PA 6522 .H4 J8 IBRARY OF CONGRESS DQQD3T4 ^ *oi,o* ^ © N O - < v 5*^ ^^ o^i* V ^ v 9- * e » . , •• ** v \ k* **cr * 4* ^ 7 « 4>-*A. 77** /V >^ THE EPISTLES OE OVIDIUS NASO, FAITHFULLY CONVERTED INTO A NEW MEASURE OF ENGLISH VERSE. BY JOHN JUMP, AUTHOR OP " GBAMMAIRE ANGEAISE A I/USAGE TJE8 PRANCAIS ;" : ART I)E IA PERSPECTIVE AU MOXEN D'UNB tCHEELE ;" AND OTHER WRITINGS PUBLISHED IN FRANCE. LONDON : BELL AND DALDY, FLEET STREET. 1857. PRINTED BY EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE, HER MAJESTY'S PRINTERS. 96-845545 CONTENTS. Page PREFACE "> i Note on English Harmony - X Letter I. Penelope to Ulysses - - 1 11. Phiilis to Demophoon - 9 Ill Brise'is to Achilles - 18 IV. Phaedra to Hippolytus - 27 Y. CEnone to Paris - 38 YI. Hypsipyle to Jason - - 47 YII. Dido to iEneas - 56 YIII. Hermione to Orestes - 66 IX. Dejanira to Hercules - - 73 X. Ariadne to Theseus - 83 XI. Canace to Macareus - - 91 XII. Medea to Jason - - 97 XIII. Laodamia to Protesilaus - 109 X1Y. Ilypermnestra to Lynceus - 118 XY. Sappho to Phaon - 123 XVI. Paris to Helen - - 138 XVII. Helen to Paris - 158 XYIII. Leander to Hero - - 171 XIX. Hero to Leander - 182 XX. Acontius to Cydippe - - 193 XXI. Cydippe to Acontius - - 206 PREFA'CE. Travelling by steam, Reader, when you come to think of it, was a lively invention ; a rapid pro- gress. Gaslight, too, was a bright idea. Phos- phoric matches again : if the tablet of your memory still retain a trace of the familiar tinder- box, phosphoric matches are a positive miracle. But the press, as Mrs. de Trepka has just ob- served, the page of types-— what a multiplication table is that page of types ! what a propagator of thought ! what an electric flame to the mental eye ! The sixteenth century is not yet outdone in the production of wonders. Well ! all these things are stupendous in their conception, in- credible at their birth, immense in their influence ; yet, reader, like everything human, they are not without their inconvenience : the medal has its reverse. One, let alone divorce of body and limbs without mutual consent, whisks you over the loveliest landscape before your retina has well seized its image, or souses you with geo- metrical rectitude through the very centre of a big billow instead of riding you neatly over the top of it in the old sailing fashion : another blows you out of bed or out at window, or sets a burgh ablaze before you can whistle "come hither." And that German engine, that press, leagued 11 PREFACE. as it is with Hamiltonian systems and ragged! schools, and with the cacoethes scribendi to boot ; | makes writers so swarm and works so pullulate that the life of a reader, shrunk as it has become since the reduction of the good old Methuselah standard, no longer suffices to skim over the tithe of a tithe of the exuberant production. Hence the modest excuses which preface every author's " new trespass on the attention of an " indulgent public." This work, however, claims exemption from apology as adding nothing to the mountainous mass : as merely changing the form of what exists and has existed any time these near two thousand years, still young, vigorous, beautiful, inimitable, — the charming Epistles of Ovidius Naso, Why should the Cantab and the Oxonian monopolize a delightful feast? Why not you, general reader, be admitted to a table so invitingly served? Come in, good friend; the baked meats consist of a faithful rescript of the prettiest love-letters you ever perused, save certain correspondence perhaps which oc- curred between yourself and you know who. Take them then, not as our friend Lawrence says, under your protection, but into your closet, and there, if they amuse, your most devoted ser- vant will be largely paid. There is yet another lurking motive, reader, than the introduction of Naso for wheedling into your acquaintance : apart, too, of that vulgar spring of human activity, that six-and-eightpence which some law-grinder sees at the bottom of PREFACE. Ill every man s act and deed, and whereon the less said the sooner mended. The alterum mobile in question is to set before you a simple measure of English verse which you have not yet seen, and which seems peculiarly adapted to epistolary poetry. Dryden and Pope have proved that our heroic rhyme of five feet renders well the Greek and Latin hexameter. Our lighter four-foot verse, as in Gay's fables, seems apt enough to supply the place of the pentameter, which couples so beautifully with the longer line. We have abun- dant examples of poems in alternate eight and six syllables, a very pleasing light measure, but I know of no complete stanza founded on a shorter line combined with the grave heroic ; and yet the effect is agreeable, rendering the verse somewhat less severe than the full measure of all tens, yet less skipping than the alternate eight and six. Let us take a fine example of full-lined alternate rhymes, and divide it into its harmonic bars by points of suspension. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ; The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea ; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Here is a rich model of deep gravity nearly in pure iambics. Reading with attention, it will be remarked that the solemn tone proceeds chiefly from the long bars of six sjdlables. Now let it not be deemed profanation to dissect this. Fear not the scapel be mad enough to attempt to mend that wdrich is perfect already. Its object IV PREFACE. is merely to try conclusions : to examine the effect as to gravity or airiness, of lopping a syl- lable here and there ; for instance, or as they say for fun, cut off the first and last of the first line : Curfew tolls the knell of parting. The grave iambic is become a gay trochaic : necessarily, for such is the known effect of annul- ling the first syllable of an iambic line. But this is foreign to the purpose, which, on the con- trary, is highly serious. Let each second and fourth line then be shortened by two syllables, but so as to leave the verse iambic, for to mix the two measures would be cacophanous. The pauses shall be indicated as before. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ; The herds wind slow — ly o'er the lea ; The ploughman homeward plods — his weary way, And leaves the world to night and me. The gravity is sensibly lessened in the diminished lines by reducing the long bar of six syllables to one of four. Let us try the effect of curtailing two syllables more. The curfew tolls. . . .the knell of parting day : The herds wind o'er the lea ; The ploughman homeward plods. . . .his weary way, And leaves the world to me. Here in the alternate lines the two bars are reduced to one, but of the longer measure ; hence the stanza has recovered a portion of its original gravity, though it has ceased to possess the solemnity of the original. Now do just read this last once again ; for, barring the effect of that hallucination to which inventors are liable, it reads more like measured prose, not than PREFACE. V blank verse does, but than any measure of rhymes that you have met with. For this reason it is here adopted to render the alternate lines of Ovid. Let it be observed that I compare this result with the Latin couplet only in as much as it renders a serious tone in an alternate measure, and not as producing a similar effect. Were the two harmonies, the English and the Latin, more susceptible of comparison, our two lines, con- sisting as they do of three pauses, would be more analogous to the longer Latin line alone. Take as an example a rough imitation of Meliboeus and Tityrus, in the first lines of Virgil's eclogue. Meliboeus. Tityre, tu patulae recubans Sub tegmine fagi, Silvestrem tenui musam Meditaris avena. Nos patriae fines et dulcia Linquimus arva : Nos patriam fugimus, tu, Tityre, Lentus in umbra, Formosam resonare doces Aniarillida sylvas. Tityrus. O Melibcee, Deus nobis HcEC otia fecit. Milibceus. O Tityrus, reclined the woods among, Cool in their ample shade, Your oaten flageolet and rural song Still make the charm they made. We to our native home must bid adieu And its luxuriant fields : We fly the land enjoyed in peace by you, With all the charm it yields, Where, Tityrus, you make the vale resound With Amarillis' name. Tityrus. A god, O Meliboeus, we have found, In goodness as in fame. A word before parting, indispensable to fend off the critic dart that may fairly enough be b VI PREFACE. aimed at certain spots of imperfect translation. Let thy indulgence then, O Aristarchus, reflect that the rendering is nearly line for line. Now since a line of Latin, at a medium, consists of fourteen syllables, and that the English line averages but eight, it was impossible to give every thought entire. True, four lines might have been devoted to two, which would have given scope and to spare ; but conscience, reader, conscience ! It would have doubled this poor increment to the Atlantaean mass of British publication which, if you recollect, in- spired the writer with awe at the very symptoms of his cacoethes ; or, more honestly and between ourselves, weak in fiction as he is, that was too much tether. He has a horrid fear of ampli- fying — it needs wit ; now common sense can contract. An amplified translation, too, presents the physiognomy rather of the translator than of the original. I have a fine example of this before my eye at this moment, in the title-page of that splendid novel Ten Thousand a Yeae. It is the following eight lines of Horace, with their translation by Dryden. Bead : Fortmia seevo Iseta negotio, ct Lusum insolentem ludere pertinax Transmutat incertos lionores, Nunc milii nunc alii benigna. Laudo manentem. Si celeres quatit Pennas, resigno qua) dedit et mea Virtute me involve-, probamque Paupeviem sine dote quaero. It would be a pity, reader, if you did not understand this ; in that case, do get some- PREFACE. Vll body to translate it for you : or stay, who is your more devoted servant than myself ? I '11 do it for you verbatim. Fortune, merry in cruel business and persistent in playing an unexpected game, transmutes uncertain honours ; now kind to mc— now to another. T laud her while she stays ; but if she shake her rapid wings, I resign what she gave, wrap myself in my virtue, and, undowered, seek an honourable poverty. The last three lines aptly portray the noble Aubrey after the loss of his ten thousand a year, and in the Latin beautifully. Dryden's trans- lation runs thus : Fortune, that with malicious joy Does man, her slave, oppress, Proud of her office to destroy, Is seldom pleased to bless. Still various and unconstant still, But with an inclination to be ill, Provokes, degrades, delights in strife, And makes a lottery of life. I can enjoy her while she 's kind, But when she dances in the wind, And shakes her wings and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away : The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned : Content with poverty my soul I arm, And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm. It must be borne in mind that Dryden figures here by the merest accident. This bit, too, we verily believe to be the worst he ever wrote ; but as his well-earned fame stands on a mountain rock, it will not feel the shift- ing of a poor pebble that may be shaken by any criticism here. Moreover, Dryden is in presence merely as a sort of Richard Roe, in the cause hereby instituted, versus the unin- corporate body of free translators, whom I would rather call, as in fact they are sometimes called, b 2 VI PREFACE. aimed at certain spots of imperfect translation. Let thy indulgence then, O Aristarchus, reflect that the rendering is nearly line for line. Now since a line of Latin, at a medium, consists of fourteen syllables, and that the English line averages but eight, it was impossible to give every thought entire. True, four lines might have been devoted to two, which would have given scope and to spare ; but conscience, reader, conscience ! It would have doubled this poor increment to the Atlanteean mass of British publication which, if you recollect, in- spired the writer with awe at the very symptoms of his cacoethes ; or, more honestly and between ourselves, weak in fiction as he is, that was too much tether. He has a horrid fear of ampli- fying—it needs wit ; now common sense can contract. An amplified translation, too, presents the physiognomy rather of the translator than of the original. I have a fine example of this before my eye at this moment, in the title-page of that splendid novel Ten Thousand a Year. It is the following eight lines of Horace, with their translation by Dryden. Head : Portuna ssevo Leta negotio, ct Jjiisum insolentem ludere pertinax Transmutat incertos lionores, Nunc mini nunc alii benigna. Laudo manentem. Si celeres quatit Pennas, resigno qua) dedit et mea Virtute me involve-, probamque Pauperiem sine dote qusero. It would be a pity, reader, if you did not understand this ; in that case, do get some- PREFACE. Vll body to translate it for you: or stay, who is your more devoted servant than myself ? I '11 do it for you verbatim. Fortune, merry in cruel business and persistent in playing an unexpected game, transmutes uncertain honours ; now kind to me— now to another. I laud her while she stays ; but if she shake her rapid wings, I resign what she gave, wrap myself in my virtue, and, undowered, seek an honourable poverty. The last three lines aptly portray the noble Aubrey after the loss of his ten thousand a year, and in the Latin beautifully. Dryden s trans- lation runs thus : Fortune, that with malicious joy Does man, her slave, oppress, Proud of her office to destroy, Is seldom pleased to bless. Still various and unconstant still, But with an inclination to be ill, Provokes, degrades, delights in strife, And makes a lottery of life. I can enjoy her while she 's kind, But when she dances in the wind, And shakes her wings and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away : The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned : Content with poverty my soul I arm, And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm. It must be borne in mind that Dryden figures here by the merest accident. This bit, too, we verily believe to be the worst he ever wrote ; but as his well-earned fame stands on a mountain rock, it will not feel the shift- ing of a poor pebble that may be shaken by any criticism here. Moreover, Dryden is in presence merely as a sort of Richard Roe, in the cause hereby instituted, versus the unin- corporate body of free translators, whom I would rather call, as in fact they are sometimes called, b 2 Vlll PREFACE. loose translators, a class which is to the highest degree imposing, both in number and in name. Their president is the great Voltaire himself, who lays down their principle, saying, " Read well your author, and then write him in your own way." In my humble opinion this is writing yourself by means of your author's ideas. Could you ever, reader, perceive even a glimpse of Shakspeare in the Shakspeare of Ducis, and so of many others that I could name ? No : the author exists in his thoughts ; to these the surest way are his words, and the nearer these can be rendered the better you will exhibit him. In any other way you will only exhibit yourself. Look at those sixteen lines of Dryden. Does their ambling loquacity give you the most distant idea of the subdued eight lines of Horace ? Certainly not. They are as much like them as I an air balloon is to a cricket ball, one all wind, the other hard pith. It is much to be doubtedl whether the six last of them would have tempted [ the author of " Ten Thousand a Year " had he| never seen the Latin. Creech, in my opinion, hits it off far better, because more literally, thus : Still fortune plays at fast and loose, And still maliciously jocose Her cruel sport she urges on, Now smiles on me ; on me bestows, And then upon another throws Vast heaps of wealth, and takes them back as soon. Whene'er she stays with what she brings I'm pleased ; but when she shakes her wings I straight resign my just pretence, I give her back her faded gold ; Myself I in my virtue fold, And live content with want and innocence. PREFACE. ix This is pretty faithful translation. If it contain four lines more than the Latin, it is to make out rhymes. It adds but few new ideas to the original. The expansion, however, of these four lines entirely destroys that pithiness for which the Latin poet is so remarkable. A still closer rendering would assuredly be better. Let us try to versify as closely as possible the bit of prose you read above : Fortune iu cruel business gay, And prone a saucy game to play, Her fickle honours will transmute ; Now mine, now Paul's, the attribute. I laud her present ; but if once She flit, I let her fly, And in a virtuous pride ensconce My honest poverty. Here is no more than in the Latin : I will not pretend to say there is no less. It slurs a little the fifth line and the end of the fourth, but the thoughts are there ; and it is better to lose some- thing, than by the help of spurious matter to retain the whole. See too, reader, whether the compressed form have not restored something of the gravity of the original. My predilection, then, is decidedly for close translation ; and aware that in a long work, compressed even far beyond the limits of the Latin, this principle may have induced in sundry places an excess of brevity, care has been taken wherever this occurs to add a note, giving the full sense. In nearly half the letters, as in the third for instance, the number of lines in the Latin would not complete stanzas of four lines each : in that X PREFACE. case, in some convenient part of the letter two lines are expanded into four, or six into eight, to complete the scale. Wherever this occurs it is indicated by a note. The learned reader need not in general trouble himself with the notes, they will tell him no more than he knows already ; but those who are unacquainted with the preux chevaliers of Greece and Troy may, in the perusal, pick up a good deal of their more than half fabulous history. The elucidations, in fine, are given for that class of readers, and to gain the good will of my fair countrywomen. Paris. J. J. NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. It is wrong, reader, very wrong, to entice you a step farther into prose composition Having artfully led you to burn with impatient curiosity to open these love-letters, 'tis a vilely-played card to baulk the appetite by delaying the feast ; but your servant is sadly infirm of purpose, and, mounted on his hobby, a mere Gilpin, he cannot draw up at Islington, but you may stop. You may order a Penelope and Ulysses to be served up immediately, Didst see the grand Hyde Park exhibition ? No doubt you did, and the grand Parisian exposition too. What works ! what inventions, eh ! what fecundity in the mind of man ! Yon preface opened in ecstasy on invention, yet let me tellyou some merit is due to the negative inventor — to the exposer of bad novelties, and still more to the exploder of old errors. Now there exists an old, firm-set, erroneous idea in my line of business, and I have a mind to set up reformer, even in a debut : gard la riposte. But where honour calls the good soldier will on, and I must try, feeble as be my means, to root up a false notion which subsists about English verse. The illustrious statesman, Sheridan, who has written very largely on the English language, expresses his opinion that our favoured tongue possesses mines of wealth as yet undiscovered by poets. This opinion has taken root and thrives luxuriantly. It is thus cited and commented by Perry, at the close of the grammar article, in his most valuable pronouncing dictionary. The parentheses contain notes by the way. Xll NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY, " Mr. Sheridan says that when the art of reading " with propriety shall have been established, and a produced its effects, a field will be opened to our " writers both in poetry and prose which will dis- " play in a new light the vast compass of our " language in point of harmony and expression, from " the same causes that produced similar effects at " Rome in the writers of the Ciceronian or Augustan " age." (Now Perry continues, speaking for himself.) " That our language is capable of great improve- " ment with respect to prosody is apparent, for by " inspection into English verse we shall find that " syllables which are naturally long and emphatical " are frequently made short, and those which are " short substituted for long syllables." (The italics are his own.) " By this indiscriminate use of accent and long " quantity^ allowing strength to supply the place of " length, the harmony of verse is marred. If our " lexicographers and poets " (that is, Ego et Rex mens) " were universally to adopt a plurality of accent, and " make a proper distinction between long and short " syllables, as the Greeks did, by the right applica- " tion of the grave and acute accent, it would tend " to free our verse from this glaring absurdity." Were this a solitary critique, I would simply answer, " Profaner, read Milton ! " but so far from being alone, he stands here the resumer of a greater man's opinion, supported by the whole phalanx of British prosodists, and must not be treated lightly. The great orator, in the passage quoted, does not very definitely lay down his views. He seems to have a mental perception of some Eldorado to be arrived at in time to come. We shall perhaps see whether, like its prototype, it turn out to be a bubble. NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. Xlll Perry specifies his complaint more clearly, and there- fore discussion shall be with him. We '11 talk the matter over quietly together. Tell me then, my good Perry, what is a Latin gradus ? It is a lexicon to show the longs and the shorts of the Latin tongue. — And the accent, Perry ? The gradus gives no accent. — Why not, pray ? The Latins disregarded accent in the construction of their verse. — The Latins were right, my dear fellow, for having adopted one scale of appreciation, it would have been absurd to refer to another. See to what confusion it would lead : amo, amas y a?nat, which are iambi by quantity in all Latin verse, would have become trochees by accent : poor Virgil would have been at his wit's end to know what to do with them. No : to all appreciable qualities one means of appreciation is enough. One basis for one simple calculation is the rule : cloth by the yard, corn by the bushel, cheese by the pound ; and, though there be masses susceptible of estimation in more than one of these ways, yet none who know how to expedite business have recourse to both pottle and pound to esti- mate the same lot. But your English gradus s Perry ? I never saw one : the only help to English verse is the rhyming dictionary, which gives no quantity ; for our poets are so dreadfully irregular in their use of iongs and shorts, that from their works, which are our only means, we have never been able to determine a tenth part of the syllables as to whether they are short or long. — And the accent, my good Perry ? Oh, the accent, w r e mark that in every word ; it peers out ; it is sensible to feeling through all their lines. See my dictionary. — And it never struck you, my honest prosodian, that this w r as enough ? That though b 5 XIV NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY, Latin and Greek be doled by length of syllable, English might be estimated by weight of accent, and so much the more reasonably, since this is in the feeling of us all, and the other baffles even your own profound research ; but, on the contrary, with Shak- speare, Milton, and the whole host dinning accent in your ear, you must go gaping after new lights that are one day to shine and cause the harmony of verse to be no longer marred, and English verse to be freed from its glaring absurdities. Why these two expressions are downright sacrilege, for they level at the works of demigods. Consider that in every nation the first poet pos- sessed the whole principle of the art. It was an instinct as sure as that of the spider which makes its web. Successors may refine, as Sheridan says^ Virgil and Horace did in the Augustan age of Rome, but in no nation of the world have they ever changed the principle of the earlier masters of the art, founded, as I say it was, not on lexicons but on that instinct of their species which is innate and infallible. No, my good Perry, you have nothing to do with what Milton ought to have done ; that is above your sphere. Consider well what he has done, and since you find in his lines an inextricable chaos of longs and shorts, take your scales : weigh them by accent, and you will find in them all a beautifully harmonious order. Nay, your double principle can lead to nothing but confusion, as we have shown it would have done in the Latin. Take the words able, evil, image, all trochees by the ear, which is necessity, and by the authority of all English verse : apply to them the principle of length they become iambi, the very oppo-? NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. XV site in rhythmic effect, which is absurd. Observe that in a Latin dissyllable you now and then find one of the two doubtful ; but you never found both syl- lables doubtful : you never saw the same word iambus and trochee : 'tis an incongruity. No, no, your double system creates for your British poet the same dilemma we supposed to Virgil just now : he sings, Hoiv happy could I be with either ivere t'other dear charmer away ; and one of them, Perry, must go away, for no poet's ear w r ill ever take those words for any thing but trochees, as they are by accent and by usage, which is immu- table necessity : hence, English verse has no concern with quantity in length. Then, say you, what is the function of longs and shorts in our poetry ? They serve in verse as in prose to give a solemn gravity or a tripping lightness to the flow of language ; to make harmony and pathos ; but they have nothing to do with the metrical con- struction of the verse. So in Greek and Latin the tonic accent served to undulate the style, but was un- connected with the metre ; and that for the reason above assigned : because one principle of measure is enough and two are absurd. I have heard tell of a printed attempt at English verse in Roman metre of