Chapter II: Part 2

Farewell to him. Æneas, with his Guide,
Approached, not unobserved, the black stream’s side
Charon was on the watch as they pursued
Their way along the sad and silent wood.
Scarcely had they emerged when he began
To scold, and Æneas first: “Halt, armed man,
Whoever thou art! No step further! Why
Wouldest thou cross? For ghosts alone I ply
Bound for the realms of slumb’rous Night and Sleep.
Not for live bodies do I ferry keep!
Do I not well remember how I crossed
With Hercules on board, much to my cost?—
Think! Zeus’s son, incomparably strong,
Fastened Cerberus with a leathern thong,
And drew trembling from under Pluto’s throne!
Who paid for the sacrilege? I alone.
When Theseus and Pirithous dared try
To carry off our Queen, who culprit? I!”
“Waste wrath!” quoth the Sibyl: “Thy hound may save
His bark to fright the pale Shades from his cave.
Pluto’s honour is safe; feel no alarms;
’Tis Æneas famed for piety and arms!
Hither has he descended from above
To pay his Sire the homage of his love.
Though not moved thou by tenderness like his,
See the Branch! Render fealty to This!”
At the sight rarely seen the anger sank,
Awe followed; straight backed Charon for the bank,
Clearing bench and deck of many a Shade
To make room for Æneas and the Maid.
Starting with its unwonted weight once more,
The coracle groaned, leaked at every pore;
But lasted out, and at the water’s edge,
Landed in clammy mud and grey-green sedge.
From where against the landing-place he lay,
Cerberus opened his three jaws to bay
Strangers, when the Sibyl, seeing the snakes
Round the neck arching, threw drugged honey-cakes.
The ravening throats licked the whole up; then—
While the monstrous limbs grovelled o’er the den—
Bidding the rivers none re-cross farewell,
The Pair are through the gate, and inside Hell.

The Underworld, an Empire manifold,
Is famed within it two main States to hold;—
For the Damned, and Fiends to torment them, Dis,
The Elysian fields for Saints in bliss.—
But Spirits of the Dead, ere they can come
Before their Judge to be assigned a home
Among the Blest or Sinners, undergo
Two stages of probation; first, we know,
For it to be on due inspection clear
They are qualified as Ghosts; and, next, where
To prepare for trial.—
From graves men rise
Shadows, bodiless, but as Death’s surprise
Caught them; and therefore shadows of the whole,
Of Body with its accidents, and Soul.
Such—Ghosts—they wake on Acheron’s dark shore:
Such by grim Charon are they ferried o’er;
As such they show when rapping at Hell’s gate;
And are sorted in vestibules to wait.
A few mortals, and living, there have been
Who, by the Gods’ leave, in a day have seen
The whole Nether World; but e’en its wide marge,
Reserved for Untried, would take men at large
Their lives to traverse. Reckon! the huge space
Needed to lodge the dead of human race!
Expectants of a summons to be tried
For the lives they led, and the deaths they died!
On probation for abjuring Earth and Sun
When their work above was not fully done!
For being here before it had begun!
Causes peopling this land of Little Ease
Myriad!
body’s accidents, disease,
A wild beast’s claws, a sudden east-wind’s blight;
Riches, poverty; daring and affright;
Jealousies of nations, brothers; the smart
Of love rejected, and a broken heart:
Hope become despair, as past, present schemes
Melt all into the fairy-land of dreams.
The victims—“Legion”—seeming still alive—
Wait here, distributed in Circles five;
Creatures of strange aspect, Earth’s rust inlaid
On spirit bearing it without flesh to aid.
Wanted a world to lodge the whole; and still
Continual accretions, plain, vale, hill,
Forest, are reclaimed from Immensity,
To hold this wreckage of humanity.

The first Circle to which were drawing near
Æneas and his Guide, might force a tear
From hearts of iron; for the entire air
Was but a storm of infantile despair;
One scream—plaints of robbery of the share
In sweet life to which each is born an heir.
Only, clasped to their mother’s breasts, of all
Promised at birth, they have—a funeral!
In the next Circle, less by one degree
Adverse their lot who died through perjury;
For they can claim revision of their cause
By eternal justice, if not man’s laws.
Minos holds his high Court; sifts hearts and lives;
A mute jury through Urns its verdict gives.
Acquittal will not breath of life restore;
But the appellant shuns his fellow Shades no more.
In the third Circle a sad folk abide,
Who go always wondering why they died.
Their hands are wet and red with blood they spilt;
And yet no neighbour charges them with guilt.
Accusers, sternest, themselves keep, within;
“Guilty,” they plead; unpardonable sin.
If a joy, ’tis but to avow their shame;
The story’s essence always is the same:
“Fool I! So wholly hateful did it seem—
Torture to my eyes—slant of a sun beam;
Needs shut it out forthwith—so simply how,
As by sending soul, body straight below?”—
Next moment!
if penury, mean toil were
The price for breathing once more Earth’s free air,
Gladly would all accept Man’s vilest lot,
But Hell’s and Heaven’s laws permit it not.
Slow Acheron is their eternal bound,
With unamiable Styx coiled ninefold around!

A fourth Circle holds within confines wide
“I Campi Dolorosi”; therein hide
In secluded alleys, and myrtle grove,
Those eaten through with leprosy of love.
Death kills it not; for a multitude haunt
The bowers, melancholy music chant.
With Procris, Laodamia, the rest,
The wound, unhealed, still bleeding in her breast,
Tyrian Dido roamed in a great wood.
Æneas in the leafy twilight stood,
Uncertain; as, at the month’s dawn, we doubt
If it be moon, or cloud flitting about.
Soon recognition, love; and, with them both,
Tears, shame, remembrance of his plighted troth:
“Then, ’twas truth,” he cried, “floated o’er the sea—
Dead—and by thy own hand—and, Queen, for Me!
But by the Stars, by all the Gods I know,
By what Pow’rs punish perjuries below—
Against, I swear, my heart’s will, by commands
Divine, I left thy shore for other lands.
To please, not myself, but because I must,
I pace Shadow-land, mouldy with the rust,
Miseries, aches of folly and of crime,—
Accumulated hoardings of old Time.
An instrument I of the Gods’ fixed plan;
Yet even thus would have rebelled as man,
Faced the penalties, had I been so vain
As to imagine the excess of pain
My parting would cause thee!
In pity, stay!
Whom flyest thou? I have so much to say!
And only one poor moment Fate allows!
Rob not of this, the last it grants our vows!”
As fruitless task to seek by words to slake
Fury of a furnace, as to re-make
A broken heart, or back to life surprise
Killed fondness.—On earth she fixed sullen eyes;
Moved by his prayers no more than by a smile
Of Venus would be cliff on Paros’ isle.
At last, though long his sad remorse pursued,
Gathering her strength, she regained the wood.

