Orval, or The Fool of Time :: :: University of Virginia Library

The shepherd Aristæus, when his bees
Sickness (so runs the tale) or dearth destroy'd,
Along Peneian Tempe flying, above
The sacred headspring rested sad, and thus,
With much-reproachful moan, his parent call'd:
“Mother Cyrene, who the gulfy deeps
Of this stream holdest! mother, if indeed
Thymbræan Apollo, as thou dost aver,
Be my begetter, why was I begot
To bear the grudge of most unfavouring fates,
Though from the gods' illustrious lineage sprung?
Or whither fleeted is thy sometime love
Of us, whom wherefore didst thou oft exhort
To hope the heaven itself? For now, behold,
Even the poor honour of this mortal life,
By me, endeavouring all things, barely wrung
From tilth and the hard tendance of the herd,
Thou being my mother, I must needs forego!

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Haste, therefore, to make end! with thine own hand
Uproot my pleasant woodland places all,
Fall on my sheepfolds with unfriendly fire,
Burn up my barns, my crops exterminate,
And lay the tough axe to my tender vines,
If thou art weary of thy son's renown.”

That sound, in halls beneath the waters high,
The mother heard. Around her sat the Nymphs,
Plucking Milesian wools of watchet hue:
Drymo, and Xantho, and Phyllodoce,
With sparkling tresses round their white necks pour'd;
Ligèa, and Nisæa, and Thalìa,
And Spio, and Cymodoce; with whom
Maiden Cydippe, and Lycoria
O' the yellow hair, to whom were newly known
Lucina's earliest labours; Beroë,
And Clio, sister Oceanitides:
Each with gold fillet girt about the brows,
Each garb'd in skins gay-colour'd; and Ephyre,
Opis, and Asian Deiopeïa; and, all
Her darts at last laid by, swift Arethuse.

Among them Clymene the tale was telling
Of Vulcan's frustrate forethought, and the frauds
Of Mars, and his sweet thefts; and all the loves
Full-frequent of the gods, since Chaos was,
She number'd. Taken by whose song, the while
The listening Nymphs around their spindles whirl'd
The fluent threads, yet once again that moan
Of Aristæus struck his mother's ears;
And all those Nymphs upon their glassy seats
Were startled. Foremost of her sisters then,

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Above the topmost wave her yellow head
Upheaving, Arethusa glanced around:
And, from aloof, “Not idly scared,” she cried,
“Sister Cyrene, by such moan wert thou;
Whose chiefest care, sad, Aristæus' self,
Stands by the wave of thy Peneian Sire
Weeping, and, by thy name, thee, cruel, calls.”
To her the mother by new fear heart-struck,
“O hither bring him, bring him unto us!
To him,” she cried, “the thresholds of the gods
It is vouchsafed to traverse.” And forthwith
She bade the waters wide asunder shrink,
Wherethro' the youth might enter. The scoop'd wave
Even as a mountainous hollow, around him hung:
The abyss received him to its bosom vast,
And down beneath the river he was drawn.

There moves he, marvelling at his mother's home,
And her wet kingdoms: lakes in caverns lock'd,
And sounding groves: there, by the unwieldy toil
Of waters all bewilder'd, round he looks,
And in their places sees those rivers all
That wander underneath the massy earth:
Phasis, and Lycus, and the headspring high
Whence, first from under-ground, Enipeus bursts,
Whence Father Tiber, whence smooth Anio flows,
And roughly-sounding rocky Hypanis,
Mysian Caïcus, and, with double horn,
Golden bull-brow'd Eridanus, than whom
No river through rich-cultured lands goes down
More passionately into the purple sea.

Soon as her son was enter'd in, beneath

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Her chamber's sparry-hanging roof, and there
Cyrene knew his woes, though vainly wept,
Not irremediable, in order round,
Her sisters all their liquid fountains pour
Upon his hands; and diapers, they bear
Daintily woven. Part, the tables load
With viands, and full goblets range. Anon,
With fired Panchæan spice the altars glow.
And “Take we beakers of Mæonian wine,”
The mother cried, “And to Oceanus
“Libations pour!” So saying, herself the Sire
Of all things, Ocean, and her Sister Nymphs,
(The hundred woodland ministers, and they
That tend upon the streams, a hundred more)
Invoking, thrice with liquid nectar drench'd
The blazing altar. Thrice the quicken'd flame,
High as the roof-top leaping, flash'd. Then she,
By that fair omen fortified, began:

“There dwells in the Carpathian gulf a Sage
To Neptune dear; sea-colour'd Proteus. He
That wanders the wide water, charioted
By his two-footed steeds to fishes join'd,
Now to revisit his loved native land
Pallene, and the Emathian port, is gone.
Him, both we Nymphs revere, and Nereus' self,
Our Sire grandæval: for to him, as seer,
Be all things known, that are, or once have been,
Or in the far off time are yet to be.
So pleased it Neptune, whose unwieldy flocks,
Rank seals, he pastures underneath the gulf.
Him, son, behoves thee first to seize, and bind,

