Autumn
The Third Pastoral, or Hylas and Ægon12
To Mr. Wycherley
Beneath the shade a spreading beech displays,3
Hylas and Ægon sung their rural lays;
This mourned a faithless, that an absent love,4
And Delia’s name and Doris’ filled the grove.5
Ye Mantuan nymphs, your sacred succour bring;5
Hylas and Ægon’s rural lays I sing.
Thou,6 whom the nine, with Plautus’ wit inspire,
The art of Terence, and Menander’s fire;
Whose sense instructs us,7 and whose humour charms,
Whose judgment sways us, and whose spirit8 warms!10
Oh, skilled in nature!9 see the hearts of swains,
Their artless passions, and their tender pains.10
Now setting Phœbus shone serenely bright,
And fleecy clouds were streaked with purple light;
When tuneful Hylas with melodious moan,15
Taught rocks to weep, and made the mountains groan.11
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away!12
To Delia’s ear the tender notes convey.
As some sad turtle13 his lost love deplores
And with deep murmurs fills the sounding shores;20
Thus, far from Delia, to the winds I mourn,
Alike unheard, unpitied, and forlorn.
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along!
For her, the feathered quires neglect their song:
For her, the limes their pleasing shades deny;25
For her, the lilies hang their heads and die.
Ye flow’rs that droop, forsaken by the spring,
Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing,
Ye trees that fade when autumn-heats remove,
Say, is not absence death to those who love?1430
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away!
Cursed be the fields that cause my Delia’s stay;
Fade ev’ry blossom, wither ev’ry tree,15
Die ev’ry flower, and perish all but she.
What have I said? where’er my Delia flies,35
Let spring attend, and sudden flow’rs arise;
Let op’ning roses knotted oaks adorn,16
And liquid amber drop from ev’ry thorn.
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along!
The birds shall cease to tune their ev’ning song,40
The winds to breathe, the waving woods to move,
And streams to murmur, ere I cease to love.17
Not bubbling fountains to the thirsty swain,18
Not balmy sleep to lab’rers faint with pain,19
Not show’rs to larks, or sunshine to the bee,45
Are half so charming as thy sight to me.20
Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs away!
Come, Delia, come; ah, why this long delay?
Through rocks and caves the name of Delia sounds,
Delia, each cave and echoing rock rebounds.50
Ye pow’rs, what pleasing frenzy soothes my mind!
Do lovers dream, or is my Delia kind?21
She comes, my Delia comes!—Now cease my lay,22
And cease, ye gales, to bear my sighs away!
Next Ægon sung, while Windsor groves admired;55
Rehearse, ye muses, what yourselves inspired.
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strain!
Of perjured Doris, dying I complain:23
Here, where the mountains, less’ning as they rise,
Lose the low vales, and steal into the skies:60
While lab’ring oxen, spent with toil and heat,
In their loose traces from the field retreat:24
While curling smokes from village tops are seen,
And the fleet shades glide o’er the dusky green.25
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay!65
Beneath yon poplar oft we passed the day:
Oft on the rind I carved her am’rous vows,26
While she with garlands hung the bending boughs:
The garlands fade, the vows are worn away;
So dies her love, and so my hopes decay.70
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strain!
Now bright Arcturus27 glads the teeming grain,
Now golden fruits on loaded branches shine,
And grateful clusters swell with floods of wine;28
Now blushing berries paint the yellow grove;75
Just Gods! shall all things yield returns but love?
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay!
The shepherds cry, “Thy flocks are left a prey”—
Ah! what avails it me, the flocks to keep,
Who lost my heart while I preserved my sheep?80
Pan came, and asked, what magic caused my smart,29
Or what ill eyes30 malignant glances dart?31
What eyes but hers, alas, have pow’r to move!32
And is there magic but what dwells in love!
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strains;85
I’ll fly from shepherds, flocks, and flow’ry plains,
From shepherds, flocks, and plains, I may remove,
Forsake mankind, and all the world—but love!
I know thee, Love! on foreign mountains bred,33
Wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed.3490
Thou wert from Ætna’s burning entrails torn,
Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born!35
Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay!
Farewell, ye woods, adieu the light of day!
One leap from yonder cliff shall end my pains,3695
No more, ye hills, no more resound my strains!
Thus sung the shepherds till th’ approach of night,
The skies yet blushing with departing light,37
When falling dews with spangles decked the glade,
And the low sun had lengthened ev’ry shade.38100
Footnotes
1 This Pastoral consists of two parts, like the eighth of Virgil: the scene, a hill; the time, at sunset.—Pope.
2 Mr. Wycherley, a famous author of comedies; of which the most celebrated were the Plain-Dealer and Country-Wife. He was a writer of infinite spirit, satire, and wit. The only objection made to him was, that he had too much. However, he was followed in the same way by Mr. Congreve, though with a little more correctness.—Pope.
3 Formed on Dryden’s version of Ecl. i. 1:
Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse.
—Wakefield.
4 Before the edition of 1736 the couplet ran thus:
To whose complaints the list’ning forests bend,
While one his mistress mourns, and one his friend.
In keeping with this announcement the song of Hylas, which forms the first portion of the Pastoral, was devoted to mourning an absent shepherd, and not, as at present, an absent shepherdess. When Pope made his lines commemorative of love, instead of friendship, he did little more than change the name of the man (Thyrsis) to that of a woman (Delia), and substitute the feminine for the masculine pronoun. The extravagant idea expressed in the first line of the rejected couplet is found in Oldham’s translation of Moschus:
And trees leaned their attentive branches down.
There is nothing of the kind in the Greek text.
5 From Dryden’s version of Ecl. i. 5:
While stretched at ease you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.
—Wakefield.
6 Wycherley.
7 He was always very careful in his encomiums not to fall into ridicule, the trap which weak and prostitute flatterers rarely escape. For “sense,” he would willingly have said “moral;” propriety required it. But this dramatic poet’s moral was remarkably faulty. His plays are all shamefully profligate, both in the dialogue and action.—Warburton.
Warburton’s note has more the appearance of an insidious attack upon Pope than of serious commendation; for if, as Warburton assumes, the panegyric in the text has reference to the plays and not to the man, it was a misplaced “encomium” to say that Wycherley “instructed” the world by the “sense,” and “swayed” them by the “judgment,” which were manifested “in a shamefully profligate dialogue and action.”
8 The reading was “rapture” in all editions till that of 1736.
9 Few writers have less nature in them than Wycherley.—Warton.
10 Till the edition of 1736 the following lines stood in place of the couplet in the text:
Attend the muse, though low her numbers be,
She sings of friendship, and she sings to thee.
11 Pope had Waller’s Thyrsis and Galatea in his memory:
Made the wide country echo to your moan,
The list’ning trees, and savage mountains groan.
—Wakefield.
The groans of the trees and mountains are, in Waller’s poem, the echo of the mourner’s lamentations, but to this Pope has added that the “moan” made “the rocks weep,” which has no resemblance to anything in nature.
12 The lines from verse 17 to 30 are very beautiful, tender, and melodious.—Bowles.
13 It was a time-honoured fancy that the “moan” of the turtle-dove was a lament for the loss of its mate. Turtur, the Latin name for the bird, is a correct representation of its monotonous note. The poets commonly call it simply the turtle, but since the term, to quote the explanation of Johnson in his Dictionary, is also “used by sailors and gluttons for a tortoise” the description of its “deep murmurs” as “filling the sounding shores,” calls up this secondary sense, and gives an air of ludicrousness to the passage.
14 This whole passage is imitated from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Book iii. p. 712, 8vo ed.:
Earth, brook, flow’rs, pipe, lamb, dove,
Say all, and I with them,
Absence is death, or worse, to them that love.
—Wakefield.
15 Congreve’s Mourning Muse of Alexis:
Fade all ye flow’rs, and wither all ye woods.
16 Virg. Ecl. viii. 52:
aurea duræ
Mala ferant quercus, narcisso floreat alnus;
Pinguia corticibus sudent electra myricæ.
—Pope.
His obligations are also due to Dryden’s version of Ecl. iv. 21:
Unlaboured harvests shall the fields adorn,
And clustered grapes shall blush on ev’ry thorn:
And knotted oaks shall show’rs of honey weep,
And through the matted grass the liquid gold shall creep.
Bowles, in his translation of Theocritus, Idyll. v., assisted our bard:
On brambles now let violets be born,
And op’ning roses blush on ev’ry thorn.
He seems to have had in view also the third Eclogue of Walsh:
Upon hard oaks let blushing peaches grow,
And from the brambles liquid amber flow.
—Wakefield.
17 These four lines followed in the MS.:
With him through Libyia’s burning plains I’ll go,
On Alpine mountains tread th’ eternal snow;
Yet feel no heat but what our loves impart,
And dread no coldness but in Thyrsis’ heart.
—Warburton.
Wakefield remarks that the second line in this passage is taken from Dryden’s Virg. Ecl. x. 71:
And climb the frozen Alps, and tread th’ eternal snow.
18 Virg. Ecl. v. 46:
Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per æstum
Dulcis aquæ saliente sitim restinguere rivo.
—Pope.
19 “Faint with pain” is both flat and improper. It is fatigue, and not pain that makes them faint.—Wakefield.
20 The turn of the last four lines is evidently borrowed from Drummond of Hawthornden, a charming but neglected poet.
To virgins flow’rs, to sun-burnt earth the rain,
To mariners fair winds amid the main,
Cool shades to pilgrims, whom hot glances burn,
Are not so pleasing as thy blest return.
—Warton.
21 Virg. Ecl. viii. 108:
an, qui amant, ipsi sibi somnia fingunt?