Their route resumed, they reached a land where air
Had a stir as of life; hither repair
War lords; here the heroes of old fights meet—
Adrastus, Parthenopæus; here greet
Æneas friends from Ilium, whose doom
Himself had witnessed, wept for, at the tomb;
And now re-wept, beholding each a Shade,
Though, like Idæus, in bright armour clad,
And charioteering.
On left and right,
Not with one look content, they throng; delight
To find pretexts to keep him, walk beside;
Question why he came, and how long might bide.
Not so with the Greeks Agamemnon led;
Seeing Æneas’s drawn sword, some fled
As once to their Fleet; all quaked; some would shout,
Mouths gaped, and the cry, a ghost, quavered out.
Shamed at the sight, Æneas, gazing there
As they shrank before him, became aware
Of a Ghost intent upon their dismay—
A Shade continuing the disarray
In which life had fled; hands, nostrils and ears
Lopped off by vengeful, jealous swords and spears;
Lace-work of gashes; the Shade shivered o’er
Dishonouring wounds, and bent, striving sore
To hide them, and himself.—
Hardly, at last
Æneas knew; and, with tears flowing fast,
Forced him to turn:
“Knight, Prince, Deiphobus,
Whose the force, will, to have outraged thee thus?
I had heard, on the death-night of our Town,
On a pile slain thou laid’st thee dying down.
Thy body I found not, but I addressed
Thrice farewell, consigning thy soul to rest.”
“No pious kindness,” answered Priam’s son,
“Friendship could require, hast thou left undone.
To Fate, and the Greek Murderess I owe
Horrors I bore on earth, my shame below;
She made my flesh my tomb, epitaph writ
Thereon, and on my ghost has graven it!
Thou knowest—how forget?—the lying joy
Of the last, the funeral night of Troy.
The Traitress through the festal city led
A chorus of Bacchantes, at its head
Waving a flaming torch; and, with the cry
Of ‘Evan,’ from the Citadel on high,
Summoned her ambushed Argives.—
I meanwhile,
Worn with the day’s cares, unsuspecting guile—
Least of all in my new-made Wife—in sleep,
Unbroken as quiet death’s self, sweet, deep,
Lay in my baleful chamber, whence my Bride
Had stolen all arms, even from my side
My trusty sword.—
Then she invites within
Menelaus—purgation for old sin!
Lo! he, and Ulysses, arch fiend, and She,
With Me unarmed—Why more?—Dost thou not see?
Gods, whom I worshipped, have not I a right
To claim like for like? Will Ye not requite?
But Thou; say, what mischance on sea or land,
Caprice of Fortune, or the Gods’ command,
Has sentenced thee in life to wander here,
Away from sunlight, and glad household cheer?”
A story long to tell; and longer still
Had been, were time Below, for good or ill,
Not measured for guests from the Upper Air
By speed of rosy Dawn’s four horses there.
But for Æneas, with half Day’s course run,
Not yet had the decisive stage begun.
Perforce the Sibyl warned against delay;
Nor thought Deiphobus his friend to stay.
Though bowed by unimaginable ill,
He faded into the Dark, to fulfil
His fate, with Adieu; “a high lot enjoy!
Be glory thine, and found a greater Troy!”

The fifth Circle left, they desired by haste
To pay time lost in grieving for the past.
Where the road forked, they took the right, that led
To Elysium; but, turning his head,
Æneas stood—bewildered, and in awe;
For, backed by a huge range of cliffs, he saw,
Extending far, behind a triple wall,
A city that one might a kingdom call,
Girt by waters—Phlegethon their dread name—
That whirl echoing rocks, and floods of flame.
Then, if that torrent of fire could be crossed,
What of the adamantine gates? Where host
Of men, nay, Gods of high Heaven, with pow’r
To tear those from their storm-defying tow’r?
And, as if this were not enough to keep
Dis safe, Tisiphone, who needs no sleep,
Sits guard in blood-red robe beside the door,
Reckoning each pulsation of the roar,
Every whizz of the lash, moan of pain,
Grating of iron, rattling of the chain.
Æneas heard too; his feet in fear clove
To the ground as frozen; he could not move
From the spot he trod. “What sins punished there,
And how? Whose those hoarse wailings of despair?”
Repelled—attracted: his unuttered thought
She answered:
“Ask not of me to be brought
Within; none guiltless enter but, like me,
They set in charge under Queen Hecate.
Herself, installing me, vouchsafed to tell
The system on which Heaven peoples Hell.
Committals hither are on sentence giv’n
By Rhadamanthus, righteous as Heav’n.
A sinner joys in craft that has concealed
His crime in life; but here it stands revealed
Blazing as the Sun; how vain cunning when
Tisiphone hauls the convict, grieved then
For old triumphs; in her right hand the scourge,
In her left snakes. She screams the while to urge
Her savage pair of sisters to make haste
From banks of dim Cocytus for a feast!
The Trials living men may not attend,
Or the dire chastisements in which they end,
But—for so much is lawful—thou shalt see
The Prison’s threshold.
At a sign from me,
Look! Gates of Adamant have opened wide,
Shrieking in loud protest; on either side,
The Fury, and a Hydra, grisly sight,
That hisses from fifty black jaws its spite;
While Tartarus beyond them plunges down
Full twice the space from red-hot Phlegethon
To the blue vault of Ether.—
Mark the twain,
And thank thy fate for being spared my pain
Of visiting the dungeons they control.
Noting unending torturings of soul!”

