The Christian Scholar :: :: University of Virginia Library

What is there in these strains unearthly sweet
That charm'd our boyhood once, our manhood greet
With untired freshness,—scenes of pastoral love,
Fill'd with the poet's breath that live and move;
While exile o'er them casts a shade of fear,
And makes their image rise more sadly dear;
With shifting landscapes such as Poussin drew,
Or Claude Lorraine; while evening's radiant hue
Comes forth and with it blends her sabler suit?
For with the Arcadian scene and pastoral lute
Mingles the sense of our lost Paradise;
Which deep beneath our ruin'd nature lies,
And wakes 'mid vernal earth or summer sky,—
That image which within us ne'er can die.
Like gales of youth our senses they beguile,
Yet only as in sleep and for awhile,

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A visionary covering of our care;
For evil and the curse are hidden there.
Some secret spring within it seems to press,
Which overflows with a deep tenderness,
As sense of that sad time awakes anew
When erst we unto Eden bid adieu.

Yea, with thee, Melibæus, would I go
To exile 'neath the mantle of thy woe,
Yet let not thy sweet sadness soothe my mind
To cast thy loving, lingering look behind;—
But rather as old Patriarchs in the skies
May we behold a better Paradise.
'Mid pastoral homes and herds and gifts divine,
Mounts, springs, and shades of their own Palestine,
Still upward with departing eyes they turn'd,
To hopes more fair than evening skies that burn'd,
Where they might hide and lose themselves in God;
And here their way as exile pilgrims trod.

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II. THE GEORGICS.

So great and silent was thy love
For Nature's children, thence to prove
A power within thee to make wise
In all their ways and sympathies;—
With inmates of stream, vale, and wood,
E'en like a sacred brotherhood;
Looking on their things with their sense,
Nay rather with intelligence
Investing them, and thought and eye
Of reflective humanity.
Till lifeless things begin to breathe,
Things animate their ways inwreathe
With intellect and human thought;
So Passion is with all inwrought;
For parts of her own self she makes,
For sympathizing spirits takes:—
With playfulness , as one that smiled
Still inwardly, and so beguiled
The thoughts that on his bosom press
From burden of some home-distress,
Or sense of mortal nothingness.

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For love without will shadows find
Of what lies in the feeling mind.

Thus Eden's curse and Eden's woes
Seem reconcil'd in that repose
Of spirit, which divinely still
Breath'd of high virtue, thought, and will,
Judgment, and souls to good allied,
Thus exercised and purified.

We the same phases still explore
On Nature's face with him of yore—
Features the same that grow not old
With their expression manifold;—
See the same moon and stars and sky
Woods, streams, and Nature's progeny,
So multiform, yet still they rise
The same in their varieties.
But unto us to free from harm
There rests a new and holy charm,
All things are to the Cross allied,
And by Its shadow sanctified.

At Nature's shrines all seem'd to be
To him replete with deity,
All living things with power indued,
Like children of his solitude.
Hence with instinctive Godhead wise,
And eloquent with auguries,—
Interpreters that are from high,
And messengers of destiny.

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Creatures of God that meet our eyes,
They are like living mysteries;
And unto us they are made known
As children of the Holy One,
That teach a Father's care and love;
But how far of the things above
The varied semblance they may bear,
To things eternal minister,
No lights their airy paths illume,
'Tis hid in shadows of the tomb.
They share our woes, and speak the wrath
That is upon our mortal path,
Defy our knowledge, leave behind
Our vain enquiries on the wind.

------“Molle atque facetum
Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camœnæ.”

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III. ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.

[_]

Georg. b. iv.

“All chances 'scaped, from shades below
“He back retraced his steps, and now
“He near'd the realms of light, and she,
“The lost and loved Eurydice,
“Follow'd his upward steps behind,
“So Proserpine's stern law assign'd.
“Day's threshold now was scarcely won,
“When, ah, unmindful and undone,
“He stood, and with love-trancèd eye
“Look'd back on his Eurydice!
“Then all was lost, the word was spoken—
“His treaty with the dead was broken,
“For ever! thrice with crash profound
“The Avernian lakes gave back the sound.
“‘Orpheus,’ she cried, ‘O misery!
“Who hath destroyed both me and thee?
“What madness! cruel fates advance
“O'er me again, and death's dark trance.
“Fare thee—farewell—borne from thy sight,
“Surrounded by the mighty night,
“I stretch to thee from death's dark shore
“These powerless hands—but thine no more.’”

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He in whose soul is born from high
The music of Heaven's harmony,—
Which soothes dark passions into peace,
And from their kingdoms gives release;—
He with him draws to realms above
The objects of his earthly love,
And leads them onward, while his face
Is upward turn'd:—with faltering pace
Should he on them turn back and gaze,
He then lets go the harmonious maze;
The music of that love divine,
That bears all heavenward, must decline.
The backward tide no power can stem:
He loses both himself and them.

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IV. THE ÆNEID.

“Sum pius Æneas.”

Could we but dive into the Poet's soul,
And see the embryo stirrings of his thought,
Before itself it glasses forth in words,
Or is embodied in some moving tale,
We should there read more deep philosophy
Than in the starry countenance of Heaven.
For in the soul of man there seems to sleep
An image of the boundless Universe,
Ebbing and flowing with its restless tides,
Breathed forth unconscious oft in feigning tales;
As in the shell the echo of the seas
Indwells, and giveth forth its soul in sounds,
So strangely heaving from its winding folds.

On this the sweet creation of thy brain,
O Mantuan Swain, thou hast a halo set,
And crown'd him with a name and character—
But not from prowess, nor stern fortitude,
Nor kingly dignity, nor wisdom known
In council, nor endurance,—but the name
Of Piety; thine own mysterious soul
Betraying, which could find no genial rest

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In aught but aspirations after God.