—Pope.
In the first edition, conformably to the original plan of the Pastoral, the passage stood thus:
Do lovers dream, or is my shepherd kind?
He comes, my shepherd comes.
—Wakefield.
22 From Virg. Ecl. viii. 110:
Parcite, ab urbe venit, jam parcite carmina, Daphnis.
Stafford’s translation in Dryden’s Miscellany:
Cease, cease, my charms,
My Daphnis comes, he comes, he flies into my arms.
23 Dryden’s Virg. Ecl. viii. 26, 29:
While I my Nisa’s perjured faith deplore.
Yet shall my dying breath to heav’n complain.
24 This imagery is borrowed from Milton’s Comus, ver. 290:
Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came.
—Wakefield.
25 Variation:
And the fleet shades fly gliding o’er the green.
—Pope.
These two verses are obviously adumbrated from the conclusion of Virgil’s first eclogue, and Dryden’s version of it:
For see yon sunny hill the shade extends
And curling smoke from cottages ascends.
—Wakefield.
26 This fancy he derived from Virgil, Ecl. x. 53:
tenerisque meos incidere amores Arboribus.
The rind of ev’ry plant her name shall know. Dryden.
—Wakefield.
Garth’s Dispensary, Canto vi:
Their wounded bark records some broken vow,
And willow garlands hang on ev’ry bough.
27 According to the ancients, the weather was stormy for a few days when Arcturus rose with the sun, which took place in September, and Pope apparently means that rain at this crisis was beneficial to the standing corn. The harvest at the beginning of the last century was not so early as it is now.
28 The scene is in Windsor Forest; so this image is not so exact.—Warburton.
29 This is taken from Virg. Ecl. x. 26, 21:
Pan deus Arcadiæ venit....
Omnes, unde amor iste, rogant tibi.
—Wakefield.
30 Virg. Ecl. iii. 103:
Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos.
—Pope.
Dryden’s version of the original:
What magic has bewitched the woolly dams,
And what ill eyes beheld the tender lambs.
—Wakefield.
31 It should be “darted;” the present tense is used for the sake of the rhyme.—Warton.
32 Variation:
What eyes but hers, alas! have pow’r on me;
Oh mighty Love! what magic is like thee?
—Pope.
33 Virg. Ecl. viii. 43:
Nunc scio quid sit amor. Duris in cotibus illum, etc.
—Pope.
Stafford’s version of the original in Dryden’s Miscellanies:
I know thee, Love! on mountains thou wast bred.
Pope was not unmindful of Dryden’s translation:
I know thee, Love! in deserts thou wert bred,
And at the dugs of savage tigers fed.
He had in view also a passage in the Æneid, iv. 366, and Dryden’s version of it:
But hewn from hardened entrails of a rock,
And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck.
Nor did our author overlook the parallel passage in Ovid’s Epistle of Dido to Æneas, and Dryden’s translation thereof:
From hardened oak, or from a rock’s cold womb,
At least thou art from some fierce tigress come;
Or on rough seas, from their foundation torn,
Got by the winds, and in a tempest born.
—Wakefield.
34 Till the edition of Warburton, this couplet was as follows:
I know thee, Love! wild as the raging main,
More fell than tigers on the Lybian plain.
35 Were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.: “Love out of Mount Ætna by a Whirlwind,” he would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us.—De Quincy.
Sentiments like these, as they have no ground in nature, are of little value in any poem, but in pastoral they are particularly liable to censure, because it wants that exaltation above common life, which in tragic or heroic writings often reconciles us to bold flights and daring figures.—Johnson.
36 Virg. Ecl. viii. 59:
Præceps aërii specula de montis in undas
Deferar.
From yon high cliff I plunge into the main. Dryden.
—Wakefield.
This passage in Pope is a strong instance of the abnegation of feeling in his Pastorals. The shepherd proclaims at the beginning of his chant that it is his dying speech, and at the end that he has resolved upon immediate suicide. Having announced the tragedy, Pope treats it with total indifference, and quietly adds, “Thus sung the shepherds,” &c.
37 Ver. 98, 100. There is a little inaccuracy here; the first line makes the time after sunset; the second before.—Warburton.
Pope had at first written:
Thus sung the swains while day yet strove with night,
And heav’n yet languished with departing light.
“Quære,” he says to Walsh, “if languish be a proper word?” and Walsh answers, “Not very proper.”
38 Virg. Ecl. ii. 67:
Et sol decedens crescentes duplicat umbras.
The shadows lengthen as the sun grows low. Dryden.
—Wakefield.
“Objection,” Pope said to Walsh, “that to mention the sunset after twilight (day yet strove with night) is improper. Is the following alteration anything better?
And the brown ev’ning lengthened ev’ry shade.”
Walsh. “It is not the evening, but the sun being low that lengthens the shades, otherwise the second passage is the best.”