The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore Collected by Himself. In Ten Volumes |
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| X. |
 | The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore |  |
THE FALL OF HEBE.
A DITHYRAMBIC ODE.
When the immortals at their banquet lay;
The bowl
Sparkled with starry dew,
Within whose orbs, the almighty Power,
At nature's dawning hour,
Stor'd the rich fluid of ethereal soul.
Around,
Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight
From eastern isles
And with rich fragrance all their bosoms fill'd),
In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,
A liquid daybreak o'er the board distill'd.
All must be luxury, where Lyæus smiles.
His locks divine
Were crown'd
With a bright meteor-braid,
Which, like an ever-springing wreath of vine,
Shot into brilliant leafy shapes,
And o'er his brow in lambent tendrils play'd:
While mid the foliage hung,
Like lucid grapes,
A thousand clustering buds of light,
Cull'd from the gardens of the galaxy.
Lay lovely, as when first the Syrens sung
And all the curtains of the deep, undrawn,
Reveal'd her sleeping in its azure bed.
The captive deity
Hung lingering on her eyes and lip,
With looks of ecstasy.
Now, on his arm,
In blushes she repos'd,
And, while he gazed on each bright charm,
To shade his burning eyes her hand in dalliance stole.
The nectar'd wave
Lyæus gave,
And from her eyelids, half-way clos'd,
Sent forth a melting gleam,
Which fell, like sun-dew, in the bowl:
While her bright hair, in mazy flow
Of gold descending
Adown her cheek's luxurious glow,
Hung o'er the goblet's side,
And was reflected in its crystal tide,
Whose sunny leaves, at evening hour
With roses of Cyrene blending ,
Hang o'er the mirror of some silvery stream.
Shone in the hands
Of dimpled Hebe, as she wing'd her feet
Up
The empyreal mount,
To drain the soul-drops at their stellar fount ;
And still
As the resplendent rill
Gushed forth into the cup with mantling heat,
Her watchful care
Was still to cool its liquid fire
With snow-white sprinklings of that feathery air
The children of the Pole respire,
Where life is all a spring, and north winds never blow.
Bright Hebe, what a tear,
And what a blush were thine,
When, as the breath of every Grace
Wafted thy feet along the studded sphere,
Some star, that shone beneath thy tread,
Raising its amorous head
To kiss those matchless feet,
Check'd thy career too fleet;
And all heaven's host of eyes
Entranc'd, but fearful all,
Saw thee, sweet Hebe, prostrate fall
Upon the bright floor of the azure skies ;
Where, mid its stars, thy beauty lay,
As blossom, shaken from the spray
Of a spring thorn
Lies mid the liquid sparkles of the morn.
Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,
The worshippers of Beauty's queen behold
An image of their rosy idol, laid
Upon a diamond shrine.
Which had pursued the flying fair,
Of her bright hair,
Now, as she fell,—oh wanton breeze!
Ruffled the robe, whose graceful flow
Hung o'er those limbs of unsunn'd snow,
Purely as the Eleusinian veil
Hangs o'er the Mysteries!
Love bless'd the breeze!
The Muses blush'd;
And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,
While every eye looked laughing through the strings.
Which Jove himself was to have quaff'd?
By the fall'n Hebe's side;
While, in slow lingering drops, th' ethereal tide,
As conscious of its own rich essence, ebb'd away.
In that blest hour,
And, with a wing of love,
Brush'd off the goblet's scatter'd tears,
As, trembling near the edge of heaven they ran,
And sent them floating to our orb below?
Essence of immortality!
The shower
Fell glowing through the spheres;
While all around new tints of bliss,
New odours and new light,
Enrich'd its radiant flow.
Now, with a liquid kiss,
Of Heaven's luminous Lyre ,
Stealing the soul of music in its flight:
And now, amid the breezes bland,
That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fann'd
By all their sighs, meandering stole.
They who, from Atlas' height,
Beheld this rosy flame
Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 'twas some planet, whose empyreal frame
Had kindled, as it rapidly revolv'd
Around its fervid axle, and dissolv'd
Into a flood so bright!
Within his twilight bower,
Lay sweetly sleeping
When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropp'd the celestial shower,
Steeping
The rosy clouds, that curl'd
About his infant head,
Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed.
But, when the waking boy
Wav'd his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!—
The tide divine,
All glorious with the vermil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distill'd, in dews, upon the world,
And every drop was wine, was heavenly wine!
On which descended first that shower,
All fresh from Jove's nectareous springs;—
Oh far less sweet the flower, the sod,
O'er which the Spirit of the Rainbow flings
The magic mantle of her solar God!
