The Georgics IV Virgil

Written 29 B.C.E

Georgic IV

 

Of air-born honey, gift of heaven, I now

Take up the tale. Upon this theme no less

Look thou, Maecenas, with indulgent eye.

A marvellous display of puny powers,

High-hearted chiefs, a nation's history,

Its traits, its bent, its battles and its clans,

All, each, shall pass before you, while I sing.

Slight though the poet's theme, not slight the praise,

So frown not heaven, and Phoebus (female Apollo, Abaddon, Apollyon)

hear his call.

 

First find your bees a settled sure abode,

Where neither winds can enter (winds blow back

The foragers with food returning home)

Nor sheep and butting kids tread down the flowers,

Nor heifer wandering wide upon the plain

Dash off the dew, and bruise the springing blades.

 

Let the gay lizard too keep far aloof

His scale-clad body from their honied stalls,

And the bee-eater, and what birds beside,

And Procne smirched with blood upon the breast

From her own murderous hands. For these roam wide

Wasting all substance, or the bees themselves

Strike flying, and in their beaks bear home, to glut

Those savage nestlings with the dainty prey.
The word gay in Greek includes:

krok-ôtos, ê, on, saffron-dyed, saffron-coloured, Pi.N.1.38.
2. as Subst., krokôtos (sc. chitôn), ho, saffron-coloured robe, worn by gay women, Ar.Th.138, Ec.879; as an offering in temples, IG12.386.22, 22.1514.60, 62; worn by Dionysus (or at his festivals) over the chitôn, Cratin.38, Ar.Ra.46; by effeminate men, parthenos d' einai dokei phorôn krokôtous (prob. for kros-) Arar.4, cf. Callix.2, Duris 12 J., etc.: neut. pl. krokôta (sc. himatia) v.l. in Ar. Lys.44.  

Dionysus

And while I was on board, reading

the Andromeda, suddenly a craving

smote my heart, you'll never guess how strong.

Heracles

A craving? How big?

Dionysus

Small, like Molon.

Heracles

For a woman?

Dionysus

Oh no.

Heracles

A boy?

Dionysus

Not at all!

Heracles

A man?

Dionysus

Argh!

Heracles

You did it with Cleisthenes?

Dionysus

Don't make fun, brother, I've really got it bad,

Such passionate desire torments me so.

 

But let clear springs and moss-green pools be near,

And through the grass a streamlet hurrying run,

Some palm-tree o'er the porch extend its shade,

Or huge-grown oleaster, that in Spring,

Their own sweet Spring-tide, when the new-made chiefs

Lead forth the young swarms, and, escaped their comb,

The colony comes forth to sport and play,

The neighbouring bank may lure them from the heat,

Or bough befriend with hospitable shade.

 

O'er the mid-waters, whether swift or still,

Cast willow-branches and big stones enow,

Bridge after bridge, where they may footing find

And spread their wide wings to the summer sun,

If haply Eurus, swooping as they pause,

Have dashed with spray or plunged them in the deep.

 

And let green cassias and far-scented thymes,

And savory with its heavy-laden breath

Bloom round about, and violet-beds hard by

Sip sweetness from the fertilizing springs.

For the hive's self, or stitched of hollow bark,

Or from tough osier woven, let the doors

Be strait of entrance; for stiff winter's cold

Congeals the honey, and heat resolves and thaws,

To bees alike disastrous; not for naught

 

So haste they to cement the tiny pores

That pierce their walls, and fill the crevices

With pollen from the flowers, and glean and keep

To this same end the glue, that binds more fast

Than bird-lime or the pitch from Ida's pines.

 

Oft too in burrowed holes, if fame be true,

They make their cosy subterranean home,

And deeply lodged in hollow rocks are found,

Or in the cavern of an age-hewn tree.

