Part 1

VIRGIL AND LUCRETIUS

VIRGIL & LUCRETIUS

PASSAGES TRANSLATED BY

WILLIAM STEBBING

HON. FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD AUTHOR OF ‘SIR WALTER RALEGH: A BIOGRAPHY’ ‘FIVE CENTURIES OF ENGLISH VERSE: IMPRESSIONS’ ‘TRUTHS OR TRUISMS’

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1917

Contents

PAGE

_VIRGIL_

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 3

PRAISE OF ITALY 14

HAPPY HUSBANDMEN 17

A TARENTINE GARDEN 25

A GOLDEN AGE 29

LIMBO AND TARTARUS 36

ELYSIUM 72

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 90

THE GATES 91

THE GHOSTS 92

EURYALUS AND PALLAS 93

THINGS 94

_LUCRETIUS_

_‘DE RERUM NATURA’_

HYMN TO VENUS 97

PHILOSOPHY 101

‘MUSICAL AS IS APOLLO’S LUTE’ 105

THE FEAR OF DEATH 107

EARTH’S DECAY 121

PRIMEVAL MAN 124

IPHIGENIA 139

MATERNAL LOVE 142

ECHO 144

THE SEASONS 147

VIRGIL

Orpheus and Eurydice

P. VIRGILII MARONIS Georgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 453-527

This is the tale old Proteus by the sea Erst told of Orpheus and Eurydice. Virgil at Parthenope overheard, And has resung it, if not word by word.

Orpheus had been espoused but one short hour, And went to gather roses for the bower, When a rejected wooer, mad with love, Sprang upon the light-footed nymph, and strove For an embrace; she, heeding nought, alas! Trod on a serpent sleeping in the grass; And when on the instant, answering her cries, Her Bridegroom knelt there, kissing her closed eyes, Half fainting with the sense of all her charms, Sudden he woke, a dead Bride in his arms! Not his alone the woe and misery; Nor he sole mourner for Eurydice; From Rhodope to Pangæa’s peaks, above The cave where Boreas hid his Attic love, Through the fierce realm of Rhesus, echo bore The wail to the wild Getes, to the shore Of Hebrus, while in forest, hill, and dale The tuneful Dryads told the tearful tale. But how conjure by the best ordered show Of grief an irremediable woe! Orpheus fled Pity, and neighbourly Care; All human fellowship but his despair. With but that and his lyre communion still He held, from dawn to sunset, then until The planets rose and sank, banishing sleep, Keeping sad vigils by the moaning deep, Thinking each shadow on the desert shore Was his lost Bride restored to life once more.

And was it days, weeks, months, or years?—at last From the ghost-haunted waters coastward passed— Whether Goddess, or Woman—a pale shape, That beckoned to the far Laconian Cape Of Tænarus, where the dread cavern draws Each generation down its hungry jaws. At the first touch of his lyre opened wide The lofty gates of Hell; he paced inside The grove impenetrable by but him; A darkness that might be felt, stark, and grim, Where bide the awful ministers of Dis, With hearts that never beat at prayer but his. And still the notes rose bravely; and still he Came, calling on his lost Eurydice; On her, sole burden of his love-lorn cries— One theme informing countless melodies. At the sweet sorrowing, awhile a hush— Amazement—throughout Hades; then a rush— A quick rustling rather, as when a flight Of birds seeks where to sleep at fall of night, Or, cow’ring, courts, against an icy breeze, Multitudinous foliage of trees. Thus—for the jailers ceased from watch and ward, Witched themselves by the wailing, wandering bard— Flocked, from the unamiable swamp, which feeds Nothing on its black slime but grisly reeds— Where steams and groans Cocytus, and Styx holds Prisoners within its nine coils and folds— A legion of the newly dead, entombed In Limbo, till ripe to be tried and doomed; A fearful gathering, bodies stripped of life, Yet moving; some in pairs, husband and wife, Girls who had virgins died, and beardless youths, With parents’ kisses warm upon their mouths; And some though freed from flesh ignorant where Their dwelling fixed, sad phantoms, thin as air. Each waiting judgment; now forgetting all Griefs in a greater, in the musical Challenge to Dis to yield its prey; while, on And on, the chant rolled, till its way it won Past the black realms of ancient Erebus, Past too the torture cells of Tartarus, Where cold-blue snakes, the Furies’ locks that tied, By the trespassing strain, charmed, stupefied, Drew in their fangs, Ixion’s wheel made pause, And, one shocked wide gape, stood Cerberus’s triple jaws.

At last, at last! a Palace flaming high With angry flashes from a mocking sky; And, seated on twin thrones, the King and Queen, Garbed in life-which-is-death’s Infernal sheen; Both silent; but, as whispered soft and low The lyre, stern Proserpine remembered how A girl plucked flowers. As nursery rhymes On dying ears, returned old happy times, Sunshine, and the sweet thought, if mixed with pain, A mother’s toil to have her child again. Paradise for Hell’s Queen once more to know That She had heart to feel for others’ woe!— For her Lord to see, transfigured, ere a crown Burned on her brow, the maid he had brought down To Hell; and she answering his eyes, cried: “Minstrel, depart in peace, and with thy Bride!” The Manes registered the high decree, Adding that, since no mortal eyes may see Spirit take flesh, Orpheus must be resigned, Till Earth was reached, never to look behind. And as they wrote and sealed what their Queen spoke, From unseen instruments weird music broke,— An owlet’s hooting, a swan’s dying cry— A rapture near akin to agony.

Orpheus turned, or was led; more felt than heard— Passing the gates—as when a babe has stirred, Dreaming—a sigh; but, venturing no glance Anywhere, or speech, walked as in a trance. Save, as if strings snapt, the lyre stammered out A spasm of jarred notes wandering about, Nor glad nor sad; the harper scarce aware Of the music that he made; or how far He had gone, through what scenes of bale or bliss, Since he quitted the royal halls of Dis; Trembling only lest the whole dream might take Flight, like his rapt girl-Bride, and he awake To find himself, widowed, lost, as before, Companionless upon the wild sea-shore. And yet. Was it not breath, a woman’s breath, Fanning his cheeks? Could even unkind Death Have the heart to cheat, with the goal so near? Was not the light he saw day’s, warm and clear? And, sure, the landscape spread before his view Was of meadows and woods, all which he knew? Phantoms, begone! Here was his spring-tide come, And his Bride with him, out of Hades, home! Sudden, an avalanche—compound—Earth, Hell— Long chained—irresistible passion—fell, Defying thought, fear! his hand left the string But just caressed; his throat forbore to sing— That he might clasp and kiss;—one look behind! A world of travail scattered to the wind!

Heav’n forgives seven sins if love the cause; The plea doubles guilt when Hell’s the brok’n laws. Hark how the grinning host of demons howls! And oh! the crash pealing over Hell’s pools! Naught heard he, but that cried Eurydice,— Regained, re-lost: “Alas! for Me and Thee! I feel hands, the inexorable Fates, Speeding back within the Infernal gates; My swimming eyes, just tasting of Earth’s light, I know are being sealed by a large Night. See! how I stretch vain arms around, and grope For thee in darkness, hoping without hope! E’en now how lightly should I life resign, Could I remember I had once been thine!” Silence! From sight, hearing, passed she apart, Leaving measureless void within his heart. He ran, striving to clutch a ghost in vain; Pursuing with vain words; never again Looked he upon her; nor could he prevail Upon Hell’s Ferryman to let him scale The walls, swimming the moat, and again win, By weeping, or by music, his way in, Then move or force its warders to restore His stolen Bride to his fond arms once more. Poor Ghost! No third time destined she to float Over foul Styx in Charon’s crazy boat! But, hapless, doomed to swell the cavalcades Of lifeless bodies, and of fleshless shades; Nor one, nor other she; just borne along, Drift on the tide—refrain to an old song— Yet, flickering, like shadows on a wall, Or rainbow gleaming from a water-fall, A throb, a thrill, a joy though set in dole— For Lethe could not wash away the whole— That she reward had been of each sharp pang By Orpheus borne, theme of each song he sang.