dactyl and spondee by time. It is said to be unsuccessful, and no wonder. Our ear is drilled to accent, and follows only where accent leads. Substitute in its place the basis of time, we are lost : as bewildered as Highlanders without their bagpipes. We liken your time hexa- meters to prose bewitched. This error of taking a double manner of scanning for two distinct sources of metre has given rise to a false notion of the compass of our language as a XVI NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. vehicle for poetry. In truth, had we double means we should have a triple effect, for there would imme- diately result three distinct classes of poetry ; namely, by accent as produced by the whole suite of benighted jinglers from Chaucer to Byron : by time, as in the virtuous though unsuccessful attempt just alluded to, and by the transcendent effect of the two combined, as sighed after by the Doubletonians ; but the dual means are a mere dream, we have them net. Perry himself has declared that one of the two sources is not yet understood : our poets amply prove that it is not wanted : common sense rejects it as absurd ; and, being a mere creation of the prosodial brain, it may safely be pronounced never-to-be-understood. Hence again, English poetry has nothing to do with measure in length. It is grievous to inflict the slightest scratch on national vanity, but it follows, as a corollary, from what has been said, that there is no ground what- ever for attributing to the English language any supereminence with regard to poetic means. Had mistaken writers done no other harm than that of authorizing an ungrounded boast, the consolation were easy, on reflecting that the praise of our poets, for having taken so glorious a stand as they have done in the literature of nations, is by so much the greater as their means were less. But the flattering of undue self-love is not the only mischief done : our honest, legitimate national pride falls in with a rude rebuff. You may read in the works of foreign philologists, that the English language has no prosody ; no means of estimating an English verse. Now these foreign writers, before making this remark, had read our prosodies. This seems droll, reader ; it makes one NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. XV11 feel all I don't know how. Are our prosodies no prosodies ? What if it should be true ? To have but one way of measuring our merchandise was no great evil, since one way is enough, but to have no way at all ! Why 'tis to be dullards, oafs, bereft of all bump of appreciation of values. Let us look into it. Send at once for the favourite author. Here he is. " Prosody : dissyllables, trisyllables, poly- syllables. ,, And where are his monosyllables ? Not a word about them. Can it be that an English prosody shall not treat of monosyllables, the first distinctive feature of our verse ? " To die ;— to sleep ; — No more ;— and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache." Here is a verse and a half ; six iambi and a pyrrhic, composed exclusively of monosyllables, and the writer has not a word to say on the subject ? This argues ill. Let us look farther on. Ha ! by his wind up, he seems to have satisfied himself at least. Read : " From the preceding view of English " versification we may see what a copious stock of " materials it possesses, for we are not only allowed '* the use of the ancient poetic feet in our heroic " measure, but we have duplicates of each, agreeing " in movement though differing in measure, and " which make different impressions on the ear; " an opulence peculiar to our language, and which " is a source of boundless variety." Perryism, reader, pure Sheridanoperryism. Doubletonism. The disease has infected them all. He sees double : double riches because he has two ways of counting his bags. However, from such copious stock of mate- rials I count that we shall at least find the means of constructing the heroic verse alluded to. Let us turn to it. XV111 NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. " The fifth species of English iambics consists of " five iambuses. Examples : " How loved, how valued once avails thee not, " To whom related, or by whom forgot. " A heap of dust alone remains of thee, " 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be" " Be wise to-day, 'tis madness to defer. " Next day, the fatal precedent shall plead ; " Thus on till wisdom is pushed out of life." What have we here? I see but one pure iambic in the whole group, and that is the third. The first has two spondees at the beginning and one at the end. The second has a pyrrhic for the third foot. The fourth is like the first. The fifth and sixth have their fourth feet pyrrhics. The last has two spondees, a pyrrhic, and its fourth foot a trochee. This augurs ill. Let us read the next article, which winds up the subject of the heroic line : " This is called the " heroic line. In its simplest form it consists of €i five iambuses, but by the admission of other feet " as trochees, dactyls, anapests, &c, it is capable of " many varieties." Many indeed ! why, it has no restriction ! It is licence unlimited, capable of hun- dreds of varieties. But which among them make good verse, and which bad ? That et ccetera is exquisite : it equals the et ccetera of Butler's round- heads, who swore et cceteras. And this is all ? This all ? upon the English epic line ? the nerve and bone of our higher poetry ? " It consists, without the shadow of restraint, of sundry feet, fyc" Only tack ten syllables together and your verse is made, for no possible combination of them will refuse to divide into five feet of some kind. Now the fact is palpable, that we have good verses and bad ; and it has become equally clear that we have no means of distinguishing between them. Not only this augurs ill, reader, 'tis a complete nonsuit. We are beaten men : men con-* NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. XIX strained to submit and confess that the English language has no prosody. These profound teachers have got so bewildered in running after the ignis fatuus of double scanning, that they have lost sight of the very object of the science on which they were writing, namely, to arrive at the art of making a verse. Let me tell you an old fable just to change the subject, for really this grows dolorous : — Grasp all, lose all. Witness a dog, Who, swimming glibly o'er a tide, Bore in his jowl a piece of mutton prog, To bolt it quietly on the other side. Seeing his image in the stream, he thought Another dog a fatter prize had caught, And snapping at it let the solid go, The image of the mutton vanished too. Dost see, reader ? JEsop's meaning is as clear as day ; the dog is Sheridanoperryism, the prog is English verse, the shadow is the double measuring system, and the lost mutton, I 'm afraid, is our prosody. But let not thy good heart be dismayed. The English language is perhaps not so utterly destitute of proso- dial rules as at this moment it appears. Dryden, Milton, Byron, all the men of the trade had their prosodies. 'Tis true the curmudgeons have kept it to themselves, and hence the opinion above noted of foreign critics who had dipped only into such printed nonsense as we have just read. But their prosody may be ferreted out. Two bits of Shakspeare and Milton, our two great models, have given me an inkling of their plan. I have picked up a few indica- tions which might serve some handy fellow of the craft to make a prosody. I'll show them to you ; if you are in that line and would set to work with new, solid, and homogeneous materials it might make you a name ; you would be the man who served his country at her need, made her rich where she was XX NOTE ON ENGLISH HAEMONY. poor, and raised her to the rank of a nation not only poetical but scientific in the art of poetry. Your plan would be this : first simplify the number of feet employed ; reject those of three syllables, since two of them necessarily make three feet of two syllables, and, if there be but one, contraction in- variably reduces it to a foot of two syllables. Thus the number of feet to be considered is limited to four, — The iambus, which is the measure of regular motion, the basis of the harmony, and which occurs four to one oftener than any other foot ; The spondee, which is semi-iambic and retard - ative ; The pyrrhic, which" is semi-iambic and "accele- rative ; The trochee, which is anti-iambic and variative. As a general rule you may use these in any way you like, provided you do not change the metre, that is, make it become trochaic, or dactylic, or an apes tic. Now spondees and pyrrhics have not that effect, and, therefore, are freely admitted to any foot of the line. My observations then reduce themselves to the following expression in the form of a rule. I use the words long and short, they are familiar to the ear, but they are intended of course to imply accented and unaccented. The spondee and the pyrrhic may occupy any place in the line. The trochee stands loell on the first foot ; it enters the third and fourth, but cannot folloio a short syllable ; consequently tivo trochees cannot stand together. The trochee is excluded from the second foot and the fifth* Let me resume this a little, adding examples and observations. One of these will show a case admit- NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. XXI ting a trochee on the second foot ; another which imposes a certain restriction on the spondee and the pyrrhic. First run over a few examples of pure iambics for the sake of comparison : — The balmy call of incense-breathing morn. A heap of dust alone remains of thee. In these, thy lowest works ; yet these declare . . The fairest she of all the maids of Troy. You will observe in these a step of two by two. Spondees in any number make no change in this dual movement. The gravity of Milton's style will some- times assemble three spondees in a line, as in the following : Him first, him last, him midst and without end. Thou sun, of this great world both eye and soul. The pyrrhic most frequently unites either with the preceding or following foot, forming with it a glided movement of four. One pyrrhic in a line occurs oftener than two : three are very rare, yet they do occur, and with good effect, if one be at each end of the line and the third in the middle. Examples : He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. It was for Malcolm and for Donaldbain. Two pyrrhics continuous require a pause between them. Twice I demanded it, but was refused. Without a pause the line becomes too hurried. The sentence was not of my signing, but . . . This reads much more like prose than verse. A spondee between two pyrrhics at the head of a line makes triplet measure, to break which the line must end with iambi. This is the restriction as to spondees and pyrrhics alluded to in our rule. By XXli NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. neglect of this restriction the following lines are triplet to the end. Is it your pleasure to sign the report ? If he dies innocent, that is to say. Iambi, in the places of the two trochees, sign the and that is, will restore the metre. Is it your pleasure to peruse the deed ? If he dies innocent, be pleased to say. The trochee is prettiest with a pure iambus after it. Happy the man. The two form a movement of four. The double foot is called choriambus, a measure of remarkable beauty. Those very words of our example suggested themselves to Pope as firstlings of his poetic pen. What an instinct, eh ! You recollect, Happy the man whose wish and care, &c. The following examples open with one choriambus, four gliding syllables, the rest two by two ; — Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk. Into this breathing world scarce half made up. The following have two choriambi contiguous ; two glidings of four :— Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths. Fairest of stars, last in the train of night. This has two choriambi separated : These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good. Both these last forms are equally beautiful, with a pyrrhic in place of the second trochee : Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow. Now is the winter of our discontent. The pyrrhic ter o/'has given to the second example a triplet beginning. If the beautiful choriambus were brought in at the end, it would ruin the verse, by setting a trochee after a short syllable, and making the measure all triplet, thus : — Now is the winter of turbulent times. NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. XX111 A line may begin with two anapests. This case, in which the first of the two anapests is often impure, makes the exception reserved to our rule : it admits a trochee on the second foot. With his guilt unavowed he'll die lamented. The hot gales of the horrid Cyclades. Dive, thoughts, down to my soul : here Clarence comes. Here again, as before, the choriambus is excluded from the end of the line. Let them meet when they will, I shall he found. . . . The trochee, i" shall, composing the choriambus makes the line triplet throughout. Establish the iambus, or at least a pyrrhic or spondee, and you recover it. Let them meet when they will, and me they'll find. These triplet openings apart, a trochee in the second place is bad. Ah ! the devil come to insult the dead ! Avaunt ! A vigorous line this, but the interjection ah I is too much for the metre. It throws an inadmissible trochee into the second foot, and makes the whole line trochaic. Efface the interjection, the trochee vanishes ; the line becomes pure iambic. The fol- lowing is triplet : Like the faint exquisite music of a dream. This comes from the trochee music after a short syllable. Introduce an iambus in its place, and you restore the measure : Like the faint exquisite harmonious dream. Take, as a wind up, a curious example : Thirty-two years of nearly ceaseless warfare With the Turk and the powers of Italy. Each of these lines apart is a good line. Together they are absolutely prose. Why so ? Because they are mutually discordant. The harmony of the first, XXIV NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. nearly pure iambic, is neutralized by that of the second, which is triplet from end to end. These, reader, are the few materials I have been able to collect from the two thorough workmen, John Milton and William Shakspeare. I most cordially greet a flattering unction that arises out of this mass of examples, namely, that if our poetry has not a bow with two strings, it has a most elastic bow with one string. It bends to a great variety of effects, and this is arithmetical : the Latin heroic was established on two feet ; ours varies on four. The inference is obvious. The foregoing examples, too, have deve- loped in our heroic line three very distinct melodies : the dual as in the iambic and spondaic line ; the ternary as in the opening of two dactyls ; and the quaternary as in the choriambic line ; all different, all beautiful : and this, for aught I know to the contrary, may be a trait peculiar to our language. With this comfortable reflection, let us wind up the subject. I do not presume to assign the place of our English in the file of lyric languages. If we have some advan- tage in vigour of expression and in variety of tone, the Greek, the Latin, and the Italian surpass us in melody. The French, who both in variety and in force are below us in poetry of the higher order, excel us far in lighter composition, in the madrigal, the romance, the chansonnette. Pre-eminence and even origin in these is delightfully asserted by the noble and most tasteful author of " Moise." Mais n'oublions pas, s'il vous plait, Le couplet. Car c'est en France, Assure-t-on, Car c'est en France Que la chanson Et la romance Ont pris naissance, Pour etre cheres aux amours Toujours, toujours. NOTE ON ENGLISH HARMONY. XXV One may risk attempting this in English, though generally these little bits of naivete are inimitable. I never could touch a song of Beranger's. But please to remember, I pray, The couplet. Tor it was in Prance They say, For it was in Prance The lay And the tender romance Saw day, Prom the loves ne'er to sever, No, never ! no, never ! French verse is a metrical phenomenon. It is grounded neither on time nor accent. Any six syllables, the last not mute, make an hemistich. Deprived of rhyme it ceases not to be harmony. Yet the poets of that nation reject blank verse, pro- bably from the too great facility of composing it, or perhaps because their heroic verse is Alexandrine, which measure even in English seems unfit for blank verse. Mere rhyme even is not deemed enough, but the masculine and the feminine couplet must regularly succeed each other. It is sensible too that the mute e of the feminine termination is a pleasing relief to the ear. That mute e, which nevertheless is slightly pronounced, a trait peculiar to the French language, is the characteristic feature of French poetry. To our English verse rhyme is not essential. Shelley has proved that it may be dispensed with in all measures from two feet to five. Nevertheless it is agreeable in all measures, which seems to imply less of harmony in our mere metre than in that of the Greeks and Latins. Rhyme, I say, is agreeable in all measures, and, excepting the drama, is admissible into poetry of the highest order, but nil nimis : it is a question in my mind whether the triple and quadruple recurrence of XXVI NOTE ON ENGLISH HAEMONY. the same rhyme, as in the Spenserian stanza, be not rather a fatigue than a delight to the ear. Dryden, Pope, and their contemporaries, seem to have been of the same opinion. Byron and Shelley thought other- wise. Let critics decide, for that is their proper function. OVID'S EPISTLES. OVID'S EPISTLES. LETTER I. PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. Argument. A war being undertaken against Troy by the united powers of Greece on account of the injury done to Menelaiis, king of Sparta, by the Trojan prince Paris, who had eloped with fair Helen his wife, and a general summons of all Greece being made, Ulysses, though unwilling, as fore- seeing many heavy misfortunes, was obliged to join the union. In the expedition he effected so many great deeds, both by his tactics, wisdom, and prowess, that the final success of the war was much attributable to his means. Vengeance being taken and Troy completely overthrown, the victorious Greeks, returning to their country loaded with spoils, were harassed by successive tempests, so that a great part of them perished; the rest, after long and various sufferings, reached their homes. These misfortunes arose from the vengeance of Minerva, on account of violence done to her famous statue, called the Palladium, brought to Troy by miracle in the days of Ilus, and deemed a gage of safety to the city. The statue was obtained and carried off by Ulysses and Diomed, and is said to have flashed fire from its eyes on fteing removed. Ulysses on his voyage home being driven by adverse winds into various coun- tries, and through various chances, did not reach his Ithaca till after ten years from the taking of Troy, which had endured the siege ten years. His queen, Penelope, importuned by numerous suitors, on the plea that Ulysses must be dead, since all the other chieftains were either returned or known to be drowned, undertook large works of embroidery, pro- mising to consider their suit when her work should be completed ; but she took care to prolong the task by undoing at night the greater part of what she did in the day. She addresses this letter to her husband, though ignorant of where he may be, pressing his return, alleging that Troy is vanquished, that the rest who survive are all home, and that there can be no reason for him alone remaining absent. Ulysses ! thy Penelope again Implores thee hasten home. Troy is now fallen ; our maids of Greece complain, Too dearly overcome. 1. Ulysses, son of Laertes, was king of two Greek islands, Ithaca and Dulychium. He was esteemed the deepest politician and strategist of 2 PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. % Would the seducer, ere to Sparta led, Had perished in the sea ! No sorrow here would fret in lonely bed At days gone wearily ; 3. No needle toil the tedious night half through, Till hands and eyelids fail ; No pallid fear raise dangers worse than true : Torment is Love's entail. 4. My fancy saw thee hemm'd with Dardan band, The name of Hector said : Trembling for thee if to his ireful hand Antilochus lay dead. 5. Or did Patroclus, like Achilles armed, Meet fate amid success ; Or had the Rhodian's blood their javelin warmed, For thee uneasiness. all Greece, and stood among the first of her warriors. Penelope was a Lacedemonian, daughter of Icarius. She is the great Greek model of the good and faithful wife. Troy, or Troja, was before the war the greatest city of Asia Minor, and the capital of Troas, so called from its second king, Tros. 2. The seducer Paris, who by seducing Helen had given rise to the war, as we have seen in the Argument. 4. Hector, the bravest of all the Trojans and son of the king, Priam. Antilochus, son of Nestor, king of Pj'los. It appears, however, that Penelope is in error in attributing his death to Hector, it being due, according to history, to the hand of Memnon. Nothing, however, is more natural than that a stranger should be in possession of imperfect intelligence. 5. Or did Patroclus, like Achilles armed. Patroclus was the bosom friend of Achilles, the most valiant of all the Greeks, as Hector was the great model of all the Trojans. (See, On Achilles, Letter III.) The Greek hero having withdrawn from the war in dudgeon, offended by Agamem- non, the affairs of the allied forces suffered sad reverse. Patroclus then, in order to re-animate the troops, borrowed the armour of Achilles, represented his person, and in battle met his death by the hand of Hector. The Rtvodian. Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules and Astyoche, bora at Argos, but called the Rhodian because he became king of Rhodes, after having fled thither to avoid the consequences of an accidental homicide. He fell by the hand of Sarpedon. PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. 6. In fine, my loving heart with cold would thrill, Whoe'er of Grecian fell : But our chaste love the gods protected still — Troy falls ; my husband's well. 7. The Grecian chiefs are home ; the altars burn ; To th' gods their quota paid : Our women offering for their lords' return, Sing Ilion level laid. 8. The good old men and timid virgins gaze, And wives while husbands tell. One on the board with drops of wine portrays The town and citadel : 9. The Simo'is here, there the Sigsean land ; Here Priam's vast abode : This was Achilles', this Ulysses' stand ; There tearing Hector rode. 7. To the gods their quota paid, all due offerings to the gods having been made in the temples. Sing Ilion level laid. In the Latin it is the husbands who sing. The change, to accommodate the verse, is of slight importance. 8. JVJiile husbands tell. While the husband relates the history of the war. 9. The Simo'is. A river of Troas falling into the Scamander. Sigceum. A promontory near Troy on which many battles were fought. Here tearing Hector rode. This passage, Hie lacer terruit Hector equos, is ambiguous, the word lacer admitting either an active or a passive signification (tearing or torn), which present two very opposite pictures : the one shows Hector alive in all his martial rage ; the other, Hector dead and dragged after the victor's car. To render this sense we may say, Tins the dragged Hector's road. It must be admitted that the greater number of commentators adopt the latter reading. We cannot, however, help siding in this case with the minority ; the two last lines of the verse seem to parcel out the ground and set the two parties in view : Here was Achilles, here Ulysses, and there the adversary, A 2 PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. 10. Telemachus, while seeking thee in vain, Nestor's long tale received : How Rhesus too and Dolon both were slain, One sleeping, one deceived. 11. You risk, too, too forgetful of your own, Into their tents to come ; And slaughter hundreds Avith the help of one : Much then you thought of home ! 12. How my heart beat until it knew thee free With the Ismarian steeds ! But ah ! what profit, Troy a nullity And on her site green meads, 13. If but as when she was our state remain, And no Ulysses here ! For all but me, Troy falls and Hector 's slain ! My tillage wants the steer. 10. Telemachus. The travels and adventures of Telemaclms in search of his father, as given by Penclon, are well known. Nestor, king of Pylos, the oldest and, after Ulysses, the most acute of all the Greek chiefs. Rhesus was a king of Thrace, who inarched to the help of Priam. An oracle had declared that Troy was impregnable if Rhesus' horses drank of the Xanthus. the same river called Scamander, and fed on the Trojan fields. This known to the Greeks, Dioiucd and Ulysses were charged to obtain them. They entered the camp by night, slew Rhesus sleeping in his tent, and carried oh' the steeds. Dolon, a Trojan of remarkable swiftness, employed to spy the Grecian camp. He fell into the hands of Ulysses and Diomed, who held out hopes of life to him on condition of his revealing to them the plans of his chiefs. This information obtained, they put him to death. 11. Into their tents, the tents of Rhesus* army. 12. Ismarian. Thracian, from Mount Ismarus. 13. My tillage wants the steer. My affairs want their principal con- ductor, yourself. PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. 5 14. Cork covers now the land of Troy bereft, Made fat with Ilian blood. Half buried bones are with the plough-share cleft. Weeds where the palace stood. 15. Victorious exile, what can cause thy stay ? Cruel, where dost abide ? Here, every pilot from a foreign bay Meets question multiplied. 16. Be any here addressed to Phrygian stand, A scroll departs for thee. Chance may . . . They've been to Pylos, Nestor's land : All dark uncertainty. 17. Again to Sparta, Sparta knows no more Of where you may sojourn, Better were Troy erect as heretofore ! Alas ! I wildly mourn. 18. Engaged in fight, the horrid chance of war, Like others I should fear. To dread one knows not what, is opening far Too wide a way to care. 14. Ulan, Trojan, from the citadel Ilium, named from King Ilus, who reigned after Tros. 16. Phrygian, Trojan. 