 

Thou not the less smear round their crannied cribs

With warm smooth mud-coat, and strew leaves above;

But near their home let neither yew-tree grow,

Nor reddening crabs be roasted, and mistrust

Deep marish-ground and mire with noisome smell,

Or where the hollow rocks sonorous ring,

And the word spoken buffets and rebounds.

 

What more? When now the golden sun has put

Winter to headlong flight beneath the world,

And oped the doors of heaven with summer ray,

Forthwith they roam the glades and forests o'er,

Rifle the painted flowers, or sip the streams,

Light-hovering on the surface. Hence it is

With some sweet rapture, that we know not of,

Their little ones they foster, hence with skill

Work out new wax or clinging honey mould.

 

So when the cage-escaped hosts you see

Float heavenward through the hot clear air, until

You marvel at yon dusky cloud that spreads

And lengthens on the wind, then mark them well;

 

For then 'tis ever the fresh springs they seek

And bowery shelter: hither must you bring

The savoury sweets I bid, and sprinkle them,

Bruised balsam and the wax-flower's lowly weed,

And wake and shake the tinkling cymbals heard

By the great Mother: on the anointed spots

Themselves will settle, and in wonted wise

Seek of themselves the cradle's inmost depth.

 

But if to battle they have hied them forth-

For oft 'twixt king and king with uproar dire

Fierce feud arises, and at once from far

You may discern what passion sways the mob,

And how their hearts are throbbing for the strife;

Hark! the hoarse brazen note that warriors know

Chides on the loiterers, and the ear may catch

A sound that mocks the war-trump's broken blasts;

 

Then in hot haste they muster, then flash wings,

Sharpen their pointed beaks and knit their thews,

And round the king, even to his royal tent,

Throng rallying, and with shouts defy the foe.

 

So, when a dry Spring and clear space is given,

Forth from the gates they burst, they clash on high;

A din arises; they are heaped and rolled

Into one mighty mass, and headlong fall,

Not denselier hail through heaven, nor pelting so

Rains from the shaken oak its acorn-shower.

 

Conspicuous by their wings the chiefs themselves

Press through the heart of battle, and display

A giant's spirit in each pigmy frame,

Steadfast no inch to yield till these or those

The victor's ponderous arm has turned to flight.

 

Such fiery passions and such fierce assaults

A little sprinkled dust controls and quells.

And now, both leaders from the field recalled,

Who hath the worser seeming, do to death,

Lest royal waste wax burdensome, but let

His better lord it on the empty throne.

 

One with gold-burnished flakes will shine like fire,

For twofold are their kinds, the nobler he,

Of peerless front and lit with flashing scales;

That other, from neglect and squalor foul,

Drags slow a cumbrous belly. As with kings,

So too with people, diverse is their mould,

Some rough and loathly, as when the wayfarer

Scapes from a whirl of dust, and scorched with heat

Spits forth the dry grit from his parched mouth:

 

The others shine forth and flash with lightning-gleam,

Their backs all blazoned with bright drops of gold

Symmetric: this the likelier breed; from these,

When heaven brings round the season, thou shalt strain

Sweet honey, nor yet so sweet as passing clear,

And mellowing on the tongue the wine-god's fire.

 

But when the swarms fly aimlessly abroad,

Disport themselves in heaven and spurn their cells,

Leaving the hive unwarmed, from such vain play

Must you refrain their volatile desires,

Nor hard the task: tear off the monarchs' wings;

While these prove loiterers, none beside will dare

Mount heaven, or pluck the standards from the camp.

 

Let gardens with the breath of saffron flowers

Allure them, and the lord of Hellespont,

Priapus, wielder of the willow-scythe,

Safe in his keeping hold from birds and thieves.

And let the man to whom such cares are dear

Himself bring thyme and pine-trees from the heights,

And strew them in broad belts about their home;

No hand but his the blistering task should ply,

Plant the young slips, or shed the genial showers.

