The works of John Dryden Illustrated with notes, historical, critical, and explanatory, and a life of the author, by Sir Walter Scott |
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| TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE. |
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| XIII. |
| XIV, XV. |
 | The works of John Dryden |  |
357
TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE.
359
THE THIRD ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.
INSCRIBED TO THE EARL OF ROSCOMMON, ON HIS INTENDED VOYAGE TO IRELAND.
So may the auspicious queen of love,
And the twin stars, the seed of Jove,
And he who rules the raging wind,
To thee, O sacred ship, be kind;
360
Supplying soft Etesian gales:
As thou, to whom the muse commends
The best of poets and of friends,
Dost thy committed pledge restore,
And land him safely on the shore;
And save the better part of me,
From perishing with him at sea.
Sure he, who first the passage tried,
In hardened oak his heart did hide,
And ribs of iron armed his side;
Or his at least, in hollow wood,
Who tempted first the briny flood;
Nor feared the winds' contending roar,
Nor billows beating on the shore,
Nor Hyades portending rain,
Nor all the tyrants of the main.
What form of death could him affright,
Who unconcerned, with steadfast sight,
Could view the surges mounting steep,
And monsters rolling in the deep!
Could through the ranks of ruin go,
With storms above, and rocks below!
In vain did Nature's wise command
Divide the waters from the land,
If daring ships and men profane
Invade the inviolable main;
The eternal fences overleap,
And pass at will the boundless deep.
No toil, no hardship, can restrain
Ambitious man, inured to pain;
The more confined, the more he tries,
And at forbidden quarry flies.
Thus bold Prometheus did aspire,
And stole from Heaven the seeds of fire,
A train of ills, a ghastly crew,
The robber's blazing track pursue;
361
And fevers of the fiery race,
In swarms the offending wretch surround,
All brooding on the blasted ground;
And limping death, lashed on by fate,
Comes up to shorten half our date.
This made not Dædalus beware,
With borrowed wings to sail in air;
To hell Alcides forced his way,
Plunged through the lake, and snatched the prey.
Nay, scarce the gods, or heavenly climes,
Are safe from our audacious crimes;
We reach at Jove's imperial crown,
And pull the unwilling thunder down.
362
THE NINTH ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.
I
Behold yon mountain's hoary height,Made higher with new mounts of snow;
Again behold the winter's weight
Oppress the labouring woods below;
And streams, with icy fetters bound,
Benumbed and crampt to solid ground.
II
With well-heaped logs dissolve the cold,And feed the genial hearth with fires;
Produce the wine, that makes us bold,
And sprightly wit and love inspires:
For what hereafter shall betide,
God, if 'tis worth his care, provide.
363
III
Let him alone, with what he made,To toss and turn the world below;
At his command the storms invade,
The winds by his commission blow;
Till with a nod he bids them cease,
And then the calm returns, and all is peace.
IV
To-morrow and her works defy,Lay hold upon the present hour,
And snatch the pleasures passing by,
To put them out of fortune's power:
Nor love, nor love's delights, disdain;
Whate'er thou gett'st to-day, is gain.
V
Secure those golden early joys,That youth unsoured with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys,
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possest;
The best is but in season best.
VI
The appointed hour of promised bliss,The pleasing whisper in the dark,
The half unwilling willing kiss,
The laugh that guides thee to the mark;
When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again;
These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain.
364
THE TWENTY-NINTH ODE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE,
PARAPHRASED IN PINDARIC VERSE, AND INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. LAURENCE, EARL OF ROCHESTER.
I.
Descended of an ancient line,That long the Tuscan sceptre swayed,
Make haste to meet the generous wine,
Whose piercing is for thee delayed:
The rosy wreath is ready made,
And artful hands prepare
The fragrant Syrian oil, that shall perfume thy hair.
II.
When the wine sparkles from afar,And the well-natured friend cries, “Come away!”
Make haste, and leave thy business and thy care,
No mortal interest can be worth thy stay.
365
III.