17. 1 ivildly mourn. It is a senseless wish to desire that my party had not succeeded in their enterprise. 18. Engaged in fight. Were you engaged in fight. PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. 19. Whatever dangers land or sea contain May cause this long delay. Fool ! musing thus ; while he perhaps is fain Some debt of love to pay : 20. Describing home, the rustic housewife there In wool alone unrude. No : let th' ungenerous idea melt in air : Here were he ; if he could, 21. My father quotes, to have me newly wed, The lapse of time gone by. Let him : Penelope, thine ever said, Will knit no other tie ! 22. But he is gained by my persistent prayer, And curbs his lofty will. Yet Samian, Zanthian, Durchian lovers dare Our house with riot fill 23. Here, uncontrolled they govern in your hall, Your substance at command : Pisander, Metheon ; need I name them all ? Antinoiis greedy hand ? 19. Fool that I am. 20. In wool. In wool-working, knitting, embroidery, &c. 22. Samos, Zanthos, Dulichium, islands near Ithaea. 23. Antinoiis was the least ceremonious of all the suitors of Penelope. He advised to get rid of Telemachus, who supported his mother's courage. Ulysses first presented himself at home disguised as a beggar, and received a blow from this Antinoiis ; he was in consequence the first to feel the master's vengeance. PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. 7 24. A host there is here housed, blood-leeches all ; And, to top shame indeed, The pauper Irus and Melanth/ they call Your steward fat their need. 25. To three too feeble wards your house is left, Laerte, your wife, and son. Lately of him, by ruse I'm near bereft : He would to Pylos soon, 26. Heaven grant that, in the common run of fate, He close our eyelids down. Same prayer our shepherd and old nurse oblate : Same prayer the swineherd clown. 27. But not Laertes, near life's weary term. This inroad can withstand ; Telemachus will grow to years more firm, Now needing father's hand. 28. To expel the foe myself, alas, too mild, Come you, our proper stead. My boy, — the gods protect him, — from a child Your ways inherited. 24. Irus, an Ithacan mendicant of vast corpulence, whom Ulysses, on his return, killed with a blow of his fist. Melanthus, the supervisor of Ulysses' flocks, who culled all the fattest for the table of the suitors of Penelope. 25. Laertes, his father, now very old. Lately of him by ruse I'm near bereft. By ruse of the suitors always contriving means to occupy Telemachus, and prevent his intended expe- dition in search of his fatlier. Pylos. There were three towns of this name all in Peloponnesus, and all laying claim to the honour of being the birthplace and domain of the venerable Xestor ; that at the mouth of the river Alpheus seems, however, to have the preference. He would to Pylos soon. He is secretly preparing his expedition to Pj-los, contrary to the will of the suitors of Penelope. 8 PENELOPE TO ULYSSES. 29. Think of Laertes : come his lids to close, Too soon his end we'll see. You left me a mere girl, and now, Heaven knows, Nearing antiquity. LETTER II. PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. Argument. Demophoon, son of Theseus and Phaedra, returning from the Trojan war and driven by tempest on the coast of Thrace, was received with hospitality hy Phillis, who governed the realm as daughter of the late king, Lycurgus. Intimacy between the stranger and the queen grew to that of man and wife. After some months' residence, Demophoon receives news of the death of Mnestheus, a usurper, by whom his father, Theseus, had been obliged to quit Athens, his own rightful domain. Prompted then by the desire of reigning, he feigned a necessity of going home to settle his affairs, and pledged his word to Phillis that he would return in a month. Soon, his fleet being refitted, he sailed for Athens, nor ever returned. Four months afterwards Phillis addresses this letter to him, entreating that, mindful of past favours, he will not violate his plighted faith : and declaring that, were he to do so, rather than endure his slight, she would put an end to her existence. 1. De^iophoox ! I, your once-loved Phillis, write, Complaining slow delay. You promised, ere the moon shone in full light, To anchor in our bay. 2. Four times her orb has waned, replenished four, And no Athenian sail. If you sum rightly (lovers tell the hour), Not immature our wail. Hope lingered long : we believe not things we Now, spite of me, they wound. [dread : Imposing on itself, Illusion said, " Wind south : he's hither bound ! n A 5 10 PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 4. We've railed on Theseus for your journey stayed : He perhaps no tie to home. Meanwhile, lest Hebrus-bound, we are afraid Of ships engulfed in foam. False one, how often is your welfare prayed With incense in the fane ! How often, seeing the favouring breeze, is said, " If well, he's on the main ! " 6. Thus faithful love new causes of delay Essays to invent and prove. But, tardy still, oaths nothing draw this way ; As profitless my love, 7. Like sails, Demophoon, words to empty air ! Words false, sails all astray ! What have I done but loved too unaware ? Is that your quarrel ? Say. 8. Traitor ! one fault of mine, you here received, The stamp of merit wore. Where now hands joined, — faith plighted and believed ? Where all the gods you swore ? 4. Lest Hebvus-bound. Lest you, when bound for the river Hebrus ; that is, Thrace, my country. 5. Is said by me. 6. Oaths nothing draw this way. The oaths you hare sworn do not | make you come. 8. Hands joined in solemn promise of marriage. PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOO^. 11 9. Where Hymen now, who was ray pledge and stay, For social years to bind ? You swore by Ocean, oft your dangerous way O'er wave with every wind : 10. Swore by your ancestor, who rules a sea, Unless he too is feigned : By Yenus and those weapons, death to me, Of dart or spark attained : 11. By Juno who protects the marriage bed : By mystic Ceres' fane. Of all these gods my cause be seconded, You'll sore abide the pain. 12. Madly your fleet our artisans restore ; Adjust new wings to fly : To bear you hence, we furnish sail and oar ; By our own weapons die. 9. Hymen, the god of marriage. 10. Swore by your ancestor, wlio rides a sea. She alludes to iEgeus, the father of Demophoon's father, Theseus, who drowned himself in the iEgean Sea through an imagined disappointment. Theseus, returning from his victory over the Minotaur (see Letter X., Argument) ought by agreement to have hoisted white sails to intimate "to his father hi's victory over the Minotaur ; this he neglected : the consequence was, that the old man, in despair, deeming him dead, threw himself into the sea which afterwards took its name from his, and fable has made of iEgeus a sea-god. Of dart or spark attained. Cupid, the son of Yenus and god of love, generally figures with bow and arrows to wound the heart, but torches or sparks are also attributed to him for the purpose of inflaming it. 11. Juno, the Queen of Heaven, presides over marriage. JTystic Ceres. The goddess who presides over the fruits of the earth. She was daughter of Saturn and mother of Proserpine, whom Pluto carried off and made queen of Hell. The epithet, mystic, alludes to the secrecy with which her cult was performed by the priests, emblematical of her nightly search after her daughter, 12 PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 13. We trusted words, which lavish you repeat ; Trusted your house's name ; Trusted your tears ; can they have learnt deceit, Subservient to aim ? 14. The gods we trusted : where have we no gage ? Too open to the snare. My house is not my grief, nor anchorage ; Would all had ended there. 15. But to have passed from board to marriage bed, These arms in thine to have laced ! Would that the yester'eve had seen me dead, While Phillis might die chaste ! 16. Hope flattered fair, as known my rightful claim : Hope merited is just. To cheat the simple is no hard won fame : Some favour 's due to trust. 17. An easy woman fell to words so bland. Gods' will, this all your praise ! Mid MgesiTL statues with your father stand : Him a step higher raise. 13. Trusted your house's name. Theseus, the father of Demophoon, by his exploits, stands second only to Hercules, and traces his genealogy up to Jupiter himself. 14. Too open to the snare. Too open as I was to your artifice. 17. JEgean statues. Statues in honour of your grandfather's family. (See note 10.) PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 13 18, When of his Scyron and Procrust' ^tis read ; Of Minotaur ; Sinis ; Thebes taken and the Centaurs buffeted ; The realm explored of Dis ; 19. Thereafter your addition let them read : 'Whom feeble Phillis believed. Of father's actions, miming one misdeed, The Cretan girl deceived. 20. What palliation needs, you have retained : Heir to his fault you are. She, and I envy not, a better gained ; Tame tigers draw her car. 18. Scyron was a robber famous about Megara ; Procrustes, another as notorious in Athens ; both were killed by Theseus. The latter is said to have had a certain bed in which to put his prisoners. If these were found too short, he stretched them to the length of his bed ; if on the contrary they were too long, he cut them shorter. Jlinotanr. The Minotaur was a monster, half man half bull, killed by Theseus. (See Letter X.) Sinis, a tyrant on the Isthmus of Corinth, who caused men to be tied to bended trees, which, being let spring, tore them to pieces. Tiicbes taken. Thebes in Bceotia, in the destruction of which Theseus was eminently instrumental. The Centaurs, a people of Thcssaly, fabled, from their early skill in horsemanship, to be half man half horse. At the marriage of Hippodamia, at £lis, the chief Centaurs were invited, and, warmed with wine, offered violence to the women. This caused a battle, in which they were over- come by Hercules, Theseus, Pirithous, and others of the Thessalian nation of the Lapithre. They were afterwards nearly extirpated by Hercules. The realm explored of Dis. Theseus accompanied his bosom friend Pirithous in an expedition to the infernal regions, the realm of Pluto or Dis, with a view to carry off Proserpine ; but this too hazardous enter- prise failed, and they were both detained by Pluto till afterwards liberated at the intercession of Hercules. 19. The Cretan girl deceived. Ariadne, who was abandoned by his father Theseus. (See her Letter, Xo. X.) 20. Heir to his fault you are. Your father's fault, inconstancy. She, and I envy not, a, better gained. Ariadne, deserted by Theseus, was afterwards espoused by the god Bacchus, and thence rbde in hi3 car drawn by tame tigers. 14 PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 21. The slighted Thracian suitors we offend ; A stranger who prefer : Saith one, " Let her to learned Athens wend ; " To rule we need not her. 22. " Ends declare acts/' "Who judges by the end Successless may he be ! Did you again to Thracian waters tend, They'd laud my loyalty. 23. Yet mine no praise, nor you my palace prize, Nor will my bay receive. That piteous look is still before my eyes, Demophoon's taking leave. 24. You dared embrace, and on my neck impress Kisses drawn long and deep ; And mingle tears with mine, and show distress That Auster did not sleep. 25. And at our parting these last words you spake : " Oh Phillis ! wait for me/' Ah, wait ! you left me no return to make : Wait infidelity ! 21. Thracian sziitors. The noblemen of my country who seek my alliance. Learned Athens, the country of Demophoon. 23. Yet mine no praise. No praise is due to me. Nor will my bay receive. Receive yon, since yen have no intention to return. 24. Auster, the south wind, favourable from the Hcbrus to Attica. PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 15 26. And yet I wait. Come tardy to these arms : Be for a time "untrue. Most wretched prayer ! there are some other Mine are a cloy to you. [charms : 27. Once gone it seemed Phillis you'd never known ; Asked, "Phillis, who is she ?" One who, Demophoon, to a wreck here thrown. Gave hospitality ; 28. Afforded means ; an indigent made rich. Fain ever to do more ; Gave him LycurgW wide dominions, which Queen-rule impatient bore, 29. From icy Rhodope to Efemus shade, The Hebrus-watered land ; But, more than all, first fruits of love who paid, Her zone loosed by his hand. 30. Tisiphone behowled that marriage bed ; The night-bird hooted there : Alecto pale, with snakes about her head, A funeral flambeau bare. 29. BJwdope, Ilcemus, both mountains in Thrace : Hebrus, a river of the same. Her zone loosed by 7iis liand. Taking off the lady's girdle on the wed- ding night was the finale of the ceremonies berore possession; as in France the cavalisr of the bride's maid takes off the bride's garter pre- vious to her retreat for the night. 30. Tisiphone and Alecto, two of the furies. The third was Megara. They were daughters of Night and the river Acheron in Hell. The Latin sets funereal flambeaux in the picture, without placing one precisely in the hand of Alecto ; the change, however, to accommodate the verse, is unimportant. 16 PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 31. Nathless by garish sun or chilly star, Coastward the sea to find, We roam o'er crag and fruit-clad hill afar, Noting which way the wind. 32. "Whatever coming sails peer o'er the main, " They are my gods/' I say ; Fly to the beach; nor for the surge refrain, Breaking in frothy spray. They come. Hope dies. 'Tis all another gear. In th' women's arms I sink. There is a cove whose rounding horns come near, Abrupt each headland brink : 34. Would in its briny pool my sorrows toss'd ! Nay, such an end is nigh. Bear me, ye waves, to his false-hearted coast, A corpse before his eye ! 35. Harder than rock, or thy hard self, thou'dst say, " Not so Fd see thee here." Oft thirst we poison ; often could we pray Transfixion by a spear. 36. This neck too, in your false embrace that lay, To cord owes well its breath. Offended modesty its debt to pay, Easy the choice of death. 35. Harder than rock, or thy hard self. Were you harder &c. PHILLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 17 37. Cause of iny grave, tliy name shall be writ over : A verse the deed shall brand : — Phillis JDemophoon killed ; the spouse the lover. He author, she the hand. 37. Poor Phillis chose the cord and hung herself in despair. LETTER III. BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. Argument. The first Greek expedition to the Trojan war, sailing by Lemnos, landed in Phrygia and began operations by attacking and destroying certain towns in the proximity and alliance of that whose capture was the grand object of their voyage. Achilles, son of Peleus and the sea- goddess Thetis, and who in prowess surpassed all the other heroes of Greece, was chiefly instrumental in the taking of Lyrnessus, where two beautiful women became his prisoners : the one, Chryseis, whom we know as Cressida in Shakspeare's play, daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo ; the other, Hippodamia, otherwise known by her family name, Briseis. Achilles cedes Chryseis to Agamemnon, reserving Briseis to himself. Chryseis being afterwards claimed by the priest, her father, and the Greeks enjoined by augury to give her up, Agamemnon, after long resistance and after severe inflictions from Heaven on the Greeks for his disobedience, consents at length to give up the maid, but insists, as being first in command, that Achilles shall cede to him his prize, Briseis. Achilles makes no resistance to this order, but retires in dud- geon from the war, nor can be induced by any entreaties to resume the fight. Magnificent presents are offered by Agamemnon, the first of which is his own Briseis, the subject of quarrel, but Achilles remains obdurate. Thereupon Briseis addresses this letter to him, reproaching him with the sin of excessive anger, and exhorting him to take arms against the common enemy, Troy; above all, to receive back herself, spontaneously offered by Agamemnon. 1. These from Briseis to Achilles sped, In Greek by foreign hand. The blots are burning tears abundant shed ; They for sad words may stand. 2. Were it for me my lord to disapprove, I'd venture to say this : Though not his fault my expedite remove, One way the fault was his. 1. By foreign hand. Briseis, as an Asiatic, excuses her want of skill in Greek writing. BEISEIS TO ACHILLES. 19 3. For TalthyV and Eurybates, that day To have me hence they came ; And did ; they, mutual glancing, seemed to say 5 " Is this their ardent flame ? " 4. Delay were easy and of pain 'twere good : Alas, no parting kiss ! No solace but of tears a bitter flood ! A double sacrifice ! 5. Oft to escape their guard it was my drift, But enemies were rife : I feared detention, to be sent a gift To some rich Trojan's wife. 6. What matter? of return no signs appear: Your anger passes by. " Why weep ? " Patroclus whispered to my ear ; ; " Youll come back presently/' 7. Me ; far from claiming, he'll not even take : Love hard to comprehend ! Phoenix and Ajax intercession make, A cousin and a friend. 3. Talthybius and Eurybates are two emissaries of Agamemnon to claim Brise'is. 4. A double sacrifice. Once on becoming prisoner at Lyrnessus, and now to be yielded up to Agamemnon. 6. What matter / of return no signs appear. What matter is it to me whether I become a slave or not ? I see no signs of your love re- turning. 7. Phoenix, the friend appointed by Achilles' father, Pelcus, to be a mentor to his son. Ajax, being the son of Telamon the brother of Peleus, was first cousin to Achilles. 20 BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. And wise Ulysses,. offering largess even To further my depart : Twenty brass cauldrons and of tripods seven, Egregious works of art. 9. To these were added talents ten of gold And twice six matchless steeds ; Fair Lesbian girls, a needless gift to hold, Though won by your own deeds. 10. With these, again superfluous, a spouse Of Agamemnon's three. You're paid to have me from the imperial house. And spurn the courtesy. 11. Why doth Achilles deem Brise'is vile ? Whither, light Love, art fled ? On wretchedness will Fortune never smile ? Is mine unlimited ? 12. We saw Lyrnessus burn before your hate, Whereof great part was I : Saw my three noble brethren meet their fate, Friends of my infancy : 10. Spurn the courtesy. Agamemnon's courtesy in restoring me, with even presents to boot. 12. Lyrnessus. See Argument. Whereof great part tvas I. Since she was wife of the reigning prince, Myncs, whom Achilles slew. BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. 21 13. Stout as he was, we saw my husband fall Expiring on your sword. Yourself became the compensate of all, Of country, brothers, lord. 14. You swore to me by Thetis of the sea ; I went with fair design. Words ! words ! Now absent to abandon me ! And even dowered decline ! 15. 'Tis said, before the morning rays appear, You sail, howe'er the wind. Ah ! when .the treason reached my wretched ear, I stood bereft of mind. 16. You leave me, reckless spirit, and to whom ? What solace, when you're fled ? May earth engulf me in its yawning tomb, Or lightning strike me dead, 17. Bather than Phthian oar should cleave the seas, Brise'is left behind ! If that return to your penates please, Her no great clog you'd find. 14. Thetis, the sea-goddess, mother of Achiller. Dowered by the rich presents of Agamemnon, her own property being lost in the destruction of Lyrnessus. 17. Than Phthian oar: that is, your vessels, Phthia in Thessaly being the birthplace of Achilles. 22 BKISBIS TO ACHILLES. 18. As captive let her follow, not as wife, At wool-work no hand better : Th' Achaian spouse in beauties the most rife Will to your couch : — so let her. 19. And worthy Peleus' race, whence Jove the head, Pleasing to Nereus too : While we, subservient slaves, plying the thread, Work off the distaff clew. 20. Let not your wife to hard dominion bear : Meseems her aspect lowers : Not in your presence cuff and rend my hair, You joking,-- -" Once 'twas ours/' 21. . Let be : so here you leave me not to expire : At that my spirits freeze. What wilt ? Atrides now laments his ire : Greece crouches at your knees. 22, Subdue your anger, chief who conquer all Fell Hector's rage oppose. To arms, Achilles, first true love recall ! Mars aiding, rout the foes ! 19. Worthy Peleus' race, tvhencc Jove the head. yEgina, daughter of Asopus, king of Bceotia, conceived, by Jupiter, iEacus, who begat Peleus the father of Achilles. Pleasing to Nereus too. Nercus is one of the most ancient of the sea deities. Ey his wife Doris he had fifty daughters called the Nereides, of whom Thetis, the mother of Achilles, was one. 20. Once 'tivas ours. Once she and all her charms were mine. 21. Let be. Let it even be so. What wilt? What would you have P 22. First true love recall. First recall mc who am your true lover. BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. 23 23. For me you chafed, let me your anger calm : Its cause be its surcease. Let pride, a wife contented, feel no qualm : iEnides armed for his. 2i. Althea, whom of brethren he bereft, Damned him : the tale you know : A war was tken ; he, proud, his armour left, Kefused to strike a blow. 25. Solely his wife prevailed ; too happy she ! My words are empty air. No envy mine, who aped no wife's degree When called the bed to share : 26. Once, it reminds me, mistress termed, I said, " For that name still more slave/ Now, by the reverend bones of him that 's dead, Which lie in ill-closed grave ; — 23. Let pride, a wife contented, feel no qualm. Let your pride feel uo compunction for having given way to a wife. JEnides armed for his, and the two following verses. JEnides or Meleager is the son of ^Eneus, King of Calydon and Althea. The fates presided at his birth, and promised an illustrious career ; but Atropos, one of the three, limited the duration of his life to that of a log of wood then burning on the fire. His mother, Althea, sprang immediately to the fire and snatch'd out the half-burnt brand, which she preserved with religious care. The most renowned of this hero's exploits is the Calydonian hunt after a monstrous boar with which the goddess Diana had afflicted the country, in punishment of some slight done to her deity. Meleager in this hunt slew the beast, and presented its spoils to Antiope, whom he loved. His uncles, jealous of this, would deprive Antiope of the skin : hence a combat, in which Meleager killed his uncles. This drew on him the imprecations of his mother, and caused him to refuse his aid on their city being attacked, but by the entreaties of his wife Cleopatra, he armed and repelled the invader. 25. Nor envy mine. Nor is envy mine, nor am I envious on that account. 26. Now by the reverend bones of Mm that's dead. Her husband Mynes, already mentioned in note to verse 12. Which lie in ill-closed grave. Buried with the mass on the field of battle. 24 BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. 27. By the three spirits of my brothers slain, Who with their country died ; — By both our heads which side by side have lain And by that sword we've tried j 28. From the Mycenian is Briseis free : This solemnly she'll swear. Achilles would an infidelity. — Ah ! were it fit to dare 29. Inquire, " My lord, hath he no love joy found ?" He'd pause for a reply. The Greeks have heard his lute's complaining sound Adoring some bright eye. SO. And to the question, Why refuse the fight ? " 'Tis music. War 's a bore. " Safer in beauty's arms with finger light " The trembling chords run o'er, ol. " Than sword or battle-axe to strain the hand, " Or casque encase the hair." Yet formerly you loved the warlike band, Their glorious deeds to share. 28. These four lines render two of the Latin text. The Mycenian, Agamemnon. Achilles would an infidelity. Achilles would rather that I had com- mitted an infidelity. BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. 25 32. 'Gainst me alone do feats of war delight ? Dies glory with my soil? The gods forbid ! Fall Hector in the fight ! Be he your valour's foil ! 33. Oh Greeks, Briseis send her lord to call, Kisses her words among : Shell more effect than Phoenix, Ajax, all ; More than Ulysses' tongue. 34. 'Tis much in well-known arms to clasp the neck : The eye to say, " I'm here." Though dire, as Thetis' waves as slow to reck, You'd yield to one soft tear. 35. (So may your father, Peleus, fill his day : Like you may Pyrrhus shine !) Oh, brave Achilles, turn me not away ; Let not Briseis pine. 36. Is your love weary ? Nay, then welcome fate. She cares no more to live. From you alone her health can emanate : Give hope, and life you give. 32. 'Gainst me alone do feats of ivar delight? alluding to the con- quest of her country, already mentioned. 33. Phoenix, &c. have been noted, verse 7. 34. Thetis, noted, verse 14. 35. Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. See Letter VIII., Hermione to Orestes. B 26 BKISEIS TO ACHILLES. 37. Of hope bereft, Briseis joins her kin. 'Twere poor to answer, " Do f And needless too ; for, thrust a dagger in, There's blood yet left for you. 38. Thrust home that blade which, but Minerva Had struck Atrides dead. [cared, Ah ! rather give me life : when foe you spared, Has love less merited ? 39. Troy teems with higher game, worthier to slay ; Send foes to their long home. But to Briseis, or you go or stay, By master's right say, " Come/' 37. Briseis joins her kin, who, as we have seen, verses 12 and 13, are all dead by the hand of Achilles. 38. But Minerva cared. Were it not that Minerva took care to pre- vent you. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and war, watched over the interests of the Greeks, and withheld Achilles from harming Aga- memnon. When foe you spared. When you were our enemy you spared my life. LETTER IV. PELEDRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. Argument. Theseus, the son of iEgeus, having overcome the minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete, was accompanied in his immediate flight by Ariadne andPluedra, the two daughters of Minos and Pasiphae, the King and Queen, with promise to espouse Ariadne for the help she had afforded him in his undertaking. But admonished by Bacchus at Xaxos, or as some say at Chios, where they had anchored by the way, he sailed, leaving Ariadne behind, and afterwards married Phaedra. She, during an absence of Theseus, became enamoured of Hippolytus, her husband's son by Hippolyte, the most renowned of the Amazons. The youth, being insensible to her advances, and wholly addicted to the sports of the field, she addresses this letter, declaring to him her illicit love, and conjuring him to accept a union with her. 1. Health, that with thee unkind herself would Thesid, let Phaedra send. [need, Dumb characters can do no harm ; then read : May be to please they tend. 2. Secrets thus told o'er land and sea are sped : A foe will read a foe. Essaying thrice to speak, thrice sound lay dead: Accents denied to flow. 1. TJiesid, or Thesides, Hippolytus, son of Theseus. Dumb characters, the silent letters of the alphabet which compose her letter, B 2 28 PHAEDRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 3. Pudour with love, when feasible, ally: They write who dare not say. What love demands unsafely we deny: The very gods obey. 4. I hesitated long : Love whispered, " Write ; " Hard heart will yet join hand/' Aid, Love, and as our vitals now ignite, Let not his soul withstand. 5. No plighted vow will I to falsehood turn : Pure fame yet stands entire. Ask else. Late love is violent ; we burn, Consuming in desire. 6. The new-worked steer but ill abides the yoke, The unhandled colt the rein. So the new heart will sore endure love's stroke, Sorely my soul its pain. Those who sin young play safe their practised It pains where love is late. [game : Thee wait the premises of maiden fame : To both one joy one fate. 8. 'Tis sweet to cull the orchard's early store, The primal rose to gain : But if that candour w T hich we faultless wore Be 7iow to mark with stain, 5. No plighted voic. No vow that I shall plight to you. Pure fame yet stands ait ire. Xo reproach can be made on my con- duct till this moment. PH/EDRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 29 9. 'Tis well : we nobly burn. Unworthy flame Were worse than lawless love ; And were heaven's queen to cede her god, I'd claim Hippolytus 'fore Jove. 10. Wouldst believe it ? new delights allure me now : To hunt the savage beast : Delia's my goddess, of the silver bow, Imbibing still your taste. 11. For me the wood, to chase the flying hart, To cheer the houjids along, To hurl with steady hand the quivering dart, To lie the woods among. 12. Now to direct the car my virile pride is, Making the coursers fly : Now mad, like Bacchus-ridden Eleleides, Or those who drum and cry : lo. Or those again mid nymphs and satyrs thrown, Touched by their power divine. All these are told me, once the fury gone, Whom love-flames undermine. 9. 'Tis well: ice nobly burn. There is no harm done, because I burn for a noble object, Hippolytus. 10. Delia, a name of Diana or Luna, the moon, goddess of field sports. Imbibing. I who imbibe or instinctively adopt! 12. Eleleides, the same as bacchants, women worshippers of Bacchus, Elelcus being a name of Bacchus from the cry Eleleu, which is the same as the Hebraic Hallelu, used in celebrating his mysteries. Bacchus-ridden implies excited by the libations of those ceremonies. Or those who drum and cry. Alluding to the worship of Cybele, thought the same with Ceres, goddess of harvest, whose ceremonies were also performed with various strange noises. 13. Or those again mid nymphs and satyrs. There was a belief, with respect to nymphs and satyrs, similar to our vulgar notions about fairies. Whoever had the misfortune to fall in the way of their revels became enchanted and moved by a certain rage. 30 PHuEDKA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 14. Haply our race with love's excess is curst ; 'Tis Venus' tribute paid : Jove won Europa, of our race the first* The god a bull portrayed. 15. Poor Pasiphae, strange infatuated, A monster yeaned to view. The traitor, Theseus, Ariadne led A deadly maze safe through. 16. Myself, in fine, by right of Minos' race, Am born like fate to see. Two sisters in one house affection place : One Theseus smit, you me. 14. 9 Tis Venus' tribute paid. Venus bore a grudge against all the race of the sun, from whom Phaedra, by her mother, descends, on account of that luminary having exposed her intrigue with Mars. Hence she supposes Venus to inflict inordinate and unhappy loves on the whole race. Jove tvon Europa, of our race the first, Jupiter, when king of Crete, became enamour'd of the beautiful Europa, daughter of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, and carried her off in a vessel whose ensign was a bull. Hence the fable that the god assumed the form of a bull, mixed in the flocks of Agenor, attracted the attention of his daughter, who caressed the beautiful animal and mounted on his back. The bull made towards the sea, took water, and conveyed his prize to Crete, where he resumed his own form and won the young lady's heart. The fruit of his amour was Minos, Phaedra's father. A bull portrayed. Appeared in the semblance of a bull. 15. Poor JPasiphae, strange infatuated. Pasiphae was the wife of Minos and mother of Phaedra. Her infatuation was that of conceiving an unnatural affection for a white bull, a desire inflicted on her by Neptune because Minos had refused to sacrifice the animal on his altar. She accomplished her wishes by the help of Daedalus, an Athenian artist, the most inventive genius of his time. (See Letter XIX., note 13.) The fruit of this enormous amour was the Minotaur, a monster half man half bull, whom Minos, to hide his wife's shame, kept at Crete in an inextricable labyrinth. The traitor, Theseus, Ariadne led. Ariadne led the traitor Theseus. Traitor on account of his conduct to her sister Ariadne, by whose clew he had escaped from the labyrinth. (See Ariadne to Theseus, Letter X.) 16. Minos' race. Prom Europa, the first of her race, to herself the last, she has shown that all the women have either burned with unlawful love or been victims to love-treason. One Theseus smit, you me. Theseus inspired one with love ; Ariadne, you have smitten me in like manner. PHAEDRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 31 17. Theseus, Thesides, win two sister hearts, A double trophy gained. Would, when you came to the Eleusian parts, In Gnossus I had remained. 18. I loved you many a day before, but now, — Oh heart ! oh dizzy head ! — Milk white your dress, roses confined your brow Glowing sun-umbrated. 19. What many call a rough severe aspect, Determined Phaedra deems. Avaunt those fopling youth, like maidens deck'd ; Plain dress the man beseems, 20. How well your bold, dust-sprinkled brows befit, And flowing locks behind ; Or when in vigorous bound the steed you sit, And close curvetting wind ; 21, Or when, intent, I watch you, Mars-like, wield The ponderous battle spear ; Or the broad javelin hurl in sportive field ; — Your every act is dear. 17. Theseus, Thesides. That is, Theseus and Thesides, Hippolytus, son of Theseus. Eleusian, from Eleusis, a city near Athens. Gnossus, a city of Crete and Phaedra's home. 18. Milk white your dress, roses confined your brow. The favourite banqueting dress in remote times of Greece, as sung by Anacreon. Sun-umbrated, sun-burnt. 32 PHiEDRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 22. Leave but that roughness in the mountain wood, Phaedra needs milder chase : High-girt Diana duly paid what good, And Venus' turn disgrace ? 23. Eest to the limbs you cannot safe refuse, New force and verve to bring : Unbend, for Cynthia's panoply you use, The bow to spare the string. 24. Cephalus was great in wood-craft ; when he shot, Innumerous fell the slain. For him Aurore her aging flame forgot, Nor loved she quite in vain. 25. Venus among the oaks Adonis led, On the first sod reclined. CEnides burned for Atalanta's bed : To her his chase consigned. 22. High-girt Diana duly paid what good, and Venus' turn dis- grace? What is gained by sacrificing all your time to field sports in honour of Diana and leave no moments for honouring Venus by love ? High-girt is of double meaning : first, it may imply the girdle tightly braced for hunting ; or secondly, her prim character, as we say stiff- laced, starched. 23. Cynthia's panoply. Diana's armour, the hunting weapons and dress. 24. Cephalus was great in wood-craft. Cephalus, son of Dioncus king of Thessaly, remarkable for his faithful attachment to Procris, daughter of Erechtheus king of Athens. Being a great hunter he was an early riser, and so handsome that Aurora was smitten with his beauty and bore him off. Whatever favours the goddess may have gained from the young sportsman,— and the text implies that she did gain some, — he remained faithful to first love and returned to his Procris. Her aging fame forgot. Her husband, Tithonus, son of Laomedon and brother to Priam king of Troy. He in his youth had been snatched off by Aurora similarly to Cephalus and became her husband. He after- wards begged to be made immortal, and, by his wife's interest at the court of J upiter, the favour was granted him. Put he had forgotten to ask perpetual youth, and weight of years wearied him of life. The god- dess, who could not make an immortal die, changed him to a grass- hopper. 25. Venus among the oalcs Adonis led. Adonis was the incestuous offspring of Myrrha with her father, Cinyras king of Cyprus. He was PH.EDEA TO HXPPOLYTUS. 33 26. Cited be our loves too : Cypris away, Blithe were the woods no more. Myself will come, nor shall the hills effray, Nor rock nor fanged boar. 27. Two seas their billows dash on th' isthmian strand : You hear both waters moan. We'll at Troezene live, Pittheus' land, More pleasing than my own. 28. Long the Neptunian hero will abide With his Pirithous ; Theseus prefers, no verity to hide, His friend to both of us. 29. Nor this the only wrong of him be spoke : We've both far worse to say : My brother's limbs with gnarled club he broke ; My sister cast away. carried off by Venus on account of his extraordinary beauty. Being passionately fond of hunting, the goddess cautioned him against wild boars, and at last he met his death by one. (This mishap is sweetly sung in an ode attributed to Anacreon.) Venus wept, and changed the corpse into an anemone. His mother, Myrrha, who had fled to avoid her father's vengeance, became after death the tree which bears her name, the myrrh-tree. (Enides. Meleager, son of (Eneus, mentioned Letter III., verse 23. His chase. The spoils won in the chase. . 26. Cypris away. Cypris or Cypria are names of Venus, since that goddess is said to have "risen from the sea near the isle of Cyprus. The name here stands for beauty, woman. 27. The isthmian strand. The shores of the isthmus of Corinth. Pittheus, the maternal grandfather of Theseus, More pleasing than my own, the land of Crete. 28. Neptunian hero. Theseus, son ofvEgeus, is grandson of Xeptune. WUh his Pirithous. The close friendship of Theseus and Pirithous is cited like that of Orestes and Pylades. 2?. My brother's limbs. The 3Iinotaur, already mentioned. My sister cast away. Ariadne abandoned like a wreck on the isle of Xaxos. (See Letter X.) B 5 34 PHiEDKA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 30. Thee bore the valiantest axe-wielding maid. Well worthy each the other. And where is she ? Dead on great Theseus' blade ; Nor saved the son the mother, 31. They by no wedded vow connect : and why ? That you might be no heir. From me he gave you kin, whom all not I But he ordained to rear. 32. Would rather, dearest, than your right to bar, Both birth and mother dead ! Go now : the worthy father's chamber spare, So aptly vacuated. 33. Nor, for a step-mother adores her son, Let your soul feel dismay. Such worn-out piety is well-nigh done : 'Twas old in Saturn's day. 34. Jove wills for good and sanctions every tie. Who his own sister led. 30. The valiantest axe-wielding maid. Hippolytc, queen of the Amazons : the battle-axe was their distinguishing weapon. Bead on great Theseus' blade. It suits her to affirm that Hyppolyte died by the hand of Theseus ; but she is said to have been killed by an Amazon, when fighting on his side in the Amazonian war. Nor saved the son the mother. Nor did the father's love for the child save its mother from her fate. 31. Wot I but he ordained to rear. We are content now-a-days to drown " kittens and blind puppies ;" the remoter ancients made no scruple of putting infants to death if they were blessed with too many. 32. Both birth and mother. Both the child and myself, an hyperbole of disinterestedness. By whom disherited. By whom you are disinherited. 34. Jove wills for good. Whatever Jupiter wills is for the good of humanity. Who his own sister led to the altar. Jupiter and Juno were own PH/EDRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 35 Then surely knit with lawful bond am I, By Cypria sponsated. 35. Nor hard the fault to slur : ask Venus how : The filial name shall hide. Our warm embraces seen, warm praises flow ; Fit love on either side. 36. For you no care, no nightly door : you have No keeper to deceive. Same house as wont : an open kiss you gave, Same open kiss receive. 37. Safe then my love^ nay more, eulogia due, Though on my couch you were. Then cease delay. Oh promise to be true, "Your heart so Cupid spare ! 38. I condescend as suppliant to pray : What will not pride endure ? So confidently firm not to give way : Love, love, in nothing sure ! brother and sister, children of Saturn and Ops, who were begotten of Caelum and Terra (heaven and earth). But Phaedra's instance is rather forced, since the primal age had no choice, but brother and sister, to make their matches. By Cypria sponsated. Given in marriage by Venus herself, who in- spires me with love for you. 35. Nor hard t7iefav.lt to slur. It will not be hard to disguise our fault. The filial name shall hide. Your name as my son will hide all. Fit love on either side. Our love will be regarded but as filial and maternal affection. 36. For you no nightly door. You will not have to enter my house by stealth at night. 36 PHiEDEA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 39. Kneeling, my uplift hands beseech, oh, yield ! Love to all form is blind, Is shameless. Modesty deserts the field. Oh, bend that haughty mind ! 40. What boots my father, Minos, ocean sways ? My line from Jove by birth ? My mother's genitor invest in rays, Whose car directs the earth ? 41. Love levels all. Let me for them entreat : Spare, if not me, spare mine. We hold a dotal land, Jove's isle of Crete, Hippolytus, as thine. 42. Yield thy fierce soul. A bull's my mother broke : Wilt be more hard than he ? By Venus, my great god, I thee invoke : So love be mild to thee ! 43. So the swift goddess in the woods thee guard And aid the chase to near : So may the fawns and satyrs round thee ward : The boar fall to thy spear. 40. What boots my father, Minos, ocean sways'! Minos, the King of Crete, being powerful at sea, is here said, like Britannia, to " rule the waves." My line, from Jove by birth ? My mother's genitor invest in rays. Phaedra was of very high nobility, having Jupiter for her paternal grandfather, Minos being the son of Jupiter and Europa, and the Sun or Apoilo for her grandfather on her mother's side, 42. A bull's my mother broke. Pasiphae, already mentioned. My great god. Of all the gods her whom I first adore. 43. So the swift goddess. Diana, goddess of the chase. So may the fawns and satyrs round ihcc ward. May the forest deities have care of you in hunting. PH^DRA TO HIPPOLYTUS. 87 44. So may the nymphs, though thou despise them all, From burning thirst thee keep. To words I add my tears. Oh, read the scroll, And fancy how I weep. 44. So may the nymphs. The wood and water nymphs. LETTER V. CENONE TO PARIS. Argument. Hecuba, wife of Priam king of Troy, just before the birth of her son Paris, dreamed that she brought forth a burning brand which set all Troy on fire. Priam, alarmed at this, consulted the oracle, and received for answer that the son to be born would cause the destruction of Troy. He immediately ordered that the infant should be destroyed as soon as it came to light. Now Hecuba, when delivered of her son, was moved by maternal affection, and privately sent the child to be nursed by the wife of one of the king's shepherds, giving him the name Paris. Grown up, and himself become a shepherd, he formed an attachment with the wood nymph (Enone, and married her. After this, there occurred a contest of beauty among the three great goddesses Juno, Minerva, and Venus, who had found a golden apple bearing this inscription : To the most beautiful. Their dispute was by Jupiter referred to Paris for judgment. The three goddesses, escorted by Mercury, appear before the young shepherd. Juno tries to bribe his favour by the offer of power, Minerva by that of skill in war. Venus offers him the most beautiful woman in the world, and to her he awards the apple. Paris, after this, is acknow- ledged by his father, Priam, returns home to Troy and soon prepares an expedition for Sparta, where he seduces and carries off the beautiful Helen, wife of King Menelaus, and conveys her to Troy. (Enone, at news of this, complains in the following letter of his perfidy to her, strives to convince Paris that the safety of his country, as well as his own honour, demand that Helen be sent back to the Greeks. 1. Will Paris read? or will his bride object ? Read, Paris^ read it through. Though no Mysenian hand the words connect, They breathe a love too true. 2. CEnone's in the Phrygian woods, thy spouse, Who fain would saj^ still thine. What god hath set his hate against our vows ? What fault, alas ! is mine ? 1. The first two lines of the Latin are rendered by four. His bride. Helen. Mysenian, Grecian ; the city of Mysene denoting the country of Mene- laus and Agamemnon. CENONE TO PARIS. S9 3. Ills merited we bear, and in good part, No pain unjust is mild. I deigned accept your humbly proffered heart, A stately river's child. 4. Priamides though now, poor servant then, A nymph descends to wed. How oft as shepherds in the shady glen Lay we, turf-carpeted ! 5. Or when, hoar frost surprising us afield, We sought the lowly roof, Who taught what coverts hold the game con- cealed ? Where wolf-cubs lodge aloof? 6. Your mate in craft, the copse with springes lined, Or coursing through the glade. Oft now I read, ensculped on beachen rind, CEnone, by your blade. And, with the trunk, QEnone's name expands : Oh tree, the fruit retain ! There is a poplar, by a brook it stands. Memorial of the twain ; 3. A stately river's child. The nymph (Enone was daughter of the river-god Cebrenus. 4. Priamides though now. Though you are now called Priamides or son of Priam. This mark of nobility Paris could not bear till he became the king's acknowledged son. Lay ice. Have we lain. 6. Your mate in craft. Wood-craft, sporting. 7. Tlie fruit. The writing. 40 GENONE TO PARIS. Its ample trunk, rooted at water's edge, This distichon doth show : When Paris lives false to (Enones pledge May Xanthus upward flow ! 9. Back, Xanthus, back ! thy waters homeward roll : Paris is false and lives ! That day declared my fate ; then felt my soul The chill suspicion gives, 10. When Juno, Venus, and, more decent armed, Minerve unveiled to thee. Oh my poor heart ! no blood its arteries warmed Once told the mystery. 11. Frighted, our aged men and wives I ask ; All deem the omen curst. Soon firs are hewn, keels laid, and, done the task, Launches the billows burst. 12. Parting you wept, — real tears, you can't deny ; Mean love ! now more than past ! You wept and saw my own o'erteeming eye : Our mingled grief flowed fast. 8. Xanthus, a renowned river near Troy. 10. Wlien Juno, Venus, and- Minerva unveiled to thee. Exposed their naked beauties to your judgment, as mentioned in the Argument. Minerva, she adds, was more decent when clad in armour. 11. Soon firs are hewn, to prepare a fleet for the departure of Paris for Lacedscmon. 12. Mean love, the love of me you now deem mean. Long as in sight. As long as your vessel remains in sight. CENONE TO PARIS. 41 13. Less clings the parasital vine to the staff Than you my neck entwine. Eating foul wind, you made the seamen laugh : The wind was most benign. 14. How oft returned, one more last kiss to win ! How faint you gasped " Adieu V Flutters the sail in fine ; the oars dash in ; You glide the waters through. 15. Long as in sights unswerving rests my eye : Its tears the shingle wet. I pray the Nereids your return be nigh ; Nigh ! ay, to my regret ! 16. You come then for a stranger, not for me ? Alas, and of what kind ? — There is a peak overlooks the open sea, Breaking the flood behind : 17. Thence first I recognise your sail, and now To plunge me in am prone ; Meanwhile there shines a purple on your prow, A purple not your own ! 18. Nearing, they slacken sail and strike the shore : Ye gods ! a woman's face ! Nor that enough, my madness will see more : She clings to your embrace ! 15. Xereids. Sea goddesses, daughters of Xereus and Doris. 17. Pin~ple, tint colour denoting nobility. 42 CENONE TO PARIS, 19. Twas tlien I beat my breast, and with my nail Furrov/d my deluged cheek ; Filled holy Ida with phrenetic wail ; Then my lone cave I seek. 20. So Helen weep, deserted by her friend ! Who bring the ill should bear : Well fit you such as o'er the ocean wend Leaving at home despair. 21. GEnone, yon then poor, the herds who drove, Was sole the poor man's spouse. Wealth, fame she prizes not ; nor does it move To be of Priam's house. 22. Not that old Priam would a nymph reject, Nor Hecuba despise : GEnone, a great matron once elect, Her mien needs no disguise. 23. Nor for that under elms we lay, retrude One fit for purple bed. Briefly, with whom no war ensues but good, Averting public dread. 19. Holy Ida. Mount Ida ; holy, as being often visited by the gods, and more particularly for the ceremonies there performed to Cybele. 20. So Helen iceep. So may Helen weep. Leaving at home despair. Helen has deserted Menelaus, and Paris (Enone, both disconsolate. 22. Not that old Priam would a nymph reject. The nymphs belong- ing to the class of immortals were deemed to confer high honour in espousing a simple terrestrial. 23. Averting public dread. The news being already known that all Greece was in arms. CENONE TO PARIS. 43 24. The fugitive is claimed with hostile arms : Proud dowry for your couch ! She must to Greece again with all her charms. Ask Hector : hell avouch. 25. What saith Antenor ? What doth Priam say ? Their age men use to trust. A sorry match with Menelas you play ; Shameful your cause, his just ! 26. Nor deem Lacoena faithful, if you are wise, So prompt with you to fly. Loud as the husband now dishonour cries, As loudly you will cry. 27. Cureless to art is wounded chastity : Pudour once soiled is dead. Atrides, whom she loved precedently, Enjoys a lonely bed. 28. Andromache in Hector bless' d I call : Myself were of her kind. Thou, lighter than the leaves which sapless fall, Art blown with every wind. 25. Antenor, a Trojan prince, then old, who was for restoring Helen to the Greeks. Shameful your cause. Yonr cause being shameful, his cause being just. 26. Lacoena, the Laconian Helen. 28. Andromache, the wife of Hector, a model, like Penelope, of the good and faithful spouse. 44j (ENONE TO PARIS. 29. More forceless thou than ears of corn which hang Siccate in tepid air. Remember how inspired Cassandra sang, All floating loose her hair : 30. " What dost, GEnone, sowing in the sand ? " Ploughing an arid plain ? " The Grecian heifer will destroy this land, a Gods, avert Ilion's bane I" 31. " Immerge her filthy vessel in the wave ! " Woes, woes o'er Troy impend ! " They bare her off, unceasing still to rave: My hair stood up on end. 32. Too true Cassandra's prophecy to me : Heifer my grove hath reft. Yet she's a harlot, lovely as she be : For him her gods are left. , 33. One Theseus, which it was I little wot, Bore her away, and strove, — Could he without success, so young and hot ? — Where learnt I this ? — I love. 29. Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba. She was a prophetess, and deemed half mad. 30. The Grecian heifer, Heleon of Sparta. 32. Heifer my grove hath reft. The heifer, Helen, has destroyed the peace of my grove, bereft me of my peace of mind. For him her gods, her household gods ; her home. (ENONE TO PARIS. 45 U. 'Twas force, veiling the fault, you wish to say. Oft rapt is willing rapt. CEnone true to her false lord will stay, In his own guise entrapp'd. 35. Two Satyrs, I lay covert, nor in vain, Sought me with rapid stride : And fir-crowned Faunus too, along the chain Whose master peak is Ide. 36. Troy's builder loved me, he for music famed : Tore him by force I fail : Yet struggling, at his face sore scratches aimed With rudely vengeful nail. 37. Nor claimed or gold or gems on Cynthius' part : Shame were in such demand. He gave me knowledge in the healing art, Chirurgic skill of hand. 38. Mine ev'ry herb and root the forests yield, For sanant virtue known. Alas, that love is by no medicine healed ! Art fails me : even my own. 35. Fir-croicned Faunus. Faunus., like Pan, was reputed a chief among the Satyrs. 36. Troy's builder. Apollo, who is said to have raised the walls of Troy by the harmony of his lyre. (See note 17, Letter I.) 37. Cyniliius and Cynthia were names of Apollo and Diana, from Mount Cynthus in Delos, the place of their great temple, and seat of their mysteries. 46 (ENONE TO PARIS. 