 

And I myself, were I not even now

Furling my sails, and, nigh the journey's end,

Eager to turn my vessel's prow to shore,

Perchance would sing what careful husbandry

Makes the trim garden smile; of Paestum too,

Whose roses bloom and fade and bloom again;

 

How endives glory in the streams they drink,

And green banks in their parsley, and how the gourd

Twists through the grass and rounds him to paunch;

Nor of Narcissus had my lips been dumb,

That loiterer of the flowers, nor supple-stemmed

Acanthus, with the praise of ivies pale,

And myrtles clinging to the shores they love.

 

For 'neath the shade of tall Oebalia's towers,

Where dark Galaesus laves the yellowing fields,

An old man once I mind me to have seen-

From Corycus he came- to whom had fallen

Some few poor acres of neglected land,

And they nor fruitful' neath the plodding steer,

Meet for the grazing herd, nor good for vines.

 

Yet he, the while his meagre garden-herbs

Among the thorns he planted, and all round

White lilies, vervains, and lean poppy set,

In pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings,

And home returning not till night was late,

With unbought plenty heaped his board on high.

 

He was the first to cull the rose in spring,

He the ripe fruits in autumn; and ere yet

Winter had ceased in sullen ire to rive

The rocks with frost, and with her icy bit

Curb in the running waters, there was he

Plucking the rathe faint hyacinth, while he chid

Summer's slow footsteps and the lagging West.

 

Therefore he too with earliest brooding bees

And their full swarms o'erflowed, and first was he

To press the bubbling honey from the comb;

Lime-trees were his, and many a branching pine;

And all the fruits wherewith in early bloom

The orchard-tree had clothed her, in full tale

Hung there, by mellowing autumn perfected.

 

He too transplanted tall-grown elms a-row,

Time-toughened pear, thorns bursting with the plum

And plane now yielding serviceable shade

For dry lips to drink under: but these things,

Shut off by rigorous limits, I pass by,

And leave for others to sing after me.

 

Come, then, I will unfold the natural powers

Great Jove himself upon the bees bestowed,

The boon for which, led by the shrill sweet strains

Of the Curetes and their clashing brass,

They fed the King of heaven in Dicte's cave.

 

Alone of all things they receive and hold

Community of offspring, and they house

Together in one city, and beneath

The shelter of majestic laws they live;

And they alone fixed home and country know,

And in the summer, warned of coming cold,

Make proof of toil, and for the general store

Hoard up their gathered harvesting. For some

Watch o'er the victualling of the hive, and these

By settled order ply their tasks afield;

 

And some within the confines of their home

Plant firm the comb's first layer, Narcissus' tear,

And sticky gum oozed from the bark of trees,

Then set the clinging wax to hang therefrom.

 

Others the while lead forth the full-grown young,

Their country's hope, and others press and pack

The thrice repured honey, and stretch their cells

To bursting with the clear-strained nectar sweet.

 

Some, too, the wardship of the gates befalls,

Who watch in turn for showers and cloudy skies,

Or ease returning labourers of their load,

Or form a band and from their precincts drive

The drones, a lazy herd. How glows the work!

 

How sweet the honey smells of perfumed thyme

Like the Cyclopes, when in haste they forge

From the slow-yielding ore the thunderbolts,

Some from the bull's-hide bellows in and out

Let the blasts drive, some dip i' the water-trough

 

The sputtering metal: with the anvil's weight

Groans Etna: they alternately in time

With giant strength uplift their sinewy arms,

Or twist the iron with the forceps' grip-

Not otherwise, to measure small with great,

The love of getting planted in their breasts

 

Goads on the bees, that haunt old Cecrops' heights,

Each in his sphere to labour. The old have charge

To keep the town, and build the walled combs,

And mould the cunning chambers; but the youth,

Their tired legs packed with thyme, come labouring home

Belated, for afar they range to feed

On arbutes and the grey-green willow-leaves,

And cassia and the crocus blushing red,

Glue-yielding limes, and hyacinths dusky-eyed.

One hour for rest have all, and one for toil:

 

With dawn they hurry from the gates- no room

For loiterers there: and once again, when even

Now bids them quit their pasturing on the plain,

Then homeward make they, then refresh their strength:

A hum arises: hark! they buzz and buzz

About the doors and threshold; till at length

Safe laid to rest they hush them for the night,

And welcome slumber laps their weary limbs.

 

But from the homestead not too far they fare,

When showers hang like to fall, nor, east winds nigh,

Confide in heaven, but 'neath the city walls

Safe-circling fetch them water, or essay

Brief out-goings, and oft weigh-up tiny stones,

As light craft ballast in the tossing tide,

Wherewith they poise them through the cloudy vast.

 

This law of life, too, by the bees obeyed,

Will move thy wonder, that nor sex with sex

Yoke they in marriage, nor yield their limbs to love,

Nor know the pangs of labour, but alone

From leaves and honied herbs, the mothers, each,

Gather their offspring in their mouths, alone

Supply new kings and pigmy commonwealth,

And their old court and waxen realm repair.

 

Oft, too, while wandering, against jagged stones

Their wings they fray, and 'neath the burden yield

Their liberal lives: so deep their love of flowers,

So glorious deem they honey's proud acquist.

 

Therefore, though each a life of narrow span,

Ne'er stretched to summers more than seven, befalls,

Yet deathless doth the race endure, and still

Perennial stands the fortune of their line,

From grandsire unto grandsire backward told.

 

Moreover, not Aegyptus, nor the realm

Of boundless Lydia, no, nor Parthia's hordes,

Nor Median Hydaspes, to their king

Do such obeisance: lives the king unscathed,

One will inspires the million: is he dead,

Snapt is the bond of fealty; they themselves

Ravage their toil-wrought honey, and rend amain

Their own comb's waxen trellis. He is the lord

Of all their labour; him with awful eye

They reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround,

In crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high,

Or with their bodies shield him in the fight,

And seek through showering wounds a glorious death.

 

Led by these tokens, and with such traits to guide,

Some say that unto bees a share is given

Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink

Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all-

Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven-

From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind,

Draw each at birth the fine essential flame;

 

Yea, and that all things hence to Him return,

Brought back by dissolution, nor can death

Find place: but, each into his starry rank,

Alive they soar, and mount the heights of heaven.

If now their narrow home thou wouldst unseal,

And broach the treasures of the honey-house,

With draught of water first toment thy lips,

And spread before thee fumes of trailing smoke.

 

Twice is the teeming produce gathered in,

Twofold their time of harvest year by year,

Once when Taygete the Pleiad uplifts

Her comely forehead for the earth to see,

With foot of scorn spurning the ocean-streams,

Once when in gloom she flies the watery Fish,

And dips from heaven into the wintry wave.

 

Unbounded then their wrath; if hurt, they breathe

Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins

And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives

Behind them in the wound. But if you dread

Too rigorous a winter, and would fain

Temper the coming time, and their bruised hearts

And broken estate to pity move thy soul,

Yet who would fear to fumigate with thyme,

Or cut the empty wax away? for oft

Into their comb the newt has gnawed unseen,

And the light-loathing beetles crammed their bed,

And he that sits at others' board to feast,

The do-naught drone; or 'gainst the unequal foe

Swoops the fierce hornet, or the moth's fell tribe;

 

Or spider, victim of Minerva's spite,

Athwart the doorway hangs her swaying net.

The more impoverished they, the keenlier all

To mend the fallen fortunes of their race

Will nerve them, fill the cells up, tier on tier,

And weave their granaries from the rifled flowers.

 

Now, seeing that life doth even to bee-folk bring

Our human chances, if in dire disease

Their bodies' strength should languish- which anon

By no uncertain tokens may be told-

Forthwith the sick change hue; grim leanness mars

Their visage; then from out the cells they bear

Forms reft of light, and lead the mournful pomp;

 

Or foot to foot about the porch they hang,

Or within closed doors loiter, listless all

From famine, and benumbed with shrivelling cold.

Then is a deep note heard, a long-drawn hum,

As when the chill South through the forests sighs,

As when the troubled ocean hoarsely booms

With back-swung billow, as ravening tide of fire

Surges, shut fast within the furnace-walls.

 

Then do I bid burn scented galbanum,

And, honey-streams through reeden troughs instilled,

Challenge and cheer their flagging appetite

To taste the well-known food; and it shall boot

To mix therewith the savour bruised from gall,

 

And rose-leaves dried, or must to thickness boiled

By a fierce fire, or juice of raisin-grapes

From Psithian vine, and with its bitter smell

Centaury, and the famed Cecropian thyme.

 

There is a meadow-flower by country folk

Hight star-wort; 'tis a plant not far to seek;

For from one sod an ample growth it rears,

Itself all golden, but girt with plenteous leaves,

Where glory of purple shines through violet gloom.

 

With chaplets woven hereof full oft are decked

Heaven's altars: harsh its taste upon the tongue;

Shepherds in vales smooth-shorn of nibbling flocks

By Mella's winding waters gather it.

 

The roots of this, well seethed in fragrant wine,

Set in brimmed baskets at their doors for food.

But if one's whole stock fail him at a stroke,

Nor hath he whence to breed the race anew,

'Tis time the wondrous secret to disclose

Taught by the swain of Arcady, even how

 

The blood of slaughtered bullocks oft has borne

Bees from corruption. I will trace me back

To its prime source the story's tangled thread,

And thence unravel. For where thy happy folk,

Canopus, city of Pellaean fame,

Dwell by the Nile's lagoon-like overflow,

And high o'er furrows they have called their own

Skim in their painted wherries; where, hard by,

The quivered Persian presses, and that flood

Which from the swart-skinned Aethiop bears him down,

Swift-parted into sevenfold branching mouths

With black mud fattens and makes Aegypt green,

That whole domain its welfare's hope secure

Rests on this art alone. And first is chosen

A strait recess, cramped closer to this end,

Which next with narrow roof of tiles atop

'Twixt prisoning walls they pinch, and add hereto

From the four winds four slanting window-slits.

 

Then seek they from the herd a steer, whose horns

With two years' growth are curling, and stop fast,

Plunge madly as he may, the panting mouth

And nostrils twain, and done with blows to death,

Batter his flesh to pulp i' the hide yet whole,

And shut the doors, and leave him there to lie.

 

But 'neath his ribs they scatter broken boughs,

With thyme and fresh-pulled cassias: this is done

When first the west winds bid the waters flow,

Ere flush the meadows with new tints, and ere

The twittering swallow buildeth from the beams.

 

Meanwhile the juice within his softened bones

Heats and ferments, and things of wondrous birth,

Footless at first, anon with feet and wings,

Swarm there and buzz, a marvel to behold;

 

And more and more the fleeting breeze they take,

Till, like a shower that pours from summer-clouds,

Forth burst they, or like shafts from quivering string

When Parthia's flying hosts provoke the fray.

 

Say what was he, what God, that fashioned forth

This art for us, O Muses? of man's skill

Whence came the new adventure? From thy vale,

Peneian Tempe, turning, bee-bereft,

So runs the tale, by famine and disease,

Mournful the shepherd Aristaeus stood

Fast by the haunted river-head, and thus

With many a plaint to her that bare him cried:

 

"Mother, Cyrene, mother, who hast thy home

Beneath this whirling flood, if he thou sayest,

Apollo, lord of Thymbra, be my sire,

Sprung from the Gods' high line, why barest thou me

With fortune's ban for birthright? Where is now

Thy love to me-ward banished from thy breast?

O! wherefore didst thou bid me hope for heaven?

Lo! even the crown of this poor mortal life,

Which all my skilful care by field and fold,

No art neglected, scarce had fashioned forth,

Even this falls from me, yet thou call'st me son.

 

Nay, then, arise! With thine own hands pluck up

My fruit-plantations: on the homestead fling

Pitiless fire; make havoc of my crops;

Burn the young plants, and wield the stubborn axe

Against my vines, if there hath taken the

Such loathing of my greatness." But that cry,

Even from her chamber in the river-deeps,

His mother heard: around her spun the nymphs

 

Milesian wool stained through with hyaline dye,

Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce,

Their glossy locks o'er snowy shoulders shed,

Cydippe and Lycorias yellow-haired,

A maiden one, one newly learned even then

To bear Lucina's birth-pang. Clio, too,

And Beroe, sisters, ocean-children both,

Both zoned with gold and girt with dappled fell,

Ephyre and Opis, and from Asian meads

 

Deiopea, and, bow at length laid by,

Fleet-footed Arethusa. But in their midst

Fair Clymene was telling o'er the tale

Of Vulcan's idle vigilance and the stealth

Of Mars' sweet rapine, and from Chaos old

Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods.

Charmed by whose lay, the while their woolly tasks

With spindles down they drew, yet once again

Smote on his mother's ears the mournful plaint

Of Aristaeus; on their glassy thrones

 

Amazement held them all; but Arethuse

Before the rest put forth her auburn head,

Peering above the wave-top, and from far

Exclaimed, "Cyrene, sister, not for naught

Scared by a groan so deep, behold! 'tis he,

Even Aristaeus, thy heart's fondest care,

Here by the brink of the Peneian sire

Stands woebegone and weeping, and by name

Cries out upon thee for thy cruelty."

 

To whom, strange terror knocking at her heart,

"Bring, bring him to our sight," the mother cried;

"His feet may tread the threshold even of Gods."

So saying, she bids the flood yawn wide and yield

A pathway for his footsteps; but the wave

Arched mountain-wise closed round him, and within

Its mighty bosom welcomed, and let speed

To the deep river-bed. And now, with eyes

 

Of wonder gazing on his mother's hall

And watery kingdom and cave-prisoned pools

And echoing groves, he went, and, stunned by that

Stupendous whirl of waters, separate saw

All streams beneath the mighty earth that glide,

Phasis and Lycus, and that fountain-head

Whence first the deep Enipeus leaps to light,

Whence father Tiber, and whence Anio's flood,

And Hypanis that roars amid his rocks,

And Mysian Caicus, and, bull-browed

 

'Twixt either gilded horn, Eridanus,

Than whom none other through the laughing plains

More furious pours into the purple sea.

Soon as the chamber's hanging roof of stone

Was gained, and now Cyrene from her son

Had heard his idle weeping, in due course

Clear water for his hands the sisters bring,

With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap

 

The board with dainties, and set on afresh

The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires

Upleap the altars; then the mother spake,

"Take beakers of Maconian wine," she said,

"Pour we to Ocean." Ocean, sire of all,

She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard

 

The hundred forests and the hundred streams;

Thrice Vesta's fire with nectar clear she dashed,

Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone:

Armed with which omen she essayed to speak:

"In Neptune's gulf Carpathian dwells a seer,

Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main

 

With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds;

Now visits he his native home once more,

Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him

We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old;

For all things knows the seer, both those which are

And have been, or which time hath yet to bring;

So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks,

And loathly sea-calves 'neath the surge he feeds.

 

Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind

That he may all the cause of sickness show,

And grant a prosperous end. For save by force

No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend

His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply

With rigorous force and fetters; against these

His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain.

 

I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires,

When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade,

Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt,

Whither he hies him weary from the waves,

That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep.

 

But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve,

Then divers forms and bestial semblances

Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change

To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled,

And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth

A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of

The fetters, or in showery drops anon

 

Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts

His endless transformations, thou, my son,

More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until

His body's shape return to that thou sawest,

When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep."