“Far from me, were I able, to express
Agonies of the Lost, their hopelessness!
Enough their names who sinned;—
here, hurled to Dis
By lightning at bottom of the abyss
Roll Earth’s sons the Titans; and I saw there
The Aloeid Twins, who scaled upper air,
Piling mount on mount; by brute strength alone
Tried to storm Olympus, and Jove dethrone
Salmoneus too, and the price his pride
Cost him, for choosing impious to ride
Mimicking lightnings’ flash, the thunder’s roar
Fool! to ape Jove with his steeds as they bore
His car through Elis, torches as they cast
Their smoky gleams, trumpets’ quavering blast.
Brief the trickeries of that crazed career,
Joy for man on Earth’s stage to act God’s peer;
And swift climax when, amid storms, there fell
Bolts that drove the pretender down to Hell!
Near him Earth’s nursling, Tityus, I saw,
Stretched o’er nine acres, with, to fill its maw,
A hook-beaked vulture clawing at his breast
For the liver e’er eaten, ne’er at rest;
Since growing ever, putting on new flesh;
So, the Thing gropes for dainties ever fresh.
Myriad Crime’s forms—Dis for all has room.
Kinship that should nurse kindness, rings its doom;
Virtues that have turned strangers into friends,
Oft change brothers and sisters into fiends.
Children, instead of vying to maintain
Parents, have beaten them, and even slain.
A traitor to human nature and hearth
Seduces her who owes to him her birth.
Lawyers, snapping ties sacred as of blood,
Have spun about their clients webs of fraud.
Misers have gone on hatching gold from gold—
A host of them—refusing to withhold
Grains from the hoard, although it were to save
Nearest that should be dearest from the grave.
Guests—till schooled here—have thought theft of a wife
Well worth the risk of forfeiture of life.
Liegemen, loved, aggrandized, have drawn the sword,
Himself had girded on, to stab their Lord.
Statesmen have abused a fond people’s trust,
To sell and tread its freedom in the dust.
Others, having dammed law-making at the source,
Opened, closed locks as gapes or shuts a purse.
The course of life cannot be ruled so straight,
Homes so pure, opportunities so great,
Reasons so full and plain for doing well,
But that they may be used as roads to Hell.
”Penalties”?—
As manifold, various.
The Lapithæ know it, Pirithous,
Tantalus, Ixion. I have held my breath
At black rock threatening, not, welcome Death,
But—for Shadows may feel—mangled, crushed bones,
Dragging eternally over jagged stones.—
That, in act to fall, ever seemed in air.—
And I have seen Hell’s cooks a feast prepare;
Spread couches with purple, and on gold-rests.
Then—dainties in view—as the famished guests
Seated themselves in hungry haste to sup,
The eldest Fury, screaming, started up
From where she lay, and, waving torch alight
Swept banquet, banqueters, into cold night.
On some the doom to push a mass up hill,
And, when it slips, as slip it ever will,
Still push; for some, e’en worse, the Wheel; and then—
Limbs healed—to be broken again, again.
There hapless Theseus sits, and will aye sit;
Phlegyas there, whose cry—might I deaden it!—
Is in mine ears: ‘Men, be warned! Scorn not Heav’n;
Never is sin against the Gods forgiv’n!’”

“More”? Yea; had I a hundred mouths; in each
A tongue of iron to give forth my speech;
And thou weeks to listen, I could not tell
Of all the guilt, its chastisements in Hell.
Enough for thee to know all there have dared
To break God’s laws, and in like kind have fared.
The deeds have been done; and now, fast shut in,
The doers take the wages of their sin.
But time presses; hasten, wouldst thou fulfil
Duties charged by Heaven’s grace, thy own good-will.
Courage; for we have left behind the Pit
Of sin and torture, and are soon to quit
Even the melancholy Precincts, where
The dead still mourn the Past, the Future fear.
Already I see the walls Cyclopian, built
To shut off lands of misery and guilt
From the happier one to which we wend.
Lo the Arch! there must thou thy Branch suspend!”

Crossing the intervening twilight space,
They stood ’neath the vault of the gate in face.
Then, sprinkled with fresh water from a spring,
Æneas hung up his gold offering.
Elysium’s doors opened; he was free,
Having paid her due to its Deity.

ELYSIUM

A land for joyance made; blest for the blest;
Happy in being chosen for their rest;
For nowhere greener lawns, more bow’ry glades
Inviting into more reposeful shades
Of arched romantic groves, with, ev’rywhere,
Steeped in a purple glow, a larger air
Than Earth’s; for the lower world owes no debt
To sun or stars with which our skies are set;
It has them of its own, as real as ours.
Real too its grass, the fragrance of its flow’rs;
Real they to Spirit as to them It seems,
Though for mortals unsubstantial as are dreams.
On turf or yellow sand some test the skill,
That earned them fame in life; and is theirs still.
The woods are full of revellers, who beat
Time to gay dancers and their flying feet;
Or banqueting sit, garlanded with bays,
Singing in chorus legends of old days;
While others proud of battle-fields afar
Conduct a mimic spectacle of war;
Spears waiting to be snatched, and the broad shield
To be slung, chargers harnessed for the field;—
Shadows to terrestrial men, who call
Earthly things real, when shadows most of all;—
Shadows these of the busy lives they led
On earth, which pursue them now they are dead;
Nought palpable, unless that through a grove
Eridanus rolls to the world above.
Here ignorantly happy dwell in joy
Princes like Dardanus who founded Troy;
With Teucer father of a royal race,
Gallant as noble, and most fair of face;
Ilus, Assaracus, of blood divine,
Through whom Æneas proudly traced his line.
Here stood showing glorious wounds a band
Of heroes fall’n to save its native land;
Though other arts could equal entrance gain,—
To give life charm, or steal a pang from pain.
Priests too, who as they at the altar stood
Offered pure lives as well as victims’ blood:
And seers, who ne’er falsified Heav’n’s truth,
But spoke as they heard from Apollo’s mouth:—
A various tribe, yet all alike in this,
That, having served, they have deserved their bliss.
The Maid led where the white-filleted throng
Was thickest; for Musæus’s the song,
Responsive to the lyre’s seven sweet chords,
That vied with all the magic of the words.
High he by head and shoulders o’er the ring
Around. The Sibyl, when he ceased to sing,
Besought him of his courtesy to tell
Where might Anchises in that blest land dwell;
Their search for him had many labours cost;
Dread sights been seen, perilous rivers crossed;
Their grace was brief, they must not longer bide;
How, clogged with flesh, find him without a guide?
Quick answer made the sage: “We count no home
As you on earth; wheresoever we roam
At home are we; for our repose at noon,
Or eve, no couch can equal with its down
A meadow bank, that rills unfailing heap
With flow’rs wooing irresistible sleep.
But flesh and blood aye move the heart and will,
And ye are here their purpose to fulfil;
So, follow me beyond this hanging peak,
And I will point your path to him you seek.”