39. Pherseas, first in therapeutic love, Was stricken by my flame. Me earth nor heaven can sanity restore : No hope but in thy name. 40. Thou canst : I merit. Oh, then stand between Despair and my poor breast. Thine I was once, now am, have ever been, And ever pray to rest. 39. Pherceas, like Apollo, was expelled from lieaven by the wrath of Jupiter, and, like him, became a shepherd. He devoted himself to medicine, as Apollo to the fine arts in general. LETTER VI. HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. Argument, Pelias, the son of Neptune by Tyro, a princess, afterwards married to Cretheus, king of Iolchos, usurped that throne at the death of the monarch to the exclusion of JEson, his half-brother, and the rightful heir as son of Cretheus. The new king was warned by an oracle, that he would be in danger of death if ever, in going to sacrifice to his father, he should meet a man barefoot. After a time, it happened that, going to perform this sacrifice, he met Jason, son of his half-brother iEson, and consequently presumptive heir to the throne of Iolchos, who had lost his shoes in the mud of the river Anaurus. Pelias then, mindful of the oracle, persuaded Jason to go to Colchos in quest of a certain golden fleece of magic virtue, and guarded in a supernatural manner, hoping that he would never return, since the enterprise was deemed too much for human strength. Jason, possessing magnanimous courage, willingly undertook the task. To that end he assembled a company of the most enterprising youth of Greece, and set out on a voyage, such as had never been attempted by the Greeks before. The fleet on its way brought up at Lemnos, where previously a tragedy had been done, similar to that of the daughters of Danaus : the women of the place had killed all the men. Our heroes were hospitably received by Hyp- sipyle, the queen, who from this general slaughter had saved her father, Thoas. Here the Argonauts remained two years ; formed connections with the women. Jason attached himself to Hypsipyle and married her. Roused at length by the complaints of some of his comrades, more active or less attached than himself, he resolved to depart, and set sail, leaving Hypsipyle pregnant. They arrived safe at Colchos the end of their voyage, where, by the art of Medea, a great sorceress, daughter of iEetes, king of the place, and who had fallen in love with him, Jason overcame all obstacles, a sleepless dragon, bulls breathing fire, and other dangers. He obtained, in fine, the golden > fleece, and sailed off with his prize, Medea herself abandoning all to accompany him. Hypsipyle, in this letter, indignant at Medea's coming, sarcas- tically congratulates Jason on his safe arrival, accuses him of having treacherously supplanted her by Medea, and ends by pronouncing her malediction on both of them. 1, In Thessaly we hear your Argo moored, Rich with the golden fleece. Accept, if such may be ; a greeting word. Was't much to write me this ? 1. In Thessaly, your native country. 48 HYPSTPYLE TO JASON. 2. For not returning as proposed, the wind Might feasibly not serve. Howe'er it blow, a word may be consigned : " All hail " we might deserve. 3. Whence comes it fame is foremost to apprise Mars' oxen take the yoke ? That from seed cast grim warriors arise And fall by mutual stroke ? 4. Whence that a dragon, guardian of a fleece, Was mastered by your act ? Oh ; could I set the hard of belief at ease, Saying, " He writes the fact." 5. But wherefore of mere laxity complain ? Great is my task if thine. A murderess, by report, you entertain, In that bed plighted mine. 6. Yet love is credulous : would men could saj r My husband false impeached. 3. To apprise, to apprise me that, &c. 4. Mars' oxen take the yoke. The conditions proposed by (Eiitcs for his rendering np the golden fleece were three : first, certain wild bulls sacred to Mars, and of preternatural power and fierceness, should be tamed and brought to the yoke ; second, that serpents' teeth were to be planted, from which armed men would arise to the destruction of the sower; and, lastly, that a dragon, immediate guardian of the fleece, and which never closed its eyes in sleep, should be surprised or destroyed. 5. A murderess, by report, yoti entertain. This is Medea, mentioned in the Argument, and of whom more will be found in Letter XII., from her to Jason. In her flight from home to follow Jason she took with her a young brother, the boy Absyrtus ; but to arrest her father's pursuit, who was following closely, she killed the child, cut him to pieces, and strewed his limbs on the road. The eld. man's attention thus horridly occupied, she escaped to the fleet. HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. 49 A guest late come from an Hsemonian bay Had scarce our threshold reached : 7. Instant, " How is my Jason ? " I inquire ; And, seeing his downcast eye, Reiterate, mad with ills that may transpire, " Lives he ? or must I die ? " " He lives/' quoth he. I make the speaker swear, Doubting his very vow. Appeased, then hear him all your acts declare ; As, how Mars' oxen plough : 9. How serpents' eeth are sown for seed of life, And armed men enate : The earth-born race, extinct by civil strife, Fill their ephemeral fate. 10. " The serpent slain," I cry, "is Jason well?" With hope and fear combined. In order, thus continuing still to tell, He shows your wavering mind. 11. Where, where is plighted faith ? Where wedded Torch worthier funeral pile ! [vows ? Ours was no stealthy match good Juno knows ; Hymen approved the while. 6. Hcemonian. Thcssalian, from Mount Hamius. 10. He shows your wavering mind. Relates to me your amour with Medea. 11. Torch worthier funeral pile. The flambeau being used in funeral processions as well as in marriage ceremonies. Hymen approved the while. That is, our marriage was performed with all due ceremony. C 50 HYPSIP7LE TO JASON. 12. Juno nor Hymen, but Erynnys brought Ill-omened torch to me. Would Argo I'd ne'er seen nor Argonaut, Or ne'er been seen of thee. 13. Here was no ram in golden wool arrayed, Nor iEetes' palace here. I had resolved (but adverse fate betrayed) To drive your troop elsewhere. 14. The wives of Lemnos well can overcome : "With them secure I lay. A stranger wins my heart, invades my home, Two summers there to stay : 15. 'Twas the third spring when, forced to take ship- Commingling tears with mine, [board, You said, " Hypsipyle, the Fates accord " Return, I'm ever thine. 16. " Live that dear pledge, the solace of our soul, " We're parents of one fruit." This said, a flood of tears wound up the whole : Your parting grief was mute. 17. Last you ascend the sacred vessel's side : The canvass holds the wind : The waters ceding, wider and more wide The space you leave behind. 12. Juno nor Hymen, but Erynnys. Neither Juno nor Hymen, the protectors of marriage, were there, but Erynnys, the fury, to bring curse and misfortune. 14. The toives of Lemnos tvell can overcome. Alluding to the deed mentioned in the Argument, when the women of that city killed their men. HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. 51 18. My bosom bathed in tears, I mount on high A turret^ in the hope To extend my view, and there through humid eye Obtain a wider scope. 19. There utter prayers and vows with fear oblate, Now due to th' gods above. We pay ; Medea gets. Ah, cruel fate ! Offended, still to love ! 20. Rich gifts we bring for losing you alive ; Burnt offerings 'gainst our peace. Surety was never mine, fearing you'd wive By iEson's act in Greece. 21. Argos my dread, unlooked-for ill befell : A foreign trull my wound ! Beauty nor merit hers to win, but spell. Dire roots in magic ground ! 22. She works to turn the struggling moon aside : Envelope Sol in gloom. Strong to bind waves, divert the flowing tide : Rocks before her give room. 23. Wont all dishevelled in the tombs to stray, Bones at the pyre to pick. She moulds the effigy of those away, Pins in their heart to stick. 19. We pay; Medea gets. I pay rich gifts in the temple, and of which Medea enjoys the advantage in possessing you, the object of my offerings and prayers. 20. uEson. His father. 21. A foreign trull. Medea. But spell. She works by incantation. 22. To envelope Sol in gloom. To cover the sun with darkness. C 2 52 HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. 24. And, horror ! love, which form and manners gain, She wins by herbs and sleight : And you can kiss and on her couch remain ? And sleep unscared the night ? 25. Even like your bulls, she makes you bear the Or like your serpents tame. ty ^; That her vile name among his deeds be spoke, She 11 mar her lover's fame. 26. Some Pelian chief her poisoning aid will quote, And suffrages obtain : Not Jason but Medea's wiles the coat O' th' golden bident gain. 27. Alcimede approves not, nor your sire, Their daughter of the north. Let her up gelid Tanais inquire A match to suit her worth. 28. Inconstant Jason, changeful as the air, How light your pledges weigh ! Mine you went hence ; mine you no longer are : The wife has had her day. 26. Some Pelian chief. Some chief of the party of Pelias, who is your enemy, and provokes dangerous enterprises to get rid of you. The coat of the golden bident. See Letter XII. verse 2, a note on the golden fleece. 27. Alcimede. Jason's mother. Their daughter of the north. Medea, whose country, Colchis, lies somewhat more north than Greece. Gelid Tanais. The river Tanais separates Asia from Europe, rises far in the north, and falls into the Euxine. The writer uses exaggera- tion in painting Medea's country as a wintry climate. So, to suit her worth, is bitter irony. HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. 53 29. Dost value birth ? high lineage to own ? Minos and Thoas mine ; And Bacchus, in whose Ariadne's crown Bright flames constellate shine. 30. Lemnos my dower, a genial soil to till, Myself the boon augment. You are father, Jason ; oh rejoice, you still Made sweet the burden sent. 31. Bless' d too in number : the dear birth is twain : Lucina graced desire. u Like whom ?" say you. They know not how to In all else like their sire. [feig 11 • 32. They my ambassadors had near been sent : Medea barred their way. Medea, worse than step-dame, ever bent New horrors to assay. 33. She who her brother's limbs abroad could strow, Would she my babies spare ? And yet with her, oh, mad by spells who grow, Hypsipyle's bed you share. 29. Minos and Thoas mine. Thoas, her father, was the son of Ariadne and Bacchus. Ariadne, as we have seen, was Minos' daughter. Bright flames constellate shine. Bacchus is said to have given Ariadne a crown composed of brilliant stars, which after her death became the constellation known by the name of the Northern Crown. 30. Lemnos my dowry. She now reigns as queen of Lemnos. 31. Lucina. Daughter of Jupiter and Juno ; or, as some think, it is a name either of Juno herself or of Diana, since she presides over child- birth. 32. Medea barred their way. The danger of Medea's wickedness was an obstacle to my sending them. 33. She who her brother's limbs abroad could strow* See note 5. 54 HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. 34. She hath a man impurely and by theft ; I holily possessed, She sold her father ; I saved mine : she left Her friends ; I Lemnian rest. 35, Is 't slight, a jilt an honest wife betrays ? By crime deserves a man ? The Lemnian deed, Jason, I blame, not praise : Grief takes what arms it can. 36. Suppose — ah, would it were ! — you both, here set Storm-driven within our bay, Hypsipyle and her twin offspring met : " Engulf me earth ! " you'd pray. 37. Before us, wretch, what face your turn would What death were then your due ? [serve? Yet you were safe, not for that you deserve, But that we are meek for you. 88. In strumpet-blood, though, both these hands I'd Your visage too, hell-bound. [dye ; Medea to Medea ! for, Jove on high Be just to justice found, 34. She sold her father. By betraying to Jason the secrets of the golden fleece, and helping him with her magic. See verse 3. I saved mine. From the general murder at Lemnos, mentioned in the Argument. She left her friends. To follow Jason. 35. The Lemnian deed. The murder of the men by the women, as noticed in the Argument. This act arose out of jealousy. Hypsipyle disapproves it, deeming it not to have had sufficient motive, yet palliates it as having arisen from grief, and brings it forward in order to show in the next verse what would be the due of Jason, who has given ample motive for revenge. 37. You were. You would be. 38. In strumpet-blood. In the blood of Medea. Hell-bound. You, Jason, who are bound by the hellish incantations of Medea. Medea to Medea. To Medea I would be a murderess like herself, and put her to death. HYPSIPYLE TO JASON. 55 39. To what Hypsipyle wails she 11 be exposed, And dearly pay her theft. As I, wife, doubly mother^ am deposed, Be she alike bereft. 40. Nor long to hold her gain, but, worse deprived, Bear far a banished life : Bad sister and bad daughter she has lived, Live she as bad a wife. 41. Land, sea denied, the air let her assay, . Front-stained with murder red : These Thoas' daughter wronged shall ever pray : Curses on both your head. 39 To what Hypsipyle wails she'll be exposed. To being deserted by Jason, a prophesy which the twelfth letter shows fulfilled, LETTER VII. DIDO TO .ENEAS. Argument. After the destruction of Troy, JEneas, the son of Venus and Anchises, having saved from the flames his household gods, his old father Anchises, and his son lulus (his wife Creusa being lost by the way), collected a fleet of twenty sail, and put to sea. Driven by tempests through many disasters along various coasts, he attained at length that of Africa, whither, according to Virgil's delightful anachronism, Dido, the daugh- ter of Belus king of Tyre, and widow of Sichoeus, priest of Hercules, had previously fled from the danger of her brother, the king Pygmalion, whose avarice had urged him to murder her husband in order to obtain possession of his vast wealth, and whose intentions towards herself were suspected. Here Dido had lately founded the city of Carthage. She received iEneas and his companions in distress with the largest hospi- tality; became deeply in love with the chief; and at length too liberal of her favours. The stay of the squadron prolonged itself indefinitely. "Warned, however, at length, by Mercury that Italy is the country allotted to him, iEneas prepares to follow his destiny, and seek the predicted shore. Dido, from whose enamoured soul no thought escapes, guesses his intention, and endeavours to dissuade him from carrying it into effect ; failing in this, she supplicates him at least to defer his departure a little longer. All her endeavours failing, she resolves to die, and addresses this last complaint to her lover that he may recognize in himself the cause of her desperate act. As the poor swan, fate-called, to Meander in vain Pours forth his dying lay, Elissa calls to thee ; hopeless of gain, To adverse gods we pray. 2. Of honour, peace, and pudic shame bereft, Words lost we scathless bear. You surely go ; Dido as sure is left. Sails, oaths, are food for air. 1. Elissa, another name of Dido. 2. Words lost. Those which I now write. DIDO TO .ENEAS. 57 3. Canvass and vows alike you give the wind For far- off Italy: My Carthage and her wealth no favour find, Nor throned security. 4. You fly what 's done, seeking what 's yet to do. Seek ground ! 'Tis here your own. Find it elsewhere, who is to give it you ? Give ! to a chief unknown ! Another love, another Dido, calls, Another to deceive. When wilt a Carthage citadel and walls In Italy achieve ? 6. Or be it done, let all to fortune turn, Where love like mine attain ? As a wax flambeau, sulphur-primed, to burn ? As incense in the fane ? 7. ./Eneas ever present to my thought ; iEneas night and day : But, deaf to favour^ were I not distraught He better were away. 8. Yet I 'd not hurt him : rather work him bliss : Love has nor bound nor laws. Oh spare me, Venus ; his hard brother kiss : Make Cupid fend my cause. 3. Nor throned security. Nor the secure throne of Carthage which I offer you finds any favour in your sight. 6. Let all to fortune turn. Suppose all to turn out fortunately. 8. His hard brother. Cupid, the god of Love, his brother, as being also the son of Venus, is always represented as enjoying the pain he inflicts. c 5 58 DIDO TO ^NEAS. 9. Grant him I love and still to love am fain : Let him my ache remove. Oh, blind ! the image flitted through my brain : Love-born, he 11 never love ! 10. Of mountains he or rugged rocks enate, By savage tigers bred ; Or of that sea the winds now agitate, Whither anon he's led. 11. Whither ! in winter ! Winter is my friend : How Eurus moves the flood ! What you might give, the gentler tempests lend, Oh, more than ocean rude ! 12. Are we so dread, unjust, that, risking fate, O'er the wild sea you fly ? J Tis exercising a too costly hate If to lose me you die, 13. The storm will cease, and Triton o'er the main His sea-blue coursers wheel. Oh, like the storm, be you appeased again : You will, if not of steel. 14 Trust to the waves, knowing what waves can do ! How had you never tried ? Even to smooth sea, who let their halser go A thousand ills abide. 9. Grant him I love. Grant me possession of him whom I love. Love-bom. Being the son of Venus, Queen of Love. 13. Triton, the son of Neptune. He had great power over the sea, and could at all times calm its waves. 14. Hoiv had you never tried. What would bo your rashness, had you not the experience of danger ? TVho let their halser go. Those who, &c. DIDO TO JENEAS. 59 15. Of oath-breakers the ocean 's to be feared : Rarely to treason good. Love treason too, for Venus came upreared From Cytherean flood. 16. I fear to hurt who hurts ; the lost to lose ; A foe's misfortune dread. Live, live iEneas lost, we rather choose 111 fate unmerited. 17. Conceive a hurricane, your ship's distress : What image haunts your mind ? The subtle perjuries of your false address : Dido to death consigned. 18. Your cheated consort's form before your eye, Blood-stained her vesture through. u Back ! back ! I have deserved it all/' you cry ; And deem each flash your due. 19. Pause but a while for ocean's rage to cool : Safety is in delay. If not for my sake, pause for young Iule : One is enough to slay. 15. From Cytherean flood. Prom the sea near the island of Cythera. 16. I fear to hurt who hurts; the lost to lose. I fear to injure you who injure me. I fear to lose you who are lost to me already. A foe's misfortune dread. Yours, who by abandonment are become my enemy. JSneas lost. Lost to me. 18. Your cheated consort. Myself. And deem each flash your due. And deem each flash of lightning directed against yourself. 60 DIDO TO .ENEAS. 20. What hath Ascanius, what your gods deserved, From fire escaped to drown ? But no ; you neither gods nor sire preserved, Borne from the blazing town. 21. Invention all ; nor this your first essay, Nor we the first to moan. Where is the mother of lulus ? say : Missing. She walked alone. 22. All this you told : me pity moved, and thence Your solace to my cost. No marvel now that for the gods' offence Seven years you 're tempest-toss'd. 23. Here cast ashore, you find my port a home, A stranger yet in name. Would that the tenderer kindness ne'er had come, Or death with loss of fame ! 24. Fatal that day, storm-driven, obliged to fly, When in the cave we sate. Voices were heard, then deemed the wood nymph's 'Twas hell howling my fate. [cry : 20. Ascanius. Another name of his son lulus. Gods. The images of his household gods. From fire escaped to drown. Escaped from burning Troy to be drowned by shipwreck. 21. Where is the mother of lulus? iEncas, loaded with his father on his shoulders, led his son by the hand ; his wife Creusa followed behind, and at the end of their march was found missing. 22. Your solace to my cost. Your solace, b} r my receiving you in hos- pitality : to my cost, since you gain my heart and abandon me. The gods' offence. She hints that ho must have got rid, of his wife, Creusa unfairly. DIDO TO .ENEAS, 61 25. Oh pudour, to Sichaeus violate, Avenge ye on my breast ! In marble is Sichaeus consecrate, Him fleece and herbs invest. 26. Four times was heard a call's familiar tone : " Elissa, come ! " it said. A little while and I will come, mine own ! Oh, call too long delayed ! 27. Pardon, dear shade, a fault no mean desire : Let that avert my blame. Celestial born, who saved his gods and sire, Gave earnest of fair flame. 28. If error be, 'tis venial, — plighted love ; A love not made to grieve. The lot which was, that lot again to prove, While we united live. 29. Sichaeus in the fane of life bereft By his despoiler's hand, I fled, his ashes and my country left, Pursued throughout the land. 25. Oh pudour, to Sichceus violate. Violated towards her late hus- band by her amour with JSneas. Him fleece and herbs invest. His statue in the tomb is decorated with wool and herbs. So, in Catholic countries, they still adorn tombs with flowers, 26. A little while and I will come. Presently, by death, Sichseus, I will come. 27. Celestial bom. ^Eneas being the son of Venus. 28. The lot which was. My lot of happiness when your wife, Sichaeus. That lot again. Of happiness, were I to espouse ^Eneas. 29. Sichceus in the fane of life bereft. Sichseus was stabbed by Pyg- malion in the temple of Hercules. 62 DIDO TO JENEAs. 30. Escaped the sword, seas crossed, domains we Traitor, to found for you. [bought, A city built, and walls extensive wrought, Envied the region through. 31. War threats, we undertake our town's defence, Though scarce portcullis down : Unnumbered suitors vie, who take offence At a preferred unknown. 32. Why not to black Iarba give me bound ? These hands are offered free. Or him who struck Sichseus his death wound : He'd do as much for me. 33. Talk not of gods, foul touch awakes their wrath : They loath an impious hand. You saving from combustion, they were loth To quit the burning brand. 34. Haply your Dido pregnant here you leave, In her your pledge innate. With mother's misery a son's achieve, The embryo of ill fate. 35. Of our two destinies complete the sum, In one destruction found. 31. A preferred unknown. Yourself, ./Eneas. 32. Iarbas, a prince of Gctulia, in the interior of Africa. Or him who struck Slchceus his death wound. Or to him, her brother, Pygmalion. ' 33. You saving. Were your hand to save them. They were loth. They would be loth. DIDO TO JENEAS. 63 A god bids go ! would he 'd forbid to come, And tread the Punic ground. 36. Led by a god, you drive with adverse wind An ever-changing way. Troy were less sought, though men her crenels Thick as in Hector's day. [lined, 37. Not Simois stream attracts, but Tiber's shore, To settle there, a guest. And still the more you seek it flies the more : Found when long years need rest. 38. Unhesitating make my realm your own, Pygmalion's wealth to bring. Happier that Ilium change to Punic town, And thou to Tyrian king. 39. Is 't war you thirst ? or would lulus know Where honours are to seize ? We '11 find him enemies to overcome, Business of war or peace. 40. By Yenus, Cupid, and those gods who are Companions of your way, Oh pity, — (so thrive all your fate who share ; So end your evil day ; 35. A god bids go. Mercury, as mentioned in the Argument, urges his departure. Punic is another name for Carthaginian. 37. Xot Simois stream attracts, but Tiber's shore. Not the land of Troy, but that of Italy, attracts you. Found. Which will perhaps be found. 38. Pygmalion's wealth. Dido had brought with her much of the wealth not only of her late husband, Sichaeus, but also of her hostile brother, Pygmalion. Happier that Ilium change to Punic tor::;, And thou to Tyrian Icing. Ilium or Troy represents the fortunes of JSneas, Tyrian those of Dido, who came from Tyre. 40. Gods companions. His household gods. 6* DIDO TO AENEAS. 41. So may Ascanius a bright course fulfil, Anchises peaceful sleeps- Pity my wretched house ; slave of your will, My fault 's to love and weep. 42. No Phthian I nor no Mycenian : foe My sire nor husband were. To wed you shame ? "With j r ou but Dido go, No matter how nor where. 43. Known are to me the waves on Afric's shore, By seasons safe their tide. When light winds serve you '11 ply both sail and Now forced in port to ride. [oar, 44. Take me the weather to observe, 'twere best, Nor fear protracted stay. Your half-refitted fleet and men distressed Demand a brief delay. 45. For my desert do this, or wave excuse, By my lost hope I ask : 'Till the floods calm . . . and love . . . 'till time Teach sufferance : bitter task ! [and use 46. If not, it is our mind with life to end : You 11 not be long severe. Note but our portrait while these lines are penned: Your Trojan blade lies here. 41. Ascanius. His son, who afterwards received the name of lulus. Anchises, his father. No Phthian ; that is, no ally of Achilles. No Mycenian; that is, no ally of Agamemnon. 42. To wed you shame 1 Are you ashamed to marry ? DIDO TO iENEAS. 65 47. And tears fall down our cheek upon the blade That will in blood be stained. How apt the gift is to my purpose made ! A grave is cheaply gained. 48. Nor this to my poor breast a primal wound : It knew love's cruel dart. Dear sister, you, in vain my fault who found, The last devoirs impart. 49. Of good Sichasus on my tomb no word. These o'er my ashes stand : jEneas gave the motive and the sword ; She fell by her own hand. LETTER VIII. HERMIONE TO ORESTES. Argument/ Agamemnon, soon after his return from the Trojan war, was mur- dered by his queeirClyfcemnestra, and her lover iEgisthus, a cousin, in whose hands the chief had left the care of his government. Orestes, the prince royal, then a youth, would have shared the same fate, but he was warned by his sister Laodicea, and fled the country. As soon as he attained the first years of manhood he spread a report of his death ; returned privately, accompanied by his bosom friend Pylades ; and avenged his father, by killing both the queen and her paramour. This violent sacrifice of feeling to what he deemed his duty drove him mad. He was, however, restored to reason by Apollo himself, and absolved by the Areopagus. He had been early betrothed to his cousin Her- mione, daughter of his uncle Menelaus by the beautiful Helen, under the auspices of his maternal grandfather Tyndarus, to whose tutelage she had been confided by Menelaus during his absence in the Trojan war. Menelaus, ignorant of the engagement made by the grandfather, promised her also to Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, and he, on his return from the war, took violent possession of her in spite of her previous engagement. Remaining, however, faithful to her first love, and even detesting Pyrrhus, she sends this letter privately to say to Orestes, that by a vigorous proceeding on his part she might be wrested from the hands of Pyrrhus, and repossessed by the preferred of her heart. This, in fact, soon afterwards took place, for Orestes killed Pyrrhus in the Temple of Apollo, and regained his Hermione, with whom, after an early life so tragically eventful, he lived in peace to a good old age. 1. Hermione to Orestes, once allied Both as her lord and brother ; Now brother only, for she 's doomed a bride By violence to another. 