
Only the blushing huntress stood confused,
And formed delays, and her delays excused;
In vain excused; her fellows round her press’d,
And the reluctant nymph by force undress’d.
_90
The naked huntress all her shame reveal’d,
In vain her hands the pregnant womb conceal’d;
‘Begone!’ the goddess cries with stern disdain,
‘Begone! nor dare the hallowed stream to stain:’
She fled, for ever banished from the train.
This Juno heard, who long had watched her time
To punish the detested rival’s crime:
The time was come; for, to enrage her more,
A lovely boy the teeming rival bore.
The goddess cast a furious look, and cried,
_100
‘It is enough! I’m fully satisfied!
This boy shall stand a living mark, to prove
My husband’s baseness, and the strumpet’s love:
But vengeance shall awake: those guilty charms,
That drew the Thunderer from Juno’s arms,
No longer shall their wonted force retain,
Nor please the god, nor make the mortal vain.’
This said, her hand within her hair she wound,
Swung her to earth, and dragged her on the ground.
The prostrate wretch lifts up her arms in prayer;
_110
Her arms grow shaggy, and deformed with hair,
Her nails are sharpened into pointed claws,
Her hands bear half her weight, and turn to paws;
Her lips, that once could tempt a god, begin
To grow distorted in an ugly grin.
And, lest the supplicating brute might reach
The ears of Jove, she was deprived of speech:
Her surly voice through a hoarse passage came
In savage sounds: her mind was still the same.
The furry monster fixed her eyes above,
_120
And heaved her new unwieldy paws to Jove,
And begged his aid with inward groans; and though
She could not call him false, she thought him so.
How did she fear to lodge in woods alone,
And haunt the fields and meadows once her own!
How often would the deep-mouthed dogs pursue,
Whilst from her hounds the frighted huntress flew!
How did she fear her fellow-brutes, and shun
The shaggy bear, though now herself was one!
How from the sight of rugged wolves retire,
_130
Although the grim Lycaon was her sire!
But now her son had fifteen summers told,
Fierce at the chase, and in the forest bold;
When, as he beat the woods in quest of prey,
He chanced to rouse his mother where she lay.
She knew her son, and kept him in her sight,
And fondly gazed: the boy was in a fright,
And aimed a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast;
But Jove forbade, and snatched them through the air
_140
In whirlwinds up to heaven, and fixed them there:
Where the new constellations nightly rise,
And add a lustre to the northern skies.
When Juno saw the rival in her height,
Spangled with stars, and circled round with light,
She sought old Ocean in his deep abodes,
And Tethys; both revered among the gods.
They ask what brings her there: ‘Ne’er ask,’ says she,
‘What brings me here, heaven is no place for me.
You’ll see, when night has covered all things o’er,
_150
Jove’s starry bastard and triumphant whore
Usurp the heavens; you ’ll see them proudly roll
In their new orbs, and brighten all the pole.
And who shall now on Juno’s altars wait,
When those she hates grow greater by her hate?
I on the nymph a brutal form impress’d,
Jove to a goddess has transformed the beast;
This, this was all my weak revenge could do:
But let the god his chaste amours pursue,
And, as he acted after Io’s rape,
_160
Restore the adulteress to her former shape.
Then may he cast his Juno off, and lead
The great Lycaon’s offspring to his bed.
But you, ye venerable powers, be kind,
And, if my wrongs a due resentment find,
Receive not in your waves their setting beams,
Nor let the glaring strumpet taint your streams.’
The goddess ended, and her wish was given.
Back she returned in triumph up to heaven;
Her gaudy peacocks drew her through the skies,
_170
Their tails were spotted with a thousand eyes;
The eyes of Argus on their tails were ranged,
At the same time the raven’s colour changed.
The Story of Coronis, and Birth of Æsculapius
The raven once in snowy plumes was dress’d,
White as the whitest dove’s unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl;
His tongue, his prating tongue, had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white.
The story of his change shall here be told:
In Thessaly there lived a nymph of old,
Coronis named; a peerless maid she shined,
Confessed the fairest of the fairer kind.
_10
Apollo loved her, till her guilt he knew,
While true she was, or whilst he thought her true.
But his own bird, the raven, chanced to find
The false one with a secret rival joined.
Coronis begged him to suppress the tale,
But could not with repeated prayers prevail.
His milk-white pinions to the god he plied;
The busy daw flew with him, side by side,
And by a thousand teasing questions drew
The important secret from him as they flew.
_20
The daw gave honest counsel, though despised,
And, tedious in her tattle, thus advised:
‘Stay, silly bird, the ill-natured task refuse,
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
Be warned by my example: you discern
What now I am, and what I was shall learn.
My foolish honesty was all my crime;
Then hear my story. Once upon a time,
The two-shaped Ericthonius had his birth
(Without a mother) from the teeming earth;
_30
Minerva nursed him, and the infant laid
Within a chest, of twining osiers made.
The daughters of King Cecrops undertook
To guard the chest, commanded not to look
On what was hid within. I stood to see
The charge obeyed, perched on a neighbouring tree.
The sisters Pandrosos and Herse keep
The strict command; Aglauros needs would peep,
And saw the monstrous infant in a fright,
And called her sisters to the hideous sight:
_40
A boy’s soft shape did to the waist prevail,
But the boy ended in a dragon’s tail.
I told the stern Minerva all that passed,
But for my pains, discarded and disgraced,
The frowning goddess drove me from her sight,
And for her favourite chose the bird of night.
Be then no tell-tale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.
‘But you, perhaps, may think I was removed,
As never by the heavenly maid beloved:
_50
But I was loved; ask Pallas if I lie;
Though Pallas hate me now, she won’t deny:
For I, whom in a feathered shape you view,
Was once a maid, (by heaven, the story’s true,)
A blooming maid, and a king’s daughter too.
A crowd of lovers owned my beauty’s charms;
My beauty was the cause of all my harms;
Neptune, as on his shores I went to rove,
Observed me in my walks, and fell in love.
He made his courtship, he confessed his pain,
_60
And offered force when all his arts were vain;
Swift he pursued: I ran along the strand,
Till, spent and wearied on the sinking sand,
I shrieked aloud, with cries I filled the air
To gods and men; nor god nor man was there:
A virgin goddess heard a virgin’s prayer.
For, as my arms I lifted to the skies,
I saw black feathers from my fingers rise;
I strove to fling my garment to the ground;
My garment turned to plumes, and girt me round:
_70
My hands to beat my naked bosom try;
Nor naked bosom now nor hands had I.
Lightly I tripped, nor weary as before
Sunk in the sand, but skimmed along the shore;
Till, rising on my wings, I was preferred
To be the chaste Minerva’s virgin bird:
Preferred in vain! I now am in disgrace:
Nyctimene, the owl, enjoys my place.
‘On her incestuous life I need not dwell,
(In Lesbos still the horrid tale they tell,)
_80
And of her dire amours you must have heard,
For which she now does penance in a bird,
That, conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
And loves the gloomy covering of the night;
The birds, where’er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day.’
The raven, urged by such impertinence,
Grew passionate, it seems, and took offence,
And cursed the harmless daw; the daw withdrew:
The raven to her injured patron flew,
_90
And found him out, and told the fatal truth
Of false Coronis and the favoured youth.
The god was wroth; the colour left his look,
The wreath his head, the harp his hand forsook:
His silver bow and feathered shafts he took,
And lodged an arrow in the tender breast,
That had so often to his own been pressed.
Down fell the wounded nymph, and sadly groaned,
And pulled his arrow reeking from the wound;
And weltering in her blood, thus faintly cried,
_100
‘Ah, cruel god! though I have justly died,
What has, alas! my unborn infant done,
That he should fall, and two expire in one?
This said, in agonies she fetched her breath.
The god dissolves in pity at her death;
He hates the bird that made her falsehood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
The feathered shaft, that sent her to the fates,
And his own hand that sent the shaft he hates.
Fain would he heal the wound, and ease her pain,
_110
And tries the compass of his art in vain.
Soon as he saw the lovely nymph expire,
The pile made ready, and the kindling fire,
With sighs and groans her obsequies he kept,
And, if a god could weep, the god had wept.
Her corpse he kissed, and heavenly incense brought,
And solemnised the death himself had wrought.
But, lest his offspring should her fate partake,
Spite of the immortal mixture in his make,
He ripped her womb, and set the child at large,
_120
And gave him to the centaur Chiron’s charge:
Then in his fury blacked the raven o’er,
And bid him prate in his white plumes no more.
Ocyrrhoe Transformed to a Mare
Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Chariclo to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevelled on her shoulders came
To see the child, Ocyrrhöe was her name;
She knew her father’s arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
Once, as the sacred infant she surveyed,
The god was kindled in the raving maid,
_10
And thus she uttered her prophetic tale;
‘Hail, great physician of the world, all hail;
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations and defraud the tomb;
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfined!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
Then shalt thou die; but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a god.
_20
And thou, my sire, not destined by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to die,
And quit thy claim to immortality;
When thou shalt feel, enraged with inward pains,
The Hydra’s venom rankling in thy veins’?
The gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the power of Fate.’
Thus, entering into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betrayed;
_30
More had she still to say; but now appears
Oppressed with sobs and sighs, and drowned in tears.
‘My voice,’ says she, ‘is gone, my language fails;
Through every limb my kindred shape prevails:
Why did the god this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetic raptures swell my heart!
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O’er flowery meadows, and to feed on grass:
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more;
But why, alas! am I transformed all o’er?
_40
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserves the man.’
Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
But in shrill accents and mishapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare:
Till by degrees accomplished in the beast,
She neighed outright, and all the steed expressed.
Her stooping body on her hands is borne,
Her hands are turned to hoofs, and shod in horn;
_50
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train.
The mare was finished in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.
The Transformation of Battus to a Touchstone
Sore wept the centaur, and to Phoebus prayed;
But how could Phoebus give the centaur aid?
Degraded of his power by angry Jove,
In Elis then a herd of beeves he drove;
And wielded in his hand a staff of oak,
And o’er his shoulders threw the shepherd’s cloak;
On seven compacted reeds he used to play,
And on his rural pipe to waste the day.
As once, attentive to his pipe, he played,
The crafty Hermes from the god conveyed
_10
A drove, that separate from their fellows strayed.
The theft an old insidious peasant viewed,
(They called him Battus in the neighbourhood,)
Hired by a wealthy Pylian prince to feed
His favourite mares, and watch the generous breed.
The thievish god suspected him, and took
The hind aside, and thus in whispers spoke:
‘Discover not the theft, whoe’er thou be,
And take that milk-white heifer for thy fee.’
‘Go, stranger,’ cries the clown, ‘securely on,
_20
That stone shall sooner tell;’ and showed a stone.
The god withdrew, but straight returned again,
In speech and habit like a country swain;
And cries out, ‘Neighbour, hast thou seen a stray
Of bullocks and of heifers pass this way?
In the recovery of my cattle join,
A bullock and a heifer shall be thine.’
The peasant quick replies, ‘You’ll find ’em there,
In yon dark vale:’ and in the vale they were.
The double bribe had his false heart beguiled:
_30
The god, successful in the trial, smiled;
‘And dost thou thus betray myself to me?
Me to myself dost thou betray?’ says he:
Then to a touchstone turns the faithless spy,
And in his name records his infamy.
The Story of Aglauros, Transformed Into a Statue
This done, the god flew up on high, and passed
O’er lofty Athens, by Minerva graced,
And wide Munichia, whilst his eyes survey
All the vast region that beneath him lay.
’Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid
Her yearly homage to Minerva paid;
In canisters, with garlands covered o’er,
High on their heads their mystic gifts they bore;
And now, returning in a solemn train,
The troop of shining virgins filled the plain.
_10
The god well-pleased beheld the pompous show,
And saw the bright procession pass below;
Then veered about, and took a wheeling flight,
And hovered o’er them: as the spreading kite,
That smells the slaughtered victim from on high,
Flies at a distance, if the priests are nigh,
And sails around, and keeps it in her eye;
So kept the god the virgin choir in view,
And in slow winding circles round them flew.
As Lucifer excels the meanest star,
_20
Or as the full-orbed Phoebe, Lucifer,
So much did Herse all the rest outvie,
And gave a grace to the solemnity.
Hermes was fired, as in the clouds he hung:
So the cold bullet, that with fury slung
From Balearic engines mounts on high,
Glows in the whirl, and burns along the sky.
At length he pitched upon the ground, and showed
The form divine, the features of a god.
He knew their virtue o’er a female heart,
_30
And yet he strives to better them by art.
He hangs his mantle loose, and sets to show
The golden edging on the seam below;
Adjusts his flowing curls, and in his hand
Waves with an air the sleep-procuring wand;
The glittering sandals to his feet applies,
And to each heel the well-trimmed pinion ties.
His ornaments with nicest art displayed,
He seeks the apartment of the royal maid.
The roof was all with polished ivory lined,
_40
That, richly mixed, in clouds of tortoise shined.
Three rooms, contiguous, in a range were placed,
The midmost by the beauteous Herse graced;
Her virgin sisters lodged on either side.
Aglauros first the approaching god descried,
And as he crossed her chamber, asked his name,
And what his business was, and whence he came.
‘I come,’ replied the god, ‘from heaven, to woo
Your sister, and to make an aunt of you;
I am the son and messenger of Jove,
_50
My name is Mercury, my business, love;
Do you, kind damsel, take a lover’s part,
And gain admittance to your sister’s heart.’
She stared him in the face with looks amazed,
As when she on Minerva’s secret gazed,
And asks a mighty treasure for her hire,
And, till he brings it, makes the god retire.
Minerva grieved to see the nymph succeed;
And now remembering the late impious deed,
When, disobedient to her strict command,
_60
She touched the chest with an unhallowed hand;
In big-swoln sighs her inward rage expressed,
That heaved the rising Ægis on her breast;
Then sought out Envy in her dark abode,
Defiled with ropy gore and clots of blood:
Shut from the winds, and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies,
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter, or disturbs the night.
Directly to the cave her course she steered;
_70
Against the gates her martial lance she reared;
The gates flew open, and the fiend appeared.
A poisonous morsel in her teeth she chewed,
And gorged the flesh of vipers for her food.
Minerva loathing turned away her eye;
The hideous monster, rising heavily,
Came stalking forward with a sullen pace,
And left her mangled offals on the place.
Soon as she saw the goddess gay and bright,
She fetched a groan at such a cheerful sight.
_80
Livid and meagre were her looks, her eye
In foul, distorted glances turned awry;
A hoard of gall her inward parts possessed,
And spread a greenness o’er her cankered breast;
Her teeth were brown with rust; and from her tongue,
In dangling drops, the stringy poison hung.
She never smiles but when the wretched weep,
Nor lulls her malice with a moment’s sleep,
Restless in spite: while watchful to destroy,
She pines and sickens at another’s joy;
_90
Foe to herself, distressing and distressed,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.
The goddess gave (for she abhorred her sight)
A short command: ‘To Athens speed thy flight;
On cursed Aglauros try thy utmost art.
And fix thy rankest venoms in her heart.’
This said, her spear she pushed against the ground,
And mounting from it with an active bound,
Flew off to heaven: the hag with eyes askew
Looked up, and muttered curses as she flew;
_100
For sore she fretted, and began to grieve
At the success which she herself must give.
Then takes her staff, hung round with wreaths of thorn,
And sails along, in a black whirlwind borne,
O’er fields and flowery meadows: where she steers
Her baneful course, a mighty blast appears,
Mildews and blights; the meadows are defaced,
The fields, the flowers, and the whole year laid waste;
On mortals next and peopled towns she falls,
And breathes a burning plague among their walls,
_110
When Athens she beheld, for arts renowned,
With peace made happy, and with plenty crowned,
Scarce could the hideous fiend from tears forbear,
To find out nothing that deserved a tear.
The apartment now she entered, where at rest
Aglauros lay, with gentle sleep oppressed.
To execute Minerva’s dire command,
She stroked the virgin with her cankered hand,
Then prickly thorns into her breast conveyed,
That stung to madness the devoted maid;
_120
Her subtle venom still improves the smart,
Frets in the blood, and festers in the heart.
To make the work more sure, a scene she drew,
And placed before the dreaming virgin’s view
Her sister’s marriage, and her glorious fate:
The imaginary bride appears in state;
The bridegroom with unwonted beauty glows,
For Envy magnifies whate’er she shows.
Full of the dream, Aglauros pined away
In tears all night, in darkness all the day;
_130
Consumed like ice, that just begins to run,
When feebly smitten by the distant sun;
Or like unwholesome weeds, that, set on fire,
Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.
Given up to Envy, (for in every thought,
The thorns, the venom, and the vision wrought).
Oft did she call on death, as oft decreed,
Rather than see her sister’s wish succeed,
To tell her awful father what had passed:
At length before the door herself she cast;
_140
And, sitting on the ground with sullen pride,
A passage to the love-sick god denied.
The god caressed, and for admission prayed,
And soothed, in softest words, the envenomed maid.
In vain he soothed; ‘Begone!’ the maid replies,
‘Or here I keep my seat, and never rise.’
‘Then keep thy seat for ever!’ cries the god,
And touched the door, wide-opening to his rod.
Fain would she rise, and stop him, but she found
Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;
_150
Her joints are all benumbed, her hands are pale,
And marble now appears in every nail.
As when a cancer in her body feeds,
And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds;
So does the dullness to each vital part
Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart;
Till, hardening everywhere, and speechless grown,
She sits unmoved, and freezes to a stone.
But still her envious hue and sullen mien
Are in the sedentary figure seen.
_160
Europa’s Rape
When now the god his fury had allayed,
And taken vengeance of the stubborn maid,
From where the bright Athenian turrets rise
He mounts aloft, and reascends the skies.
Jove saw him enter the sublime abodes,
And, as he mixed among the crowd of gods,
Beckoned him out, and drew him from the rest,
And in soft whispers thus his will expressed.
‘My trusty Hermes, by whose ready aid
Thy sire’s commands are through the world conveyed,
_10
Resume thy wings, exert their utmost force,
And to the walls of Sidon speed they course;
There find a herd of heifers wandering o’er
The neighbouring hill, and drive them to the shore.’
Thus spoke the god, concealing his intent.
The trusty Hermes on his message went,
And found the herd of heifers wandering o’er
A neighbouring hill, and drove them to the shore;
Where the king’s daughter, with a lovely train
Of fellow-nymphs, was sporting on the plain.
_20
The dignity of empire laid aside,
(For love but ill agrees with kingly pride,)
The ruler of the skies, the thundering god,
Who shakes the world’s foundations with a nod,
Among a herd of lowing heifers ran,
Frisked in a bull, and bellowed o’er the plain.
Large rolls of fat about his shoulders clung,
And from his neck the double dewlap hung.
His skin was whiter than the snow that lies
Unsullied by the breath of southern skies;
_30
Small shining horns on his curled forehead stand,
As turned and polished by the workman’s hand;
His eye-balls rolled, not formidably bright,
But gazed and languished with a gentle light.
His every look was peaceful, and expressed
The softness of the lover in the beast.
Agenor’s royal daughter, as she played
Among the fields, the milk-white bull surveyed,
And viewed his spotless body with delight,
And at a distance kept him in her sight.
_40
At length she plucked the rising flowers, and fed
The gentle beast, and fondly stroked his head.
He stood well pleased to touch the charming fair,
But hardly could confine his pleasure there.
And now he wantons o’er the neighbouring strand,
Now rolls his body on the yellow sand;
And now, perceiving all her fears decayed,
Comes tossing forward to the royal maid;
Gives her his breast to stroke, and downward turns
His grisly brow, and gently stoops his horns.
_50
In flowery wreaths the royal virgin dressed
His bending horns, and kindly clapped his breast.
Till now grown wanton, and devoid of fear,
Not knowing that she pressed the Thunderer,
She placed herself upon his back, and rode
O’er fields and meadows, seated on the god.
He gently marched along, and by degrees
Left the dry meadow, and approached the seas;
Where now he dips his hoofs and wets his thighs,
Now plunges in, and carries off the prize.
_60
The frighted nymph looks backward on the shore,
And hears the tumbling billows round her roar;
But still she holds him fast: one hand is borne
Upon his back, the other grasps a horn:
Her train of ruffling garments flies behind,
Swells in the air and hovers in the wind.
Through storms and tempests he the virgin bore,
And lands her safe on the Dictean shore;
Where now, in his divinest form arrayed,
In his true shape he captivates the maid;
_70
Who gazes on him, and with wondering eyes
Beholds the new majestic figure rise,
His glowing features, and celestial light,
And all the god discovered to her sight.
Book III
The Story of Cadmus
When now Agenor had his daughter lost,
He sent his son to search on every coast;
And sternly bid him to his arms restore
The darling maid, or see his face no more,
But live an exile in a foreign clime:
Thus was the father pious to a crime.
The restless youth searched all the world around;
But how can Jove in his amours be found?
When tired at length with unsuccessful toil,
To shun his angry sire and native soil,
_10
He goes a suppliant to the Delphic dome;
There asks the god what new-appointed home
Should end his wanderings and his toils relieve.
The Delphic oracles this answer give:
‘Behold among the fields a lonely cow,
Unworn with yokes, unbroken to the plough;
Mark well the place where first she lays her down,
There measure out thy walls, and build thy town,
And from thy guide, Boetia call the land,
In which the destined walls and town shall stand.’
_20
No sooner had he left the dark abode,
Big with the promise of the Delphic god,
When in the fields the fatal cow he viewed,
Nor galled with yokes, nor worn with servitude:
Her gently at a distance he pursued;
And, as he walked aloof, in silence prayed
To the great power whose counsels he obeyed.
Her way through flowery Panope she took,
And now, Cephisus, crossed thy silver brook;
When to the heavens her spacious front she raised,
_30
And bellowed thrice, then backward turning, gazed
On those behind, till on the destined place
She stooped, and couched amid the rising grass.
Cadmus salutes the soil, and gladly hails
The new-found mountains, and the nameless vales,
And thanks the gods, and turns about his eye
To see his new dominions round him lie;
Then sends his servants to a neighbouring grove
For living streams, a sacrifice to Jove.
O’er the wide plain there rose a shady wood
_40
Of aged trees; in its dark bosom stood
A bushy thicket, pathless and unworn,
O’errun with brambles, and perplexed with thorn:
Amidst the brake a hollow den was found,
With rocks and shelving arches vaulted round.
Deep in the dreary den, concealed from day,
Sacred to Mars, a mighty dragon lay,
Bloated with poison to a monstrous size;
Fire broke in flashes when he glanced his eyes;
His towering crest was glorious to behold,
_50
His shoulders and his sides were scaled with gold;
Three tongues he brandished when he charged his foes;
His teeth stood jagy in three dreadful rows.
The Tyrians in the den for water sought,
And with their urns explored the hollow vault:
From side to side their empty urns rebound,
And rouse the sleepy serpent with the sound.
Straight he bestirs him, and is seen to rise;
And now with dreadful hissings fills the skies,
And darts his forky tongues, and rolls his glaring eyes.
_60
The Tyrians drop their vessels in their fright,
All pale and trembling at the hideous sight
Spire above spire upreared in air he stood,
And gazing round him, overlooked the wood:
Then floating on the ground, in circles rolled;
Then leaped upon them in a mighty fold.
Of such a bulk, and such a monstrous size,
The serpent in the polar circle lies,
That stretches over half the northern skies.
In vain the Tyrians on their arms rely,
_70
In vain attempt to fight, in vain to fly:
All their endeavours and their hopes are vain;
Some die entangled in the winding train;
Some are devoured; or feel a loathsome death,
Swoln up with blasts of pestilential breath.
And now the scorching sun was mounted high,
In all its lustre, to the noonday sky;
When, anxious for his friends, and filled with cares,
To search the woods the impatient chief prepares.
A lion’s hide around his loins he wore,
_80
The well-poised javelin to the field he bore,
Inured to blood, the far-destroying dart,
And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart.
Soon as the youth approached the fatal place,
He saw his servants breathless on the grass;
The scaly foe amid their corps he viewed,
Basking at ease, and feasting in their blood,
‘Such friends,’ he cries, ‘deserved a longer date;
But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate.’
Then heaved a stone, and rising to the throw
_90
He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe:
A tower, assaulted by so rude a stroke,
With all its lofty battlements had shook;
But nothing here the unwieldy rock avails,
Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales,
That, firmly joined, preserved him from a wound,
With native armour crusted all around. 97
The pointed javelin more successful flew,
Which at his back the raging warrior threw;
Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
_100
And in the spinal marrow spent its force.
The monster hissed aloud, and raged in vain,
And writhed his body to and fro with pain;
And bit the spear, and wrenched the wood away;
The point still buried in the marrow lay.
And now his rage, increasing with his pain,
Reddens his eyes, and beats in every vein;
Churned in his teeth the foamy venom rose,
Whilst from his mouth a blast of vapours flows,
Such as the infernal Stygian waters cast;
_110
The plants around him wither in the blast.
Now in a maze of rings he lies enrolled,
Now all unravelled, and without a fold;
Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force,
Bears down the forest in his boisterous course.
Cadmus gave back, and on the lion’s spoil
Sustained the shock, then forced him to recoil;
The pointed javelin warded off his rage:
Mad with his pains, and furious to engage,
The serpent champs the steel, and bites the spear,
_120
Till blood and venom all the point besmear.
But still the hurt he yet received was slight;
For, whilst the champion with redoubled might
Strikes home the javelin, his retiring foe
Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow.
The dauntless hero still pursues his stroke,
And presses forward, till a knotty oak
Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear;
Full in his throat he plunged the fatal spear,
That in the extended neck a passage found,
_130
And pierced the solid timber through the wound.
Fixed to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke
Of his huge tail, he lashed the sturdy oak;
Till spent with toil, and labouring hard for breath,
He now lay twisting in the pangs of death.
Cadmus beheld him wallow in a flood
Of swimming poison, intermixed with blood;
When suddenly a speech was heard from high,
(The speech was heard, nor was the speaker nigh,)
‘Why dost thou thus with secret pleasure see,
_140
Insulting man! what thou thyself shalt be?’
Astonished at the voice, he stood amazed,
And all around with inward horror gazed:
When Pallas, swift descending from the skies,
Pallas, the guardian of the bold and wise,
Bids him plough up the field, and scatter round
The dragon’s teeth o’er all the furrowed ground;
Then tells the youth how to his wondering eyes
Embattled armies from the field should rise.
He sows the teeth at Pallas’s command,
_150
And flings the future people from his hand.
The clods grow warm, and crumble where he sows;
And now the pointed spears advance in rows;
Now nodding plumes appear, and shining crests,
Now the broad shoulders and the rising breasts:
O’er all the field the breathing harvest swarms,
A growing host, a crop of men and arms.
So through the parting stage a figure rears
Its body up, and limb by limb appears
By just degrees; till all the man arise,
_160
And in his full proportion strikes the eyes.
Cadmus surprised, and startled at the sight
Of his new foes, prepared himself for fight:
When one cried out, ‘Forbear, fond man, forbear
To mingle in a blind, promiscuous war.’
This said, he struck his brother to the ground,
Himself expiring by another’s wound;
Nor did the third his conquest long survive,
Dying ere scarce he had begun to live.
The dire example ran through all the field,
_170
Till heaps of brothers were by brothers killed;
The furrows swam in blood: and only five
Of all the vast increase were left alive.
Echion one, at Pallas’s command,
Let fall the guiltless weapon from his hand;
And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes,
Whom Cadmus as his friends and partners takes:
So founds a city on the promised earth,
And gives his new Boeotian empire birth.
Here Cadmus reigned; and now one would have guessed
_180
The royal founder in his exile blessed:
Long did he live within his new abodes,
Allied by marriage to the deathless gods;
And, in a fruitful wife’s embraces old,
A long increase of children’s children told:
But no frail man, however great or high,
Can be concluded blessed before he die.
Actæon was the first of all his race,
Who grieved his grandsire in his borrowed face;
Condemned by stern Diana to bemoan
_190
The branching horns, and visage not his own;
To shun his once-loved dogs, to bound away,
And from their huntsman to become their prey.
And yet consider why the change was wrought,
You’ll find it his misfortune, not his fault;
Or if a fault, it was the fault of chance:
For how can guilt proceed from ignorance?
The Transformation of Actæon Into a Stag
In a fair chase a shady mountain stood,
Well stored with game, and marked with trails of blood.
Here did the huntsmen till the heat of day
Pursue the stag, and load themselves with prey;
When thus Actæon calling to the rest:
‘My friends,’ says he, ‘our sport is at the best.
The sun is high advanced, and downward sheds
His burning beams directly on our heads;
Then by consent abstain from further spoils,
Call off the dogs, and gather up the toils;
_10
And ere to-morrow’s sun begins his race,
Take the cool morning to renew the chase.’
They all consent, and in a cheerful train
The jolly huntsmen, loaden with the slain,
Return in triumph from the sultry plain.
Down in a vale with pine and cypress clad,
Refreshed with gentle winds, and brown with shade,
The chaste Diana’s private haunt, there stood
Full in the centre of the darksome wood
A spacious grotto, all around o’ergrown
_20
With hoary moss, and arched with pumice-stone.