Under his lead they climbed the height, and thence
Down into a wide, smiling champaign, whence
Opened a wooded valley: in a glade
Anchises stood, and deep in thought surveyed
A host of hurrying Shades. As he gazed,
He heard steps, his Son’s!
Eagerly he raised,
Both hands, while eyes and heart joined in the burst
Of love and joy; each struggling to be first
Its welcome to express: “Dearest! at last
I see Thee; at what cost of perils passed!
Yet never feared I that the utmost pow’rs
Of Earth and Hell could bar a love like ours
From meeting, as in old times, face to face,
In full converse, however brief the space.
With trust undoubting traced I to its goal
Thy devious course; for well I knew thy soul;
Each stage I numbered; tempests on what seas;
Unfriendly lands; kindnesses worse than these!”
“And could’st Thou,” cried Æneas “more repine,
Missing my presence than I longed for thine?
Thy image warned me on the island shore,
To ask thy counsels, as, on earth, of yore,
So, I am here! Once more to feel thy heart
Beating to my own!—
Nay; my Father, why,
When I would clasp hands, kiss thy face, deny
The embrace I dared Hell’s alarms to gain?”
Of no avail his prayers, tears; all vain;
Thrice in his arms the image melted away—
As flutter of breeze; dream at break of day.

Near where Anchises and Æneas stood
Shades swarmed, dense, ever denser, in a wood
Which rustled all its bushes with the press—
As of a migrant nation numberless—
Of Spirits emulous to be the first
To reach grey Lethe’s edge, and quench their thirst—
—Thus, in languorous stillness of noontide,
Sudden the slumb’rous calm is swept aside
By an inrush of bees; in wild descent,
Like pirates from the main, on nothing bent
But spoil they seem; yet each has its own flow’r,
To which sure instinct guides it hour by hour,—
Æneas saw the haste, knew not th’ excuse;
For him it seemed to be Hell broken loose.
Even when he heard the marvellous tale
That the myriads gathered in that vale
Were no unwilling, mourning outcasts there,
Condemned to breathe once more the upper air,
But after their secular repose full fain
Flesh to resume, links in an endless chain,
The world-worn hero shuddered none the less
It might be his to count it happiness
To exchange the peace of the myrtle grove
For stark sunshine and gross body above;
To be of those whom Lethe should wash clear
Of all they once had been, and all they were:—
That Elysium’s a waiting-room for life;
Life a dust-heap for trials, failures, strife
That men are Shadows all, expecting doom,
Whether flesh, or to shift it in a tomb.
“Forbear,” replied Anchises, old and wise,
“To measure laws of Fate by earthly eyes.
From the beginning of the sky and land,
The stars where once the Titans held command,
The sun and moon that share the day and night,
Air’s liquid fields;—all owe their charm and light
To eternal Spirit. That feeds the whole,
Breathes into bodies, lifeless else, a soul.
Mankind and beasts, winged Things, and monster strange,
That ’neath the level plains of Ocean range,
Draw hence their fire, the instinct of a birth
Elsewhere;—alas! for the burdensome bulk
Of limbs diseased, and joints that creak and sulk
For the foul lusts they stir, the scares, affrights,
The cowardly griefs, and as vain delights,
The Dark through which flesh stumbles, halt and blind
The dungeon where it keeps shut close the Mind,
Lest at one breath of air it should in scorn
Of earth fly back to Heaven where ’twas born.
Meanwhile an evil partnership for both!—
Spirit incorporate, however loth
To be associate with sores and blains,
Vice’s parasites, must bear fleshly pains
To be cleansed; for death is itself no cure;
Body, Soul with it, share in the Impure.
Some, carcasses, swing, split open, for breeze
To scour and wring, to bleach, and scorch, or freeze
For some a mill-stream whirls a crime about,
Or a furnace roars a rich baseness out.
Just the Judgment, every judgment true;
Each of us bears no more than is his due;
High as the merits of our kith and kin,
None but himself can carry his own sin.
Blest the sharp ordeal for the few who thence
Pass, not in sheer spiritual innocence,
But in no worse than such affections dressed
As leave the pure celestial spark at rest,
And free in these fair fields to dream away
Any chance taint surviving from earth’s clay
To dull the sereneness of the fire giv’n
To infants, that they may remember Heav’n.”