It is a beauteous picture, from the walls
Of burning Troy seen in the glaring blaze,
'Tween mountains and the sea in hurried flight,
His aged Sire upon his shoulders borne,
His household Gods, and with unequal steps
The boy Iulus holding firm his hand.

And well, great Poet, did thy heart divine
Of messages from Heaven, with trails of light
Dropp'd down to earth—and calling—at whose voice
Conjugal tenderness and home-repose
Are to be cast behind; and yet thy hand
Could not pourtray therein thy better thought,
But falter'd, when the victim's funeral pile
Sheds on the parting ships its lurid glare.
And thou thyself, O sacred bard, must sure
Have turn'd away with heavy cold disdain
From this thine own creation, poor and frail,—
Like thine own Dido who in shades below
With cold averted brow in silence turn'd.
A hero, yet no hero; half a God,
Yet less than man!

For all unequal were the Heathens' thoughts
To that mysterious truth they fain would grasp,
Or to pourtray the veiled lineaments
Of that immortal Face, which should arise

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In genial lumination on mankind.
And hence on this imagin'd type of good
A dreamy indistinctness seems to rest;
No strong ideal of a breathing soul,
No featured countenance of speaking mould
That clings to thought and memory, but this
Like some unreal phantom of a man,
The shadow of a shade in realms beneath,
Or dream that issues from the ivory gate.
Achilles' wrath was stamp'd like fallen man,
Noble in falling and in ruin great;
Great is Ulysses roving seas and lands.
But when the Latian would his pencil dip
In hues of Heaven, beneath his hand came forth
This image, as in water, weak and wan.
It was not found in man to deem aright
Or by his words pourtray lost Eden's Lord,
A form of piety and meet for Heaven,
Unequal by his deeds such form to frame.
When more than that Ideal man would raise,
The Truth and Archetype was given from Heaven,
His Countenance was marr'd beyond all men,
Known for no form or comeliness, but One
Who had no beauty as desired of men,
And clothed with shame and suffering. For to err
Is human, but to suffer is Divine.

Howbeit this the “pious” conqueror

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We honour less e'en than his conquer'd foe.
A conquer'd side lay near the poet's soul;
And secret love will its own impress find,
And gleam through the disguise of outward veils.
As from the head of one, whose bold proud heart
Was smitten with successful wickedness,
Satan all-arm'd came forth, defying Heaven
With nobleness and grandeur, as might suit
A rebel chieftain;—of far other form
Than evil spirits found in hallowed lore.

This Mantuan—this our Daphnis—must we love,
Daphnis, who Pollio sung, the Mincian Swan,
Who sung the birth of Christ in Latian plains;
As if he had o'er-heard the angelic song;
So near hath he approach'd the eternal doors,
Daphnis , in shining white he walks on high,
Wondering at thresholds of the unwonted Heaven,
And 'neath his feet beholds the clouds and stars.

Pollio, Ecl. iv., as in Pope's Messiah.

Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.”

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V. THE SHADES BELOW.

[_]

Æn. vi.

Then Plato's high philosophy,
Of things that after death shall be,
Was shadow'd in that vision deep,
Which pass'd the ivory gate of sleep.
Lo, where the golden branch displayed
Shone 'mid the green embowering shade;
The wingèd pair that led them on
From step to step, alight thereon,
His Mother's doves, there sitting by
In beautiful sweet augury.
Thence in the darkling solitude,
As through the obscure of some deep wood,
When the pale moon half hides her light,
Through realms of subterranean night;—
Hush'd, lest they do the silence wrong
Which doth to things of death belong;—
With multitudinous ghosts around,
As birds that throng the Autumnal ground.
Then gloomily they pass the bound
Of houses for eternity,
With adamant wall'd to the sky:

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Their varied place of woe assign'd
To every crime wrought 'mong mankind,
Their penal sufferings manifold
By eye unseen, by tongue untold.
And there to pious souls is given
Elysian realms of nether Heaven:
Another sun and firmament,
And other stars, and o'er them bent
Purple serene, ethereal light,
With gifts beyond our mortal sight.

Sweet teacher of our early youth!
The ancient Keeper of Christ's truth
Hath hail'd and own'd thee most of all
On whom the heathen shadows fall.
For pure thy page and undefiled,
Not unmeet for a Christian child .
Till poets down all Christendom
Thy gentle genius did illume.
Tasso hath lit his lamp by thine;
No other guide the Florentine
Sought in the penal shades below,
And regions of eternal woe.

“Poeta nobilissimus.” Aug. Civ. Dei, iv. xi.

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VI. ÆNEAS AND DIDO.

[_]

From S. Augustine's Confessions, b. i. 21.

“Alas, my God, while yet a boy
Æneas would my thoughts employ;
To me his wanderings were all known,
While I in his forgot mine own!
O'er dying Dido too I grieved,
Who slew herself by love bereaved.
Yet I in all these things was dead,
But o'er myself no tear I shed.
Apart from God myself could die
Yet tearless was my heart and eye.

Yet what more pitiable could be
Than not to know one's misery;—
To others feel compassionate,
Yet pity not one's own estate.—
That Dido's death my tears could move
Self-slain for lost Æneas' love;
Yet I for want of love could die,
And bear that death with tearless eye?

Light of mine heart, Bread of my soul,
Spouse of my being, my life's Whole,

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I lov'd Thee not; unfaithful rov'd
From Thee, the adulterous world approv'd,
And sounded in my ears, Well done!
Well done, re-echoed on and on,
And I was sham'd to stand alone.

These things I wept not, yet could moan
For Dido's sorrows and her death,
Mine own was worse than parting breath;
And when forbid that tale of woe
I griev'd that sorrow to forego.”