From out its rocky clefts the waters flow,
And trickling swell into a lake below.
Nature had everywhere so played her part,
That everywhere she seemed to vie with art.
Here the bright goddess, toiled and chafed with heat,
Was wont to bathe her in the cool retreat.
Here did she now with all her train resort,
Panting with heat, and breathless from the sport;
Her armour-bearer laid her bow aside,
_30
Some loosed her sandals, some her veil untied;
Each busy nymph her proper part undressed;
While Crocale, more handy than the rest,
Gathered her flowing hair, and in a noose
Bound it together, whilst her own hung loose.
Five of the more ignoble sort by turns
Fetch up the water, and unlade their urns.
Now all undressed the shining goddess stood,
When young Actæon, wildered in the wood,
To the cool grot by his hard fate betrayed,
_40
The fountains filled with naked nymphs surveyed.
The frighted virgins shrieked at the surprise,
(The forest echoed with their piercing cries,)
Then in a huddle round their goddess pressed:
She, proudly eminent above the rest,
With blushes glowed; such blushes as adorn
The ruddy welkin, or the purple morn;
And though the crowding nymphs her body hide,
Half backward shrunk, and viewed him from aside.
Surprised, at first she would have snatched her bow,
_50
But sees the circling waters round her flow;
These in the hollow of her hand she took,
And dashed them in his face, while thus she spoke:
‘Tell if thou canst the wondrous sight disclosed,
A goddess naked to thy view exposed.’
This said, the man began to disappear
By slow degrees, and ended in a deer.
A rising horn on either brow he wears,
And stretches out his neck, and pricks his ears;
Rough is his skin, with sudden hairs o’ergrown,
_60
His bosom pants with fears before unknown.
Transformed at length, he flies away in haste,
And wonders why he flies away so fast.
But as by chance, within a neighbouring brook,
He saw his branching horns and altered look,
Wretched Actæon! in a doleful tone
He tried to speak, but only gave a groan;
And as he wept, within the watery glass
He saw the big round drops, with silent pace,
Run trickling down a savage hairy face.
_70
What should he do? Or seek his old abodes,
Or herd among the deer, and skulk in woods?
Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails,
And each by turns his aching heart assails.
As he thus ponders, he behind him spies
His opening hounds, and now he hears their cries:
A generous pack, or to maintain the chase,
Or snuff the vapour from the scented grass.
He bounded off with fear, and swiftly ran
O’er craggy mountains, and the flowery plain;
_80
Through brakes and thickets forced his way, and flew
Through many a ring, where once he did pursue.
In vain he oft endeavoured to proclaim
His new misfortune, and to tell his name;
Nor voice nor words the brutal tongue supplies;
From shouting men, and horns, and dogs he flies,
Deafened and stunned with their promiscuous cries.
When now the fleetest of the pack, that pressed
Close at his heels, and sprung before the rest,
Had fastened on him, straight another pair
_90
Hung on his wounded haunch, and held him there,
Till all the pack came up, and every hound
Tore the sad huntsman, grovelling on the ground,
Who now appeared but one continued wound.
With dropping tears his bitter fate he moans,
And fills the mountain with his dying groans.
His servants with a piteous look he spies,
And turns about his supplicating eyes.
His servants, ignorant of what had chanced,
With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced,
_100
And called their lord Actæon to the game:
He shook his head in answer to the name;
He heard, but wished he had indeed been gone,
Or only to have stood a looker-on.
But, to his grief, he finds himself too near,
And feels his ravenous dogs with fury tear
Their wretched master, panting in a deer.
The Birth of Bacchus
Actæon’s sufferings, and Diana’s rage,
Did all the thoughts of men and gods engage;
Some called the evils which Diana wrought,
Too great, and disproportioned to the fault:
Others, again, esteemed Actæon’s woes
Fit for a virgin goddess to impose.
The hearers into different parts divide,
And reasons are produced on either side.
Juno alone, of all that heard the news,
Nor would condemn the goddess, nor excuse:
_10
She heeded not the justice of the deed,
But joyed to see the race of Cadmus bleed;
For still she kept Europa in her mind,
And, for her sake, detested all her kind.
Besides, to aggravate her hate, she heard
How Semele, to Jove’s embrace preferred,
Was now grown big with an immortal load,
And carried in her womb a future god.
Thus terribly incensed, the goddess broke
To sudden fury, and abruptly spoke.
_20
‘Are my reproaches of so small a force?
’Tis time I then pursue another course:
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die,
If I’m indeed the mistress of the sky;
If rightly styled among the powers above
The wife and sister of the thundering Jove,
(And none can sure a sister’s right deny,)
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die.
She boasts an honour I can hardly claim;
Pregnant, she rises to a mother’s name;
_30
While proud and vain she triumphs in her Jove,
And shows the glorious tokens of his love:
But if I’m still the mistress of the skies,
By her own lover the fond beauty dies.’
This said, descending in a yellow cloud,
Before the gates of Semele she stood.
Old Beroe’s decrepit shape she wears,
Her wrinkled visage, and her hoary hairs;
Whilst in her trembling gait she totters on,
And learns to tattle in the nurse’s tone.
_40
The goddess, thus disguised in age, beguiled
With pleasing stories her false foster-child.
Much did she talk of love, and when she came
To mention to the nymph her lover’s name,
Fetching a sigh, and holding down her head,
‘’Tis well,’ says she, ‘if all be true that’s said;
But trust me, child, I’m much inclined to fear
Some counterfeit in this your Jupiter.
Many an honest, well-designing maid,
Has been by these pretended gods betrayed.
_50
But if he be indeed the thundering Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend, triumphant from the ethereal sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity;
Encompassed round by those celestial charms,
With which he fills the immortal Juno’s arms.’
The unwary nymph, insnared with what she said,
Desired of Jove, when next he sought her bed,
To grant a certain gift which she would choose;
‘Fear not,’ replied the god, ‘that I’ll refuse
_60
Whate’er you ask: may Styx confirm my voice,
Choose what you will, and you shall have your choice.’
‘Then,’ says the nymph, ‘when next you seek my arms,
May you descend in those celestial charms,
With which your Juno’s bosom you inflame,
And fill with transport heaven’s immortal dame.’
The god surprised, would fain have stopped her voice:
But he had swrorn, and she had made her choice.
To keep his promise he ascends, and shrouds
His awful brow in whirlwinds and in clouds;
_70
Whilst all around, in terrible array,
His thunders rattle, and his lightnings play.
And yet, the dazzling lustre to abate,
He set not out in all his pomp and state,
Clad in the mildest lightning of the skies,
And armed with thunder of the smallest size:
Not those huge bolts, by which the giants slain,
Lay overthrown on the Phlegræan plain.
Twas of a lesser mould, and lighter weight;
They call it thunder of a second-rate.
_80
For the rough Cyclops, who by Jove’s command
Tempered the bolt, and turned it to his hand,
Worked up less flame and fury in its make,
And quenched it sooner in the standing lake.
Thus dreadfully adorned, with horror bright,
The illustrious god, descending from his height,
Came rushing on her in a storm of light.
The mortal dame, too feeble to engage
The lightning’s flashes and the thunder’s rage,
Consumed amidst the glories she desired,
_90
And in the terrible embrace expired.
But, to preserve his offspring from the tomb,
Jove took him smoking from the blasted womb;
And, if on ancient tales we may rely,
Enclosed the abortive infant in his thigh.
Here, when the babe had all his time fulfilled,
Ino first took him for her foster-child;
Then the Niseans, in their dark abode,
Nursed secretly with milk the thriving god.
The Transformation of Tiresias
’Twas now, while these transactions passed on earth,
And Bacchus thus procured a second birth,
When Jove, disposed to lay aside the weight
Of public empire and the cares of state,
As to his queen in nectar bowls he quaffed,
‘In troth,’ says he, and as he spoke he laughed,
‘The sense of pleasure in the male is far
More dull and dead than what you females share.’
Juno the truth of what was said denied;
Tiresias therefore must the cause decide;
_10
For he the pleasure of each sex had tried.
It happened once, within a shady wood,
Two twisted snakes he in conjunction viewed;
When with his staff their slimy folds he broke,
And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke.
But, after seven revolving years, he viewed
The self-same serpents in the self-same wood;
‘And if,’ says he, ‘such virtue in you lie,
That he who dares your slimy folds untie
Must change his kind, a second stroke I’ll try.’
_20
Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
New-sexed, and straight recovered into man.
Him therefore both the deities create
The sovereign umpire in their grand debate;
And he declared for Jove; when Juno, fired
More than so trivial an affair required,
Deprived him, in her fury, of his sight,
And left him groping round in sudden night.
But Jove (for so it is in heaven decreed,
That no one god repeal another’s deed)
_30
Irradiates all his soul with inward light,
And with the prophet’s art relieves the want of sight.
The Transformation of Echo
Famed far and near for knowing things to come,
From him the inquiring nations sought their doom;
The fair Liriope his answers tried,
And first the unerring prophet justified;
This nymph the god Cephisus had abused,
With all his winding waters circumfused,
And on the Nereid got a lovely boy,
Whom the soft maids even then beheld with joy.
The tender dame, solicitous to know
Whether her child should reach old age or no,
_10
Consults the sage Tiresias, who replies,
‘If e’er he knows himself, he surely dies.’
Long lived the dubious mother in suspense,
Till time unriddled all the prophet’s sense.
Narcissus now his sixteenth year began,
Just turned of boy, and on the verge of man;
Many a friend the blooming youth caressed,
Many a love-sick maid her flame confessed:
Such was his pride, in vain the friend caressed,
The love-sick maid in vain her flame confessed.
_20
Once, in the woods, as he pursued the chase,
The babbling Echo had descried his face;
She, who in others’ words her silence breaks,
Nor speaks herself but when another speaks.