Conscious if voiceless, she. And he? The lyre Which, while its master hoped, had quenched its fire, Was ever confidant of his despair, The instrument commissioned to declare His wrongs. They tell who know, that in a cave Humid and bare, desolate as new grave, At the foot of a tall cliff, hung with ice, By Strymon’s gloomy waters, for full twice A hundred days and nights, singing he wept; Like a nightingale cruelly bereft Of all her young ones in the poplar grove, With nothing for her any more to love, Or live for, but to gaze upon her nest, And mourn, the night through, all she once possessed, Till overflows the wood where she complains, With the sweet melancholy of her strains. So longed he, and so played; changing at times To lands yet lonelier, and harsher climes; Arctic ice-fields crossed, forded snowy Don, Camped on Scythian heaths, where yews keep-on Eternal pall of frost;—always in quest Of postern into Hell, whence he might wrest Audience of its Lords, and with his tale Of unreal gifts, all pre-ordained to fail, Oblige them to repeat for very shame A boon Hell granted only to reclaim. No more than this? This his one hope and theme? This, sum of his powers? And this a dream! A dream? And yet the key—magic of Art!— Which could unlock at will a tiger’s heart, And, as notes rose and fell in cadence, made Triumphal arches of each sylvan glade; For true passion a hearing aye commands, And speaks a tongue all Nature understands. No more than that it had killed care to bless More than one life, and left a wilderness! And that it fell on Virgil to recall A legend—would that it lied!—how, when all The land’s women, Bacchus-fired, and distraught By hymns that Orpheus in glad days had taught, Had pressed him into the wild dance they led Nightly through torch-lit forests, and he fled In horror, as at treason to his love, They, infuriate more the more he strove, Followed, reckless of all but the mad chase, Down to the Hebrus from the hills of Thrace, And tore him limb from limb: but still the tongue, As the wild current rolled the head along, Called on “Eurydice”; and till the sea Received it, bank to bank returned “Eurydice”!

Pardon, my Master, if I’ve dared re-think A thought, or, standing on the outer brink Of a deep pool, would with a pebble thrown Measure your depth of feeling by my own. But You the cause, the tempter;—who could read A tale like yours, and not pursue each deed From impulse to the act—complete a scene With such small details as there may have been? So cunningly you made romance to live— I trespassed on your stage; You must forgive!

Praise of Italy

P. VIRGILII MARONIS Georgicon, Bk. II. vv. 136-176

This our world has beauties everywhere; Grand are your forests, Medes, and wondrous fair; Travellers to Blest Araby have told Of sands that grow frankincense, streams of gold; Strange legends run of bulls with fire for breath, Dragons sowing plains with myriad teeth, Till in the place of harvest’s yellow ears A battle field gleamed with steel helms and spears. Leave me the land I live in, where kind earth Yields real grain, a hundredfold at a birth; And purple grapes of every laden vine Laugh with the girls that tread them into wine. Glad all life! In the olive, as each day Ripens its juices; cattle, as they play Amid rich herbage; the warrior steed, Curvetting with arched neck about the mead. Even the snow-white ram, and mighty bull, Joy, as, Clitumnus, on them dashes full Thy hallowed flood, to be chosen to escort A Roman Triumph to Jove’s Temple-Court. Ever; from young Spring, that, keeping the doors Of Winter and of Summer, with soft show’rs Melts March frosts, and returning with a gay, Late Zephyr laughs the Dog-star’s heats away; To Summer, that at call, whate’er the Hour, Re-stocks the fold, and bids the orchard flow’r. Fruitfulness everywhere—all things good; No savage lions, tigers mad for blood, No scaly pythons, gathered, coil on coil, Into one orb, to hurl it on the spoil; No wolf’s-bane, with its mystic-purple bloom Tempting rash herb-collectors to their doom; But Nature, kind in that which She denies, Kind above all whenever She allies With human effort.— Mark how She has filled The vales with rocks that cry: “Come, take, and build!” How, to crown the work, She has bid beside Each citadel’s sheer walls a river glide. No Libyan desert ours, but a land Of many streams, where in cool shadows stand Knee-deep the still kine; and of lakes good store, Como’s to Garda’s sea-imitating roar; Of highways for her navies, east and west, To circulate, world-through, Rome’s high behest; Glorious service theirs, though the salt waves, Sulking outside new ports in echoing caves, Affect to murmur at decrees they know, When Cæsar sets them bounds, they must allow. Even for silver, brass and gold itself, If Italy deigned boast of vulgar pelf, She might just claims to be considered raise. But she has titles, nobler far, to praise. Hers the seed-bed, harvest, ever have been Of men, of fighters, hardened, sharp, and keen, Bred north and south, east and west, with, from Rome, Chiefs to lead forth, and bring them victors home. Band of mighty Shades! Ah! mightiest Thou Who schoolest the insolent Hindoo now, How weak is strength, valour no better than Cowardice, when our Cæsar leads the van! Hail to Giver of wane, and oil, and corn! Hail, Shrine of ancient peace, ere Jove was born! Hail, Mother of Men, real Men, source and spring Of precious arts I love, of all I sing! At thy call, my Italy, parent, nurse, Unsealing primal well-heads, I rehearse Pure rustic themes long since discoursed upon Myrtle-clad slopes of musical Helicon!

Happy Husbandmen

Georgicon, Bk. II. vv. 458-540

Of all rewards that Heav’n bestows on toil, Which is the peer of yours who till the soil! Would you exchange with them who sue the great For place or alms? Read, as they pass the gate, On this face wrath, envy on that, and gall; And, worst, the death of self-respect on all. ’Tis yours to breathe an atmosphere of peace, Suitors of earth that knows not of caprice; That grieves to disappoint a hope, and pours Into expectant laps a choice of stores, Sounding changes high and low, grave and gay, On the vast organ Nature loves to play. Learn from a farm to work, and never tire; An acre is various as a shire; Labour and rest there alternating meet, Each indistinguishably good and sweet; Ah! the murmurous quiet in the wide Homesteads, where, in the intervals, beside Bubbling brooks, in cool valleys, ’neath green boughs You slumber, lullabied by lowing cows. Winter anon, earth’s holiday; and then To rouse the wild boar in his fenny den: Sport dear to youth’s blood racing fast and pure, Content with simple joys, trained to endure. Nor at one season, but throughout the year, Be sure the Gods fail not of love and fear: While no chimney corner but makes a shrine Where to tend a grandsire all but divine. If Justice has not yet forsaken Earth, ’Tis that she lingers on some cottage hearth!

Ancestral guardians of my home forgive, Pan, too, and Sylvan, if I do not live The life I praise; but ere I knew its charms, The choir of Muses wooed me to their arms, Taught me an eager child their sacred lore, Arts I still love; and fain had taught me more— To map Heav’n’s paths, number its stars, and trace Why wanes the moon; when veils the sun his face, Hastes purple-clad to sink on Ocean’s breast, And stays Night’s course for him and Man to rest; Where growling earthquakes breed; and why seas feign To roar in wrath, and straightway laugh again.— Something I learned; and blest had been my state, If gifted with the will and powers by Fate To follow Nature to her primal cause, And coax from her the meaning of her laws; Like him, too early lost, who told us how To spurn at all it is not Man’s to know, To count it shame to dread Death, as to weep At putting off our shoes to go to sleep. But my blood chills—poor thing, it cannot find Air it may breathe—where soars aloft sheer Mind. Yet why lament that the Seer’s part is not For me, when mine the sweet, if humbler, lot— To light and feed a poet’s holy fire; Rapt from myself to feel a God inspire The visions that I see, the words I pen— The message that I bring my fellow men— Bound, if the Muse decrees, to soar away Where rolls Spercheios, or girls dance and play On Spartan hills, or to some forest dell Of snowy Hæmus; while, I know it well, That far so ever as I seem to roam, My spirit always will return to home, Predestined to no inglorious themes— My native fields, and woods, and sparkling streams, And the race no less that those vales frequent, Simple husbandmen, wholly innocent Of ill, though shrewd, keen to resent a wrong; For whom I meditate my pastoral song. Fancy will wander oft to lands unknown, But finds the thoughts to dwell on in its own. Italian peasant I, and would rehearse Our peasants’ virtues in Italian verse.