Leave for a while thy costly country seat,And, to be great indeed, forget
The nauseous pleasures of the great:
Make haste and come;
Come, and forsake thy cloying store;
Thy turret, that surveys, from high,
The smoke, and wealth, and noise of Rome,
And all the busy pageantry
That wise men scorn, and fools adore;
Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.
IV.
Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to tryA short vicissitude, and fit of poverty:
A savoury dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet, or the Tyrian loom,
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.
V.
The sun is in the Lion mounted high;The Syrian star
Barks from afar,
And with his sultry breath infects the sky;
The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry:
The shepherd drives his fainting flock
Beneath the covert of a rock,
And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh:
The Sylvans to their shades retire,
Those very shades and streams new shades and streams require,
And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.
366
VI.
Thou, what befits the new Lord Mayor,And what the city factions dare,
And what the Gallic arms will do,
And what the quiver-bearing foe,
Art anxiously inquisitive to know:
But God has, wisely, hid from human sight
The dark decrees of future fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night;
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state,
When mortals search too soon, and fear too late.
VII.
Enjoy the present smiling hour,And put it out of fortune's power;
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high, and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb, or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed;
Anon it lifts aloft the head,
And bears down all before it with impetuous force:
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown;
Both house and homestead into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.
367
VIII.
Happy the man, and he alone,He, who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
“To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived today:
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine;
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.”
IX.
Fortune, that with malicious joyDoes 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,
Promotes, 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 the 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.
X.
What is't to me,Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise, and clouds grow black,
If the mast split, and threaten wreck?
368
For his ill-gotten gain;
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds, and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar;
And running with a merry gale,
With friendly stars my safety seek,
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.
369
THE SECOND EPODE OF HORACE.
“How happy in his low degree,
How rich in humble poverty, is he,
Who leads a quiet country life,
Discharged of business, void of strife,
And from the griping scrivener free?
Thus, ere the seeds of vice were sown,
Lived men in better ages born,
Who ploughed, with oxen of their own,
Their small paternal field of corn.
Nor trumpets summon him to war,
Nor drums disturb his morning sleep,
Nor knows he merchants' gainful care,
Nor fears the dangers of the deep.
The clamours of contentious law,
And court and state, he wisely shuns,
Nor bribed with hopes, nor dared with awe,
To servile salutations runs;
But either to the clasping vine
Does the supporting poplar wed,
Or with his pruning-hook disjoin
Unbearing branches from their head,
And grafts more happy in their stead:
Or, climbing to a hilly steep,
He views his herds in vales afar,
Or shears his overburthened sheep,
Or mead for cooling drink prepares,
Or virgin honey in the jars.
Or in the now declining year,
When bounteous autumn rears his head,
He joys to pull the ripened pear,
And clustering grapes with purple spread.
The fairest of his fruit he serves,
Priapus, thy rewards:
Sylvanus too his part deserves,
Whose care the fences guards.
Sometimes beneath an ancient oak,
Or on the matted grass he lies;
No god of sleep he need invoke;
The stream, that o'er the pebbles flies,
With gentle slumber crowns his eyes.
The wind, that whistles through the sprays,
Maintains the concert of the song;
And hidden birds, with native lays,
The golden sleep prolong.
But when the blast of winter blows,
And hoary frost inverts the year,
Into the naked woods he goes,
And seeks the tusky boar to rear,
With well-mouthed hounds and pointed spear:
Or spreads his subtle nets from sight
With twinkling glasses, to betray
The larks that in the meshes light,
Or makes the fearful hare his prey.
Amidst his harmless easy joys
No anxious care invades his health,
Nor love his peace of mind destroys,
Nor wicked avarice of wealth.
But if a chaste and pleasing wife,
To ease the business of his life,
Divides with him his household care,
Such as the Sabine matrons were,
Such as the swift Apulian's bride,
Sun-burnt and swarthy though she be,
Will fire for winter nights provide,
And without noise will oversee
His children and his family,
And order all things till he come,
Sweaty and overlaboured, home;
If she in pens his flocks will fold,
And then produce her dairy store,
With wine to drive away the cold,
And unbought dainties of the poor;
Not oysters of the Lucrine lake
My sober appetite would wish,
Nor turbot, or the foreign fish
That rolling tempests overtake,
And hither waft the costly dish.