Echo was then a maid, of speech bereft,
Of wonted speech; for though her voice was left,
Juno a curse did on her tongue impose,
To sport with every sentence in the close.
Full often, when the goddess might have caught
Jove and her rivals in the very fault,
_30
This nymph with subtle stories would delay
Her coming, till the lovers slipped away.
The goddess found out the deceit in time,
And then she cried, ‘That tongue, for this thy crime,
Which could so many subtle tales produce,
Shall be hereafter but of little use.’
Hence ’tis she prattles in a fainter tone,
With mimic sounds, and accents not her own.
This love-sick virgin, overjoyed to find
The boy alone, still followed him behind;
_40
When, glowing warmly at her near approach,
As sulphur blazes at the taper’s touch,
She longed her hidden passion to reveal,
And tell her pains, but had not words to tell:
She can’t begin, but waits for the rebound,
To catch his voice, and to return the sound.
The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,
Still dashed with blushes for her slighted love,
Lived in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes;
_50
Where pining wandered the rejected fair,
Till harassed out, and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice had nothing left.
Her bones are petrified, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles every sound.
The Story of Narcissus
Thus did the nymphs in vain caress the boy,
He still was lovely, but he still was coy;
When one fair virgin of the slighted train
Thus prayed the gods, provoked by his disdain,
‘Oh, may he love like me, and love like me in vain!’
Rhamnusia pitied the neglected fair,
And with just vengeance answered to her prayer.
There stands a fountain in a darksome wood,
Nor stained with falling leaves nor rising mud;
Untroubled by the breath of winds it rests,
_10
Unsullied by the touch of men or beasts:
High bowers of shady trees above it grow,
And rising grass and cheerful greens below.
Pleased with the form and coolness of the place,
And over-heated by the morning chase,
Narcissus on the grassy verdure lies:
But whilst within the crystal fount he tries
To quench his heat, he feels new heats arise.
For as his own bright image he surveyed,
He fell in love with the fantastic shade;
_20
And o’er the fair resemblance hung unmoved,
Nor knew, fond youth! it was himself he loved.
The well-turned neck and shoulders he descries,
The spacious forehead, and the sparkling eyes;
The hands that Bacchus might not scorn to show,
And hair that round Apollo’s head might flow,
With all the purple youthfulness of face,
That gently blushes in the watery glass.
By his own flames consumed the lover lies,
And gives himself the wound by which he dies.
_30
To the cold water oft he joins his lips,
Oft catching at the beauteous shade he dips
His arms, as often from himself he slips.
Nor knows he who it is his arms pursue
With eager clasps, but loves he knows not who.
What could, fond youth, this helpless passion move?
What kindle in thee this unpitied love?
Thy own warm blush within the water glows,
With thee the coloured shadow comes and goes,
Its empty being on thyself relies;
_40
Step thou aside, and the frail charmer dies.
Still o’er the fountain’s watery gleam he stood,
Mindless of sleep, and negligent of food;
Still viewed his face, and languished as he viewed.
At length he raised his head, and thus began
To vent his griefs, and tell the woods his pain.
‘You trees,’ says he, ‘and thou surrounding grove,
Who oft have been the kindly scenes of love,
Tell me, if e’er within your shades did lie
A youth so tortured, so perplexed as I?
_50
I who before me see the charming fair,
Whilst there he stands, and yet he stands not there:
In such a maze of love my thoughts are lost;
And yet no bulwarked town, nor distant coast,
Preserves the beauteous youth from being seen,
No mountains rise, nor oceans flow between.
A shallow water hinders my embrace;
And yet the lovely mimic wears a face
That kindly smiles, and when I bend to join
My lips to his, he fondly bends to mine.
_60
Hear, gentle youth, and pity my complaint,
Come from thy well, thou fair inhabitant.
My charms an easy conquest have obtained
O’er other hearts, by thee alone disdained.
But why should I despair? I’m sure he burns
With equal flames, and languishes by turns.
Whene’er I stoop he offers at a kiss,
And when my arms I stretch, he stretches his.
His eye with pleasure on my face he keeps,
He smiles my smiles, and when I weep he weeps.
_70
Whene’er I speak, his moving lips appear
To utter something, which I cannot hear.
‘Ah wretched me! I now begin too late
To find out all the long-perplexed deceit;
It is myself I love, myself I see;
The gay delusion is a part of me.
I kindle up the fires by which I burn,
And my own beauties from the well return.
Whom should I court? how utter my complaint?
Enjoyment but produces my restraint,
_80
And too much plenty makes me die for want.
How gladly would I from myself remove!
And at a distance set the thing I love.
My breast is warmed with such unusual fire,
I wish him absent whom I most desire.
And now I faint with grief; my fate draws nigh;
In all the pride of blooming youth I die.
Death will the sorrows of my heart relieve.
Oh, might the visionary youth survive,
I should with joy my latest breath resign!
_90
But oh! I see his fate involved in mine.’
This said, the weeping youth again returned
To the clear fountain, where again he burned;
His tears defaced the surface of the well
With circle after circle, as they fell:
And now the lovely face but half appears,
O’errun with wrinkles, and deformed with tears.
‘All whither,’ cries Narcissus, ‘dost thou fly?
Let me still feed the flame by which I die;
Let me still see, though I’m no further blessed.’
_100
Then rends his garment off, and beats his breast:
His naked bosom reddened with the blow,
In such a blush as purple clusters show,
Ere yet the sun’s autumnal heats refine
Their sprightly juice, and mellow it to wine.
The glowing beauties of his breast he spies,
And with a new redoubled passion dies.
As wax dissolves, as ice begins to run,
And trickle into drops before the sun;
So melts the youth, and languishes away,
_110
His beauty withers, and his limbs decay;
And none of those attractive charms remain,
To which the slighted Echo sued in vain.
She saw him in his present misery,
Whom, spite of all her wrongs, she grieved to see.
She answered sadly to the lover’s moan,
Sighed back his sighs, and groaned to every groan:
‘Ah youth! beloved in vain,’ Narcissus cries;
‘Ah youth! beloved in vain,’ the nymph replies.
‘Farewell,’ says he; the parting sound scarce fell
_120
From his faint lips, but she replied, ‘Farewell.’
Then on the unwholesome earth he gasping lies,
Till death shuts up those self-admiring eyes.
To the cold shades his flitting ghost retires,
And in the Stygian waves itself admires.
For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn,
Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn;
And now the sister-nymphs prepare his urn:
When, looking for his corpse, they only found
A rising stalk, with yellow blossoms crowned.
_130
The Story of Pentheus
This sad event gave blind Tiresias fame,
Through Greece established in a prophet’s name.
The unhallowed Pentheus only durst deride
The cheated people, and their eyeless guide,
To whom the prophet in his fury said,
Shaking the hoary honours of his head;
’Twere well, presumptuous man, ’twere well for thee
If thou wert eyeless too, and blind, like me:
For the time comes, nay, ’tis already here,
When the young god’s solemnities appear;
_10
Which, if thou dost not with just rites adorn,
Thy impious carcase, into pieces torn,
Shall strew the woods, and hang on every thorn.
Then, then, remember what I now foretell,
And own the blind Tiresias saw too well.’
Still Pentheus scorns him, and derides his skill,
But time did all the promised threats fulfil.
For now through prostrate Greece young Bacchus rode,
Whilst howling matrons celebrate the god.
All ranks and sexes to his orgies ran,
_20
To mingle in the pomps, and fill the train.
When Pentheus thus his wicked rage express’d;
‘What madness, Thebans, has your soul possess’d?
Can hollow timbrels, can a drunken shout,
And the lewd clamours of a beastly rout,
Thus quell your courage? can the weak alarm
Of women’s yells those stubborn souls disarm,
Whom nor the sword nor trumpet e’er could fright,
Nor the loud din and horror of a fight?
And you, our sires, who left your old abodes,
_30
And fixed in foreign earth your country gods;
Will you without a stroke your city yield,
And poorly quit an undisputed field?
But you, whose youth and vigour should inspire
Heroic warmth, and kindle martial fire,
Whom burnished arms and crested helmets grace,
Not flowery garlands and a painted face;
Remember him to whom you stand allied:
The serpent for his well of waters died.
He fought the strong; do you his courage show,
_40
And gain a conquest o’er a feeble foe.
If Thebes must fall, oh might the Fates afford
A nobler doom from famine, fire, or sword!
Then might the Thebans perish with renown:
But now a beardless victor sacks the town;
Whom nor the prancing steed, nor ponderous shield,
Nor the hacked helmet, nor the dusty field,
But the soft joys of luxury and ease,
The purple vests, and flowery garlands, please.
Stand then aside, I’ll make the counterfeit
_50
Renounce his godhead, and confess the cheat.
Acrisius from the Grecian walls repelled
This boasted power; why then should Pentheus yield?
Go quickly, drag the audacious boy to me;
I’ll try the force of his divinity.’
Thus did the audacious wretch those rites profane;
His friends dissuade the audacious wretch in vain;
In vain his grandsire urged him to give o’er
His impious threats; the wretch but raves the more.
So have I seen a river gently glide,
_60
In a smooth course and inoffensive tide;
But if with dams its current we restrain,
It bears down all, and foams along the plain.
But now his servants came besmeared with blood,
Sent by their haughty prince to seize the god;
The god they found not in the frantic throng
But dragged a zealous votary along.
The Mariners Transformed to Dolphins
Him Pentheus viewed with fury in his look,
And scarce withheld his hands, while thus he spoke:
‘Vile slave! whom speedy vengeance shall pursue,
And terrify thy base, seditious crew:
Thy country and thy parentage reveal,
And why thou join’st in these mad orgies tell.’
The captive views him with undaunted eyes,
And, armed with inward innocence, replies.
‘From high Meonia’s rocky shores I came,
Of poor descent, Acætes is my name:
_10
My sire was meanly born; no oxen ploughed
His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures lowed.
His whole estate within the waters lay;
With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey.
His art was all his livelihood; which he
Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me:
In streams, my boy, and rivers, take thy chance;
There swims,’ said he, ‘thy whole inheritance.
’Long did I live on this poor legacy;
Till tired with rocks, and my own native sky,
_20
To arts of navigation I inclined,
Observed the turns and changes of the wind:
Learned the fit havens, and began to note
The stormy Hyades, the rainy Goat,
The bright Täygete, and the shining Bears,
With all the sailor’s catalogue of stars.
‘Once, as by chance for Delos I designed,
My vessel, driven by a strong gust of wind,
Moored in a Chian creek; ashore I went,
And all the following night in Chios spent.
_30
When morning rose, I sent my mates to bring
Supplies of water from a neighbouring spring,
Whilst I the motion of the winds explored;
Then summoned in my crew, and went aboard.
Opheltes heard my summons, and with joy
Brought to the shore a soft and lovely boy,
With more than female sweetness in his look,
Whom straggling in the neighbouring fields he took.
With fumes of wine the little captive glows,
And nods with sleep, and staggers as he goes.
_40
‘I viewed him nicely, and began to trace
Each heavenly feature, each immortal grace,
And saw divinity in all his face.
“I know not who,” said I, “this god should be;
But that he is a god I plainly see:
And thou, whoe’er thou art, excuse the force
These men have used; and, oh! befriend our course!”
“Pray not for us,” the nimble Dictys cried,
Dictys, that could the main-top-mast bestride,
And down the ropes with active vigour slide.
_50
To the same purpose old Epopeus spoke,
Who overlooked the oars, and timed the stroke;
The same the pilot, and the same the rest;
Such impious avarice their souls possessed.
“Nay, heaven forbid that I should bear away
Within my vessel so divine a prey,”
Said I; and stood to hinder their intent:
When Lycabas, a wretch for murder sent
From Tuscany, to suffer banishment,
With his clenched fist had struck me overboard,
_60
Had not my hands, in falling, grasped a cord.
‘His base confederates the fact approve;
When Bacchus (for ’twas he) began to move,
Waked by the noise and clamours which they raised;
And shook his drowsy limbs, and round him gazed:
“What means this noise?” he cries; “am I betrayed?
All! whither, whither must I be conveyed?”
“Fear not,” said Proreus, “child, but tell us where
You wish to land, and trust our friendly care.”
“To Naxos then direct your course,” said he;
_70
“Naxos a hospitable port shall be
To each of you, a joyful home to me.”
By every god that rules the sea or sky,
The perjured villains promise to comply,
And bid me hasten to unmoor the ship.
With eager joy I launch into the deep;
And, heedless of the fraud, for Naxos stand:
They whisper oft, and beckon with the hand,
And give me signs, all anxious for their prey,
To tack about, and steer another way.
_80
“Then let some other to my post succeed,”
Said I, “I’m guiltless of so foul a deed.”
“What,” says Ethalion, “must the ship’s whole crew
Follow your humour, and depend on you?”
And straight himself he seated at the prore,
And tacked about, and sought another shore.
‘The beauteous youth now found himself betrayed,
And from the deck the rising waves surveyed,
And seemed to weep, and as he wept he said;
“And do you thus my easy faith beguile?
_90
Thus do you bear me to my native isle?
Will such a multitude of men employ
Their strength against a weak, defenceless boy?”
‘In vain did I the godlike youth deplore,
The more I begged, they thwarted me the more.
And now by all the gods in heaven that hear
This solemn oath, by Bacchus’ self, I swear,
The mighty miracle that did ensue,
Although it seems beyond belief, is true.
The vessel, fixed and rooted in the flood,
_100
Unmoved by all the beating billows stood.
In vain the mariners would plough the main
With sails unfurled, and strike their oars in vain;
Around their oars a twining ivy cleaves,
And climbs the mast and hides the cords in leaves:
The sails are covered with a cheerful green,
And berries in the fruitful canvas seen.
Amidst the waves a sudden forest rears
Its verdant head, and a new spring appears.
‘The god we now behold with open eyes;
_110
A herd of spotted panthers round him lies
In glaring forms; the grapy clusters spread
On his fair brows, and dangle on his head.
And whilst he frowns, and brandishes his spear,
My mates, surprised with madness or with fear,
Leaped overboard; first perjured Madon found
Rough scales and fins his stiffening sides surround;
“Ah! what,” cries one, “has thus transformed thy look?”
Straight his own mouth grew wider as he spoke;
And now himself he views with like surprise.
_120
Still at his oar the industrious Libys plies;
But, as he plies, each busy arm shrinks in,
And by degrees is fashioned to a fin.
Another, as he catches at a cord,
Misses his arms, and, tumbling overboard,
With his broad fins and forky tail he laves
The rising surge, and flounces in the waves.
Thus all my crew transformed around the ship,
Or dive below, or on the surface leap,
And spout the waves, and wanton in the deep.
_130
Full nineteen sailors did the ship convey,
A shoal of nineteen dolphins round her play.
I only in my proper shape appear,
Speechless with wonder, and half dead with fear,
Till Bacchus kindly bid me fear no more.
With him I landed on the Chian shore,
And him shall ever gratefully adore.’
‘This forging slave,’ says Pentheus, ‘would prevail
O’er our just fury by a far-fetched tale:
Go, let him feel the whips, the swords, the fire,
_140
And in the tortures of the rack expire.’
The officious servants hurry him away,
And the poor captive in a dungeon lay.
But, whilst the whips and tortures are prepared.
The gates fly open, of themselves unbarred;
At liberty the unfettered captive stands,
And flings the loosened shackles from his hands.
The Death of Pentheus
But Penthcus, grown more furious than before,
Resolved to send his messengers no more,
But went himself to the distracted throng,
Where high Cithæron echoed with their song.
And as the fiery war-horse paws the ground,
And snorts and trembles at the trumpet’s sound;
Transported thus he heard the frantic rout,
And raved and maddened at the distant shout.
A spacious circuit on the hill there stood,
Level and wide, and skirted round with wood;
_10
Here the rash Pentheus, with unhallowed eyes,
The howling dames and mystic orgies spies.
His mother sternly viewed him where he stood,
And kindled into madness as she viewed:
Her leafy javelin at her son she cast,
And cries, ‘The boar that lays our country waste!
The boar, my sisters! aim the fatal dart,
And strike the brindled monster to the heart.’
Pentheus astonished heard the dismal sound,
And sees the yelling matrons gathering round:
_20
He sees, and weeps at his approaching fate,
And begs for mercy, and repents too late.
‘Help, help! my aunt Autonöe,’ he cried;
‘Remember how your own Actæon died.’
Deaf to his cries, the frantic matron crops
One stretched-out arm, the other Ino lops.
In vain does Pentheus to his mother sue,
And the raw bleeding stumps presents to view:
His mother howled; and heedless of his prayer,
Her trembling hand she twisted in his hair,
_30
‘And this,’ she cried, ‘shall be Agave’s share,’
When from the neck his struggling head she tore,
And in her hands the ghastly visage bore,
With pleasure all the hideous trunk survey;
Then pulled and tore the mangled limbs away,
As starting in the pangs of death it lay.
Soon as the wood its leafy honours casts,
Blown off and scattered by autumnal blasts,
With such a sudden death lay Pentheus slain,
And in a thousand pieces strowed the plain.
_40
By so distinguishing a judgment awed,
The Thebans tremble, and confess the god.
Book IV
The Story of Salmacis and Hermaphrodites
How Salmacis, with weak enfeebling streams
Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs,
And what the secret cause, shall here be shown;
The cause is secret, but the effect is known.
The Naïads nursed an infant heretofore,
That Cytherea once to Hermes bore:
From both the illustrious authors of his race
The child was named; nor was it hard to trace
Both the bright parents through the infant’s face.
When fifteen years, in Ida’s cool retreat,
_10
The boy had told, he left his native seat,
And sought fresh fountains in a foreign soil;
The pleasure lessened the attending toil.
With eager steps the Lycian fields he crossed,
And fields that border on the Lycian coast;
A river here he viewed so lovely bright,
It showed the bottom in a fairer light,
Nor kept a sand concealed from human sight.
The stream produced nor slimy ooze, nor weeds,
Nor miry rushes, nor the spiky reeds;
_20
But dealt enriching moisture all around,
The fruitful banks with cheerful verdure crowned,
And kept the spring eternal on the ground.
A nymph presides, nor practised in the chase,
Nor skilful at the bow, nor at the race;
Of all the blue-eyed daughters of the main,
The only stranger to Diana’s train:
Her sisters often, as ’tis said, would cry,
‘Fie, Salmacis, what always idle! fie,
Or take thy quiver, or thy arrows seize,
_30
And mix the toils of hunting with thy ease.’
Nor quiver she nor arrows e’er would seize,
Nor mix the toils of hunting with her ease.
But oft would bathe her in the crystal tide,
Oft with a comb her dewy locks divide;
Now in the limpid streams she viewed her face,
And dressed her image in the floating glass:
On beds of leaves she now reposed her limbs,
Now gathered flowers that grew about her streams:
And then by chance was gathering, as she stood
_40
To view the boy, and longed for what she viewed.
Fain would she meet the youth with hasty feet,
She fain would meet him, but refused to meet
Before her looks were set with nicest care,
And well deserved to be reputed fair.
‘Bright youth,’ she cries, ‘whom all thy features prove
A god, and, if a god, the god of love;
But if a mortal, bless’d thy nurse’s breast,
Bless’d are thy parents, and thy sisters bless’d:
But, oh! how bless’d! how more than bless’d thy bride,
_50
Allied in bliss, if any yet allied.
If so, let mine the stolen enjoyments be;
If not, behold a willing bride in me.’
The boy knew nought of love, and, touched with shame,
He strove, and blushed, but still the blush became:
In rising blushes still fresh beauties rose;
The sunny side of fruit such blushes shows,
And such the moon, when all her silver white
Turns in eclipses to a ruddy light.
The nymph still begs, if not a nobler bliss,
_60
A cold salute at least, a sister’s kiss:
And now prepares to take the lovely boy
Between her arms. He, innocently coy,
Replies, ‘Or leave me to myself alone,
You rude, uncivil nymph, or I’ll begone.’
‘Fair stranger then,’ says she, ‘it shall be so;’
And, for she feared his threats, she feigned to go;
But hid within a covert’s neighbouring green,
She kept him still in sight, herself unseen.
The boy now fancies all the danger o’er,
_70
And innocently sports about the shore,
Playful and wanton to the stream he trips,
And dips his foot, and shivers as he dips.
The coolness pleased him, and with eager haste
His airy garments on the banks he cast;
His godlike features, and his heavenly hue,
And all his beauties were exposed to view.
His naked limbs the nymph with rapture spies,
While hotter passions in her bosom rise,
Flush in her cheeks, and sparkle in her eyes.
_80
She longs, she burns to clasp him in her arms,
And looks, and sighs, and kindles at his charms.
Now all undressed upon the banks he stood,
And clapped his sides and leaped into the flood:
His lovely limbs the silver waves divide,
His limbs appear more lovely through the tide;
As lilies shut within a crystal case,
Receive a glossy lustre from the glass.
‘He’s mine, he’s all my own,’ the Naiad cries,
And flings off all, and after him she flies.
_90
And now she fastens on him as he swims,
And holds him close, and wraps about his limbs.
The more the boy resisted, and was coy,
The more she clipped and kissed the struggling boy.
So when the wriggling snake is snatched on high
In eagle’s claws, and hisses in the sky,
Around the foe his twirling tail he flings,
And twists her legs, and writhes about her wings.
The restless boy still obstinately strove
To free himself, and still refused her love.
_100
Amidst his limbs she kept her limbs entwined,
‘And why, coy youth,’ she cries, ‘why thus unkind!
Oh may the gods thus keep us ever joined!
Oh may we never, never part again!’
So prayed the nymph, nor did she pray in vain:
For now she finds him, as his limbs she pressed,
Grow nearer still, and nearer to her breast;
Till, piercing each the other’s flesh, they run
Together, and incorporate in one:
Last in one face are both their faces joined,
_110
As when the stock and grafted twig combined
Shoot up the same, and wear a common rind:
Both bodies in a single body mix,
A single body with a double sex.
The boy, thus lost in woman, now surveyed
The river’s guilty stream, and thus he prayed:
(He prayed, but wondered at his softer tone,
Surprised to hear a voice but half his own:)
You parent gods, whose heavenly names I bear,
Hear your Hermaphrodite, and grant my prayer;
_120
Oh grant, that whomsoe’er these streams contain,
If man he entered, he may rise again
Supple, unsinewed, and but half a man!
The heavenly parents answered, from on high,
Their two-shaped son, the double votary;
Then gave a secret virtue to the flood,
And tinged its source to make his wishes good.
To Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, With the Tragedy of Cato, Nov. 1714
The Muse that oft, with sacred raptures fired,
Has generous thoughts of liberty inspired,
And, boldly rising for Britannia’s laws,
Engaged great Cato in her country’s cause,
On you submissive waits, with hopes assured,
By whom the mighty blessing stands secured,
And all the glories that our age adorn,
Are promised to a people yet unborn.
No longer shall the widowed land bemoan
A broken lineage, and a doubtful throne;
_10
But boast her royal progeny’s increase,
And count the pledges of her future peace.
O, born to strengthen and to grace our isle!
While you, fair Princess, in your offspring smile,
Supplying charms to the succeeding age,
Each heavenly daughter’s triumphs we presage;
Already see the illustrious youths complain,
And pity monarchs doomed to sigh in vain.
Thou too, the darling of our fond desires,
Whom Albion, opening wide her arms, requires,
_20
With manly valour and attractive air
Shalt quell the fierce and captivate the fair.
O England’s younger hope! in whom conspire
The mother’s sweetness and the father’s fire!
For thee perhaps, even now, of kingly race,
Some dawning beauty blooms in every grace,
Some Carolina, to heaven’s dictates true,
Who, while the sceptred rivals vainly sue,
Thy inborn worth with conscious eyes shall see,
And slight the imperial diadem for thee.
_30
Pleased with the prospect of successive reigns,
The tuneful tribe no more in daring strains
Shall vindicate, with pious fears oppressed,
Endangered rights, and liberty distressed:
To milder sounds each Muse shall tune the lyre,
And gratitude, and faith to kings inspire,
And filial love; bid impious discord cease,
And soothe the madding factions into peace;
Or rise ambitious in more lofty lays,
And teach the nation their new monarch’s praise,
_40
Describe his awful look and godlike mind,
And Cæsar’s power with Cato’s virtue joined.
Meanwhile, bright Princess, who, with graceful ease
And native majesty, are formed to please,
Behold those arts with a propitious eye,
That suppliant to their great protectress fly!
Then shall they triumph, and the British stage
Improve her manners and refine her rage,
More noble characters expose to view,
And draw her finished heroines from you.
_50
Nor you the kind indulgence will refuse,
Skilled in the labours of the deathless Muse:
The deathless Muse with undiminished rays
Through distant times the lovely dame conveys:
To Gloriana[13] Waller’s harp was strung;
The queen still shines, because the poet sung.
Even all those graces, in your frame combined,
The common fate of mortal charms may find,
(Content our short-lived praises to engage,
The joy and wonder of a single age,)
_60
Unless some poet in a lasting song
To late posterity their fame prolong,
Instruct our sons the radiant form to prize.
And see your beauty with their fathers’ eyes.
To Sir Godfrey Kneller on His Picture of the King
Kneller, with silence and surprise
We see Britannia’s monarch rise,
A godlike form, by thee displayed
In all the force of light and shade;
And, awed by thy delusive hand,
As in the presence-chamber stand.
The magic of thy art calls forth
His secret soul and hidden worth,
His probity and mildness shows,
His care of friends and scorn of foes:
_10
In every stroke, in every line,
Does some exalted virtue shine,
And Albion’s happiness we trace
Through all the features of his face.
Oh may I live to hail the day,
When the glad nation shall survey
Their sovereign, through his wide command,
Passing in progress o’er the land!
Each heart shall bend, and every voice
In loud applauding shouts rejoice,
_20
Whilst all his gracious aspect praise,
And crowds grow loyal as they gaze.
This image on the medal placed,
With its bright round of titles graced,
And stamped on British coins, shall live,
To richest ores the value give,
Or, wrought within the curious mould,
Shape and adorn the running gold.
To bear this form, the genial sun
Has daily, since his course begun,
_30
Rejoiced the metal to refine,
And ripened the Peruvian mine.
Thou, Kneller, long with noble pride,
The foremost of thy art, hast vied
With nature in a generous strife,
And touched the canvas into life.
Thy pencil has, by monarchs sought,
From reign to reign in ermine wrought,
And, in their robes of state arrayed,
The kings of half an age displayed.
_40
Here swarthy Charles appears, and there
His brother with dejected air:
Triumphant Nassau here we find,
And with him bright Maria joined;
There Anna, great as when she sent
Her armies through the continent,
Ere yet her hero was disgraced:
Oh may famed Brunswick be the last,
(Though heaven should with my wish agree,
And long preserve thy art in thee,)
_50
The last, the happiest British king,
Whom thou shalt paint, or I shall sing!
Wise Phidias, thus his skill to prove,
Through many a god advanced to Jove,
And taught the polished rocks to shine
With airs and lineaments divine;
Till Greece, amazed, and half afraid,
The assembled deities surveyed.
Great Pan, who wont to chase the fair,
And loved the spreading oak, was there;
_60
Old Saturn too, with up-cast eyes,
Beheld his abdicated skies;
And mighty Mars, for war renowned,
In adamantine armour frowned;
By him the childless goddess rose,
Minerva, studious to compose
Her twisted threads; the web she strung,
And o’er a loom of marble hung:
Thetis, the troubled ocean’s queen.
Matched with a mortal, next was seen,
_70
Reclining on a funeral urn,
Her short-lived darling son to mourn.
The last was he, whose thunder slew
The Titan race, a rebel crew,
That, from a hundred hills allied
In impious leagues, their king defied.
This wonder of the sculptor’s hand
Produced, his art was at a stand:
For who would hope new fame to raise,
Or risk his well-established praise,
_80
That, his high genius to approve,
Had drawn a GEORGE, or carved a Jove!
The Play-House
Where gentle Thames through stately channels glides,
And England’s proud metropolis divides;
A lofty fabric does the sight invade,
And stretches o’er the waves a pompous shade;
Whence sudden shouts the neighbourhood surprise,
And thundering claps and dreadful hissings rise.
Here thrifty R——[16] hires monarchs by the day,
And keeps his mercenary kings in pay;
With deep-mouth’d actors fills the vacant scenes,
And rakes the stews for goddesses and queens:
_10
Here the lewd punk, with crowns and sceptres graced,
Teaches her eyes a more majestic cast;
And hungry monarchs with a numerous train
Of suppliant slaves, like Sancho, starve and reign.
But enter in, my Muse; the stage survey,
And all its pomp and pageantry display;
Trap-doors and pit-falls, form the unfaithful ground,
And magic walls encompass it around:
On either side maim’d temples fill our eyes,
And intermixed with brothel-houses rise;
_20
Disjointed palaces in order stand,
And groves obedient to the mover’s hand
O’ershade the stage, and flourish at command.
A stamp makes broken towns and trees entire:
So when Amphion struck the vocal lyre,
He saw the spacious circuit all around,
With crowding woods and rising cities crown’d.
But next the tiring-room survey, and see
False titles, and promiscuous quality,
Confus’dly swarm, from heroes and from queens,
_30
To those that swing in clouds and fill machines.
Their various characters they choose with art,
The frowning bully fits the tyrant’s part:
Swoln cheeks and swaggering belly make an host,
Pale, meagre looks and hollow voice a ghost;
From careful brows and heavy downcast eyes,
Dull cits and thick-skull’d aldermen arise:
The comic tone, inspir’d by Congreve, draws
At every word, loud laughter and applause:
The whining dame continues as before,
_40
Her character unchanged, and acts a whore.
Above the rest, the prince with haughty stalks
Magnificent in purple buskins walks:
The royal robes his awful shoulders grace,
Profuse of spangles and of copper-lace:
Officious rascals to his mighty thigh,
Guiltless of blood, the unpointed weapon tie:
Then the gay glittering diadem put on,
Ponderous with brass, and starr’d with Bristol-stone.
His royal consort next consults her glass,
_50
And out of twenty boxes culls a face;
The whitening first her ghastly looks besmears,
All pale and wan the unfinish’d form appears;
Till on her cheeks the blushing purple glows,
And a false virgin-modesty bestows.
Her ruddy lips the deep vermilion dyes;
Length to her brows the pencil’s arts supplies,
And with black bending arches shades her eyes.
Well pleased at length the picture she beholds,
And spots it o’er with artificial molds;
_60
Her countenance complete, the beaux she warms
With looks not hers: and, spite of nature, charms.
Thus artfully their persons they disguise,
Till the last flourish bids the curtain rise.
The prince then enters on the stage in state;
Behind, a guard of candle-snuffers wait:
There swoln with empire, terrible and fierce,
He shakes the dome, and tears his lungs with verse:
His subjects tremble; the submissive pit,
Wrapt up in silence and attention, sit;
_70
Till, freed at length, he lays aside the weight
Of public business and affairs of state:
Forgets his pomp, dead to ambitious fires,
And to some peaceful brandy-shop retires;
Where in full gills his anxious thoughts he drowns,
And quaffs away the care that waits on crowns.
The princess next her painted charms displays,
Where every look the pencil’s art betrays;
The callow squire at distance feeds his eyes,
And silently for paint and washes dies:
_80
But if the youth behind the scenes retreat,
He sees the blended colours melt with heat,
And all the trickling beauty run in sweat.
The borrow’d visage he admires no more,
And nauseates every charm he loved before:
So the famed spear, for double force renown’d,
Applied the remedy that gave the wound.
In tedious lists ’twere endless to engage,
And draw at length the rabble of the stage,
Where one for twenty years has given alarms,
_90
And call’d contending monarchs to their arms;
Another fills a more important post,
And rises every other night a ghost;
Through the cleft stage his mealy face he rears,
Then stalks along, groans thrice, and disappears;
Others, with swords and shields, the soldier’s pride,
More than a thousand times have changed their side,
And in a thousand fatal battles died.
Thus several persons several parts perform;
Soft lovers whine, and blustering heroes storm.
_100
The stern exasperated tyrants rage,
Till the kind bowl of poison clears the stage.
Then honours vanish, and distinctions cease;
Then, with reluctance, haughty queens undress.
Heroes no more their fading laurels boast,
And mighty kings in private men are lost.
He, whom such titles swell’d, such power made proud,
To whom whole realms and vanquish’d nations bow’d,
Throws off the gaudy plume, the purple train,
And in his own vile tatters stinks again.
_110
On the Lady Manchester
Written on the Toasting-Glasses of the Kit-Cat Club
While haughty Gallia’s dames, that spread
O’er their pale cheeks an artful red,
Beheld this beauteous stranger there,
In native charms divinely fair;
Confusion in their looks they show’d;
And with unborrow’d blushes glow’d.
An Ode
1
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled Heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied Sun from day to day
Does his Creator’s power display;
And publishes, to every land,
The work of an almighty hand.
2
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The Moon takes up the wondrous tale;
And nightly, to the listening Earth,
Repeats the story of her birth:
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
3
What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice, nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found:
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing as they shine:
‘The hand that made us is divine.’
An Hymn
1
When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys;
Transported with the view, I’m lost
In wonder, love, and praise.
2
O how shall words with equal warmth
The gratitude declare,
That glows within my ravish’d heart!
But thou canst read it there.
3
Thy providence my life sustain’d,
And all my wants redress’d,
When in the silent womb I lay,
And hung upon the breast.
4
To all my weak complaints and cries
Thy mercy lent an ear,
Ere yet my feeble thoughts had learnt
To form themselves in prayer.
5
Unnumber’d comforts to my soul
Thy tender care bestow’d,
Before my infant heart conceiv’d
From whence these comforts flow’d.
6
When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
Thine arm unseen convey’d me safe,
And led me up to man.
7
Through hidden dangers, toils, and death,
It gently clear’d my way;
And through the pleasing snares of vice,
More to be fear’d than they.
8
When worn with sickness, oft hast thou
With health renew’d my face;
And when in sins and sorrows sunk,
Reviv’d my soul with grace.
9
Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss
Has made my cup run o’er,
And in a kind and faithful friend
Has doubled all my store.
10
Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ;
Nor is the least a cheerful heart,
That tastes those gifts with joy.
11
Through every period of my life,
Thy goodness I’ll pursue;
And after death, in distant worlds,
The glorious theme renew.[17]
12
When nature fails, and day and night
Divide thy works no more,
My ever-grateful heart, O Lord,
Thy mercy shall adore.
13
Through all eternity, to thee
A joyful song I’ll raise;
For, oh! eternity’s too short
To utter all thy praise.
An Ode
1
How are thy servants blest, O Lord!
How sure is their defence!
Eternal wisdom is their guide,
Their help Omnipotence.
2
In foreign realms, and lands remote,
Supported by thy care,
Through burning climes I pass’d unhurt,
And breath’d in tainted air.
3
Thy mercy sweeten’d every soil,
Made every region please;
The hoary Alpine hills it warm’d,
And smooth’d the Tyrrhene seas.
4
Think, O my soul, devoutly think,
How, with affrighted eyes,
Thou saw’st the wide-extended deep
In all its horrors rise.
5
Confusion dwelt in every face,
And fear in every heart;
When waves on waves, and gulphs on gulphs,
O’ercame the pilot’s art.
6
Yet then from all my griefs, O Lord,
Thy mercy set me free;
Whilst, in the confidence of prayer,
My soul took hold on thee.
7
For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave,
I knew thou wert not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.
8
The storm was laid, the winds retired,
Obedient to thy will;
The sea that roar’d at thy command,
At thy command was still.
9
In midst of dangers, fears, and death,
Thy goodness I’ll adore;
And praise thee for thy mercies past,
And humbly hope for more.
10
My life, if thou preserv’st my life,
Thy sacrifice shall be;
And death, if death must be my doom,
Shall join my soul to thee.
An Hymn
1
When rising from the bed of death,
O’erwhelm’d with guilt and fear,
I see my Maker face to face;
O how shall I appear!
2
If yet, while pardon may be found,
And mercy may be sought,
My heart with inward horror shrinks,
And trembles at the thought:
3
When thou, O Lord, shalt stand disclos’d
In majesty severe,
And sit in judgment on my soul;
O how shall I appear!
4
But thou hast told the troubled soul,
Who does her sins lament,
The timely tribute of her tears
Shall endless woe prevent.
5
Then see the sorrows of my heart,
Ere yet it be too late;
And add my Saviour’s dying groans,
To give those sorrows weight.
6
For never shall my soul despair
Her pardon to procure,
Who knows thy only Son has died
To make that pardon sure.
Paraphrase on Psalm XXIII
1
The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd’s care;
His presence shall my wants supply,
And guard me with a watchful eye:
My noon-day walks he shall attend,
And all my midnight hours defend.
2
When in the sultry glebe I faint,
Or on the thirsty mountain pant;
To fertile vales and dewy meads
My weary wandering steps he leads:
Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,
Amid the verdant landscape flow.
3
Though in the paths of death I tread,
With gloomy horrors overspread,
My steadfast heart shall fear no ill,
For thou, O Lord, art with me still;
Thy friendly crook shall give me aid,
And guide me through the dreadful shade.
4
Though in a bare and rugged way,
Through devious lonely wilds I stray,
Thy bounty shall my wants beguile:
The barren wilderness shall smile,
With sudden greens and herbage crown’d,
And streams shall murmur all around.
End of Addison’s Poems
Footnotes
3 ‘Seneffe:’ lost by William to the French in 1674.
Claverhouse fought with him at this battle.
4 The four last lines of the second and third stanzas were added by Mr Tate.
6 ‘Such as of late.’ See Macaulay’s ‘Essay on Addison,’ and the ‘Life’ in this volume, for an account of this extraordinary tempest.
7 ‘Tallard,’ or Tallart: an eminent French marshal, taken prisoner at Blenheim; he remained in England for seven years.
8 A comedy written by Sir Richard Steel.
9 A dramatic poem written by the Lord Lansdown.
10 ‘Smith:’ Edmund, commonly called ‘Rag;’ see Johnson’s
‘Poets.’
12 ‘Princess of Wales:’ Willielinina Dorothea Carolina of Brandenburg-Anspach—afterwards Caroline, Queen of George II.; she figures in the ‘Heart of Mid-Lothian.’
13 ‘Gloriana:’ Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I. See our edition of Waller.
14 ‘Sir Godfrey Kneller:’ born at Lubeck in 1648; became a painter of portraits; visited England; was knighted by William III.; died in 1723; lies in Westminster Abbey.
15 This refers to a portrait of George I.
17 Otherwise,
‘Thy goodness I’ll proclaim;’
And,
‘Resume the glorious theme.’