Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams :: :: University of Virginia Library

Twain are the sons of Venus: one beholds
Our globe in gladness, while his brother's eye
Casts graver glances down, nor cares for woods
Or song, unworthy of the name of Love.
Nothing is sweet to him, as pure and cold
As rain and Eurus.

289

What dissension thus
Severed the beauteous pair? Ambition did.
With heavy heart the elder bore that he
Whom often with an arrow in his hand
He saw, and whetstone under it, and knew
To spend the day entire in weaving flowers
Or drawing nets, as might be, over birds,
That he should have men's incense, he have shrines,
While only empty honour, silent prayer,
Was offered to himself.

On this he goes
And makes Silenus arbiter. The eld
With gentle speech would fain assuage his wrath;
It rises but the higher: he bids him call
The Idalian to his presence, then decide.

With downcast eye, and drooping wing, and cheek
Suffused with shame, the little one advanced,
And “Brother! did you call me? Then at last
The poor Idalian is not quite despised?”
The kindly arbiter in vain attempts
To bring together two such potent hands.

“No,” said the taller; “I am here for this,
This only, that he learn, and by defeat,
What is my power.”

Hereon Silenus, “Go!
Kiss first: then both (but with no enemy)
In power and honour safely may contend.”

The younger leaps upon the elder's neck
And kisses it and kisses it again:
The austerer could not, tho' he would, resist
Those rapid lips; one kiss he did return,
Whether the influence of the God prevail'd,
Or whether 'tis impossible to stand
Repelling constantly a kindly heart.
But neither his proud words did he remit
Nor resolution: he began to boast
How with his radiant fire he had reduced
The ancient Chaos; how from heaven he drove
The darkness that surrounded it, and drew

290

Into their places the reluctant stars,
And made some stand before him, others go
Beyond illimitable space; then curb'd
The raging sea and chain'd with rocks around.

“Is not all this enough for you?” exclaimed
The brother; “must my little realm be stript
Of every glory? You will make me proud
In speech, refusing what is justly due.
Upon my birth the golden ether smiled.
What Chaos was I know not, I confess;
I would let every star fly where it list,
Nor try to turn it: her who rules them all
I drew behind the Latmian cliffs; she prayed,
She promist ever to perform my will
Would I but once be friendly. 'Twas her first,
'Twas her last vow . . and it was made to me.
Now you alike inhabit the same heaven,
And she must know you, yet none other Love
Acknowledges save him whom you despise.
To me what matter are the raging seas,
Curb'd or uncurb'd, in chains or out of chains?
I penetrate the uttermost retreat
Of Nereus; I command, and from the deep
Dolphins rise up and give their pliant backs
For harps to grate against and songmen ride;
And, when I will'd it, they have fondly wept
For human creatures human tears, and laid
Their weary lives down on the dry sea-sand.
Desert thou some one, and he knows it not;
Let me desert him, let me but recede
One footstep, and funereal fire consumes
His inmost heart.

“The latest guest above
With basket overturn'd and broken thread
Lay lithe as new-mown grass before the gate
Of Omphale: a fondled whelp tug'd off
The lion-skin, and left athwart his breast.
Vast things and wonderful are those you boast.
I would say nothing of the higher Powers,

291

Lest it might chafe you. How the world turns round
I know not, or who tempers the extremes
Of heat and cold and regulates the tides.
I leave them all to you: give me instead
Dances and crowns and garlands; give the lyre,
And softer music of the river-side
Where the stream laps the sallow-leaves, and breaks
The quiet converse of the whispering reeds:
Give me, for I delight in them, the clefts
Of bank o'ergrown by moss's soft deceit.
I wish but to be happy: others say
That I am powerful: whether so or not
Let facts bear witness: in the sun, the shade,
Beneath the setting and the rising stars
Let these speak out; I keep them not in mind.”

“Scarce less thy promises,” the other cried.
He smiled and own'd it.

“You will soon educe
Bolder assertion of important deeds
Who things terrestial haughtily despise.
Decline your presence at the blissful couch,
And boast you never make those promises
Which make so many happy, but with eye
Averted from them gaze into the deep,
Yet tell me, tell me, solemn one, that swearest
By that dark river only, who compel'd
Pluto to burn amid the deepest shades,
Amid the windings of the Stygian stream
And panting Phlegethon? while barkt the dog
Three-throated, so that all his realm resounds.
And who (here lies the potency) who made
The griesly Pluto please the captive bride?
Mere sport! If graver, better, things you want,
This is the hand, and this the torch it held
(You might have heard each drop the Danäid
Let fall, Ixion's wheel you might have heard
Creak, as now first without his groans it roll'd)
When the fond husband claspt Eurydice,
And the fond wife the earliest slain at Troy.”

292

The arbiter embraced him: more composed
He turn'd toward the other and pronounced
This sentence.

“O most worthy of thy sire
The Thunderer! to thy guidance I commit
The stars (if he approve of it) and storms
And seas, and rocks coercing their uproar,
If Amphitrite smile, if Neptune bend.
But, O thou smaller one of lighter wing,
Source of the genial laugh and dulcet smile,
Who makest every sun shed softer rays,
And one sole night outvalue all that shine,
Who holdest back (what Jove could never do)
The flying Hours! thou askest nought beyond;
And this do I award thee. I bestow
On thee alone the gentle hand hand-linkt . .
Thy truest bond . . on thee the flowers, the lyre,
The river's whispers which the reeds increase,
The spring to weave thy trophies, the whole year
To warm and fill it with the balm of spring.
Only do thou” . . he whispered in the ear
Of Love, and blusht in whispering it . . “incline
Ianthe . . touch her gently . . just the point . .
Nor let that other know where thou hast aim'd.”