Let me recall a neighbour good and kind, Loving the ancient methods, disinclined To quit his fathers’ ways; nor bard nor sage; Who just has served the soil from youth to age. No Mysteries for him; enough to adore The rustic Gods his sires revered of yore. All one to him who shall the Consul be— This or that—our Rome stands eternally. He cares not about Kings; so much he knows; Rome crowned; and, when she wills, Rome can depose. Faint echoes reach the country from the Town Of swarms of Dacian pirates rowing down Ister; and of brothers by brothers slain; Cæsar’s charge that—and his to garner grain. Sometimes the calm is broken by the wealth Of courtiers seeking country air for health; Why envy when the whole that they possess Has not distilled a drop of happiness! Or one may stumble by, diseased and old, With scarce a rag to shield him from the cold; The good-man helps; he pities; does not grieve; Is grateful he can give, need not receive. Statesmen will strive, he counts his orchard’s yield, And reaps his harvest from the willing field. A realm may fall, loud lawyers rule the Court, Heirships be changed by some forgot report, Adventurers new seas explore, or rush On foreign swords in thirst for gold, or push Into proud palace halls; while he instead Drives his curved plough, and mows the yellow mead. Hence herds deserving well their ample cheer, With all the genial labours of the year. Hence too the tribute that he gladly brings To his Penates, modest offerings— Kind “Little People,” blest where’er ye come Compacted of an atmosphere of Home! Hence, above all, what may his native land Of labour, store, nay, of his life demand! True Roman, few as he of Rome so proud; None readier to give her goods and blood! Meantime no season comes without its call; Not one would he away; he loves them all— Cries between laugh and wail from lambs new-born, Sheaves in the close-packed barn of golden corn, Groans of content from home-returning sows, The woodlands’ crackling thuds of severed boughs, Pyramids of red apples, row on row, And vineyards purpling in late Autumn’s glow, Till with the olives’ rendering of oil Winter winds up the victories of toil. Content the master, with glad welcoming eyes, As crop to crop succeeds, each a surprise, Yet taking each its place in order clear, The grand procession of the fruitful year!

Harmonious whole, made up, hopes and cares, Mind’s, Body’s work, in not unequal shares; With grateful pauses, as when whirlwinds cease To riot in a wood, and there is peace. Thus Eve; Man’s truce, nor his alone, for play; But Nature’s universal holiday. Stall-wards, devious steps, the cattle pass, Their udders richly furnished; on the grass With harmless horns kids wrestle; while a band, Children and Wife, contend to clasp his hand, And kiss his lips; he happy in the pride Of love which chastity has sanctified. And days as well there are, when the farm feasts, The host reclining amid friends, his guests; High flame the hissing logs, wine-cups are crowned, And vows and healths to Gods and men go round; On equal terms master with shepherds vies, As archer, or as wrestler, for a prize. Thus sprang a race, the wonder of the earth, Suckled by Sabine mothers—as, at birth, Their king by wild werewolf—twin strains with those, Blending of Tuscan lords, high Lucumos; Till from Seven Hills, in one wall, see come, Mistress of a world, Imperial Rome! Noblest of Monsters! beautiful as brave, And strong at once to conquer, and to save.

Yet sometimes dream I legends strange and sweet, Ere Nymphs nursed Jove upon a hill of Crete, Of days when Earth, a garden bright and fair, Gave Man fruits as easily as the air He breathed; when all that trod or flew had part In a large brotherhood of sense and heart, And it could scarce have seemed to human mind More hideous to batten on its kind, Than with as unnatural zest to heap Impious boards with flesh of steer and sheep; When no war-bugle blew its summons shrill, Or forge had fitted hands with swords to kill; When Saturn planted here below his throne— The Age of Gold, when Heaven and Earth were one!

A Tarentine Garden

Georgicon, Bk. IV. vv. 116-148