Though I have styled this poem a Dithyrambic Ode, I cannot presume to say that it possesses, in any degree, the characteristics of that species of poetry. The nature of the ancient Dithyrambic is very imperfectly known. According to M. Burette, a licentious irregularity of metre, an extravagant research of thought and expression, and a rude embarrassed construction, are among its most distinguishing features; and in all these respects, I have but too closely, I fear, followed my models. Burette adds, “Ces caractères des dityrambes se font sentir à ceux qui lisent attentivement les odes de Pindare.” —Mémoires de l'Acad. vol. x. p. 306. The same opinion may be collected from Schmidt's dissertation upon the subject. I think, however, if the Dithyrambics of Pindar were in our possession, we should find that, however wild and fanciful, they were by no means the tasteless jargon they are represented, and that even their irregularity was what Boileau calls “un beau désordre.” Chiabrera, who has been styled the Pindar of Italy, and from whom all its poetry upon the Greek model was called Chiabreresco (as Crescimbeni informs us, lib. i. cap. 12.), has given, amongst his Vendemmie, a Dithyrambic, “all' uso de' Greci;” full of those compound epithets, which, we are told, were a chief characteristic of the style (συνθετους δε λεξεις εποιουν —Suid. Διθυραμβοδιδ.); such as
Nubicalpestator.
Non più dar pregio a tue bellezze e taci,
Che se Bacco fa vezzi alle mie labbra
Fo le fiche a' vostri baci.
------ esser vorrei Coppier,
E se troppo desiro
Deh fossi io Bottiglier.
Rime del Chiabrera, part ii. p. 352.
This is a Platonic fancy. The philosopher supposes, in his Timæus, that, when the Deity had formed the soul of the world, he proceeded to the composition of other souls, in which process, says Plato, he made use of the same cup, though the ingredients he mingled were not quite so pure as for the former; and having refined the mixture with a little of his own essence, he distributed it among the stars, which served as reservoirs of the fluid.—Ταυτ' ειπε και παλιν επι τον προτερον κρατηρα εν ω την του παντος ψυχην κεραννυς εμισγε, κ. τ. λ.
We learn from Theophrastus, that the roses of Cyrene were particularly fragrant.—Ευοσματα τα δε τα εν Κυρηνη ροδα.
Heraclitus (Physicus) held the soul to be a spark of the stellar essence—“Scintilla stellaris essentiæ.” —Macrobius, in Somn. Scip. lib. i. cap. 14.
The country of the Hyperboreans. These people were supposed to be placed so far north that the north wind could not affect them; they lived longer than any other mortals; passed their whole time in music and dancing, &c. &c. But the most extravagant fiction related of them is that to which the two lines preceding allude. It was imagined that, instead of our vulgar atmosphere, the Hyperboreans breathed nothing but feathers! According to Herodotus and Pliny, this idea was suggested by the quantity of snow which was observed to fall in those regions; thus the former: Τα ων πτερα εικαζοντας την χιονα τους Σκυθας τε και τους περιοικους δοκεω λεγειν. —Herodot. lib. iv. cap. 31. Ovid tells the fable otherwise: see Metamorph. lib. xv.
Mr. O'Halloran, and some other Irish Antiquarians, have been at great expense of learning to prove that the strange country, where they took snow for feathers, was Ireland, and that the famous Abaris was an Irish Druid. Mr. Rowland, however, will have it that Abaris was a Welshman, and that his name is only a corruption of Ap Rees!
It is Servius, I believe, who mentions this unlucky trip which Hebe made in her occupation of cup-bearer; and Hoffman tells it after him: “Cum Hebe pocula Jovi administrans, perque lubricum minus cauté incedens, cecidisset,” &c.
The arcane symbols of this ceremony were deposited in the cista, where they lay religiously concealed from the eyes of the profane. They were generally carried in the procession by an ass; and hence the proverb, which one may so often apply in the world, “asinus portat mysteria.” See the Divine Legation, book ii. sect. 4.
In the Geoponica, lib. ii. cap. 17., there is a fable somewhat like this descent of the nectar to earth. Εν ουρανω των θεων ευωχουμενων, και του νεκταπος πολλου παρακειμενου, ανασκιρτησαι χοπεια τον Ερωτα και συσσεισαι τω πτερω του κρατηρος την βασιν, και περιτρεψαι μεν αυτον: το δε νεκταρ εις την γην εκχυθεν, κ. τ. λ. Vid. Autor. de Re Rust. edit. Cantab. 1704.
The constellation Lyra. The astrologers attribute great virtues to this sign in ascendenti, which are enumerated by Pontano, in his Urania:
Emodulans, mulcetque novo vaga sidera cantu,
Quo captæ nascentum animæ concordia ducunt
Pectora, &c.
The Egyptians represented the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. Ειτε Αιγυπτους εωρακως αρχην ανατολης παιδιον νεογνον γραφοντας επι λωτω καθεζομενον. —Plutarch. περι του μη χραν εμμετρ. See also his Treatise de Isid. et Osir. Observing that the lotos showed its head above water at sunrise, and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating this flower to Osiris, or the sun.
This symbol of a youth sitting upon a lotos is very frequent on the Abraxases, or Basilidian stones. See Montfaucon, tom. ii. planche 158., and the “Supplement,” &c. tom. ii. lib. vii. chap. 5.
The ancients esteemed those flowers and trees the sweetest upon which the rainbow had appeared to rest; and the wood they chiefly burned in sacrifices, was that which the smile of Iris had consecrated. Plutarch. Sympos. lib. iv. cap. 2. where (as Vossius remarks) καιουσι, instead of καλουσι, is undoubtedly the genuine reading. See Vossius, for some curious particularities of the rainbow, De Origin. et Progress. Idololat. lib. iii. cap. 13.
| The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore | |