Epigrams and Other Poems
To Cuma
Lend hospitable rites and house-respect,
You that the virgin with the fair eyes deckt
Make fautress of your stately-seated town,
At foot of Sardes, with the high-hair’d crown,
Inhabiting rich Cuma; where ye taste
Of Hermus’ heavenly fluent, all embrac’d
By curl’d-head whirl pits; and whose waters move
From the divine seed of immortal Jove.
In His Return to Cuma
Swiftly my feet sustain me to the town,
Where men inhabit whom due honours crown,
Whose minds with free-given faculties are mov’d,
And whose grave counsels best of best approv’d.
Upon the Sepulchre of Midus Cut in Brass, in the Figure of a Virgin
A maid of brass I am, infixed here
T’ eternize honest Midus’ sepulchre;
And while the stream her fluent seed receives,
And steep trees curl their verdant brows with leaves,
While Phœbus rais’d above the earth gives sight,
And th’ humorous Moon takes lustre from his light,
While floods bear waves, and seas shall wash the shore,
At this his sepulchre, whom all deplore,
I’ll constantly abide; all passers by
Informing, “Here doth honest Midus lie.”
Cuma, Refusing to Eternize Their State, Though Brought Thither by the Muses
O to what fate hath Father Jove given o’er
My friendless life, born ever to be poor!
While in my infant state he pleas’d to save me,
Milk on my reverend mother’s knees he gave me,
In delicate and curious nursery;
Æolian Smyrna, seated near the sea,
(Of glorious empire, and whose bright sides
Sacred Meletus’ silver current glides,)
Being native seat to me. Which, in the force
Of far-past time, the breakers of wild horse,
Phriconia’s noble nation, girt with tow’rs;
Whose youth in fight put on with fiery pow’rs,
From hence, the Muse-maids, Jove’s illustrous Seed,
Impelling me, I made impetuous speed,
And went with them to Cuma, with intent
T’ eternize all the sacred continent
And state of Cuma. They, in proud ascent
From off their bench, refus’d with usage fierce
The sacred voice which I aver is verse.
Their follies, yet, and madness borne by me,
Shall by some pow’r be thought on futurely,
To wreak of him whoever, whose tongue sought
With false impair my fall. What fate God brought
Upon my birth I’ll bear with any pain,
But undeserv’d defame unfelt sustain.
Nor feels my person (dear to me though poor)
Any great lust to linger any more
In Cuma’s holy highways; but my mind
(No thought impair’d, for cares of any kind
Borne in my body) rather vows to try
The influence of any other sky,
And spirits of people bred in any land
Of ne’er so slender and obscure command.
An Essay of His Begun Iliads
Ilion, and all the brave-horse-breeding soil,
Dardania, I sing; that many a toil
Impos’d upon the mighty Grecian pow’rs,
Who were of Mars the manly servitours.
To Thestor’s Son Inquisitive About the Causes of Things1
Thestorides! of all the skills unknown
To errant mortals, there remains not one
Of more inscrutable affair to find
Than is the true state of a human mind.
To Neptune
Hear, pow’rful Neptune, that shak’st earth in ire,
King of the great green, where dance all the quire
Of fair-hair’d Helicon; give prosperous gales;
And good pass, to these guiders of our sails,
Their voyage rend’ring happily directed,
And their return with no ill fate affected.
Grant likewise at rough Mimas’ lowest roots,
Whose strength up to her tops prærupt rocks shoots,
My passage safe arrival; and that I
My bashful disposition may apply
To pious men, and wreak myself upon
The man whose verbal circumvention
In me did wrong t’ hospitious Jove’s whole state,
And th’ hospitable table violate.
To the City of Erythræa
Worshipful Earth, Giver of all things good!
Giver of even felicity; whose flood
The mind all-over steeps in honeydew;
That to some men dost infinite kindness shew,
To others that despise thee art a shrew,
And giv’st them gamester’s galls; who, once their main
Lost with an ill chance, fare like abjects slain.
To Mariners
Ye wave-trod watermen, as ill as she
That all the earth in infelicity
Of rapine plunges; who upon your fare
As sterv’d-like-ravenous as cormorants are;
The lives ye lead, but in the worst degree,
Not to be envied more than misery;
Take shame, and fear the indignation
Of Him that thunders from the highest throne,
Hospitious Jove, who, at the back, prepares
Pains of abhorr’d effect of him that dares
The pieties break of his hospitious squares.
The Pine
Any tree else bears better fruit than thee,
That Ida’s tops sustain, where every tree
Bears up in air such perspirable heights,
And in which caves and sinuous receipts
Creep in such great abundance. For about
Thy foots, that ever all thy fruits put out,
As nourish’d by them, equal with thy fruits,
Pour Mars’s iron-mines their accurs’d pursuits.
So that when any earth-encroaching man,
Of all the martial brood Cebrenian,
Plead need of iron, they are certain still
About thy roots to satiate every will.
To Glaucus, Who Was So Miserably Sparing That He Feared All Men’s Access to Him
Glaucus! though wise enough, yet one word more
Let my advice add to thy wisdom’s store,
For ’twill be better so: Before thy door
Give still thy mastiffs meat, that will be sure
To lie there, therefore, still, and not endure
(With waylaid ears) the softest foot can fall,
But men and beasts make fly thee and thy stall.
Against the Samian Ministress or Nun
Hear me, O Goddess, that invoke thine ear,
Thou that dost feed and form the youthful year,
And grant that this dame may the loves refuse,
And beds, of young men, and affect to use
Humans whose temples hoary hairs distain,
Whose pow’rs are passing coy, whose wills would fain.
Written on the Council Chamber
Of men, sons are the crowns of cities’ tow’rs;
Of pastures, horse are the most beauteous flow’rs;
Of seas, ships are the grace; and money still
With trains and titles doth the family fill.
But royal counsellors, in council set,
Are ornaments past all, as clearly great
As houses are that shining fires enfold,
Superior far to houses nak’d and cold.
The Furnace Called in to Sing by Potters
If ye deal freely, O my fiery friends,
As ye assure, I’ll sing, and serve your ends.
Pallas, vouchsafe thou here invok’d access, I
Impose thy hand upon this Forge, and bless
All cups these artists earn so, that they may
Look black still with their depth, and every way
Give all their vessels a most sacred sale.
Make all well-burn’d; and estimation call
Up to their prices. Let them market well,
And in all highways in abundance sell,
Till riches to their utmost wish arise,
And, as thou mak’st them rich, so make me wise.
But if ye now turn all to impudence,
And think to pay with lies my patience,
Then will I summon ’gainst your Furnace all
Hell’s harmfull’st spirits; Maragus I’ll call,
Sabactes, Asbett, and Omadamus,
Who ills against your art innumerous
Excogitates, supplies, and multiplies.
Come, Pallas, then, and all command to rise,
Infesting forge and house with fire, till all
Tumble together, and to ashes fall,
These potters selves dissolv’d in tears as small.
And as a horse-cheek chides his foaming bit,
So let this Forge murmur in fire and flit,
And all this stuff to ashy ruins run.
And thou, O Circe, daughter of the Sun,
Great-many-poison-mixer, come, and pour
Thy cruell’st poisons on this Potters’ floor,
Shivering their vessels; and themselves affect
With all the mischiefs possible to direct
’Gainst all their beings, urg’d by all thy fiends.
Let Chiron likewise come; and all those friends
(The Centaurs) that Alcides’ fingers fled,
And all the rest too that his hand strook dead,
(Their ghosts excited) come, and macerate
These earthen men; and yet with further fate
Affect their Furnace; all their tear-burst eyes
Seeing and mourning for their miseries,
While I look on, and laugh their blasted art
And them to ruin. Lastly, if apart
Any lies lurking, and sees yet, his face
Into a coal let th’ angry fire embrace,
That all may learn by them, in all their lust,
To dare deeds great, to see them great and just.
Eiresione, or the Olive Branch
The turrets of a man of infinite might,
Of infinite action, substance infinite,
We make access to; whose whole being rebounds
From earth to heaven, and nought but bliss resounds.
Give entry then, ye doors; more riches yet
Shall enter with me; all the Graces met
In joy of their fruition, perfect peace
Confirming all; all crown’d with such increase,
That every empty vessel in your house
May stand replete with all things precious;
Elaborate Ceres may your larders fill
With all dear delicates, and serve in still;
May for your son a wife make wish’d approach
Into your tow’rs, and rapt in in her coach
With strong-kneed mules; may yet her state prove staid,
With honour’d housewiferies; her fair hand laid
To artful loomworks; and her nak’d feet tread
The gum of amber to a golden bead.
But I’ll return; return, and yet not press
Your bounties now assay’d with oft access,
Once a year only, as the swallow prates
Before the wealthy Spring’s wide open gates.
Meantime I stand at yours, nor purpose stay
More time t’ entreat. Give, or not give, away
My feet shall bear me, that did never come
With any thought to make your house my home.
To Certain Fisher-Boys Pleasing Him With Ingenious Riddles
Yet from the bloods even of your self-like sires
Are you descended, that could make ye heirs
To no huge hoards of coin, nor leave ye able
To feed flocks of innumerable rabble.
THE END OF ALL THE ENDLESS WORKS OF HOMER.
The Translator’s Epilogue
The work that I was born to do is done!
Glory to Him that the conclusion
Makes the beginning of my life; and never
Let me be said to live, till I live ever.
Where’s the outliving of my fortunes then,
Ye errant vapours of Fame’s Lernean fen,
That, like possess’d storms, blast all not in herd
With your abhorr’d heads; who, because cashier’d
By men for monsters, think men monsters all,
That are not of your pied Hood and your Hall,
When you are nothing but the scum of things,
And must be cast off; drones, that have no stings;
Nor any more soul than a stone hath wings?
Avaunt, ye hags! Your hates and scandals are
The crowns and comforts of a good man’s care;
By whose impartial perpendicular,
All is extuberance, and excretion all,
That you your ornaments and glories call.
Your wry mouths censure right! Your blister’d tongues,
That lick but itches! And whose ulcerous lungs
Come up at all things permanent and sound!
O you, like flies in dregs, in humours drown’d!
Your loves, like atoms, lost in gloomy air,
I would not retrieve with a wither’d hair.
Hate, and cast still your stings then, for your kisses
Betray but truth, and your applauds are hisses.
To see our supercilious wizards frown,
Their faces fall’n like fogs, and coming down,
Stinking the sun out, makes me shine the more;
And like a check’d flood bear above the shore,
That their profane opinions fain would set
To what they see not, know not, nor can let.
Yet then our learn’d men with their torrents come,
Roaring from their forc’d hills, all crown’d with foam,
That one not taught like them, should learn to know
Their Greek roots, and from thence the groves that grow,
Casting such rich shades from great Homer’s wings,
That first and last command the Muses’ springs.
Though he’s best scholar, that, through pains and vows
Made his own master only, all things knows.
Nor pleads my poor skill form, or learned place,
But dauntless labour, constant prayer, and grace.
And what’s all their skill, but vast varied reading?
As if broad-beaten highways had the leading
To Truth’s abstract, and narrow path, and pit;
Found in no walk of airy worldly wit.
And without Truth, all’s only sleight of hand,
Or our law-learning in a foreign land,
Embroidery spent on cobwebs, braggart show
Of men that all things learn, and nothing know.
For ostentation humble Truth still flies,
And all confederate fashionists defies.
And as some sharp-brow’d doctor, English born,
In much learn’d Latin idioms can adorn
A verse with rare attractions, yet become
His English Muse like an Arachnean loom,
Wrought spite of Pallas, and therein bewrays
More tongue than truth, begs, and adopts his bays;
So Ostentation, be he never so
Larded with labour to suborn his show,
Shall sooth within him but a bastard soul,
No more heaven heiring than, Earth’s son, the mole,
But as in dead calms emptiest smokes arise,
Uncheck’d and free, up straight into the skies;
So drowsy Peace, that in her humour steeps
All she affects, lets such rise while she sleeps.
Many, and most men, have of wealth least store,
But none the gracious shame that fits the poor.
So most learn’d men enough are ignorant,
But few the grace have to confess their want,
Till lives and learnings come concomitant.
Far from men’s knowledges their lives’-acts flow;
Vainglorious acts then vain prove all they know.
As night the life-inclining stars best shows,
So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.
For me, let just men judge by what I show
In acts expos’d how much I err or know;
And let not envy make all worse than nought,
With her mere headstrong and quite brainless thought,
Others, for doing nothing, giving all,
And bounding all worth in her bursten gall.
God and my dear Redeemer rescue me
From men’s immane and mad impiety,
And by my life and soul (sole known to Them)
Make me of palm, or yew, an anadem.
And so my sole God, the Thrice-Sacred-Trine,
Bear all th’ ascription of all me and mine.
Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater, et Dux rationis nostræ, ut nostræ nobilitatis recordemur quâ Tu nos ornasti; et ut Tu nobis præstó sis, ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et à corporis contagio, brutorumque affectuum, repurgemur, eosque superemus, atque regamus, et, sicut decet, pro instrumentis iis utamur. Deinde, ut nobis adjumento sis, ad accuratam rationis nostræ correctionem, et conjunctionem cum iis qui verè sunt per lucem veritatis. Et tertiùm, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum, caliginem prorsus abstergas, ut norimus bene qui Deus, aut mortalis, habendus. Amen.
Sine honore vivam, nulloque numera ero.
Finis
Notes
1 Homer intimated, in this his answer to Thestorides, a will to have him learn the knowledge of himself, before he inquired so curiously the causes of other things. And from hence had the great peripatetic, Themistius, his most grave epiphoneme, Anima quæ seipsam ignorat, quid sciret ipsa de aliis? And, therefore, according to Aristotle, advises all philosophical students to begin with that study.