So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew

She sheds around, and all his frame therewith

Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks

Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt

Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast

 

Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave

By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up

Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old

For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin,

Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides.

 

Here in close covert out of the sun's eye

The youth she places, and herself the while

Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof.

And now the ravening dog-star that burns up

The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course

The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades

Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws

 

Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray,

When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave

Strode from the billows: round him frolicking

The watery folk that people the waste sea

Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide.

 

Along the shore in scattered groups to feed

The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself,

Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids

The steers from pasture to their stall repair,

And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves,

Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale.

 

But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch,

Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs,

With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose

Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless,

All unforgetful of his ancient craft,

Transforms himself to every wondrous thing,

Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream.

 

But when no trickery found a path for flight,

Baffled at length, to his own shape returned,

With human lips he spake, "Who bade thee, then,

So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront

Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?"- But he,

"Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest;

For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou

To practise upon me: at heaven's behest

I for my fainting fortunes hither come

 

An oracle to ask thee." There he ceased.

Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained,

Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes

Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth

Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven:

 

"Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus,

Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self,

Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his,

So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires,

Yet madly raging for his ravished bride.

 

She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit

Along the stream, saw not the coming death,

Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank

In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake.

But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers

Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks:

 

Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope,

And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars,

The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less

With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept,

Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self,

Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell,

Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone,

Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang.

 

Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,

Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove

Grim with a horror of great darkness- came,

Entered, and faced the Manes and the King

Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame.

 

Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus,

Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades

Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms

Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie

To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour

Or storms of winter chase them from the hills;

Matrons and men, and great heroic frames

Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls,

Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes.

 

Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed,

Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp

Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast,

Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between.

Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death

Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides,

Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined;

Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape,

And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still.

 

And now with homeward footstep he had passed

All perils scathless, and, at length restored,

Eurydice to realms of upper air

Had well-nigh won, behind him following-

So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart

A sudden mad desire surprised and seized-

Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive.

 

For at the very threshold of the day,

Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve,

He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice

His own once more. But even with the look,

Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond

Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard

Three times like thunder in the meres of hell.

 

'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought

On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again

The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep

Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell:

 

Girt with enormous night I am borne away,

Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more,

These helpless hands.' She spake, and suddenly,

Like smoke dissolving into empty air,

Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him

Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak,

Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time

Hell's boatman brooks he pass the watery bar.

 

What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved?

Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice

The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now

Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge!

 

For seven whole months unceasingly, men say,

Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave,

Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill

Unrolled his story, melting tigers' hearts,

And leading with his lay the oaks along.

 

As in the poplar-shade a nightingale

Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,

Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she

Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray

With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,

Till all the region with her wrongs o'erflows.

 

No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:

By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,

Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed,

Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice

Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.

 

Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,

Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites

And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,

And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.

Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream,

Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,

Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,

The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry

 

'Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!'

 

With parting breath he called her, and the banks

From the broad stream caught up 'Eurydice!'"

So Proteus ending plunged into the deep,

And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl

Churned into foam the water, and was gone;

But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus

Bespake the trembling listener: "Nay, my son,

From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:

Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,

With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,

Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.

 

Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:

Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant

Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.

But how to approach them will I first unfold-

Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,

That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,

Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,

Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these

Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,

And from their throats let gush the victims' blood,

And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.

 

Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,

To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,

Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep

Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon

For pardon found adore Eurydice

With a slain calf for victim."

 

No delay:

The self-same hour he hies him forth to do

His mother's bidding: to the shrine he came,

The appointed altars reared, and thither led

Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,

With kine to match, that never yoke had known;

 

Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day,

To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought

The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell

A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh,

Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum

Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil

In endless clouds they spread them, till at last

On yon tree-top together fused they cling,

And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.

 

So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields,

Of flocks and trees, while Caesar's majesty

Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep

Euphrates, and bare rule o'er willing folk

Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven.

 

I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope

The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace

Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights

The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth

Thee, Tityrus, 'neath the spreading beech tree's shade.

 

 

THE END

 

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