Poems by Hartley Coleridge :: :: University of Virginia Library

What shall we say of thee, pert, perking Mag,
Whose every motion seems to fish for praise,
Whose whole existence is a game at brag?
Art thou a stranger quite to poet's lays,
With black and white thy pretty self adorning,
Like a blithe widow in her second mourning?

Thou wert the pet bird of the God of wine,
And dear thou art, and should'st be very dear,
To that great Son of Jove whose mighty line,
After long strife, and many a toilsome year,
Regain'd at last their lawful heritage,
And reign'd in southern Greece for many an age.

For great Alcides never had a home—
No wonder if his loves were vagabond.

247

Once in a hollow vale he chanced to roam,
And of a village maid grew sudden fond.
What shall we say?—the buxom village lass
Became the mother of Æchmacoras.

The brawny sire, as usual, went his way,
New loves to woo—new monsters to destroy.
But the poor mother—she that went astray—
All husbandless, with her unfathered boy—
What can she do? Her ruthless father's curse
Bids her conceal a small sin with a worse.

She wrapt her baby in a lion's skin,
The lion's skin her roving lover gave,
And left the helpless witness of her sin
In the dark wood. Ye happy wood-nymphs, save,
As ye would keep your innocence secure,
The helpless thing—like you—so sweet and pure.

Nought that the poet feigned in happiest mood,
Or pagan priest invented in his trade,

248

Was ever half so beautiful or good
As the kind things that Nature's self hath made:
O'er the poor babe the magpie chatters still,
Soothes with its wings, and feeds it with its bill.

Ere long the strenuous foe of Hydra came—
He came in pride of some new conquest won;
But when he saw how pale the hapless dame,
The childless mother, by himself undone,
Enraged he rushed into the forest wild,
To seek the pledge of love, the hapless child.

I will not say how loud the thickets crash'd,
For he would never step an inch aside;
Or how far off the timid lions lash'd
Their sides; or how, less wild, the serpents eyed
The trampling terror. Nought he cared for this—
For lion's inward growl, or serpent's smothered hiss—

But ever onward he pursued the cry,
The still repeated one note of the bird,
That faithful sat where that poor babe did lie.
Still he pursued the note, and never err'd;
And there he found them both—the babe and Mag—
In the dark wood, beneath the mossy crag.

249

The babe became a hero in its time;
The bird, its task performed, it fled away.
To the good bird I dedicate this rhyme;
The hero lives in many an antique lay.
Oh could my song preserve thy nest of briar,
As thou the babe Herculean for its sire!

Æchmacoras, fil. Herculis, ex vitiatâ Phillone, filiâ Alcimedontis Herois; qui cum in lucem editus fuisset, ab Alcimedonte, unà cùm matre Phillone, in proximo monte feris expositus fuit: ibi vagientem infantem cùm pica imitaretur, ad hujus avis vocem, quòd puerilem esse credidisset, Hercules fortè illàc iter habens conversus, puellam et a se genitum puerum agnovit, ambosque vinculis liberavit.—Pausan. in Arcadic. (Hofmanni Lex. Univ.)