Not heath-pout, or the rarer bird,
Which Phasis or Ionia yields,
More pleasing morsels would afford
Than the fat olives of my fields;
Than shards or mallows for the pot,
That keep the loosened body sound,
Or than the lamb, that falls by lot
To the just guardian of my ground.
Amidst these feasts of happy swains,
The jolly shepherd smiles to see
His flock returning from the plains;
The farmer is as pleased as he,
To view his oxen sweating smoke,
Hear on their necks the loosened yoke;
To look upon his menial crew,
That sit around his cheerful hearth,
And bodies spent in toil renew
With wholesome food and country mirth.”
How rich in humble poverty, is he,
Who leads a quiet country life,
Discharged of business, void of strife,
And from the griping scrivener free?
Thus, ere the seeds of vice were sown,
Lived men in better ages born,
Who ploughed, with oxen of their own,
Their small paternal field of corn.
Nor trumpets summon him to war,
Nor drums disturb his morning sleep,
Nor knows he merchants' gainful care,
Nor fears the dangers of the deep.
The clamours of contentious law,
And court and state, he wisely shuns,
Nor bribed with hopes, nor dared with awe,
To servile salutations runs;
But either to the clasping vine
Does the supporting poplar wed,
Or with his pruning-hook disjoin
Unbearing branches from their head,
And grafts more happy in their stead:
370
He views his herds in vales afar,
Or shears his overburthened sheep,
Or mead for cooling drink prepares,
Or virgin honey in the jars.
Or in the now declining year,
When bounteous autumn rears his head,
He joys to pull the ripened pear,
And clustering grapes with purple spread.
The fairest of his fruit he serves,
Priapus, thy rewards:
Sylvanus too his part deserves,
Whose care the fences guards.
Sometimes beneath an ancient oak,
Or on the matted grass he lies;
No god of sleep he need invoke;
The stream, that o'er the pebbles flies,
With gentle slumber crowns his eyes.
The wind, that whistles through the sprays,
Maintains the concert of the song;
And hidden birds, with native lays,
The golden sleep prolong.
But when the blast of winter blows,
And hoary frost inverts the year,
Into the naked woods he goes,
And seeks the tusky boar to rear,
With well-mouthed hounds and pointed spear:
Or spreads his subtle nets from sight
With twinkling glasses, to betray
The larks that in the meshes light,
Or makes the fearful hare his prey.
Amidst his harmless easy joys
No anxious care invades his health,
Nor love his peace of mind destroys,
Nor wicked avarice of wealth.
371
To ease the business of his life,
Divides with him his household care,
Such as the Sabine matrons were,
Such as the swift Apulian's bride,
Sun-burnt and swarthy though she be,
Will fire for winter nights provide,
And without noise will oversee
His children and his family,
And order all things till he come,
Sweaty and overlaboured, home;
If she in pens his flocks will fold,
And then produce her dairy store,
With wine to drive away the cold,
And unbought dainties of the poor;
Not oysters of the Lucrine lake
My sober appetite would wish,
Nor turbot, or the foreign fish
That rolling tempests overtake,
And hither waft the costly dish.
Not heath-pout, or the rarer bird,
Which Phasis or Ionia yields,
More pleasing morsels would afford
Than the fat olives of my fields;
Than shards or mallows for the pot,
That keep the loosened body sound,
Or than the lamb, that falls by lot
To the just guardian of my ground.
Amidst these feasts of happy swains,
The jolly shepherd smiles to see
His flock returning from the plains;
The farmer is as pleased as he,
To view his oxen sweating smoke,
Hear on their necks the loosened yoke;
372
That sit around his cheerful hearth,
And bodies spent in toil renew
With wholesome food and country mirth.”
This Morecraft said within himself:
Resolved to leave the wicked town,
And live retired upon his own,
He called his money in:
But the prevailing love of pelf
Soon split him on the former shelf;—
He put it out again.
Resolved to leave the wicked town,
And live retired upon his own,
He called his money in:
But the prevailing love of pelf
Soon split him on the former shelf;—
He put it out again.
| The works of John Dryden | |