Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

‘Orpheus laudes Deorum cantans et reboans, Sirenum voces confudit et summovit: meditationes enim rerum divinarum voluptates sensûs non tantum potestate, sed etiam suavitate superant.’—Lord Bacon, Sapientia Veterum.

High on the poop, with many a godlike peer,
With heroes and with kings, the flower of Greece,
That gathered at his word from far and near,
To snatch the guarded fleece,

Great Jason stood; nor ever from the soil
The anchor's brazen tooth unfastenëd,
Till, auspicating so his glorious toil,
From golden cup he shed

Libations to the Gods, to highest Jove,
To Waves and prospering Winds, to Night and Day,
To all by whom befriended they might prove
A favourable way.

With him the twins, one mortal, one divine,
Of Leda, and the Strength of Hercules;
And Tiphys, steersman through the perilous brine,
And many more with these:

Great father, Peleus, of a greater son,
And Atalanta, martial queen, was here;
And that supreme Athenian, nobler none,
And Idmon, holy seer:

Nor Orpheus pass unnamed, though from the rest
Apart, he leaned upon that lyre divine,
Which once in heaven his glory should attest,
Set there, a sacred sign:

But when auspicious thunders pealed on high,
Unto its chords and to his chant sublime
The joyful heroes, toiling manfully,
With measured strokes kept time.

Then when that keel divided first the waves,
Them Chiron cheered from Pelion's piny crown,
And wondering sea-nymphs rose from ocean caves,
And all the Gods looked down.

The bark divine, itself instinct with life,
Went forth, and baffled ocean's wildest shocks,
Eluding, though with pain and arduous strife,
Those huge encountering rocks;

And force and fraud o'ercome, and peril past,
The hard-won trophy raised in open view,
Through prosperous floods was bringing home at last
Its high heroic crew;

Till now they cried (Ææa left behind,
And the dead waters of the Cronian main),
‘No peril more upon our path we find,
Safe haven soon we gain:’

When, as they spake, sweet sounds upon the breeze
Came to them, melodies till then unknown,
And, blended into one delight with these,
Sweet odours sweetly blown—

Sweet odours wafted from the flowery isle,
Sweet music breathëd by the Sirens three,
Who there lie wait, all passers to beguile,
Fair monsters of the sea!

Fair monsters foul, that with their magic song
And beauty to the shipman wandering
Worse peril than disastrous whirlpools strong,
Or fierce sea-robbers bring.

Sometimes upon the diamond rocks they leant,
Sometimes they sate upon the flowery lea
That sloped towàrd the wave, and ever sent
Shrill music o'er the sea.

One piped, one sang, one swept the golden lyre;
And thus to forge and fling a threefold chain
Of linkëd harmony the three conspire,
O'er land and hoary main.

The winds, suspended by the charmëd song,
Shed treacherous calm about that fatal isle;
The waves, as though the halcyon o'er its young
Were always brooding, smile;

And every one that listens, presently
Forgetteth home, and wife, and children dear,
All noble enterprise and purpose high,
And turns his pinnace here,—

He turns his pinnace, warning taking none
From the plain doom of all that went before,
Whose bones lie bleaching in the wind and sun,
And whiten all the shore.

He cannot heed,—so sweet unto him seems
To reap the harvest of the promised joy;
The wave-worn man of such secure rest dreams,
So guiltless of annoy.

—The heroes and the kings, the wise, the strong,
That won the fleece with cunning and with might,
They too are taken in the net of song,
Snared in that false delight;

Till ever loathlier seemed all toil to be,
And that small space they yet must travel o'er,
Stretched, an immeasurable breadth of sea,
Their fainting hearts before.

‘Let us turn hitherward our bark,’ they cried,

Mr. Holden has done me the honour to include more than one translation from this poem in his Folia Silvulæ, pp. 342, 343. This is from his own pen.

Huc feriantes ibimus, ibimus,
Ridens amœnum quo vocat insula,
Paulisper obliti laboris
Præteriti simul ac futuri;
Et mox refecti corpora obibimus
Rursus laborem, si superest labor,
Rursusque pectemus marinam
Præpete canitiem carinâ?
Quo dia proles tenditis, immemor
Famæ prioris, sanguinis immemor?
Quid voltis? at quondam pigebit
Degeneres maculasse nomen.
Blandis sed illi vocibus illicum
Iam iamque prensant litora creduli;
Fractis nec advertere fœdam
Undique navigiis harenam,
Aut visa nullos incutiunt metus:
Neque usta ventis, usta caloribus,
Quis omnis albescebat ora
Ossa monent revocare gressum.

‘And, bathed in blisses of this happy isle,
Past toil forgetting and to come, abide
In joyfulness awhile;

‘And then, refreshed, our tasks resume again,
If other tasks we yet are bound unto;
Combing the hoary tresses of the main
With sharp swift keel anew.’

O heroes, that had once a nobler aim,
O heroes sprung from many a godlike line,
What will ye do, unmindful of your fame,
And of your race divine?

But they, by these prevailing voices now
Lured, evermore drew nearer to the land,
Nor saw the wrecks of many a goodly prow,
Which strewed that fatal strand;

Or seeing, feared not; warning taking none
From the plain doom of all that went before,
Whose bones lay bleaching in the wind and sun,
And whitened all the shore.

And some impel through foaming billows now
The hissing keel, and some tumultuous stand
Upon the deck, or crowd about the prow,
Waiting to leap to land.

And them this fatal lodestar of delight
Had drawn to ruin wholly, but for one
Of their own selves, who swept his lyre with might,
Calliope's great son.

He singing, (for mere words were now in vain,
That melody so led all souls at will),
Singing he played, and matched that earth-born strain
With music sweeter still.

Of holier joy he sang, more true delight,
In other happier isles for them reserved,
Who, faithful here, from constancy and right
And truth have never swerved;

How evermore the tempered ocean gales
Breathe round those hidden islands of the blest,
Steeped in the glory spread, when daylight fails
Far in the sacred West;

How unto them, beyond our mortal night,
Shines evermore in strength the golden day;
And meadows with purpureal roses bright
Bloom round their feet alway;

And plants of gold—some burn beneath the sea,
And some, for garlands apt, the land doth bear,
And lacks not many an incense-breathing tree,
Enriching all that air.

Nor need is more, with sullen strength of hand
To vex the stubborn earth, or cleave the main;
They dwell apart, a calm heroic band,
Not tasting toil or pain.

Nor sang he only of unfading bowers,
Where they a tearless painless age fulfil,
In fields Elysian spending blissful hours,
Remote from every ill;

But of pure gladness found in temperance high,
In duty owned, and reverenced with awe,
Of man's true freedom, which may only lie
In servitude to law;

And how 'twas given through virtue to aspire
To golden seats in ever calm abodes;
Of mortal men, admitted to the quire
Of high immortal Gods.

He sang—a mighty melody divine,
Waking deep echoes in the heart of each—
Reminded whence they drew their royal line,
And to what heights might reach.

And all the while they listened, them the speed
Bore onward still of favouring wind and tide,
That when their ears were vacant to give heed
To any sound beside,

The feeble echoes of that other lay,
Which held awhile their senses thralled and bound,
Were in the distance fading quite away,
A dull unheeded sound.