“And now behold the final stage:—
this rout,
Its cycle—a thousand years—being out—
Called by God’s Messenger of Life and Death,
Descends where Lethe, in the cleft beneath,
Will make it, drinking of the troubled flood,
Conscious it once was clothed with flesh and blood.
And yearn to take them back, and to return
Rude air to breathe, and feel a rude sun burn.
Nearer now draw with me, that from this bank
Thou mayest watch the comers rank by rank;
Read, as I point, the future in each face;
See, as I see, the glory of our race—
Great as it was, and greater still to be,
Graft on Troy’s stock, the bud of Italy.
Mark him who leans upon a bloodless spear;
’Tis thy own son; but look upon him here;
On earth Thou wilt not; for, when thy long life
Is all but spent, Lavinia thy Wife
Shall conceive a child, and in full time bear
Silvius in the woods to be thy heir;
King of Alba, like many of his line,
As Procas and Æneas, namesake thine.
And still kings come—I cannot number them,
Each adding to old a fresh diadem!
But stay! who advances crested like to Mars—
For whom Jove keeps a place among the stars?
Romulus—City maker? Tenfold more!
From him Earth’s arbiter, matchless in war,
With no limits to empire but the Pole,
And none below Olympus to the soul!—
—As Joys Cybele to have peopled Heav’n,
Rome boasts a breed to which Earth is giv’n!
Turn thy eyes; regard this Company; know
What a full tide of grandeur is to flow
Hence of thy name; how from Thyself, and from
Iulus, in time shall Julius come,
And one as great, long destined to be born
By Fate’s decree—else were Fate’s self forsworn—
That, where King Saturn reigned in days of yore,
Augustus shall the Golden Age restore.
Marches still; already his edicts sway
Where our day is night, and our night is day;
Among the Gætuli; beyond them; far
Outside the orbit, light, of any star;
Outside track of Sun and dancing Hours, where
Atlas swings the world’s axis, with its gear.
Rumours of his approaching overwhelm
Quaking Mæotis and the Caspian realm;
While sevenfold Nile offers fealty,
Trembling for what the Master shall decree.
Have we not heard in legends or romance
How God or Hero has made his advance,
Victor throughout Earth?—
Of him who laid low
Lerna’s fire-breathing Dragon with his bow,
Shot the brazen-footed Hind, and stilled the roar
In Arcady of Erymanthian boar!—
Of Bacchus in tipsy triumph, a yoke
Of spotted tigers in his chariot, broke
To obey, for reins, tendrils of a vine—
His Mænads leaping down the long incline
Of Nysa, wildly singing, their locks curled
With vine leaves, following to win a world?
Yet what in tales of Gods and men can match
For scorn of space, and ardour of despatch,
Delight in braving peril, grasp of mind,
Our Cæsar’s progress to the verge of Ind!
Wilt, Son, in view of all thy future Rome,
With her chiefs destined from thyself to come,
And while ancestral fire of Troy burns high
In thy own veins, put off the hour to try
Valour in act, and hesitate to prove
Thy right to lordship given Thee by Jove?”

“Observe, as they pass by us, one by one,
Those who will glorify thy Rome, my Son.
Illegible to them, for us the whole
Of their careers is writ as on a scroll,
See, the grey-bearded King, the Priest, the Sage,
Of many years, though not bowed down with age,
Whose laws devised to rule a petty town
Will fit it when into an empire grown;
Next, Tullus, warrior-prince, and Ancus, near,
Boasting his wit to catch the popular ear:
Then the proud Tarquins; and, of soul as proud,
Brutus, grudging not Freedom his sons’ blood—
Careless if fainter hearts, a feebler time
Brand a patriot’s sacrifice as crime!
Ah! changes—leaps and bounds—so fast surprise
Brains, toned here to calm, that my aged eyes
Are dazzled as forms pass, and then repass,
And straight are lost—reflections in a glass.
No smoother course for this, thy Rome to be,
Than now, my Son, for Thee in Italy.
A whirl of arms ere the fair land will deign
To grant thy offspring’s right divine to reign;
An age-long wrestle; yet a rope of sand
Makes a poor rival of an iron band.—
Hide from my sight those lictors, and a Son!
But they tell how Latium shall be won.—
A will inflexible, a discipline
Making a religion of a straight line,
A consuming, passionate, red-hot force
Never prisoned in its volcanic source—
Pride in the City of the Seven Hills—
Will merge all other passions, heal all ills.
These the fire inspired, that in fateful war
Gave Cossus and Jove arms of Tuscan Lar.
Maligned and banned Camillus their first call
Brought as through air to save Rome from the Gaul
Fabricius taught the Epirot King
Thus, that Rome wounded rises on the wing.
From them Serranus learned the art to guide
The State, and victor o’er the billows ride
As straight as he his furrow erewhile ploughed.
Regard these visages serene and proud
To do whate’er is Rome’s behest, content
To go whithersoever they are sent.
See, war’s twin thunderbolts, the Scipios,
Their oracle Rome, their one mark her foes.
See them to whom Achaia bows the head,
With Macedon’s monarch in triumph led;—
Avenging on Mycenæ, and the race
Of Atreus, on Achilles, the disgrace
They heaped upon Troy, and the outraged shrine
Of Pallas, their own patroness Divine.
Nor fail note that old man, heeding no jeer,
No hint of blood slow and sluggish, e’en fear:
Resolved throughout of one thing—ne’er, from haste
In clutching popular applause, to waste
A chance on Fortune’s wheel for his Rome’s Shield
To foil War’s cross-eyed Master in the field;
And, near to him, in Britomart’s royal spoils,—
Like a brave boar, trapped in a huntsman’s toils,
Unconquerable else—the battle’s lord—
Confess it, Gaul, Carthage, and Syracuse—Rome’s Sword!
But who is this, Thou askest, in the pride
Of arms and youth, advancing by his side?
Thou mark’st the likeness; well might he be son:
From the same stock he springs, a noble one.
Strange, in the changeless calm of these blest groves
The shadow of a brooding sorrow moves....
Well might I weep, if Spirit could, the fate
Of good as fair, and not more good than great.
Earth will have but seen to lose him!
Heaven,
Wert thou jealous, lest, thinking him given
To this our mighty Rome, not just on loan,
But to live her life, be her very own,
She would wax overweening? Yet the woe
Must surely wake thy pity, when, below,
Thou hear’st the wails numberless for such charms
Borne to their pyre upon the Field of Arms;
And Thou, old Tiber, as thou flowest by
The tomb in which the loved One’s ashes lie,
Wilt not forget how thou hast seen him play
Oft on thy banks young, beautiful, and gay.
Never will hope be raised so high by boy
Blending the blood of Latium and Troy;
And, when shall our earth ever find again
Such loyalty and faith in living men—
A right hand so approved in every art,
On horse, or foot, to do a soldier’s part?
I pity, praise, love!
Arrest but the chain
Of Fate; and lo! Marcellus come again!
—Armfuls of lilies bring; for Soul as sweet!
Spread crimson flow’rs, fit carpet for his feet!
—Grief for a Shadow, from a Shadow grief;
Yet Shadows find a Shadow of relief
For boundless loss in Shadows e’en of grief!”

“But now for the near future—I will show
How to surmount, and how to bear with, woe;
Faint not, endure, and earn renown! On Earth,
What, without store of fame, is living worth!
Weigh not the toils and snares, that, I foresee,
Impend, ere Thou shalt reign in Italy.
Remember thy reward, the noble end
Tow’rds which thy trials and thy hardships tend.
Teach a world-empire how its Founder bears
The load of war, and, worse, intestine cares;
For these must be, though I spare Thee the sight
Of brothers against brothers armed for fight—
Decii, Drusi, Gracchi—each House moved
By jealous passion for the Rome all loved.
And when the All-Conquering shall have hurled
Her legions to the confines of the world,
Lo! Chiefs—allied by blood, and leagued to share
Two continents between them—arm to tear
Their country’s entrails piecemeal! Baleful strife!
Will not one victim serve—Great Cato’s life?
Joy! God grants my prayer! There is brave steel
Of double virtue, both to wound and heal;
And of that heav’nly temper, Youth, is thine,
Second founder of the Julian line!
Hail to Olympian Cæsar! Who would
Not guard dear life at cost of Roman blood;
And ere—too soon—he parts, will choose an heir
Of skill divine the ship of State to steer
Clear of the breakers; Kind and keen to know
His fellow Romans, with the rush and flow,
The genius for sovereignty; their fate
To be Earth’s lords, and Earth’s to stand and wait!
Let others wile the furnace with its heat
To warm the heart within the bronze to beat,
Cunningly lift th’ imprisoning stone away,
And lead nymphs forth to blush in rosy day;
Dissemble truth with nimble tongues; and call
Stars by their names; tell when they rise and fall.
Others Rome’s Arts;—
To speak her mistress will:
Fight if it please her; bid the world keep still!
See that her vassals nowhere suffer wrong;
—Make Pride her Right; be Valiant, and be Strong!”

Death, and her brother, Sleep, rule side by side
Realms that shadowy boundaries divide,
Yet none can cross but through gates twain; and these
Are in the charge of Death, who keeps the keys.
Now and again a Spirit will repair
For love or hate back to the upper air,
To commune with Spirit, so far as whole
Can become two parts, Soul be just a Soul.
Of dull, dun horn the gate such use; hard by
Gleams the other, perfect of ivory.
Thence from the Under-world Imps float above
Freaks that in spite or idlesse they have wove,
To raid and wilder slumber, let it close
Men’s eyes, and cheat their senses of repose.
Anchises, for whom Space and Time were nought,
Had through the gate of horn Æneas sought
By night on the Etruscan sea; he now
With last words, and many a longing vow
Of love, confessed his child was due to part—
Though truer no Son, kinder no Sire’s heart—
By the ivory door; the horn gate stood
Fast locked and sealed against all flesh and blood.
Though soul there—a thistle-down Man, wind-tost
With life; a night-mare; less real than a ghost!

Virgil to the Unknown God

Æneidos, Bk. IV. vv. 576-577

_Sequimur te, Sarnie Deorum, Quisquis es_

Thou camest in the Darkness, and the Darkness Light became—
Not a word was ever spoken, and yet I heard Thy name,
I care not whither I must go; to worship at what shrine;
I know but that Thy servant I; that Thou art Master mine.
No Priest I need to lead me; for when Thou goest before,
How can I aught but follow, to love Thee, and to adore!
Who can ever fail to find Thee, or miss of Thy abode?
For where Thou art is Holiness,—and Holiness is God!

The Gates

Æneidos, Bk. VI. vv. 893-898

Sleep, and his Sister, Death;
Twins ever with Us; and theirs the keys
Of Past and Present, the Above, and the Beneath;
And, as Brother and Sister please,
Forth flutter Falsehood. Truth,
Changed, according as they pass the Gate
Of Horn or of Ivory into Joy or Ruth,
Even dreamed kindness into Hate!

Ghosts

_Ibid._

Ah! We at the behest,
Poor human mortals! of numberless shadowy hosts
Weaving Men’s dooms to amuse the tedium of Rest!
And nought abides but Ghosts!

Euryalus and Pallas

Æneidos, Bk. IX. vv. 455-457; Bk. XI. vv. 68-71

As a queenly daffodil in the springtide of its bloom,
Falls, whelmed beneath the plough-share, and wondering at its doom;
Or as a scarlet poppy, laying weary neck on earth,
Yields its breath to the full shower it welcomed at its birth;
So, all too fair to die, star of a life, Euryalus
Left for Nisus nought but despair, with dire revenge; and thus
Sank Pallas, young and brave;—as, under a girl’s heedless feet,
Drop violets, soft and shy, or hyacinths, faint and sweet,
Appealing from Fate to Heav’n, with all of their grace and sheen,
Telling—the more that life has fled—of what its charms have been;
Or as Babe on its Mother’s breast, who cannot, will not, think
Rosy lips half open are cold, and presses them to drink.

Things

Æneidos, Bk. I. v. 462

_Sunt lacryma rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_

There is spirit immortal that mounts up on high,
Yet reaches longing hands back to hopes left to die;
There are things that are tears; there are tears that are things;
There are tears that are water, and tears that are wings!

LUCRETIUS

Hymn to Venus

TITI LUCRETII CARI De Rerum Natura, Bk. I. vv. 1-48

Goddess! in whom our Rome is proud to trace
Nursing Mother of an Imperial race;
Who ’neath the constellations, as they range,
Heav’n’s standard-bearers, in soft interchange
Of night’s watches, rulest how, when, and where.
In Ocean’s finny depths, in upper air,
And teeming soil, Life, urgent to be born,
Shall at thy smile burst forth to greet the morn,
All without thee was gusty darkness;
then
A sudden rapture stirs in Gods and Men!
Thou comest! Winds fall; the sky no more low’rs:
Earth embroiders herself with fragrant flow’rs;
Billows that had been rolling mountains high,
Ripple laughter to greet a sapphire sky.
Wherever thou art is spring; thine the key
That sets the prisoned wanton west-wind free
To beat time to thy approach; and note how
Birds, thy heralds, by fits skim to and fro;
While, more fiercely-smitten, herds that had been
Content to graze their pastures rich and green,
Toss hoofs and horns, breast headlong streams; and where
It pleases Thee follow, whitherso’er!
Venus, all provident, and kind, and wise,
Nought in sea, torrent, hill escapes thy eyes;
No green plain, no tree that invites a nest.
With soothing touch in every breathing breast
Thou layest seed of love, yet with such skill,
A forethought so unerring, and a will
So tenderly sure, that never a spark
Strays from its order, but knows each its mark;
Kind choosing kind, species species, race race,
Till Being grows, age to age, in emulous grace!
Alone thou steerest Nature on her course!
Failing Thee, lost the aye marshalling force
To wash blind atoms on the shores of Light,
Where each shall take up Life in its due right,
To use it at its best, and for the best,
Joy for itself, harmony for the rest?

A theme, which it might well have seemed in vain
To attempt with powers of mortal brain;
Then least, when Rome—how lately!—claimed of all
Her children service at the trumpet’s call.
Ev’n still she aches with pangs that she has borne,
Glooming dumbly with fear they may return.
But, Goddess, I trust! greatly dare to ask:
“Shed thy eternal charm upon my task:
Bid warfare cease; uplift thy sovereign hand;
And blissful Peace will brood o’er sea and land.
What can resist Thee?
Mars with his alarms?
Where lies the God but in thy lovely arms?
Slender throat thrown back, see, his hungry eyes
Feed upon thine with ever fresh surprise!
Queen, he is thine; wound deeply as thou wilt;
Sweeter smart than all the blood he has spilt!
Cling round him; fold in thy divine embrace;
Lift tow’rds his the appeal of thy bright face;
Whisper love’s little nothings, till deep calm
Steep his whole being in a honeyed balm;
And he forget ’twas his murderous car
Spread frenzy through our streets of civil War!”

But the fever has abated; so long
As it is stayed, I will resume my song;—
The more gladly if it be heard by One
Whom Venus willed long back a Paragon,
Adorned with all the gifts that mortal man
Has owed her since Humanity began.
A Memmius is by that illustrious name
Pledged not to stand aloof from Rome aflame;
And thou didst thy part; but, the crisis past,
Thou now, my Lord and Friend, art free at last.
Yet weigh all well;
I have toiled hard to learn,
And with pains equal held it my concern,
When I myself was satisfied, to find
Means to pass truths into another mind.
No less a duty, if thou undertake,
Wilt thou betray, if thou should then forsake!
Away with mean cares; give, if aught, thy whole—
The sum of Reason—that which makes the Soul!

Philosophy

Bk. II. vv. 1-60

“Listen! the waves hiss, and loud the winds roar!
See! a ship drifts on a lee shore!
“Help!” No help; a whole crew on the beach dead.
Alas poor souls! I sleep on a good bed.

And lo! two hosts in line of battle drawn.
Thousands will not wake at next dawn!
To be killed, or kill—life or death for those—
I wonder which; happy I cannot lose!”

Count not men Molochs that with passive eyes,
They witness neighbours’ agonies.
Bodily ills all; how should bodies care
For others’ ills? Each has its own to bear.

Easily flow our tears when others weep;
As easily we fall asleep;
When Havoc stalks abroad, content we see
Other flesh in pain from which ours is free!

Let flesh be flesh; we by rough ways and bleak
Will climb up to the mountain peak;
And entering through guarded ramparts there
Find peace from flesh in temples stately, fair;

Work of wise builders, where a welcome waits,
With keys to life, within the gates.
That riddle many have tried, and not guessed;
They wander, spirit in flesh; nowhere rest.

Spirit trumpets down from tower, spire and hall;
They cannot hearken to the call.
Smothered in that they worship—wealth, power, birth—
Dream they are growing wings, and rot on earth!

Self-courted woes, suicide of the brain,
Dark chos’n for light, tortures in vain
Endured; this particle of life we have—
A spark at best—o’erdriven to the grave!

All but to pamper bodies, that, so long
As they are painless, hale, and strong,
Are warranted by Nature, watch-dog kind,
To press no further wants upon the Mind.

This commonwealth of limbs, together brought
To be a tenement for Thought,
Asks but to be exempt from fell disease,
Joy in mere breath, and feel itself at ease.

When the lamps’ flame from golden statues gleams,
Do the lights vie with the sun’s beams?
Must music to stir hearts to leap and bound,
From frescoed walls and fretted roofs resound?

Or if some time hot fever racks the head,
Are you, tossing on a sick bed,
Easier at all that you chance to lie
On cedarn couch purple with Tyrian dye?

Know you not, wastrels, that what Mind you give
To flesh you steal from power to live?
The spirit is the root of life; thereby
We live; and if we starve it, then we die.

When spirit-comrades by cool brook recline,
Beneath the shade of beech or pine,
They reck not which the rich, and which the poor.
Nor envious, nor jealous of neighbours’ store.

Enough to feel the warm blood answering
The joyousness of the sweet Spring:
While the soft turf, to offer greetings due,
Dresses itself in flow’rs of ev’ry hue.

Sense feels the charm, and Nature all approves;
While spirit talks with spirit, as it loves.
Ah! know how nought to flesh itself the whole
You sell life for; how hateful to the soul!

‘Musical as is Apollo’s Lute’

Bk. IV. vv. 1-25

I know a dell the Muses haunt; lone scene,
Where ne’er ere now had mortal footstep been.
Curious they what wand’rer should invade
The tuneful solitude, and pray their aid.
Ungrateful office his who tries to set
Men free from the close meshes of the net
In which religions of whatever kind
Presume to hold humanity confined.
Repulsed by those for whose sakes I pursued
A thankless work, I trod ways rough and rude,
Until, the track by good chance missed, I came
Solitary, out of heart, footsore, lame,
To this strange spot where the Nine Sisters camp
Out in the wilderness, and light their lamp
To guide lost wayfarers thither.
I asked,
And received; the Goddesses even tasked
Themselves for my scorned mission, which they dressed
In new melodies as an honoured guest;
For it unsealing in the sands fresh springs,
Inspiring it to lift itself on wings,
While they bade flow’rs strange to poesy blow,
That they might wreathe a garland for my brow.
If I, to emancipate Mind, make use
Of verse, does the enlistment need excuse?
Ignorance is the babe who drinks all up
When doctors sweeten at its brim the cup.
No sickness equals spectres of the brain,
They enslave till the bondsman hugs his chain.
Whose soul should not burn, as like mine, it sees
Hale men being treated, as for disease,
With drugs that force a nightmare-ridden sleep,
When they might bask in sun, and shout, and leap!
But the remedy? Reason wears a face
Austere, abstracted, void of outward grace.
The problems it would solve are deep and high;
And the informing light they shed is dry.
The crowd, long since besotted, in affright
Shrinks to its lazy phantoms from the sight
Of Wisdom, grim and grimy, in the mire
Calling it to drudge and moil without hire.
Whatever means Souls’ doctors can command
Should not they use to make men understand
That they are free—the more for the consent
Of Heav’n’s music to be their instrument?
Music interprets Mind; by it I strive—
Like physicians by honey from the hive—
To clothe bare truths Philosophy has taught
In garb that points—not hides—the charms of Thought.
All praise be to the Muses that I find
Power in their sweet mystery to bind
A friend in toils so happy that his soul
Will refuse deliverance ere the whole
Reveals itself to him of Nature’s plan,
Even in our verse, and how good for Man!

The Fear of Death

Bk. III. vv. 883-1107, and Bk. III. vv. 9-30

Men’s Words and Thoughts on Death!
One will deny
His and his dead body’s identity;
Yet resent, as if slight to his own worth,
Its rotting when deposited in earth;
Flame’s outrage, devouring it with his goods;
Beasts’, tearing it to pieces in the woods.
His proud profession that he does not care
For his body’s plight—He will not be there—
Rings false; he keeps, secreted in his heart,
A nerve which aches, though flesh and feeling part.
Not will self be root and branch so wrenched out
As that some still shall not be left about;
For why contemplate else at all the lot
Of the dead flesh he says concerns him not,
Unless Self pities Self, and it hurts the Soul
That it and flesh make an ill-smelling whole?
But, if strange that the sufferer thus made
To stand by, share the cruel insult paid
The carcase, being flesh and spirit, one,
Though feigned to feel, by now is past and gone,
And as Nothingness cannot feel it ill
For brutes to maul it, is not stranger still
The impulse rather to exult than mourn
When men foresee they shall hereafter burn
Upon a grand funeral pyre, or lie
Mummies, stifled, frozen, alternately,
On polished slabs of marble, or be hid,
Crushed beneath a mountainous pyramid!
You grieve: “No more will echoes of your feet
Reach home; no wife and children run to greet
Your glad return, and vie for the first kiss,
Flooding a heart, too full for speech, with bliss;
No more for dear ones will you watch and store;
Be their armour, and citadel no more;—
Oh! that one day, cruel, accursed, should spoil,
The harvesting of a whole lifetime’s toil!”
But in these sighs, what cause will you have shown
For real tribulation of your own?
Rather will not the death that you bewail
Be happy ending of a fairy tale?
Reduce your cries to words; and they will clear
Away a grievance, and assuage a fear.
To fall asleep at a fair life’s fair close,
And thence till Time shall cease enjoy repose—
Where hardship?
If it be to leave behind
Boundless sorrow to kindred, ease your mind;
The ash-pale face on the funeral pile,
Far from forbidding kindly souls to smile,
Stands for rest rewarding labour, release
From accidents of fortune’s blind caprice!
Folly again, when banqueters recline,
Brows roses-wreathed, cups in their hands, the wine
At their hearts, and—“brief harvest this of joy
For us poor things”, they cry; “the hour employ!
What is is ours; for use; not to recall!”
As if of death’s ills, if any, of all
Chief were to think of feasting in the past,
Feel in the hand the wine cup, and not taste!

Mere slumber will the night from day divide,
And brush life’s merriment and cares aside.
Death has infinite force to put asleep
Body and Mind, and how can men then keep
From craving the fuller, they being one?
Is not Death Sleep, but a sleep going on,
On eternally—more complete again,
While it lasts, than the sleep of living men?
Sleep in its own true nature does not quit
Its hold so far of sense as to unfit
A wakened subject to collect his powers
For the due service of his working hours.
Much less—if nought with something may compare—
Than busy life’s in slumber, is Death’s care
For Self! Death owes no duty unto life,
Its joys and griefs, its harmony and strife;
Dissolves as if intent to negative
The utmost art of builder to revive.
Did ever man re-tread his native land
On whom Death once has laid his icy hand?
Yet living men will counterfeit a woe
For loss that in their graves they cannot know!
Well Nature losing patience might express
Herself in plain reproof of fussiness:
“What ails the man? Why all this waste of breath
In fond anger at the approach of Death?
Did all thy days in unmixed misery pass?
No drop of pleasure moisten the cracked glass?
If satiety the fault, better, Guest,
Fly a feast too hospitable, and rest.
Since the offence a glut of life, the waste
Is the worse the longer the life shall last.
Why live, when, as each hour is born, and dies,
You read its curses in lack-lustre eyes?
Off with yourself; nought fresh can I invent;
You’ve sampled my whole stock; my wits are spent!”
You object: “Your years few; body not chill
Or withered with age; your joints supple still?”
True, I dare say: yet though you should defy
Whole centuries to kill—nay, never die—
Nature endures; all would be stale to you!—
Plead guilty; for you know the charge is true.
Call next appellant—one advanced in years,
Who meets Death’s advent with protesting tears.
Would not Nature have reason on her side,
If high She raised her voice to scold and chide:
“Begone! bad jester, peak and pule elsewhere!
I will not stand your sickly groanings here.
What if, when, as your head you laid just now
On the pillow, thinking nought else than how
Empty you were, hungering for rich fare,
Death entered, bidding you forthwith prepare
To follow! You may call it hard, unkind
Of the many years which left you behind,
Drift-weed, ashore cast by the downward flow,
Unsatisfied, forlorn,
—But wherefore so?
Did I not range careers for you to choose—
This, that—a crowd—while you, from fear to lose
A better, let all go?
At last be sage;
And cut ambition short to suit your age;
Accept complacently the golden rule—
What must be must be—
kick; and die a fool!”