2. Pyrrhus, unbending as his iron sire, Keeps me within his door^ To lawless will opposing honest ire : Can feeble woman more ? 1. The first stanza renders the two first lines of the Latin. 2. His iron sire. The inflexible Achilles. HEKMIOKE TO ORESTES. 67 3. " Pyrrhus, hold off," I sa y> "not friendless" I, " A wife's respect who claim." Deaf as the wind, he makes me onward hie, Calling Orestes' name. 4 Were Sparta taken. could one suffer more, Under barbarian thrall ? Andromache froin Greece less sufferance bore At her proud city's fall. 5. Is your Hermione, Orestes, dear ? Lay hands upon your right. If for stolen cattle you would raise a spear, For consort sure you 'd fight. 6, Think of my father, whose lost love to get "Was general cause of strife. Wronged and content had he sat down, even yet Helen were Paris' wife. 7. Dream no battalions nor aggressive fleet : Come boldly in alone. Not that by war, if needed, 'twere unmeet For Love to claim his own. 8. Have we not Atreus for our common sire ? I 'm cousin, if not spouse, Let wife her lord, let cousin cousin fire, Two calls your heat to rouse. 3. A spouse's right iclio claim. Being betrothed to Orestes. Calling. Me calling on the name of Orestes. 4. Andromache. The wife of Hector. 6, Think of my father . Menelaus, the rape of whose wife, Helen, by Paris, caused the Trojan war. 8. Have we not Atreus for our common 'sire. Her father, Menelaus, and his father, Agamemnon, were sons of Atreus. 68 HERMIONE TO ORESTES. 9. Our union made by Tyndarus, grave with age, O'er me fall power who bore, My father could not rightly disengage What his had bound before. 10. We plighted, injuring no one by our love : Wed him, I break my vows. Good Menelas to pardon we shall move, For Cupid's dart he knows. 11. Love like his own is little to demand ; Set Helen in his view. As she to him I to Orestes stand, Pyrrhus is Paris too. 12. And though he endless boast his father's acts, Your sire's are on the roll. He ruled Achilles : one a part enacts, The other guides the whole. 13. Your lineage too : Atreus from Pelops got : Of five from Jove you are one. Nor valourless : unhappy arms, but what ? A father set them on. i 9. Tyndarus. Her maternal grandfather. His. His sire; by courtesy, however, since it indicates Tyndarus, her father's father-in-law. 10. We plighted. Our faith to each other. For Cupid's dart he knows. Having been smitten with love for Helen. 11. As she to him I to Orestes stand. She was his lawful wife ; I am betrothed to you. Pyrrhus is Paris. Paris robbed Menelaus of his lawful wife ; Pyrrhus keeps your betrothed by force. 12. His father's acts. The deeds of Achilles. Your sire's. The deeds of Agamemnon. He nded Achilles. Being his commander-in-chief. 13. Of jive from Jove you are one. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who was son of Atreus the son of Pelops, who was son of Tantalus, begotten of Jove.— Unhappy arms. The necessity of revenging on his own HERMTONE TO ORESTES. 69 14. Would in more glorious cause you had been led, But forced who could do more ? Your work complete, for where Atrides bled Gushed forth iEgisthus' gore. 15. iEacides your praise to crime would wrest, And that before my face. Lie still, poor heart, within this suffering breast, O'er swoll'n with foul disgrace. 16. Orestes 'fore Hermione to blame ! And she nor strength nor sword ! Weep well she may, in tears immerse her shame : How on my breast they poured ! 17. Tears only left and amply they are shed, An unremitting flood. Our race's curse even yet unlimited : Tantalian loves run rude. 18. Need one repeat, the plumage of the swan Made amorous Jove's attire ? The Elis chariot race, where Pelops won And wore Hippodamia ? mother the murder of his father. — A father set them on. That is, your father's murder caused you to take arms. 14. Your' work complete. Full and complete vengeance being taken. yEgisthus. Mentioned at the beginning of the Argument. 15. jEacides. Pyrrhus, descendant of iEachus, in the order iEachus, Peleus, Achilles, Pyrrhus. To crime would ivrest. Would construe into a crime. 17. Tantalian loves run rude. The following lines show that the women of Tantalus' line fell a prey to violence in love. 18. The plumage of the swan. According to the fable, Jupiter, to obtain the favours of Leda, assumed the form of a swan. — The Elis chariot race. iEnomaus, king of Pisa and JElis, betted on a chariot 70 HERMIONE TO ORESTES. 19. How Pollux and how Castor once again Helen to Sparte restored ? How, Helen stolen by the Idean swain, Our Greece for vengeance roared ? 20. The memory 's faint, but there our woe begins : All seemed afraid to move : Tyndarus and Phoebe wept, so did the twins : Leda invoked her Jove. 21. I, wearing then long infant curls, out scream, " Mamma gone without me ! " In fine, lest not of Pelops' race we seem, Pyrrhus my lord must be. 22. Oh, had Pelides 'scaped the fatal bow, His son in awe to keep ! Alive he would not, no, nor would he now, Let wedded husband weep. race his daughter Hippodarnia against the life of his opponent, Pelops. Now as the king drove by proxy, and Pelops was his own whip, the latter had an opportunity of practising a means not yet quite obsolete : he bribed the king's coachy, and won. It will be observed that this is another Hippodarnia than the lady who was cause of the battle of the Centaurs, noted Letter II., verse 18 ; the latter was daughter of Adrastus, king of Argolis. 19. How Pollux and how Castor. Helen, whose beauty had renown even in her childhood, was at ten years old carried off and kept concealed by Theseus, but safely restored by him to her brothers, Castor and Pollux. The Idean swain. Paris, who, as we have seen, was bred a shepherd on Mount Ida. 20. There our woe begins. There began woe to Grecian families, the Trojan war then breaking out. Phoebe. Her aunt, a sister of Helen. Leda. Mother of Helen and the twins, Castor and Pollux. 21. Lest not of Pelops* race we seem. She has already shown that the women descending from Tantalus, the father of Pelops, were doomed to violence, and affirms that she is no exception, since Pyrrhus, in whose power she remains, is capable of it to a great degree. 22. Oh had Pelides 'scaped the fatal bow. Would that his father, Achilles, had escaped the fatal arrow of Paris, which killed \\\w,—Let HERMIONE TO ORESTES. *71 23. What wrong of mine hath made the gods unfair ? What star malign hath crossed ? Ledsea gone, my sire the corslet bare, To me both parents lost. 24. In infancy no kiss, no soft caress, Mother, you gave to me. Ne'er to your bosom wont my cheek to press, While fondled on your knee. 25. My school cost you no thought : engaged to wed, My couch gave you no care. We met at length, and, if the truth be said, I knew not which you were. 26. Yet singled Helen out, so beauties shine : " Which is my girl V 3 you ask. — -\ One shade of comfort still : Orestes mine : But as he fill his task. 27/ Pyrrhus for rape, contra my sire contends : First cause of both was Troy. While Titan's radiant car its circle wends, Some respite I enjoy. wedded husband weep. Since he took arms among the Greeks to redress the wrong done to my father, Menelans, were he alive, he would oppose the same wrong being done to you. 23. Ledcea gone, my sire the corslet have. My mother Helen eloped; my father at the war. 26. But as he fill his task. His duty, which is to assert his right, and get me out of the hands of Pyrrhus. 27. Pyrrhus for rape, contra my sire contends. Pyrrhus strives to exercise violence on me : my father took arms against Paris' abduction of Helen. Wliile Titan's radiant car its circle wends. That is, during the day, Titan being a name given to the sun. 72 HERMIONE TO ORESTES. 28. But plenteous tears and sobs come with the night, On tristful couch reclined, When weary hours in vain to sleep invite, And no retreat to find. 29. Oft stupid in forgetfulness I sink, And reach his cumbent side : Recoiling from the contact farther shrink, Nor the loathed touch abide. 30. For Pyrrhus' oft Orestes' name If ve said : Such faults my grief allay. Now by our race I swear, and by its head, Whom land and sea obey, 31. By thy great father's dust, which owes to thee Revenge for murdered life, Extinct in youth will I, Tantalian, be, Or be Tantalian's wife. 30. Now by our race. One of the most abundant in matter for tragedy. By its head. The head of that family was Jupiter himself, the father of Tantalus. 31. Extinct in youth will I, Tantalian, be. Or be Tantallan's wife. I who am descended from Tantalus will die young, or be the wife of you who are also descended from Tantalus. LETTER IX. DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. Argument. Hercules was the son of Jupiter by Alcmena, daughter of Electryon king of Argos. Alcmena had been given in marriage to Arnpyhtrion, a prince of Thebes, under condition that he should not enter into enjoy- ment of his bride till he had gained a decisive victory over the king's enemies. Jupiter then, smitten with the beauty of the wife, during the husband's absence on an expedition, assumed his form, presented him- self as just returned from victory, and was received as a loving husband ought to be. Juno was moved to jealousy by this intrigue, and bore malice to Hercules throughout his earthly career. She excited Eurys- theus king of Mycenae to propose to his daring spirit many arduous and perilous labours, under the hope that he would perish in performing them, but, on the contrary, he returned victorious from all. Strong, however, against men and monsters, he gave way to love, and abandoned himself to all its excesses. Before his great undertaking of the tasks proposed by Eurystheus he had married Dejauira, daughter of JEneus king of Calydon, and his wife addresses this letter to him to shame him from the excesses to which he is abandoning himself, exposing par- ticularly his amour with Omphale queen of Lydia, and the last of his loves, that of Iole princess of iEchalia. She sets before his view the ' glorious actions of his life, that by their scale he may estimate his present conduct and reform it. While writing, however, she receives news of Hercules' calamity ; his death being caused by a poisoned timic guilefully given to her by the centaur Nessus, who, in the act of carrying her violently away, was reached and mortally wounded by Hercules' arrow. The dying centaur gave Dejauira the poisoned tunic, affirming that if her husband wore it he would remain ever true to her. In con- sequence of Hercules' late irregularities she sent it in the hope of reclaiming him, and the consequence was his death. Overwhelmed then with extreme grief, she ponders on the manner of expiating her fault and resolves, in fine, to hang herself. 1. CEchalta to your titles joined we greet, The vanquished victor grieve. Our states with ugly whispers are replete, Marring all you achieve. 1. (Echalia. It is uncertain which country of the name is here indicated, its king, Eurytus, however, offered his daughter lole to whoever should beat him in archery. Hercules won the fair prize, and the king refused to fulfil his engagement. The hero then made war on him, conquered (Echalia, killed King Eurytus, and obtained possession of his daughter Iole, of whom he became violently enamoured. The vanquished victor. Vanquished by the charms of Iole ; hence the condolence mixed with Dejanira's felicitations. Ugly whispers. Concerning the effeminacy of his present life. D 74 DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. Whom Juno nor unheard of labours bent, Him Iole enchains. Eurystheus and the goddess are content : Your losses make her gains. 3. But he will blame to whom did not suffice One day to form your mould. Fear Venus ; for of Juno's hate your rise : Love downward tends to hold. 4. Look back, and see coerced to peace all lands In Neleus' girdle pressed. This bruited forth to every coast expands Your name from east to west, You have sustained those heavens whereto you Assuming Atlas' place : [tend, Unhappily notorious in the end, If fame turn to disgrace. 6. Infant, two horrid snakes you 're said to crush : In the cradle worthy Jove ! Beware the man, degenerate, fall to blush, Seeing the child above. 2. The goddess. Juno. 3. But he. Jupiter. 4. In Neleus' girdle. Within the limits of the sea. 5. Assuming Atlas' place. Atlas either took his name from the moun- tain in Africa or the mountain from him. He was of the race of the Titan giants, king of Mauritania, and said to bear the heavens on his shoulders. This may be attributed to the height of the mountain, but it is more generally thought to have arisen from his love of astronomy. Hercules is said to have borne his load for one day, probably from having taken part in his studies. 6. Beivare the man degenerate. Beware lest you, a man, blush to consider that you were more illustrious when a child. DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. 75 7. Whom neither monsters, nor Eurystheus' hate, Nor Juno, Love brings down. Yet nobly matched is Hercules' co-mate ! Whom Jupiter must own ! 8. Unequal steers but ill endure the yoke : So couples widely matched. Disparity will discontent provoke, While equals live attached. A husband far away, in arduous quest Of labours frightful all : My widowed .prayers the gods solicit, lest By some dread foe he fall. 10. Now serpents, boars, and lions my only theme, And dogs of triple throat. I study entrails and the nightly dream, Omens of mystic note. 11. The whispers of uncertain fame I Ve seized, Tossed between hope and fear. Your exiled mother grieves the god to have Father nor Hyllus here. [pleased, 7. Whom neither monsters, nor Eurystheus' hate, nor Juno, Love brings down. You, whose glorious career no danger nor difficulty raised by the hatred of Eurystheus and Juno could arrest, give way to love. ' Yet nobly matched Ironically ; in the face of all these wrongs it is a fine thing to be Hercules' wife and owned by Jupiter as a daughter ! 9. My widowed prayers. Widow by her husband's absence. 11. Tossed as I am. The god. Jupiter. Father nor Hyllus. Neither your father, Amphytrion, nor our son, Hyllus. D 2 76 DEJANIEA TO HEECULES. 12. We feel Eurystheus heavy on us weigh, Dispensing Juno's ire : Nor that enough ; your love runs far astray, Full feasting hot desire. 13. Not to name Auge's rape in Parthenus' vales, Astydamia's too ; Of Thespius' fifty daughters similar tales : All this is slight to you. 14. But one, a later crime usurps our bans : From her a step-son born. Meander serpentining through the lands, In all directions borne, 15. Saw ribboned amulets that throat infold, That heaven-sustaining neck ! Nor Her'cles blushed to adorn his thews with His brawn with gems to deck ! [gold : 13. Not to name Auge's rape in Parthcmis' vales. Auge was daughter of Alcus king of Arcadia, in which country Mount Parthenus is situated. Astydamia. Violated because her father, Ormenus king of Thessaly, refused her in marriage to Hercules, as knowing him to be married already to Dejanira. Of Thespius' fifty daughters. Thcspius was an Athenian king. The number of fifty children occurs frequently in these remote histories ; probably that number was used to express a large number indefinitely, as our hundred, score. 14. A later crime usurps our bans. Encroaches on our marriage rights. She alludes to Omphale, a queen of Lydia, in Asia Minor, who bought Hercules when the oracle had pronounced that he must be three years ■ a slave for having in a fit of insanity attempted to carry away the sacred tripod from the temple at Delphi. An attachment, however, soon grew between the queen and her slave. She gave him his liberty, made him her received lover, and the authority she exercised over him, and the effeminate works to which he submitted under her, form the subject of the sixteen following verses. From her a step-son born. Omphale's son by Hercules was named Lamus. Meander, or Meandros, is a celebrated river in Lydia, remarkable for its numerous windings, whence the tortuosities of streams are called meanders. 15. That heaven-sustaining neck. When, as above mentioned, he took Atlas' place in supporting the heavens. DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. 77 16. An arm which strangled dead the Nemean pest ! Whose spoil those shoulders wear : See but that shaggy head in mitra dressed ! Comelier its aspen there, 17. Is 3 t no disgrace about your loins the zone A Lydian strumpet wears ? You by whom bloody Diomed was thrown To his carnivorous mares ! 18. Busiris, had he seen your glories' wreck, Were of his fall ashamed : Antaeus would denude your bawbled neck 5 Lest with it he be named. 19. Among the maidens, supple to command, The work-basket you hold : Nor shames Alcides' all-victorious hand At maidens' work we 're told. 16. The Nemean pest. This was a tremendous lion, said to be born of the hundred-headed Typhon, which afflicted the country of Nernaea. Hercules at the age of sixteen, as they relate, encountered it unarmed, and choked it by straining its jaws open with his bare hands. In mitra dressed. This is a woman's ornament for the head, used in Phrygia and Lydia. Comelier its aspen there. Alluding to Hercules' expedition to the infernal regions, on which occasion he wore a crown of aspen leaves. The tree afterwards became sacred to him. 17. Bloody Diomed. A king of Thrace, who fed his horses on human flesh. Hercules killed him, and threw his body as provender to his own stud. 18. Busiris. An Egyptian tyrant, who sacrificed foreigners on the altar of Jupiter. Hercules was in his power, bound hand and foot for that purpose, but the hero snapped his bonds and killed the tyrant, with many of his courtiers, then offered his body on the altar prepared, for himself. Antceus. A giant, son of Terra, the earth, who killed so many oppo- nents in wrestling that he vaunted to build a temple with their skulls ; but this unvaried success was owing to his nerves being constantly revigorated by his mother Terra. Our hero tried a bout with him, and to set the giant beyond mamma's reach he lifted him from the ground and throttled him in the air. 19. Alcides. A patronymic appellation of Hercules, from Alcaeus, the father of Amphytrion, his mother's husband. 78 DEJANIKA TO HEKCULES. 20. 'Twill even spin, drawing uneven thread, The fair one's task to pay. How oft in doing hath its awkward speed Broken the ball away ? 21, Poor bungler, you'll be thought to endure the And stoop the head, and crouch : [thong, Yet vaunt j^ou of high deed, right worthy song, T were bettev not avouch. 22. To wit : that, yet a cradled infant, you Two serpents choked and tore : On Erymanthus, cypress crown'd, you slew The vast Tegaean boar : 23. Of heads on Thracian hall you say your word : Mares anthropophagous : Of triple Geryon, rich in flock and herd, Monster tricephalous : 24 And Cerberus, the triple dog in one, Whose hair immix'd with snakes : The serpent, too, by every loss who won : A lopp'd head double makes. 22. Erymanthus. A mountain in Arcadia, Teg cecm. Arcadian ; from the town of Tega?a. 23. Of heads on Thracian hall. The palace of the cruel Diomed, mentioned verse 17, who caused to be hung against his wall, as trophies, the heads of the human bodies on which he fed his horses. Geryon, monster tricephalous. Geryon king of Gades, a prince ex- ceeding rich in herds, had, according to fable, three heads and three bodies. This image is supposed to have arisen from a triplicity of cir- cumstances; he ruled three kingdoms, had three sons, and three armies under their command. Hercules having killed him had all his cattle conveyed to Italy. 24. Cerberus. The three-headed dog which guards the gate of hell. Hercules mastered him, and brought him up to earth, after having DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. 79 25. The giant choking in the air, whose head With blood to bursting fills : The centaurs felled, whose timid remnant fled To their Thessalian hills:— 26. These you can tell, in Tyrian purple dressed. For shame ! the subject waive: And she, with club and lion-spoil invest, Holds trophies of her slave. 27. Proceed: take heart: more prowess to recall: Not you the man, but she. Of all the fallen your own the greatest fall, Stationed more loftily. 28. Be hers the guerdon of your arduous fame : She is your exploits' heir : The Nemean lion's shaggy hide, oh shame ! A puppet minx to wear ! 29. Nay, more than lion-spoils repay her charms, Yours, Hercles, are her gain : succeeded in his enterprise to the infernal regions in search of the apples of the Hesperides. The serpent, too, by every loss who icon. The hydra of Lyrna, said to have had many heads, each of which being cut off was replaced by two. 25. The giant choking in the air. Antaeus, mentioned note IS. TJie centaurs felled. The centaurs, and a company of the people called Lapitha?, to whom Theseus and Hercules belong, were invited to the marriage feast of Pirithous and Hippodamia. The centaurs, in their cups, were rude to the women, which was resented by the party of the Lapitha?; hence a general battle in which the centaurs were worsted, and Hercules afterwards nearly extirpated them. 26. Club and lion spoils. These are the usual insignia of Hercules- His favourite weapon was a massy club, and his cloak the skin of the Kemean lion, mentioned verse 16. 29. Yours, Hercules, are her gain. Since you are become her prisoner, bound in love. Black with the Lemean bane, Dipped in the poison of the Lernsean hydra. 80 BEJANIBA TO HERCULES. A feeble strumpet bears terrific arms, Black with the Lernean bane ! 30. Poising the club by which huge monsters fell, To th' glass the plaything goes. Yet hearsay this : less dolorous ills they tell : What '$ seen perforce one knows. 31. . - A newer gawd is set before my sight ; My suffering clear as day. Ignore I cannot, for in open light She stands full in my way. 32. Not like a captive with dishevelled hair, Veiling a visage sad ; But bold, erect, with vest of richest wear, As you in Phrygia had, 33. She looks sublime, on conquered Hercles' arm : CEchalia won you 'd swear. Retreat but Dejauira with alarm, The trull to spouse you rear. 34 Alcid' and Iole in one love chain United ne'er to part ! The warning thrills with horror through my Hold, hold offended heart ! [brain : 30. Less dolorous ills they tell. Ills which are related to us are less felt than those which we see, and therefore must believe. 31. A newer gawd. This is Idle, mentioned in note 1, on CEchalia. 32. Not like a captive. We have seen in the same note 1, that Her- cules besieged her city, CEchalia, slew her father, and carried her oil as a prisoner. As you in Phrygia had. When he was at the court of Omphnle, who has formed the subject of the preceding- verses. Phrygia was then re- markable for magnificence, 33. CEchalia won. You would think that I61e\s city, CEchalia, had resisted the siege, instead of being taken and ruined. Retreat but Dejauira, If I, Dejauira, do but quit the place. DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. 81 35. Me in the crowd you loved, but without shame : Twice causing deadly fight. First Acheloiis in the marshy slime Hid his horn-broken plight, 36. Then centaur Nessus at the Evenus fell : The river bore the stain. Ha ! what's that rumour ? — Horrid news they By Nessus' fraud he 's slain ! [tell, — 37. What have I done ? in madness whither borne ? Die, Dejanira, die ! By thee thy lord on (Eta's side is torn : Thou clid'st his destiny. 38. Is Dejanira fitly Hercles' spouse ? Her end shall testify. See her, (Enides, worthy of our house ! Die, Dejanira, die ! 35. First Acheloiis in the marshy slime Hid his horn-broken plight. Acheloiis, tlie son of Oceanus and of Terra or of Tethys, was god of the river so called, in Epirus. He had obtained from his mother the power, when engaged in fight, of assuming any living form he pleased. Being one of the numerous competitors for the hand of Dejanira, whose father would give her to the strongest, he had to contest the prize with Her- cules, and used the mutative power with which lie was endowed : first he assumed the form of a serpent, then of a bull, under which phasis Hercules seized him by the horn and broke it short, whence the beaten river god withdrew with shame to his marshes, Then centaur Nessus By Nessus' fraud he 's slain. The centaur was entrusted by Hercules to convey his wife over the river Evenus, and having got across was proceeding to extort favours by violence, but Hercules, who saw him from the opposite bank, let fly an arrow and wounded him mortally, for the dart, having been dipped in the blood of the hydra, was poisonous. The dying centaur then persuaded Dejanira to take his tunic, which, having been pierced, he knew to be infected with the poison, and to keep it as a talisman, having at all times the power, if Hercules wore it, of fixing his love to her. Dejanira, too cre- dulous, kept the tunic, and by the irregularities of her husband was led to wish to make trial of its efficacy, and hence the catastrophe. Her- cules, in torment with the effect of the poison, lighted his own funeral pile, and burnt himself to death. 37. (Eta. A mountain in Thessaly. 38. (Enides, see her. An invocation to her brother Meleager, the son of (Eneus, who is dead ; suggested by a certain similitude of their fates. D 5 82 DEJANIRA TO HERCULES. 39. Oh, fatal house ! Agrios usurps its throne ; Poor CEneus bends with age ; Tydeus, one brother, far in lands unknown ; A brand the other's gage, 40. Which burnt, he fell : herself our mother slew. Die, Dejanira, die ! One thing be prayed : by sacred love — and true, Think none that it was I. 41. " This blood/' quoth Nessus, writhing in his pain, " Faint love will vivify/' He gave — I sent the shirt imbued with bane. Die, Dejanira, die ! 42. Now farewell, father, sister, all I prize, Brother, and country, too : And thou, oh day, the last to light these eyes, Hyllus and Lord, adieu ! His love for Atalanta caused his death, her love for Hercules will cause her own. On Meleager, see Letter III. verse 23. This name, (Enides, in Letter III. has by mistake been written with 2E instead of (E. 39. Oh fatal house. CEneus, the father of Dejanira, was deposed from his throne by his brother Agrios, now reigning : Tydeus, one brother, on account of the accidental murder of a friend had lied to Argos, and remained there, and we have seen, Letter iii., verse 23, that a burning brand tvas the gage of the life of the other, Meleager. 40. Herself our mother slew. See the same note on (Enides, Meleager. Die, Dejanira die I Our confined limit has forced this meager transla- tion of the beautiful line, Impia qnin dubitas Deianira mori, which is the more to be regretted, since the poet repeats it four times ; and again, that it has forced an equal recurrence of the same rhymes, which, when free, we invariably take care to avoid ; but to render the spirit of the author, it seemed indispensable to follow him as well as might be. Think none. Let no man think. 42. Hyllus. Her son by Hercules. LETTER X. ARIADNE TO THESEUS. Argument. Minos, son of Jupiter and Europa, and king of Crete, in consequence of his son Androgeos having been assassinated at Athens by order of the Athenian king iEgeus, who was jealous of his fame and popularity as a wrestler, made war against that people, and, after a long and severe struggle, reduced them to accept severe terms of peace, namely, that they should send every year to Crete seven youths and seven virgins to be devoured by a monster, half man half bull, called Minotaur, which had been produced by the unnatural connection, during Minos' absence in this war, of his wife Pasiphae with a favourite white bull. The creature was kept in an inextricable labyrinth. When the lot fell on Theseus to make one of these youths, and his turn came to be exposed to the monster, he had gained the favour of Ariadne, one of Minos' daughters, who furnished him with a clew, by the help of which he might find his way out of the labyrinth if he should overcome the Minotaur, which he was fortunate enough to do. Theseus, this exploit achieved, made his escape, Ariadne and Phaedra, Minos' two daughters, consenting to be companions of his flight. Under consideration that he is to espouse Ariadne in gratitude for her having saved his life, they took ship, and made a port in the island of Xaxos, where, by the advice of the god Bacchus, instead of marrying he abandoned Ariadne and sailed, leaving her in a profound sleep. On waking she seeks her lover in vain, perceives his departure and her abandoned position, and addresses this letter to him, bewailing his cruel treatment of her, his forgetfulness of past service, and imploring him to return. We have seen in Letter IT., that Theseus, on reaching home, espoused the sister, Phaedra. 1. Milder to me than Theseus wolves and boars ; Trustworthier than he. Theseus, these lines are written on these shores "Where you abandoned me. 2. In somnolent oblivion left by you, traitor to my sleep ! Twas at the first congeal of morning dew, When birds lost autumn weep. 84f ARIADNE TO THESEUS. 3. Drowsy awaking, forth my arms I strain, O'er Theseus' neck to throw : He 'a gone : they back recoil ; — extend again : Is it a dream ? ah, no. 4. Fear banished sleep : all trembling quick I rise, And leave the widowed bed, Holding my beating heart ; tears fill my eyes ; Bewildered my poor head. 5. The moon shone bright ; I hasten to the coast : All vacant sea and strand ! Hurry now here, now there, my senses lost, O'er shingle, reef, and sand, 6. Calling the way along: " Hola, Theseu ! M The hollow rocks reply : Their echoes verberate the sound anew, Aiding my frantic cry. 7. There is a peak with stunted foliage rare, A pendant rock one side : Mounting, desire gave wings, to compass there A range of view more wide. 8. I see, for even the cruel winds betrav, The fresh south fill your sail : Or fancying see, and, shuddering with dismay, My wounded spirits fail. 9. Grief will not linger long - new roused I burn ; Re-halloo to the wind, " Theseus, oh, whither fliest ? Theseus, return, " You 're leaving one behind." ARIADNE TO THESEUS. 85 10. This said, words failing, raise lugubrious moan, Beating my tortured breast. And that, unheard, the eye at least may own, Lift up my arms distressed. 11. And signals on high points conspicuous rear To supplicate relief. You 're out of sight : then flowed the ample tear : Hope died : all fell to grief. 12. Weep, endless weep, my weary e}-es, since there Your sails were lost to view. Now wild I wander with dishevelled hair As Theban bacchants do. 13. Or gelid sitting on a rock, to pore Seaward, myself a stone. Or dwelling o'er the bed where two before, But widowed now of one. 14, At night I seek the part where late you lay, The spot j^ou warmly pressed, And sobbing lie, and to our pillow say, — " Once two, oh ! yield the rest ! 15. " Two we came here, my bed, single to leave ; " The greater part, oh where V — Incult the isle, no vestige I perceive Of plough or oxen here. 12. As Tlieban bacchants. The priestosses of Bacchus, who, at the fes- tivals in honour of the god, went abroad half naked, with dishevelled hair, and making wild noises. 86 ARTADNE TO THESEUS. 16. By ocean hemmed, no mark of seaman-kind, No ship to stem the sea : And, grant both sailor, ship, and favouring wind, My home is none to me. 17. The waters glided o'er with breezes fleet, We make our port exiled ; No home for me in all thy towns, O Crete ! Cradle of Jove the child ! 18. My father and the land that owns his sway Were injured by my deed, When to avert your fate I lent the way, A clew your steps to lead. 19. You swore by danger past you would be mine While both our beings last : We live, O Theseus, I no longer thine, By perjury off-cast. 20. Me had but met the club my brother slew, Then death had been the end : 16. My home is none to me. On account of her disobedience to her father in aiding Theseus to escape from the labyrinth. 17. The waters glided o'er. Supposing I find means to get over to my country. No home for me in all thy toivns, O Crete ! Cradle of Jove the child ! Crete, which boasted of a hundred cities, claimed the honour also of being the birthplace of Jupiter. Saturn, his father, who held the god- ship of the world on condition that he should raise no male child, devoured his boys at their birth, but the goddess mother, Ops, gave him a stone to digest at the birth of Jupiter, and entrusted the infant to the care of the Corybantes, priests of Cybele on Mount Ida, by whom the young god was brought up on the isle of Crete. 18. My father and the land that oivns his sivay. Minos and the isle of Crete. 20. Me had but met the club my brother slew. Would that the club with which you slew the Minotaur had fallen on me. Evils that may impend. My misery in being abandoned by you is AEIADNE TO THESEUS. 87 Now grieves my soul, with all her wrongs from Evils that may impend. [y ou > 21. A thousand threatening deaths my fancy draws, Less dreadful than delay : A famished wolf distending avid jaws, Her craving to allay : 22. Haply the tawny lion stalks his round, Or tigers prowl abroad : 'Tis said sea monsters on this coast abound : Fear even of the sword. 23. Save me from captive chain however mild ! From tedious labouring hours ! — Whose sire was Minos ; mother Phoebus' child, Theseus, yet more, am yours. 24. Contemplating the sea, the land, the shore ; Sore threat both land and sea. Remain the gods, their forms affright me more. Wild wolves my destiny ! 25. Of native men unsure the helping hand : Strangers, now tried, effray. Would that Androgeos lived, then Cecrops' land No debt of deaths would pay. augmented by numerous dangers incident to such an exposed position. These she is about to dev elope. 23. WJiose mother Phoebus' child. Her mother, Pasipha?, was the daughter of Perseis, a sea nymph, one of the Oceanides, by Phoebus or the Sun. 25. Strangers, now tried, effray. Poreigners, since my experience of them in you, frighten me still more. Would that Androgeos lived, then Cecrons' land. Cecrops' land is that of Greece, and had not Androgeos been murdered there, Minos would not have exacted the sacrifice of Greek children mentioned in the Argument. 88 ARIADNE TO THESEUS. 26. Nor, Theseus, had your knotted bludgeon fell'd The semi-bovine man, Nor you from me the thread eductive held, The life-string of your plan. 27. No marvel if the palm by you be borne, The Cretan bi-form slain : Your iron breast, impervious to horn, Naked were smit in vain. 28. There flint, there adamant, or there thy heart, Theseus, more hard than they, Ah perfid sleep, to hold me here inert ! Why not then close my day ? 29. And ye officious cruel winds, who blew Too favouring to my wail ! Hand, tongue, more fatal : that my brother slew, This me with a false tale. 30. Leagued enemies were oaths, and winds, and sleep : One maid 'gainst three allies : No mother here my parting breath to weep, And close my lifeless eyes. 31. My wretched shade to utter realms will fly, No friend the corse perfume : 26. Semi-bovine man. The Minotaur, who was half man, half bull. The thread eductive. The clew of thread which I furnished to lead you out of the labyrinth. 27. The Cretan bi-form. The minotaur. Your iron breast, insensible to horn. Punning between the moral and literal senses of the words iron, insensible. • 29. Hand, tongue. Those of Theseus. 31. My wretched shade. The shades of bodies wanting burial were doomed to wander beyond the limits of Elysium. ARIADNE TO THESEUS. 89 My bones by water-birds denuded lie : Such is my service' tomb. 82. You touch Cecropian port, then home, and, full Of honours in your town, Eecount the deed of the half-man, half-bull ; Your labyrinth renown : 33. Nor Ariadne in your tale be hid, Her, too, those titles need. iEgides you ? no : Theseus never did iEthra Pittheis breed. 34 Him on a flood did some flint rock create, Ye gods ! why not impart, That from his deck he saw my wretched state ? 'T would move his rigid heart. 35. Here seated, view me with the mental eye ; A foam-lashed crag my rest ; My hair down drooping o'er my face descry, And my tear-deluged vest : 36. See my frame, quivering like wind ruffled wheat, My slipping pen indite. But waive desert ; 'tis vain, and let us treat Sans favour for good right. 32. You touch Cecropian port. Athenian port, the name of Cecrops, one of the early settlers there, having: passed to the country. Here she lays a picture of his happiness in contrast with that of her own misery. 33. Here eight lines, the 33d and 34th stanzas of English, answer to six lines of Latin. JEgides you ? no : Theseus never did JEthra Pittheis breed. Yon the son of JEgeus r it cannot be, nor is it possible that JEthra, the child of Pitthens, can have borne such a son as you. The character of JEthra is still raised by the patronymic Pittheis, since her father Pittheus was one of the wisest and best men of his time. 90 AKIADNE TO THESEUS. 37. Say to our aid my lord's dear life not due : What death owes he to me ? These hands, sore as my beaten bosom, view Imploring o'er the sea ! 83. View these lank locks, one half in dolour shed By tears, by sighs, by groans, Oh, Theseus, pray, pray come : if I am dead You '11 gather up my bones ! 37. Say to our aid my lord's dear life not due. By the clew furnished him to get through the labyrinth. 38. We have seen, Letter II. note 20, that Ariadne did not perish, but that she was afterwards espoused by Bacchus, and rode in a car drawn by tigers, as the unhappy Phillis has told us (Letter II. verse 20.), " She, and' I envy not, a better gained, " Tame tigers draw her car." Also in Letter VI. verse 29, Hypsipyle, counting Bacchus among the number of her ancestors, tells us that after death she took place in the heavens as a constellation. It is that called the Northern Crown. " And Bacchus, in whose Ariadne's crown " Bright flames constellate shine." LETTER XI. CANACE TO MACAREUS. Argument. Macareus and Canace, son and daughter of Eolus king of the winds, had the misfortune to fall in love with each other ; the consequence was the pregnancy of the sister. She was privately delivered, and her maid undertook to convey the child out of the palace in a flower basket, and put it to nurse. In doing this she had to pass by Eolus and his court, and, when, in the midst of them, the child crying betrayed itself to the boisterous grandfather, who, furious at the sin of his children, ordered the fruit of their crime to be immediately thrown to the dogs. He then, by one of his officers, sends to Canace a sword, with orders to kill herself. Before executing this rigid irrevocable mandate she writes the following to Macareus, who has taken refuge in the temple of Apollo, narrating her horrid situation, and praying him to collect the remains of the exposed child, and to deposit them in the same urn with her own. 1. As this, obliterate by tears, my life A blot will shortly be. One hand a pen, the other holds a knife, My paper on my knee. 2. Such is the child of Eolus : she may But so appease her sire. Would he were here to see the debt we pay, Fulfilling his desire ! 3. His winds in rude ferocity surpassed, No tear his eye shall wet. 'Tis much, in dwelling with the howling blast, Its tone his spirits get. 1. A knife. The sword sent by her father for her to execute on herself. 3. 'Tis much in dwelling with the howling blast. An excuse in irony. 92 CAN ACE TO MACAREUS. 4. Kestraining Notus, Zephyr, and the North, And whistling Eurus too, Anger, alas, in spite of him breaks forth : The feebler praise his due. 5. Proud who by lineage to the empyrean rise, And Jove's own kindred stand ! The fatal blade no less before me lies, 111 fitting woman's hand, 6. Why, brother, why did our affection run Beyond fraternal cess ? Would thy dear Canace, ere we made one, Reduced to nothingness I 7. With thee she warmed, and, as we Ve heard to Some god within her burned. [say, The colour fled her cheek ; wasting away, All food to loathing turned. 8. Uneasy sleep, a whole night seemed a year ; Groaning, no pain I prove ; No reason why, and, loving though so dear, Scarce knowing what is love. 9. My nurse's aged mind first saw the ill : " Eola loves," she said. 4. Notus, the south wind. Zephyr ', the west, and the mildest of the winds. Eurus, the south-east wind. 5. Proud who by Uncage. Annotatovs dispute to Cnnaee the kindred of Eolus with Jupiter. She might, perhaps, find it hard to make out her title. The pretension demonstrates at least that pride of birth is of all ages. Jupiter and the magnates of our own day may all say with prince Hal,—" They will be akin to us, or they '11 fetch it from Japhet." 9. Eola. Canace, daughter of Eolus. CANACE TO MACABEUS. 93 My blush and downcast eye, in spite of will, Tacit confession made. 10. And now, the signs of pregnancy more plain, The furtive pains augment. What herbs, what medicines, did she not obtain, What sinful means Invent, 11. Quite from our loins the burden to remove ! This you were not to know. The birth, too strong, resists : in vain she strove : He safe eludes the blow. 12. Nine times had Dian run her phaseful course, And fast refilled her orb, 'Cute throes, unfelt before, and growing worse My ignorant fears absorb. 13. I scream. " Husli, "hush ! v quoth nurse ; " you 11 make it known :" My lips her both hands press. Excruciate twinge will still put forth a groan : Nurse, fear, and shame repress. 11, Word, cry, and plaint my energies constrain, The very tear held in. Death threats : Lucina's aid invoked in vain : And death self-caused is sin. 10. Furtive pain. Pain which I am obliged to conceal. 11. The birth. The infant in embryo. 12. Nine times had Dian run her phaseful course. Nine times had the moon gone through her monthly changes. 13. My lips her both hands pressed. Both her hands pressed against my lips. 14. Lucina. A name of Juno or of Diana, both of whom presided over child-bearing. Death self -caused. If her own sin become the cause of her death. 94 CAN ACE TO MACAKEUS. 15. 'Twas then down stooping, piteously sad, You pressed me warm to you, And, " Live, oh dearest sister, live/' you said, " Nor in one death link two. . 16. " Take courage ; we shall wed, then he by whom €t You 're mother claims his wife/' As dead, believe me, you revoked my doom : A birth foredid my strife. 17. A birth ! poor victim ! was not Eolus there ? Hide shame from father's sight ! Nurse laid it in a frail, concealed with care 'Mong fruit with flowers bedight. 18. Pronouncing prayer, she feigns a sacrifice : All, Eolus' self, make way. Now near the threshold, the poor infant's cries The artifice betray. 19. Tremendous, once revealed the forged tale. Thundered the tempest chief. As water trembles ruffled by the gale, Or aspen's quivering leaf, 20. So you might see my pallid members shake ; The couch infirmly stands. He comes, nor slow appalling threats to make, Withholding scarce his hands. 15. Nor in one death link two. Your own and your child's. 1G. A birth foredid my strife. The birth of the child put an end to my struggle. CANACE TO MACAREUS. 95 21. Shame-struck, and pouring tears, nor uttering My tongue lies mute in fear. [word, At once he dooms my son for beast or bird Its little limbs to tear. 22. Poor babe, it cried as if the doom it felt, And mercy tried to call. What was my feeling at such misery dealt ? Seek yours, you '11 find it all. 23. Fruit of myself was there, its foe before, To wild wolves to be thrown ! He left the room : 'twas then our face we tore, And made a piteous moan. 24. My father's satellite arrived meantime With words of hideous sound : " This sword from Eolus ; you who know the " The meaning can expound." [crime 25. We know, and do accept ; ay, in our breast Deposed his gift shall be : The wedding present by the sire addressed ! The boon of cruelty ! 26. Hence, hence, Hymen, take thy flame and fly With speed, ere yet awhile Black furies be about us hideously, To grace our funeral pile. 23. He. Her father, Eolus. 25. Ay, in our breast deposed his gift shall be. My father's dagger shall be struck into my heart as he wishes. 96 CAN ACE TO MACAREUS. 27. Marry, dear sisters all with happier fate : Let my misfortune warn. But, what from my sad fruit could emanate To offend, though hardly born ? 28. Guilty, if guilty may, let him be said, He died, poor babe, for me. My son ! my grief ! to beasts a banquet made ! Too horrid destiny ! 29. My child ! the wretched pledge of ill-star'd love ! Thy birthday is thy doom. And me forbid in sad array to move Tow'rd thy precocious tomb ! 30. On thy cold breast no mother's kisses laid, Alive to jackals heft : Myself anon will follow thy sad shade, Nor sorrow long bereft. 31. But thou, my hoped in vain, oh, pray consume What from the beasts may fall : Lay the poor dust with mine : one common One urn, however small. [tomb, 32. Live and remember us, and shed thy tear. Dread not a lover's clay, But do the bidding of thy sister dear : My father's I obej r . 28. If guilty may. If so young a creature can be guilty. 31. But thou, my hoped in vain. Thou, Maeareus, whom I in vain hoped for as a wedded husband. 32. Bread not a lover's clay. Fear not to approach and touch the body of me, your departed friend. LETTER XII. MEDEA TO JASON. Argument. Jason, on his expedition in search of the golden fleece, when arrived at Colchos, the term of his outward journey, excited a tender feeling in the heart of Medea, daughter of iEetes and Idya, king and queen of the country. An agreement of marriage having been made between them, she instructed him by what means he might accomplish the object of his voyage. The prize obtained, he privately embarked, having settled with Medea chat she should follow him on board. With this view she left the palace, accompanied by her brother, the boy Absyrtus. On the way, perceiving that they were pursued by her father, she killed the youth, separated his limbs, and scattered them on the way to attract and occupy the king's attention, and by that means divert him from the pursuit. Thus she got safely aboard, and they arrived all well in Thessaly. Here they found Jason's father, iEson, worn out with age, and Medea, by her art, restores him to the vigour of youth. Jason at length repudiates Medea, and takes to wife Creusa, daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. Medea, furious at this, writes to Jason accusing him of ingratitude and treachery, and threatening deep revenge if he does not take her back. 1. At Colchos some small pains we took for you, In need of our poor art. Would the dispensers of the mortal clew Had there wound up my part ! 2. Well had Medea died, so would not she Bewail her ruined peace. Ah me ! why ever did that Pelian tree Go seek the Phryxian fleece ? 1. Tlie dispensers of the mortal clew, the Fates : three sisters, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, daughters of Erebus and Xox (hell and night). Their business was to determine the destinies of men, which they did by spinning a thread. The first held the distaff; the second apportioned the thread to the life of the man about to enter the world ; the last, Atropos, with her shears cut it to mark the close of the career. 2. Her ruined peace, since Jason has abandoned her. Why ever did that Pelian tree. Why ever did that ship Argo, con- structed of the timber of Mount Pelion. Go seek the Phryxian fleece. The golden fleece, the object of Jason's expedition, had been deposited at Colchis by Phryxus, son of Athamas, E 98 MEDEA TO JASON. 3. Why did that Argo ever stem our seas To bring a Grecian throng ? Why did the sunny locks of Jason please, And his too flattering tongue ? 4. Or why, since foreign sail upon our shore Had brought audacious men ; Did he not unpremedicate explore The fire-breath'd oxen then ? 5. Had but the grain he cast offensive been, He by his fruit struck dead, What perjuries had we not avoided clean ! What evils missed our head ! 6. One likes with favours the ingrate to brand: 1 11 do % 'tis all I get. Retrace : your vessel liulFd to Colchic strand Is safe in harbour set : 7. Medea then was what your bride is now : My sire had equal store : Hers Corinth held 5 mine Scythia, land of snow, To the left Pontic shore. king of Thebes and Nephelc. His mother dying, and his life being in danger from the jealousy of the step-mother, Ino, Phryxus and his sister, Helle, fled the country to go to the court of their friend ^Eetes, at Colchis, in a ship called the ram, or, according to the fable, on the back of a golden ram of magic endowments, who bore them through the air ; but, passing over the entrance of the Propontis, Helle fell into the water and was drowned, whence those straits are called the sea of Helle, or Hellespont. On arriving at Colchis, he sacrificed his ram to Mara and deposited its golden fleece in the temple. 3. Argo, the name of Jason's ship. 4. The fire-breath' d oxen. (See Letter VI., note 3.) 5. Had but the grain he cast. (See note, Letter VI. , verses 3 and 4.) 6. Is safe in harbour set. She takes up her story from the point where Jason first entered their territory at Colchis. 7. My sire had equal store, territories as rich as those of her father. MEDEA TO JASON. 99 8. Opened iEetes' halls, the Grecian youth On broidered couch reclined. Then first I knew thee. There began the ruth And ruin of my mind. 9. We saw and fell, with unknown fire consumed, Burning like fane-lit pine. You beautiful^ me destiny-foredoomed. Your eye extinguished mine. 10. You felt it, traitor, love lies not concealed ; The flame will needs appear. Just then the terms are read : strange bulls must Their shoulder to the gear ; [yield 11. The bulls of Mars, more dread than for their horn. Whose fearful breath was fire ; Brass hoofs, their nostrils lined with brass in- Which flame and smoke expire. [born, 12. Seed too you 're bid with ample hand to throw, Armed people to beget, To smite you with each other as they grow : The sower sore beset ! 13. The last a sleepless dragon to deceive, Of charge not easy reft. Such the proposals, hearing wdiich all grieve ; The festal board is left. 8. Opened jE'ete's halls. The saloons of iEete's palace were thrown open to the Grecian guests. 9. Your eye extinguished mine. I stood fascinated under your look. 10. The terms are ready the conditions on which the golden fleece is to be ceded to you. 10 to 13. Explained by the same passage already referred to. (Let- ter VI., note 3.) E 2 100 MEDEA TO JASON. 14. Creusa then and Creon's wide estate Lay far beyond your view. First you retire (my own tears scintillate), Gasping a faint adieu. 15. Deep smitten, to the couch I bear my pain, Weeping, all night awake : Before my view the bulls, the virile grain ; Before my view the snake. 16. Here love, there fear. Fear strengthens love. 'Twas day : My tender sister came. Forlorn, dishevelled, on the face I lay, A seeming lifeless frame. 17. She called on you : one asks, —another has : We give the aid we pray. That wood so dense of oak and pine, that was Impervious to day, 18. Where Dian's temple rose, of antique fame ; The goddess stands in gold ; — You'll have forgot both place and me : — we came Thither, and thus you told : 14. Creusa then, and Creon's wide estate Lay Jar beyond your view. At that time you were far from dreaming of Creusa or her father Creon's dominions. Gasping a faint adieu. While you gasped, &c. 15. Deep smitten, with love. Before my view the bulls, &c. All the difficulties and dangers you have to encounter being presented to my mind. 17. One asks, another has. I ask, Creusa obtains. 18. The goddess stands in gold. There is in the temple a golden statue of the goddess. MEDEA TO JASON. 101 19. " Fated, you reign omnipotent o'er me : " My life yon hold in stake. u Suffice the power, if satisfaction be, " But save, for glory's sake. 20. " By our sore ills, which you may ease, I call ; " By your all-seeing sire, " By triple Dian's visage, and by all " The host of heaven entire, 21. 6i Oh maiden, pity me ! Make me and mine " Ever devote to thee. " If no disparagement with Greek to join, " The gods so favour me, 22. " Rather my vacant spirit flit in air " Than with another wed. a By Juno, queen of nuptial vows, I swear, u And her whose floor we tread ! " 23. This, but a part, much moved a simple maid : You joined your hand to mine, Shedding real tears. Are we by them betrayed ? We fell to oaths so fine. 19. Suffice the power if satisfaction he. Content yourself with having the power to injure, if that be a satisfaction, but spare for the sake of your glory. 20. By your all-seeing sire. Sol, the sun, who was the father of her father, JSetes. By triple Dian's visage. Diana has the epithet triple on account of her three names : Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Hecate in hell. 21. With Greek to join, to marry a Grecian. The gods so favour me as to make me acceptable and become the object of your choice. 22. Rather my vacant spirit flit in air. Rather let my spirit be separated from the body and flit iu air. And her whose floor we tread. Diana, in whose temple they are. 23. A simple maid, herself. Medea. 102 MEDEA TO JASON. 24. The brazen-footed bulls endure the yoke ; The share divides the field : The lands by germing dragon-teeth are broke And forth armed soldiers yield. 25. Myself who wrought the spell saw fearfully The crescent warriors rise, Till, the battalion ripe in panoply, Each by his neighbour dies. 26. The scaled indormient dragon next one sees, Breasting the ground along. Where then your spouse and fortune? Where, 'tween seas, Your Isthmian Argive throng ? 27. Twas I, — -barbarian now, too poor to keep, — I, of venefic stain, I closed those flaming lids in medicined sleep, And gave the fleece to gain. 28. A father cheated, home, friends, country left : Exile with you paid cost. Fair fame besmirched, a prey to foreign theft : Dear mother, sister lost. 24. The brazen-footed bulls. Same note already referred to. note 3, Letter VI., which serves equally to explain verses 24, 25, and part of 26. 25. Ripe in panoply. Full grown and complete in armour. 26. Where then your spouse? Future spouse Creusa, mentioned note 14. Where, 'tween seas, your Isthmian Argive throng ? Where were then your Grecian followers from the isthmus of Corinth? 27. Of venefic stain. Having- the stain of a reputation for poisoning. Tliose flaming eyes. The eyes of the dragon. 28. A father cheated. Her father, .Eetes, cheated by her helping Jason to succeed in his enterprise. A prey to foreign theft. To your artifices, a stranger who stole my affections, and, after possession, abandon me. MEDEA TO JASON. 103 29. My brother, the companion of my flight His tale we can't go through ! The hand durst perpetrate, but dares not write ! — Would his lot mine ! — with you. 30. TJntrembling yet, such done what could one We trust us to the sea, [dread ? Where were the gods ? their vengeance merited Fraud* and credulity. 31. Would the Sympiegades had closed and smashed, Commingled both our bones ! Or that to Scylia's hounds we had been dashed ! Debt to th' ingrate she owns. 29. His tale we cannot go through. The tragical tale of her murder of Absyrtus, mentioned in the Argument. Would his lot mine ! — with you. I would willingly be murdered too, provided you were murdered with me. 30. ..... Their vengeance merited Fraud and credulity. Your fraud in marrying me to obtain your ends, and then to abandon me, merited the vengeance of the gods, and my credulity in trusting to your falsehood, led me to deeds which merited their vengeance also. The annotator of theDelphin edition observes on this line, Tufraudis poenas crediditatis ego, that Ovid would no doubt and with more truth have used the word crudelitaiis instead of crediditatis had it suited his metre. Our line would then be Your fraud, my cruelty. But I am in- clined to think that Ovid would not be disposed to change what he has written. The thought uppermost in Medea's mind is her credulity, which, though not deserving punishment per se, may well have earned a whipping for the sin she committed under its influence. 31. The Sympiegades. Two island rocks at the entrance of the Black Sea, which, at a distance, seem to touch each other. She presents the image of their closing on the ship, and crushing them in their passage through the strait. Scylia's hounds. Scylla is a dangerous rock on the Italian side of the Straits of Messina, against which the sea roars with tremendous noise. According to fable, it was once a beautiful girl of the same name, daughter of the giant Typhon. She fell in love with the sea-god Glaucus, which excited the jealousy of Circe, the princess magician, who after- wards nearly corrupted Ulysses, and who bewitched the body of Scylla, so as to convert the lower part of it into a mass of barking dogs. Horror- struck at the change, Scylla threw herself into the sea, and immediately became a rock, round which her dogs still continue to augment the howling of the waters. Debt to the ingrate she oivns. The poets sometimes mix the adven- tures of two Scyllas ; here vengeance for ingratitude refers to another, 104 MEDEA TO JASON, 32. Or in Charybdis' whirl, the pilot's dread, Both at one suck enclosed ! But victor, safe, the Hsemonian ground you tread, To the gods the fleece deposed. 33. Need one name Pelias, whom his girls dissect Under mistaken charm ? 'Tis fair to boast since others will object, And for your good the harm, 31 You dared (can words depict)— yon dared to say, " Bid iEson s house adieu!" I went ; the sole companions of my way Two sons and love for you. 35. And soon the sounds of Hymen reach my ear : The nuptial lights illume, daughter of Nisus, king of Megara, who, when her father's dominions were invaded by Minos, became enamoured of the assailant, and, to gain his love, betrayed the place into his hands. She was despised by Minos for her pains, and hence her debt to ingratitude. This Scylla also threw herself into the sea. 32. Or in Charybdis' whirl. This is a powerful whirlpool on the Sicily side of the Straits of Messina, and opposite to the rock Scylla ; the pas- sage between them was so dangerous that it became proverbial. To avoid Scylla and fall into Charybdis was, as we say, out of the frying pan into the fire. Fable makes the whirlpool also a woman, changed into that form by Jupiter as a punishment for having stolen and driven away the oxen which Hercules, as we have seen, Letter IX., verse 23, had sent to Italy after having killed Geryon. 33. Need one name Pelias. We have seen in the Argument of Letter VI. that Pelias was the usurper of a throne due to Jason. The argument of the present letter has also shown that Medea, on arriving with Jason at his home, performed a miracle on his father ^.-Eson, by restoring him to the vigour of youth. The daughters of Pelias prayed her to do the same by their father, who had been the mover of all Jason's labours and dan- gers. Guilefully Medea undertook the task, telling them it would be necessary first to kill the old man, then separate his members, and boil them in an enchanted cauldron. All this being done by the daughters, Medea refused to carry the charm any farther. And for your good the harm. Since the mischief I did in making the daughters of Pelias avenge you on their father, your enemy and the usurper of your throne, the cause of your dangers and sulferings, was for your good ; it procured you the satisfaction of revenge ; in causing his death, therefore, I did you real service. MEDEA TO JASON. 105 The flute and harp pour forth their voices clear : Me grief and spite consume, 36. Trembling and doubting the foul sin can be, A chill runs through my brain : The gay crowd chant " Hymen, Hymensee !" The nearer more the pain. 37. Servants there wandering weep and hide their tear : The news to me who 'd tell ? More satisfied, Heaven knows, the less to hear, Too sad whatever befell. 38. Our youngest boy, being bid, to him no pain, Stood at the folding gate : " Back, mother, back/' he cried, "'tis father's train; He's in the car of state." 39. Oh, then we beat our breast and wept aloud, Nor spared our face to tear : 'Twas in my mind to rush into the crowd, And strip her dizened hair. 40. Scarcely refraining madly to out-cry, " He's mine ! " with uplift voice. injured sire, be glad ! O land I fly, Absyrtus' shade, rejoice ! 36. Hymen, Hymencee. The first words of a nuptial hymn. 40. O ! injured sire be glad ! oh land IJly, Absyrtus' shade, rejoice ! Since by my present sufferings you are all revenged for the injuries 1 have done you. E 5 106 MEDEA TO JASON. 41. Ah me ! home, throne, friends, kindred, country Now he, who weighed them all ! [lost ! Bulls to reduce, and serpents scale-embossed ! Before one man to fall ! 42. I, who with medicined, spell-wrought fires assail, Avoid not my own flame ! Are magic, herbs, and art of no avail ? All hell is put to shame ! 43. No day delights, at eve no sorrows cease ; No sleep restores this brain ! Dragons I soothe — my mind can get no ease : Art to myself is vain. 44. A harlot holds those limbs preserved by me ! I sow that she may reap ! Haply to charm the fool with braggery, Silence inept to keep. 45. You'll newly blame our looks, assert new crime : She smiles, enjoys our fall. Let the minx laugh, on Tyrian couch sublime, Shell weep and pay for all. 46. Be knife or flame at hand, or well-drugged bowl, None 'scape Medea's hate. But if chance will prayer touch your iron soul, Hear my due style abate. 41. Now he who weigliecl them all. Now I lose him who was worth and compensated all to me. 42. Avoid not my own flame. The flames of love and anger with which 1 burn. 44. A harlot, meaning her rival, Oreusa. The fool, meaning* again Oreusa. 46. Prayer touch, that prayer touch. Due style, the style of severity and reproach which is due to your falsehood. MEDEA TO JASON. 107 47. As supple we can be as erst you were, Even at your feet to kneel. Though I seem vile, our progeny yet spare, Let them no step-dame feel. 48. They're like you, Jason, and my wrath allays Your form in theirs to see. Oh ! by yon sky, bright with my grandsire's rays, By our two children's plea, 49. Restore that bed for which are riven all ties : Good faith in love e'er keep. We beg not against bulls or spears that rise, Nor that a snake may sleep : 50. We claim our own : 'tis but a right you yield, By whom we mother grew. Is it the dower ? 'Twas paid there in the field, Impregned with teeth by you. 51. My dower ? — The golden ram with the rich fleece, Which, asked, you'd not restore. My dower ? — You safe. My dower ? — The youth of Greece : Compare the wealth she bore. 43. With my grandsire's rays. With the rays of the sun : through her father iEetes she is granddaughter of Sol, the sun. By our two children's plea. By the just claim of our two children. 49. For which are riven all ties, to obtain which I offended my family, and cut all connection with them. We beg not against bulls. I ask not your love as you did inine, to accomplish a certain object, vanquishing bulls, soldiers, or a dragon. 50. Is it the dower 1 Is it because you received no dowry with me, and your new wife is rich in possessions. By whom, you, by whom. Impregned with teeth : where you planted dragon's teeth to grow into armed men. 51. Which ashed you'd not restore. If you repudiate the wife, you should restore the dowry ; but were the golden fleece, which I say is"my dowry, to be re-demanded, you would not restore it. My dower ? You safe 'The youth of Greece. My dowry is the deed of saving you and your companions, the young men of Greece. 108 MEDEA TO JASON. 52. That you have life, a spouse, a fine estate — That you can wrong, is mine, But presently - — — or why anticipate ? Wrath in big threats is fine ! 53. Where anger leads I follow, e'en to repent. We've helped a cheat : that's sore. Look to 't the god by whom my heart is rent, I muse what I'll do more. 52. Is mine, is owing to my assistance. But presently I'll be revenged. Why anticipate ? Why develop beforehand all the revenge I meditate? 53. I follow e'en to repent. Whatever my anger suggests, I'll do, at the risk of repenting afterwards. Look to it the god. If I am led to the sin of murder, the gods who have permitted such provocation as I have received may thank them- selves for it. LETTER XIII. LAODAMIA TO PEOTESILAUS. Argument. Protesilaus, a Thessalian prince, son of Iphiclus, on his way to Troy with other Grecian princes on board a fleet of forty sa'.l, was weather- bound at Aulis, a port in Boeotia. His wife, Laodamia, daughter of Acastus and Laodatliea, hearing of his detention there, loving her hus- band with the tenderest affection and tormented by omens and dreams, addresses this letter to conjure him to be mindful of the oracle of Apollo, and abstain from the too dangerous services of the war. This oracle had declared to the Greeks that the first who should land on Trojan ground would perish. Now Protesilaiis, moved by his ardent courage, did land first, and died by the hand of Hector. 1. Laodamia, the Haenionian spouse, To her Efemonian lord, Protesilas. Health with her dearest vows Accompany the word ! Wind-bound at Aulis you are long detained : Here foully fair the wind. At home had but retentive gales constrained, Foul weather had been kind. 3. More kisses, love, more cautions had been given : We had so much to say. By favouring breezes from my soul was riven More than itself that day. The four first lines answer to two of the Latin. 1. Hcemonian, Thessalian, from Mount Haemus. The epithet applies to both parties, since the father of each reigned over a part of Thessaly. 2. Here foully fair the wind. When you were yet here, the wind, foul to my wishes, was vexingly fair for your departure. Had been, would have been. 110 LAODAMIA TO PROTESILAUS. 4. Away on board, from my embraces wrung, Protesilas, you hie. Grief-struck, of speech bereft, hardly my tongue Articulates " good-bye/' 5. With Aquilo, the canvass onward bore Protesilas away. While sight can compass, mine persists to pore, Distinguish as it may. 6. Still, when no longer it deciphered you, The sail my sense retained ; At length, all image vanished from my view. When nought but sea remained, 7. Thee gone, night come, lifeless, as they relate, I sank upon the beach. Poor mother and Acastus, in sore strait To renovate my speech, 8. Kecalled in fine the power, but to deplore They did not let me die. With life renewed, renewed the tears that pour From my full-teeming eye. 9. Now listless, on my hair nor bead nor band ; No shining robe my wear ; But, like those touched with Bacchus' vintage Mad, wandering here and there, [wand, 5. Aquilo, a name of the north wind, which favoured the first part of Protesilaus' voyage down the jNegropont channel. 7. Acastus, the father of Laodamia. 9. But like those touched. Bacchus, the god of wine, bore a wand or spear decked with vine-leaves and ivy, which they called a thyrsus ; whoever he touched with it became mad. This figures the ebriety caused by the use of wine. The votaries of the god bore these wands in LAODAMIA TO PKOTESILAUS. Ill 10. The Phyllian dames assembled here entreat Me,—" Wear your royal dress/' Twere fine ! my robe with musk and rose replete ! Fights he at Troy the less ? 11. Cuirass and helm out there^ shall here be seen New gawds and pompous style ? No, let his toil be figured by our mien, Splendour inurned the while. 12. Paris bright, in war be slowly fired As you are perfid guest ! Would you had ne'er the Spartan spouse admired, Or she been unimpressed ! 13. Too deep, good Menelas, a jilt you mourn, Dole throughout Greece to move. Heaven grant our omen swerve and he return, Sacred his arms to Jove ! 14. Still at war's mention ever terrified, My tears bedew the ground. Troy, Simois, Xanthus, Tenedos, and Ide, Are names of fearful sound. their processions, and performed the most grotesque dances, uttering the wildest howling that can be conceived. 10. Phyllian, from Phyllos, a town of Thessaly. 12. O Paris bright. Paris, the son of Priam and cause of the war by the rape of Helen, was remarkably handsome. 13. Menelaiis, the husband of Helen. Heaven grant our omen swerve. Alluding to a bad omen to which she reverts again, verse 23. And he, Protesilaiis. Sacred his arms to Jove. His arms to be hung up in the temple of Jupiter as a sacred trophy. 14. Troy, Simois, Xanthus, Tenedos, and Ide. Names of places near the seat of war. The city Troy, the rivers Simois and Xanthus, the island of Tenedos, and Mount Ida. 112 LAODAMIA TO PROTESILAUS. 15. The guest knew well, or had not been so bold, A support would not lack. He came, 'tis said, conspicuous in gold, Troy's wealth upon his back. 16. With ships and men, whereby a chieftain wins, His quota of the realm. To all this fell the sister of the twins : Our Greece it may overwhelm. 17. I dread one Hector. Paris spake him fell, Harder than steel in fight. Avoid that Hector if you love me well ; Ever his fear in sight. 18. While him you shun> cautious of others too, Deem many Hectors there : Mindful to think, when hotly you pursue, " Laoda bids beware/' 19. If Ilion must by Grecian fall, thee safe, Fall Ilion as it may. Atrides hunt the youth who makes him chafe : The robbed the robber pay. 15. The guest, Paris, who came as a guest to Menelaiis. See Argument, Letter I. But we shall presently have his own letter to Helen. Or had not, or would not have. 16. The sister of the twins, Helen, the sister of Castor and Pollux, and object of Paris' rape. Our Greece it may o'erwhelm, it may be the ruin of this our Greece. 19. Atrides hunt the youth tuho makes him chafe: The robbed the robber pay. Let Menelaiis who has been robbed hunt down the youth Paris, who has robbed him, till retribution be made. LAODAMU TO PROTESILAUS. 113 20. Let Menelas go win, as just, his plea : He combats for his wife. 'Tis not your case : strive you to live for me : Return and bring me life. 21. Spare one, O Dardans, in a host of foes, Nor with his life kill mine. Not his the rage with uplift sword who goes To lead the slaughtering line. 22. Stronger in arms who combat with good will : Protesilas let love. I will confess, once I 'd have held you still, But fear'd my fears to move. 23. Twas when you left the hall, Troy ward to wend, On the stair you nearly fell. Shuddering with dread I prayed, "May that por- " Returning safe and well/* [tend 24. Now this is said that you avoid the van : Vain be my terrors found. Some one the Fates demand, be who it can, First treading Ilian ground. 21. Spare one, O Dardans. The country named Troy, from one of its early kings, Tros, was originally called Dardania froni Dardanus, the chief of the earliest settlers t here. 22. Onceltcould have held you still. I wished to persuade you to remain at home, but dared not speak my thoughts of fear. 23. On the stair you nearly fell. Returning safe and well. The first line contains a bad omen, which she feels, shuddering. By the second, her love strains to interpret it into a good one, unwilling, as she has just said, to give way to thoughts of fear. 24. Some one the Fates demand. Alluding to the oracle mentioned in the Argument. 11.-4 LAODAMIA to protesilaus. 25. Unhappy she who first shall have to mourn ! You Heaven from rashness save ! Of thousand sail be you the thousandth borne O'er the last weary wave. 26. This too observe : go last down the ship's side ; Why haste to foreign strand ? Returning, ply with sail and oar the tide, And urge your keel to land. 27. Sleeps Phoebus, or on high his chariot whirls, At eve or morn, we sigh. Yet more at eve, dearer than day to girls In love's embrace who lie. 23. Our pillow nightly hankers after dreams : False joys please wanting true. Ever thy form : ah me ! but pale it seems, And mournfully to rue. 29. We start from sleep ; invoke the shades of night : No altar unadored. Throw incense, dropping tears, which seem t' Like burning spirit poured. [ignite SO. You, once returned, when here these arms enchain, With joy my sense will ache ; When on connubial couch together lain, You full recital make. 27. Sleeps Phoebus, or high his chariot ivhirls. Whether the sun be gone down or shine high in the heavens. 28. Our pilloiu. I, when on my pillow. - Ever thy form presents itself to my dream. LAODAMIA TO PROTESILAUS. 115 31. In middle tale occurs, much as it please, A pause of kisses long. Kisses are apt the place of words to seize, And make a livelier tongue. 32. But thoughts of Asia rise and wat'ry graves, And flattering hopes all fail. Too full of terrors are the winds and waves, Yet spite of them you sail. 33. None brave the wind, though home invite to joy : Despising it you roam. "While Neptune bars the progress to his Troy : Turn then, Greeks, turn home. 34. Whither away ? oh hear the storm forefend. No chance this : 'tis from Heaven ! * W T hat asks your war ? a harlot home to wend ? To Greece, men, while 'tis given. 35. But this is vain : what 's done is past recall : Mild winds then bear you far. Happier Troy's dames ! Though seen their cham- pions' fall, Though near the hostile war, 33. Yon roam. You undertake a voyage far away from home. While Neptune bars the progress to his Troy. The principal gods, protectors of Troy, were Neptune, Venus, Apollo, Mars : that is, navi- gation, love, the arts, and arms. The chief celestial allies of the Greeks were Juno and Minerva • that is, power and wisdom. Jupiter, or the providence of heaven, was impartial. 34. A harlot home. Helen to Sparta. To Greece, men, while 'tis given. Make for Greece, O ye men, while it is yet in your power. 116 LAODAMIA TO PKOTESILAUS, 36. The bride herself, at morning, ready is To arm her warrior spouse. Each sturdy buckle set, she takes a kiss, Sensation sweet to rouse. 37. She leads him forth, holds him awhile to say, " Bring back these arms to Jove." With this injunction, wending on his way, He heeds for his house's love. 38. Returned, she takes his shield, relieves his head, Pressing it to her own. We, far away, all misadventure dread : Things feared to us are done. 39. While banished hence afar, in foreign lands, Your waxen figure 's here, By me caressed, to it my heart expands In softest souvenir. 40. Truly a form it more than seems : add voice, Protesilas 't would be. 'Tis my sweet commune, image of my choice, As it could answer me. 41. By your return, by you, my gods, I swear, By days of love to come, By that dear front, — may it live grey locks to By all the joys of home, [wear, — 38. We. The wives of Greece. 40. As it could. As if it could. 41. By your return, by you, my gods. I swear by yourself and your safe return, which are the two deities I adore. LAODAMIA TO PROTESILAUS. 117 42. I '11 come to you wherever you may call : In health, the gods so speed ! And now let one last bidding sum up all : If you love me, take heed. 42. In health, the gods so speed. May Heaven grant that I find you in health. LETTER XIV. HYPERMNESTRA TO LYNCEUS. Argument. Danaus and iEgyptus were the sons of Belus : the former by his several wives had fifty daughters, the latter fifty sons. iEgyptus proposed a general marriage between the two families, the fifty young men to the fifty girls. Now Danaus, having learnt from an oracle that he would die by the hand of a son-in-law, in order to escape the danger took ship and came to Argos, thus avoiding the proposed connection. iEgyptus, indignant at seeing his offer thus rejected, sent his fifty sons with an army to besiege their uncle, forbidding them to return till they had either killed Danaus or espoused his daughters. Danaus, then, constrained by the siege, consented to give his daughters in marriage to their cousins. To each of the young women, however, on the wedding day he gave a dagger, with injunction to use it on their husbands in the nuptial bed when, heated with wine and feasting, they should all be wrapt in the first profound sleep. The girls all executed their father's order except Hypermnestra, who spared Lynceus her spouse, recommending him to fly as soon as possible. 'Now when Danaus found that the deed had been done by all his daughters except Hypermnestra, he caused her to be put in prison, there to wait the punishment of death for disobedience. From her cell she addresses this letter to her husband, begging him either to bring help, or, failing in that, and if she should be put to death, to have her interred with all due funeral ceremony. She was, however, liberated by Lynceus after he had slain Danaus, and thus fulfilled the oracle. 1. From Hypermnestra to the one unslain Of fifty royal brothers : Herself confined in ignominious chain, For charity to others. 2. Guilty that she refused her spouse to kill, Praised had she shown him dead : A guilty praise to do a father's will, Her husband poniarded. HYPERMNESTRA TO LYNCEUS. 119 Me rather let the wedding torch consume, By me inviolate : Rather the sword; by my harsh father's doom, Myself exterminate : 4. Than he should make me say, " Would I had not," Or grieve a worthy deed. Danaus and cruel sisters wail the blot : Tears are their action's meed. 5. My heart recoils at memory of that night : It thrills me to the bone. You deem this hand could do ? It shrinks to The deed surmised its own. [write 6. 'Twas thus : Sol in the w^est had laid his head. Twilight the day relieved, When we beneath iEgyptus' roof were led, All armed : th' old man received. 7. Resplendent lamps of gold bedaze the eye : Incense the gods eschew. " Hymen, O Hymenaee ;" the people cry ; Juno and he withdrew. 3. By me inviolate. My sisters violated the marriage ceremony by murdering their husbands, which I did not. 4. Would Iliad not done the honest and charitable act of saving my husband. 5. The deed surmised its oicn. The deed which you surmise it could have perpetrated. 6. When ice ; my sisters and myself. 7. Incense the gods eschew. The eye is dazzled also with flames of in- cense which, on this occasion, is odious to the gods. Hymen, O Hymencee, the nuptial hymn. Juno and he withdrew. He, Hymen, the god of marriage, and Juno its protectress, also withdrew in disgust. 120 HYPERMNESTRA TO LYNCEUS. 8. Later, all flushed with wine, the husband crowd, Fresh flowers about their hair, Each to his bed retired, all talking loud. The grave lay hidden there. Oppressed with sleep, they drew a heavy breath : Silence all Argos through. And soon there seemed as 'twere the groans of Nor seemed, for it was true. [death ; 10. The sinful sound my cheek of blood bereaves ; On wedded couch of state, Trembling, like ruffled corn or aspen leaves That Zephyrs agitate ; 11. E'en so my members shook, you sleeping sound : 'Twas soporific wine. My father bade the knife : I rise, look round, And, all aghast, take mine. 12, 'Tis truth you read. Three times uplift the sword, Three times the deed to do : Three times it met your neck, — let say the word, — My father's sword to you. 13. Nor heart nor piety the action dare, Nor hand obsequious : Rending my purple robe, my scented hair, I moan lugubrious, 8. Fresh flowers. After carousing, they had renewed their garlands to enter the bridal chamber. 12. Let say the word. Permit the truth to be told. 13. Nor heart nor piety. Neither my feeling nor my good principles. HYPERMNESTKA TO LYNCEUS. 121 14. " Hard, hard, oh Hypermnestra, yet the child " Must do her sire's command.