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That he thy cause of mischief may declare,
And second the event. For counsel none
He unenforced vouchsafes: nor may'st thou him
Beseeching turn: on whom, when caught, hard force
And chains essay: round these, if thou persist,
His frustrate wiles shall waste themselves away.
Myself, what time the sun's mid-ardours burn,
When thirsty is the herb, and to the herd
Most pleasant every haunt of happy shade,
Thee to the hiding places will conduct
Wherein the old man, weary from the wave,
Betakes himself, whom there, in slumber sunk
Supine, thou may'st most easily assail.
Howbeit, when him thou holdest in thy hands
Fast bound, his various aspects, even then,
Shall fool thee with brute faces counterfeit:
For sudden shall he seem a bristly board,
Fell tigress, dragon scaled, and lioness
With tawny mane; or, to escape his chains,
Give forth anon sharp sound of crackling flame,
Or, in thin waters falling, melt away.
But thou, the more he shift his shapes, so much
The more, son, tighten stern his stubborn bonds;
Till to the same his form returns, as when
With sleepy eyelids sunk thou saw'st him first.

So counsell'd she: and liquid odour pour'd
Ambrosial o'er her son, that all his frame
With fragrance flooded: on his curls composed
Came breathing gusts of sweet, and to his limbs
Light nimble health.
A hollow huge there is,

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Deep-cavern'd in the side of a hoar crag,
Wherein the oft-wind-beaten wave o' the sea
Into long gorges breaks, and falls; erewhile
To storm-struck mariners a haven safe.
There Proteus, under the broad beetlling cliff,
Houseth: and there, turn'd from the light o' the day,
The Nymph among the shadows placed the youth.
Herself, at hand, in vapour veil'd, retires.

By this, swift Sirius, scorching thirsty Ind,
Was hot in heaven: and now the fiery sun
His middle orbit had nigh fill'd: the grass
Was parching: and to muddy ooze the beams
Baked in their suck'd and shrunken river-beds
The tepid brooks; when from the sea-wave forth
Came Proteus, seeking his accustom'd cave.
Around him the vast deep's moist people play'd,
And, shambling, shook abroad the salt sea-spray.
Anon, to slumber, scatter'd here and there,
About the sea-beach, settled the sea-beasts.
Himself, meanwhile, as one that tends his herds
The hills among, what time the Even star
Back to their stalls his beeves from pasture bids,
And the lambs' bleating the wolf's hunger whets,
Above them, in the midst, upon a crag
Sat down considerate, and their number told.

Whom to assail soon as the chance he spied,
Scarce Aristæus the old man vouchsafed
Scant time to stretch at ease his wearied limbs,
But with alarum loud upon him rush'd,
Prone where he lay, and him fast manacled.

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He, not unmindful of his art meanwhile,
Himself to all manner of marvellous shapes transform'd:
Fire, formidable beast, and flowing stream.
But, when by no false seeming might he 'scape,
Vanquisht, he turned anon into himself,
With human countenance resumed; and said:
“Rash boy, who bade thee our abodes approach?
Or here what seek'st thou?” But the other cried:
“Proteus, thou know'st: thyself, thou know'st: nor thee
May any man in aught deceive. Do thou
Therefore, thine own deceivings, prithee, cease.
Here, to the gods obedient, are we come,
Of our misfortunes to enquire the cause.”
Thus far he spake: whereto in answer, shaked
By mighty spasms, the prophet around him roll'd
The glassy glare of his sea-colour'd eyes,
And grimly gnashing, thus the fates declared:

“Thee nothing less than wrath divine reproves.
Large debt thou owest of evil done: and worse
(If fates forbid not) hast deserved, than these
Retributive woes by wretched Orpheus waked,
Indignant raging for his ravisht spouse.
She headlong flying, headlong to her doom,
From thy pursuit the river-banks along,
Spurn'd with unheedful steps in the high reed
A hydra huge that by the rivage housed.
The hill-tops, then, with their lamentings loud,
In chorus, her companion Dryads fill'd:
Deep moan'd the Rhodopeian mountains: moan'd
Craggy Pangæa, and the region wild
Of Rhesus: moan'd those realms the Getæ:

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Hebrus: and where, from Athens, the North Wind
Bore ravisht Orithyia to his haunt.
But he, his heart's love-sickness solacing
To a hollow shell, the lonesome shores along,
Thee, at the dawning of the day, sweet wife,
Thee, at the darkening, solitary sung.

“Down, even, through the jaws of Tænarus, down
To the high doors of Dis, and that black grove,
With hideous darkness horrible, he went:
Down to the Manes, and their dreadful king,
And hearts to human prayers implacable.
Moved by his music from the nether seats
Of Erebus, lean shades and lightless shapes
Came flocking, thick as birds, at eventide,
In multitudes, that to the woodlands wing,
Or from the hills are driven by winter rains:
Matrons, and men, and bodies with no life
Of high-soul'd heroes, and unwedded maids,
Children, and youths upon the funeral pyre
Before the faces of their parents stretch'd:
Whom the slow ooze of that unlovely marsh
About Cocytus binds with sooty slime
And shapeless sedge, or ninefold Styx constrains.

“Amazement all the habitations husht
Of Tartarus, and the inmost depths of death,
And those cold tangled coils of livid snakes
Woven in the locks of the Eumenides:
Cerberus his three silenced jaws withheld
Wide gaping: and Ixion's orbèd wheel,
Still'd from the whirling of the wild wind, stood.

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“Anon, returning, all those perils 'scaped,
With his restored Eurydice, what time
He reach'd the upper airs (behind him she:
For such command Proserpina imposed),
That lover rash his frenzied fancy seized;
Fault to forgive, if Death forgiveness knew!
Sudden he paused: and his Eurydice,
—His, now that day's true light is reach'd at last,
Unmindful, by his love, alas, o'ercome,
Turn'd to behold: thus all his labour lost:
Broken his pact with Death's unpardoning lord:
And thrice, from all his fens, Avernus shriek'd!

“‘Ah, what hath lost me, miserable,’ she moan'd,
‘Orpheus, and thee? what fatal frenzy this?
Me, hark! once more the cruel Fates recall,
And sleepy death my swimming sight obscures.
Farewell! For I fare hence, in the vast night
That gathers round me, and in vain to thee
Weak hands am waving; thine, alas, no more!’
Speaking, she faded sudden from his sight,
Like vapour mixt with unsubstantial air:
Nor him, yet yearning ah how much to say,
And shadows pale with frustrate passion clasping,
She any more beheld: for never more
The ferryman of Orcus to o'erpass
The opposing deep permitted. What to do
Is left him? whither should he turn? to whom
Appeal, who mourns a now twice-ravisht spouse?
The Manes by what weeping, by what voice
Of wail may he the Nether Powers, appease?
She, cold, meanwhile, in Stygian bark is borne.

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“Him, rumour'd tales report, for seven whole months
Continuous, weeping on a windy crag
Far off by Strymon's solitary wave:
Charm'd from their lairs by his melodious moan,
Came tigers, creeping under caverns cold,
Lull'd into languor, and the lured oak trees.
So Philomela in the poplar shade
Laments, bewailing her departed brood,
Whom, haply, passing, the hard ploughman spied,
And from the nest, yet callow, filch'd: but she
Mourns, brooding night by night upon the bough,
There pours and pours her miserable song
And with sad plainings fills the region round.

“No woman's beauty him, nor wedlock, soothed.
Lonely along the Hyperborean wilds
Of ice, and frosty Tanaïs, and the wolds
Unwidow'd ever of Rhiphæan snows
Wandering, his lost Eurydice he wail'd,
And the vain gifts of Dis. Stung by his scorn
The Thracian women, in the revels fierce
Of midnight Bacchus, and the season due
To rights divine, the youth asunder rent,
And wide upon the wilds his ruins strew'd.
Even then, tho' from the marble shoulders torn,
The while his head Œagrian Hebrus whirl'd
Down the mid-stream, still ‘Ah Eurydice!’
‘Hapless Eurydice!’ from chilly lips
The voice call'd ever; and the parting soul

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‘Eurydice!’ ‘Eurydice!’ the rocks
All down the stream re-echoed as it roll'd.”
Thus Proteus: and adown the steep he sprang,
Plunged, and the bubbling billow above him whirl'd.
But not Cyrene. “Son,” to him, o'erawed,
Returning lightly, “Put away,” she said,
“Sad thoughts out of thy heart. Of thy mischance
This the sole cause. For this, unhappy boy,
The woodland Nymphs, with whom her wont it was
In the high groves to wake the choral dance,
Death on thy bees have sent. But, suppliant, thou
Bring offerings, and imploring peace, revere
The mild Napææ that to votive gifts,
In wrath relentful, light forgiveness grant.
The manner, first, of thy beseeching them
In order due will I declare. Four bulls
Well-chosen, and in shape surpassing all,
Of those, now thine, that on the summits feed
Of green Lycæus, and, by yoke untoucht,
Heifers as many more, do thou select:
Therewith, four altars to those goddesses,
In their high precincts, build: and from the throats
Of these let forth the sacred blood: and leave
The bodies of them in the leafy grove.
Then, when her rising the ninth dawn reveals,
Lethæan poppies to the nether ghost
Of Orpheus offer: and a heifer slay,
With a black sheep, appeased Eurydice
Revering thus: and to the grove return.”

Nor linger'd he. But those maternal words
Duteous obey'd. Forth to the hallow'd groves

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He went: and there the altars raised, and there
Four chosen bulls, in shape surpassing all,
And heifers by the yoke as yet untoucht
As many more, he led. Anon, what time,
This done, her rising the ninth dawn reveal'd,
Lethæan poppies to the nether ghost
Of Orpheus given, he to the grove return'd.
But there a wonder, sudden, and to tell
Surpassing strange, was witness'd. All about
Those bulls' half-molten entrails, and deep down
I' the heifer's womb, a sound of humming bees,
That, bubbling up from out the bursten ribs,
Swarm'd forth in clouds innumerable: and now
They fly together on the tall tree-tops,
And from the bended boughs in cluster hang.

“Quo muncre, &c.” By which pious office of his rendered indignant, &c.