384. Poetry and Time
(Prefixed to his Life of Vergil)
O VETVSTATIS ueneranda custos,
regios actus simul et fugacis
temporum cursus docilis referre,
aurea Clio,
tu nihil magnum sinis interire,
nil mori clarum pateris, reseruans
posteris prisci monumenta saecli
condita libris.
sola fucatis uariare dictis
paginas nescis, set aperta quicquid
ueritas prodit, recinis per aeuum
simplice lingua.
tu senescentis titulos auorum
flore durantis reparas iuuentae;
militat uirtus tibi: te notante
crimina pallent.
tu fori turbas strepitusque litis
effugis dulci moderata cantu,
nec retardari pateris loquellas
conpede metri.
his faue dictis: retegenda uita est
uatis Etrusci, modo qui perenne
Romulae uoci decus adrogauit
carmine sacro.
The Selection that follows needs some explanation. I have made no systematic search in the literature of translation: and it is likely enough that I have omitted renderings more beautiful, or more interesting, than some which I have included. I have not tried to do more than to collect together a few old 'favourites' of my own. Moreover I have—save for one or two examples—confined myself to the four principal Latin poets.
I have interpreted the word 'Imitations' rather widely. It is quite possible, for example, that Clough never read Vergil's Lines Written in a Lecture-Room(Catalepton V): yet the poem of Clough which I have brought into connexion with this piece is, I think, a truer translation of it than could be found elsewhere. I will venture to hope, again, that I may be readily forgiven for placing beside Statius' famous Invocation to Sleepsix sonnets on a like subject from six English masters of the sonnet-form.
I have to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to reprint copyright pieces: Messrs. G. Bell & Sons (four versions by Calverley, Nos. 67, 82, 145, 149), Prof. D.A. Slater (versions of Lucretius, Nos. 66, 69, and Catullus, No. 97), Messrs. Blackwood (two pieces by the late Sir Theodore Martin, Nos. 92, 136), Prof. Ellis and Mr. John Murray (version of Catullus, No. 85), The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press and the Executors of the late Sir R.C. Jebb (version of Catullus, No. 74), Mr. L.J. Latham and Messrs. Smith Elder (version of Propertius, No. 179, from Mr. Latham's Odes of Horace and Other Verses), Messrs. George Allen (version of Horace from the Ionicaof the late William Cory, No. 148), Mr. John Murray (version of Horace by Mr. Gladstone, No. 126), Dr. T.H. Warren and Mr. John Murray (version of Vergil, No. 110), Mr. James Rhoades and Messrs. Kegan Paul (version of Vergil, No. 119), Mr. W.H. Fyfe (version of Statius, No. 262).
44
By the side of this Epitaph may be placed Pope's Epitaph upon Mrs. Corbet, with Johnson's comment:
HERE rests a woman good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason and with sober sense.
No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired,
No arts essayed but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that Virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so composed a mind,
So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustained it, but the woman died.
'The subject of it', says Johnson, 'is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities: yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character, which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be made known and the dignity established.'
66
(Beginning at the third paragraph, Illud in his rebus...)
BUT here's the rub. There soon may come a time
You'll count right reason treason and the prime
Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft
In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.
Think how at Aulis to the Trivian Maid
The hero-kings of Greece their homage paid,
The flower of men, whose impious piety
Iphianassa on the altar laid.
Behold the bride! upon her head the crown
Of ritual, that from either cheek let down
An equal streamer. But cold rapture hers
As on her father's face she marked the frown:
A frown of anguish: at his side the men
Of doom, and in their hands, screened from her ken,
Death; and her countrymen shed tears to see
The lamb, poor victim, in the lions' den.
Then dumb with fear, not tongue-tied with delight,
She drooped to earth. What profited it her plight
She was her father's first-born? Not the less
They took her. Death, not Love, ordained the rite.
His were the bridesmen, and the altar his
To which with quaking limbs in fearfulness
Uplifted then, sans song, sans ritual due,
She was brought home—but not to wedded bliss,
A maid, but marred not married, in the spring
Of life and love's sweet prime, to yield the king
A victim, and the fleet fair voyaging:
Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring.
D.A. Slater.
67
SWEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm-winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling: