University of Virginia Library

ABOUT OVID.

He is a sorry philosopher, who to the days that are recent,
Limits his sympathies all, hearing no cries from the past.
Time has but little to do with what is eternally human;
That which went forth from the heart, ne'er for the heart is unfit.
Think'st thou thy woe of to-day will be deeper or truer to-morrow
Than in a thousand years hence? Time does not lessen a fact,
Nor can it deaden a cry of grief unaffected and simple;
Let but the words be preserved, in them the pathos remains.
Only a day or two back, I lighted by chance on the passage
(Read and re-read in the schools, hackneyed enough, in good sooth),
Where, in the Tristia, Ovid recurs to the night of his exile,
When his last moments in Rome swiftly were gliding away.
Fresh was my mind, and long free from the deadening work of the schoolroom;
Straight went the words to the heart, straight through the centuries dead.
Vivid, indeed, is the scene, with touching simplicity painted:
Almost the moonlight we see, bathing the city that sleeps.
“When, of that saddest of nights, the picture uprises before me,
Which was the last, very last, spent in the city by me;
When I remember that night, on which I left all that was dear,
Down from my eyes, on my cheek, trickles a tear even now.
Then had relapsed into silence the voice of men and of watch-dogs;
High was the Moon in the sky, guiding her coursers of night.
As I looked up to her face, and she showed me the Capitol's structures,
Closely adjacent to which stood all in vain our home:
Deities all, I exclaimed, who dwell in the neighbouring places,
Temples which I, with these eyes, never again shall behold;
Ay, and ye gods that I leave, who belong to Quirinus's city,
Let me, before I depart, bid you for ever farewell.”