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THE cloudcapt monuments of mighty kings and captains crumble into dust and mingle with the nameless ashes of those who reared them; but we know perhaps the name and even the colour of the hair and eyes of some humble shepherd's mistress who brushed through the dew to meet her lover's kiss, when the rising sun glittered on the golden images that crowned the palace roof of Semiramis. Fleets and navies are overwhelmed and forgotten, but some tiny love freighted argosy, launched (like those of the Hindoo maidens) upon the stream of time in days now behind the horizon, floats down to us with its frail lamp yet burning. Theories for which great philosophers wore their hearts out, histories over which the eyes of wise men ached for weary years, creeds for which hundreds underwent an exulting martyrdom, poems which had once quickened the beating of the world's great heart, and the certainty of whose deathlessness had made death sweet to the poet—all these have mouldered to nothing; but some word of love, some outvent of a sorrow which haply filled only one pair of eyes with tears, these seem to have become apart of earth's very lifeblood.

JAMBS RUSSELL LOWELL

CHRYSANTHEMA

GATHERED FROM THE

GREEK ANTHOLOGY BY

WILLIAM M HARHINGE

PORTLAND MAINE

THOMAS B MO5HER

MDCCCCXI

Copyright

THOMAS B. MOSHER

1911

SUCH THE BLOSSOMS THAT WERE BORNE

BY THE GRECIAN SOIL OUTWORN,

WHOM THE PORTION TO POSSESS

OF ETERNAL YOUTHFULNESS

DID THE MUSES, KINDLY BENT,

WITH THE GRACES IN CONSENT,

WILL, UPON THEIR OPENING,

THEIR SWEET BEAUTY MARVELING.

NOT OF GRECIAN BIRTH ARE WE,

BUT, NO GRECIANS THOUGH WE BE,

STILL TO US THE BLOOMS ARE DEAR

BLOWN IN GREECE, AND NEVER SERE.

WALTER HEADLAM

CONTENTS

PAGI

FOREWORD ...... Xi

CHRYSANTHEMA .... 1

TROY.......49

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ... 59

FOREWORD

Perhaps, however, the true secret of their charm is this; that in their couplets, after listening to the choric raptures of triumphant public art, we turn aside to hear the private utterances, the harmoniously modulated whispers of a multitude of Greek poets telling us their inmost thoughts and feelings. The unique melodies of

Meleager, the chaste and exquisite delicacy of Callimachus, the clear dry style of Straton, Plato's unearthly subtlety of phrase, Aniipater's perfect polish, the good sense of PaUadas, the fretful sweetness of Agatkias, the purity of Simonides, the gravity of Poseidippus, the pointed grace of Philip, the few but mellow tones of Sappho and Erinna, the tenderness of Simmias, the biting wit of Lucullius, the sunny radiance of Theocritus—all these good things are ours in the Anthology. But beyond these perfumes of the poets known to fame is yet another. Over very many of the sweetest and the strongest of the epigrams is written the pathetic

word ddiffiroTOV —' without a master.1 Hail to you, dead poets, unnamed, but dear to the Muses I Surely with Pindar and Anacreon, with Sappho and with Sophocles, the bed of flowers is spread for you in those ' black^etaUed hollows of Pieria* where you bade Euripides farewell.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

FOREWORD

THE Greek Anthology is that vast drift heap of antique poetry consisting of something like six thousand distinct pitcts of verse, which has survived the wreck of empires. Its lyric accretions, in more or less fragmentary condition, extend from first to last otwh a period of marly twenty centuries* Imbedded

in this mighty ma^er {which onc4 teas not without a plan,) iu enshrined some of the most exquisite utterances of human love and longing; white in Mellager, the earliest gatherer of old Greek posies, are evidences of that ettrnal self-renewing romanticism which binds together hearts of dust with hearts that still

throb and burn. Conceivably, also, the lost world of Herondas, the delicate atmosphere of which has been wonderfully recaptured by Marcel Schwob in his Mimes, is precisely that living world depicted in these palimpsests of a vanished past.

Thus much premised it is doubly delightful to come upon an unspoiled specimen of rare poetic scholarship, wherein is made over to us who are neither scholars nor poets save in our appreciation of what such gifts may mean, a gracious bequest,—this Chrysanthema of old-world song. As if in emulation of the many

"unknown masters'[1] of the Anthology the name of its author is not to be found save in connexion with this unique series of direct translations.1 Originally printed in The Nineteenth Century for November, 1878, the

little garland was left to time and chance, a marvellous and regrettable instance of literary modesty we could well wish otherwise.[2]

" Time and fate could not destroy the blooms of the Anthology, the loveliest Syracusan idyls, the odes of Catullus and Horace; " and, as Mr. Stedman goes on to say, in his Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892)," the word Irreparable suggests a yearning as infinite as that for the Unattainable." It is indeed just this touch of old unhappy far-off things that in the verse we are considering,—this breath from the far distant lying, a faint susurrus of the spirit,—that still has power to move us as once it moved the hearts of mm and women in the violet land of Greece— "

A long while since, a long, long time ago.'* T. B. M.

[1 A statement that must be revised as it is a recently ascertained fact that Mr. Hardinge is still living and is the author of at least several novels as well as the writer of the Newdigate Pri^e Poem for 1876, which last we have appended to these translations from the Anthology. The novels so far as aseertainable are Clifford Gray: a Romance of Modern Life, 1881; Eugenia: an Epi- sode, 3 vols., 1883; The Willow Garth: a Novel, 2 vols., 1886; Out of the Fog: a Tale, 1888. See also A Reminiscence of Rossetti in The Universal Review for March, 1890.

[2 First reissued in The Bibelot for January and February, 1903.

CHRYSANTHEMA

The references throughout are to the AnthoIogU Palatina {juutruxk Fred.

Diiimer, Parti, 1864).

CHRYSANTHEMA

P scholars have heard and read 1 quite enough about the Greek Anthology. It has become historical, as all collected poems do, a storehouse not unlocked unless to group or edit the contents; this record of the manifold life of a thousand years has been made into a book, and has lost some of its vitality in the making. There is plenty of question about the different anthologies, and some little about the separate authors and their poems. But, on the other hand, poetry-lovers, and specially lovers of songs, hardly know how many of their favourites are there in original form. English people who love Herrick and Ben Jonson do not all know that Meleager was in love with daffodils, and wrote about the wreath he made of them very much as Herrick would have done; that Agathias as good as wrote 'Drink to me only with thine eyes' (the first verse of it at least, and the second is to be found unfathered in the fifth book of the Anthology too); and that, to speak in reverse order of time, Mrs. Browning and Shakespeare and Spenser can all be quoted in it. There are epigrams with the stamp of each upon the face of them.

These lovers of songs—they may not care for history, and are very likely quite ignorant of Herrick's life and Jonson's— will not want to hear much about the song- writers themselves; and there is not much to tell. • Herrick' and * Jonson' are to them respectively the names of a good many and a few well-known and well-loved verses, and so should Callimachus, for instance, and Agathias, and of course Meleager be; and that would be a great deal better fame for these poets than that students only should know about them as represented by certain numbers in the great drift-heap of the Anthol- ogy. Plato and Simonides have their better fame elsewhere, and are not in such risk of being laid by. This, then, is what I want to give—some readable little English poems written to all intents and purposes a great while ago in Greek. An accurate recog- nition of each poet as an individual cannot perhaps be made out of the original language, scarcely even there; but just as Keats by his temperament met Homer halfway in Chapman, lovers of the Elizabethan poets and of modern poetry, as well as Greek scholars or better, can meet these very men with their sweethearts and their garlands * in their habit as they lived' so many hundred years gone by.

Now, for us to do this with ease and pleasure, we must meet them under some guise familiar to us and not dulL This brings us to the question of metres. With our ears accustomed to such a great number of lyric forms, we must have variety above all else. For different subjects we want different keys and different time as in music. We have a strong instance of this in Tennyson's work. For the monotone of sorrow he takes one grave metre, but in • Maud,' where the movement is as complex as life's, he varies the metres to correspond with it as best may be. The translator who would use one metre for these Greek epigrams, would have written * Maud' in couplets. Hexameters and pentameters and occasional iambics are the metres of the Anthology, but they are not familiar to as and never will be, unless combined with rhyme (and always the more rhyme the better), when they present as good a means as can be found for faithful and rhythmical translations; and heroic couplets which to us take the place of the longer lines to the Greek ear are generally dull. There is no denying that. Take up any book of unbroken couplets, and it will certainly prove less inviting than it could possibly have done in any other form, blank verse included. It is true that in English literature heroic couplets do best clothe the epigram; but then we must bear this in mind—what is nearest to our sympathies in the work of these so-called ' epigrammatic' poets is not, as we now speak, epigrammatic at all. Many of the verses are rhetorical exercises, jokes and so forth; but even of these (as Mr. Symonds has shown in his Greek Poets) most, though they have the point of an epigram, have not its sting. Meleager*s * wreath of songs'was a collection of lyrics, most of them short and nearly all memorable, but their incisiveness is very different from the precision we look for in an epigram; they are not forced or witty, many of them just idylls. In our English with its wide vocabulary, and if he had been writing for print and not for graving, it is not per- haps impertinent to suppose that he and his fellows, if not his predecessors, would have chosen the sonnet form. For the sonnet with its beautiful order, its strict rules, any one of which broken is an offence to the cultivated ear, and with the manifold changes of tone, the simplicity and the neatness which it admits, is really our best equivalent for the eight or ten hexameters and pentameters in which most of our favourite Greek epigrams are contained. As it is, a translator cannot render these into sonnets without a little undue ezpansiveness; but where the epigram is of fourteen lines or even twelve, he may fairly cast it into a sonnet, as I shall hope to show in one or two examples by-and-by.

To rondels and other • moulds,' so to speak, for English verse, we are not accus- tomed. I am afraid, if I were to try these, I should not be simple enough for a transla- tor. The charm of a rondel is its artificial grace, delighting the eye and ear. The charm of a translation in verse is that the verse should neither ioad the sense nor tangle it. So I have not inserted any ron- dels, the most delicate webs of love-song possible.

We need not hesitate over the story of the Anthology as it has come down to us; Mr. Symonds has made it all interesting already, and what matters to us is that we have the poems in their original form. Being fugitive pieces, they will speak for themselves. We don't want to say, * Now all this was a man's diathesis, and here is his heart-beat,' but 'Here is this man's heart-beat: judge his diathesis.'

The first collection that was made of Greek epigrams was Meleager's, just before the Christian era, and his way of collecting them is quite the most charming of all. He gathers the songs into a wreath, as he calls it, giving to each poet a symbolic flower; and though he gives all sorts of flowers, for health, and rest, and pleasuring, he gives no poppy to any one, which we must take to mean that they are none of them dull. This is how he introduces them: I have put the preface into blank verse, to preserve the quantities for any one who cares to read it, not because among so many names strange to us we can hope to see all the pretty touches of the poem*

For whom the fruitage of this strain, my Mu«,

And who among the bards hath made this wreath?

Mclf,jgtr wove it, and his Weaving gives

For keepsake to most noble Diodes.

Here many lilies are of Anyte,

And white lilies of Muto. many an one,

And Sappho's flowers — so few but rases all —

And daffodils of Melairippides

Heavy with ringing hymns — and thy young brunch,

Vine of Siniomdea, and twisted in

Nt'JisiSf thine iris flower that breathed of myrrli,

And in its tablets are Love's stores of wax.

Herewith, Rhtanua' scented marjoram.

And the sweet crocus of Ennna too

Clear aa the girl'a own skin— and hyacinth,

Alcana' hyacinth that speaks to barda—

And a dark spray of SanuuV laurel tret.

Fresh ivy-clmtexs of LermiiUs,

And foliage of MnesaJcus' needled pine.

And from the plane-tree song of PamphLLua

He cut a branch, and with the walnut boughs

Of FancrateB he twined ttT and white leaves

Oi Tymnes* poplar. Nicias' green mint

And tandwQTt of Euphemus frotn the shore;

And Damagetua' purple violctj

And the tweet myrtle of Callimaclius

Full of sharp honey — with Euphoriant flower.

The lychnis and, therewith, his cyclamen*

The Masts call after the sons of Zeus.

This is Dioscorides'. We must find one

epigram of his, at all events:—

And Hegesippus' maddening grape-cluster

He set therein, and Persus' scented flag

And a sweet apple from Diotimus' tree—

Pomegranate flowers of Menecrates,

And the myrrh branches of Nkaenetus,

Phaennus' flax plant—Simmias' tall wild pear.

And a few leaves he trailed of Parthenis

Her delicate meadow-parsley, and—gleanings fair

Of the honey-dropping muses—golden ears

From the wheat-harvest of Bacchylides.

And old Anacreon—that sweet strain of his,

An unsown flowerage of his nectar songs:

And the rough white-thorn of Archilochus

He gathered from the pasture—as it were.

Only a few drops from a sea of bloom—

Young shoots of Alexander's olive grown

And Polycleitus' dark blue cornflower. There

He set Polystratus the amaracus,

The poets' flower, and from Antipater

A young Phoenician cypress: and therewith

Eared Syrian spikenard whkh he gathered him

Out of his singing they call Hermes' gift.

That is Hermodorus. There is only one

epigram of his in the Anthology, a beautiful

one upon a statue of Athene:—

And Poseidippus too, and Haedulus—

Flowers of the field—and windflowers springing glad

In airs Skilian,

(that is a periphrasis for Asclepias perhaps,

for these lowers are for the poets of country

life) — and the golden bough

Of sacred Plata, shining in its worth.

And he threw La Arams leamtd in starsh

Cutting the first spires ol hit heaven-high pine,

( 'In*-!omen's leafy lotush mixing it

With flox of Fhardimua and chamomile—

The crinkled oxcye— of Atitagmrai*

And fresh green thyme of Thendi'itidiis—

The wine cup's charm—and Fhfliiicus' beanflowcrs too,

With many shoots fresh rtpmtig of other bardit,

Adduig thereto white early violets

Of his own muse, But to my friends I give

Thanks- And thin gracious coronal of song

Re for all such as love these holy things.

There it is with its 1 envoi,1 Nothing about order except the order of taste, as if he were really plaiting a garland — just the praise of a book of pleasant verses. Now, to make any portion of the Anthology tome to us anything like what Meleager's collection was, we wajit to make a. wreath of songs too — to get A. taste of a great many writers at their best* Only we must plait our flowers with this difference — that Meleager's own early violets take the place of a great many of the poets1 flowers whom he quoted.

Mr. Wright's little book, Tht Golden Treasury of Greek Poetry, published in 1867

able; and he has tied \ groups which give some allow a sufficient variety, again what he has done s by choosing his selection i and Greek letters can be; take it for basis, and try simple in my renderings as I can. I shall want epigrams, nearly all of the shall do so from time to that group of Mr. Wrigt severally appertain. We need not trouble c rhetorical exercises — models of brevity and fulness in the Greek, but thankless in English verse, and indeed in print altogether. The longest of them, for instance, which has its locus classicus in Demosthenes' Dt Corond, has been done scores of times and never yet made thrilling. It is no doubt rather out of compliment and custom that Mr. Wright has included it. Scholars look for it everywhere, and I hope they will not be disappointed to forego their favourite here; it is quite too involved for translation, and has in itself none of the special charm of the Greek epigram — terseness with limpidity.

Here are his first two, epitaphs of Simonides, who lived a good five hundred years

before Christ,'

On them that fell with Leonidaa I'-

For their dear country thtse her quenchless glory

Won, for themselves the dusky shroud of death.

By that same deadi they live, whose echoing story

Rings from the halls Hades inhabitcth.

And:

Stranger! tel] LaccdjLmon —here we lie!

Hers was the word and ours tlic will to die.

And here is a fine traditionary epitaph for Achilles:—

This mound, the Achaeans reared, —Achilles' tomb—

For terror to the Trojans yet to be,

Leans shoreward that his mighty spirit whom

Sea Thetis bore may hear its dirge of the sea.

I should like to add this noble and characteristic one of Dioscorides. (I promised one of his for the sake of Meleager's wreath.) But I am afraid I must give a reference here to the Palatine Anthology (vii. 434).

The mother sent eight sons against the foe —

Eight sons beneath one pillar buried she,

Nor wept for grief, nor spake aught else but—' Oh,

These children, Sparta, did I bear for thee 1'

And now, commencing Mr. Wright's second section, we come straight upon Meleager's * Spring Song/ which might be — I had almost written must be — Spenser's work in Greek, and which is one of the loveliest as it is one of the longest pieces in the Anthology. As there is evidently the Alexandrian touch about it, and the work is almost of the Christian era, I shall expand it a little more, in English, than I should venture to do were it the work of an earlier period: —

Now wintry winds are banished from the sky.

Gay laughs the blushing face of flowery Spring:

Now lays the land her duskier raiment by

And don* her grass-green vest, for signal why

Young plants may choose themselves apparelling.

Now, drinking tender dews of generous nmm.

The meadows break into their summer smile,

The rose unfolds her leaves ) and glad, the while.

In far-off hills the shepherd winds hit horn,

And his white brede the goatherd's heart beguile.

N i.w sail the sailors over billowing seas

While careless Zephyr fills the canvas fair,

And singing crowds with dances debonnair

Praise Dionysus for the grapes1 increase —

The berried ivy twisted in their hair.

Forth from the, rotting hide now bees are come —

Deft craftsmen working well and warily —

And in the hive they settle, while they ply

Fresh-flowing waxen store, with busy hum,

And small pierced Cells for their sweet Industry.

Now shriileth dear each several bird hi.1! note.

The Halcyon charms the wave that knows no gale,

Abtnit our eaves the swallow tells her tale,

Along the river banks the swanh afloat.

And down the woodland glades the nightingale,

Now tendrils curl and earth bursts forth anew —

Now shepherd's pipe and fleecy flocks arc gay —

Ni:w tailors ml!, and Bacchus gets his due —

Now wild birds chirp and bees their toil pursue —

Sing, poet, thou —and sing thy best for May.

'Ainsi,' says Sainte-Beuve, 'le printemps de Mrieagre iiYcait pas tin ideal dans lequel, comme dans presque tons nos avril et nos mai, ^imagination, e'veille'e par le renouveau, assemble divers traits e*pars, les arrange plus ou moins, et les acheve . . . Fheureux poete n'a fait que copier la nature.' Next we go back more than two hundred

years to Leonidas. He is terser, but loves the spring quite as well (I must try and be terser too): —

VII

'Tia time to sail—the swallow's note is heard,

Who chattering down the soft west wind is come,

The fields are all aflower, the waves are dumb

Which erst the winnowing blast of winter stirred.

Loose cable, friend, and bid your anchor rise.

Crowd all your canvas at Priapus' best,

Who tells you from your harbours—' Now 'twere best,

Sailor, to sail upon your merchandise.'

The last of this group is Agathias' vintage song. He lived a good seven hundred years after Leonidas, and is a pagan only by imitation; but he did delicious work, with a certain lilt about it that makes translation irresistible, and here he is at his very best— for his * Laurel-leaves/ a series of love-songs, are lost long ago: —

VIII

Tread we thine infinite treasure, Iacchus, the vintage sweet!

Weave we the Bacchic measure with paces of wildcring feet.

Down flows the vast clear stream, and the ivy-wood bowls, as they float

O'er the surging nectar, seem each like a fairy boat.

Close we stand as we drink and pledge in the glowing wine—

No warm Naiad, I think, need kiss in your cup or mind

See, o'er the wine-press bending, the maiden Rose-flower beams—

Splendour of loveliness sending that dazzles the flood with its gleams.

Captive the hearts of us all! straightway no man that is here

But is bound to Bacchus in thrall—to Paphia in bondage dear.

Cruel—for while at our feet he revels in bountiful rain,

Longing most fleet—most sweet—is all she gives for our pain.

That is all, I am sorry to say, that Mr. Wright has quoted in his idyllic section. As I am going to cut out a few from his fifth part, I shall here insert a lovely one of Meleager's to a locust—not half well known enough (vii. 195):—

IX

Charmer of longing—counsellor of sleep!

—The cornfields' chorister

Whose wings to music whirr—

Come, mimic lute, my soul in songs to steep,

Brush tiny foot and wing

In tender musicking:

Come! out of sleepiest care my heart uplift,

Locust, and set love free

With your shrill minstrelsy.

And, in the morning, I will give for gift

A fresh green leek to you

And kissing drops of dew.

I will not apologise for the metre; no Englishman could write anything but a lyric to a locust.

The third part brings us to the love-songs, of which I cannot spare any, and I must add one or two. Meleager is at the head of the poets here, of course, but I cannot bring myself to give his sweethearts their proper names, Heliodora and Zenophile, and I prefer putting a simple English equivalent or none at all to selecting other names, which must always be a matter of the translator's individual taste, and so rather an impertinence, although no less a name than Shelley's[  ] sanctions it.

[i Though his 'kissing Helena' owes the name doubtless to the\/fe«rftff of Marlowe:—' Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies.' [ " Kissing Helena, together With my kiss, my soul beside it

Came to my lips, and there I kept it,—

For the poor thing had wandered thither,

To follow where the kiss should guide it.

Oh cruel I to intercept it I" ]

White flowers the violet now, Narcissus flowers

And drinks the dewy showers:

The lily plants arow

On hillsides grow.

But Spring's best crown, her flower of flowers, is here,

My lady-love, my dear:

Most winsome bud that blows

And sweetest rose.

Proud fields, in vain ye laugh with blooms bedight!

For lo, my lady's light

Is better than the breath

Of all your wreath.

I shall be accused of recherche here; but it is a case where it is much better to be fanciful than to be bald, and whoever cares to substitute * Zenophile' for * my lady-love' will see how it puts the little poem out, though it

has no effect upon the metre.

The next is Elizabethan too, if I may classify my poets so, but full of epithets almost impossible in English: —

XI

I cry you Love—at earliest break of day

But now, even now, his wings the wanderer spread

And passed away,

Leaving his empty bed.

Ho I ye that meet die boy—for such is he,

Full of sweet tears and wit: a fickle sprite

Laughing and free,

With wings and quiver bright!

Yet know I not on whom to father Love—

For earth denies the wanton child his name,

And air above,

And the broad sea the same.

With each and all he lives at feud. Beware

Lest, while I speak, he cast

A dainty snare

Over your hearts at last.

But see 1 his hiding-place, his very self,

Close to my hand, behold, the archer lies,

A laughing elf

Within my lady's eyes.

The next is of the same period, and by Philodemus, who came also from Gadara, which we know of as the city of swine, but which was a city of poets then.

Gadara first received me—that famous city my mother, says Meleager in one of his epitaphs for him-

self, which we cannot find room for in fulL In this song of Philodemus is a note of warning which we do not get in Meleager:—

XII

Not yet the season of bare stems for flowers,

Nor yet winehued the grape cluster, which now

Puts forth its maiden charms—but these the hours

When little Loves prepare them each his bow,

Lusidice, and smoke from embers lours—

Poor lovers I and thou t

Ere the dart speed a hasty flight be ours,

For soon the world will be ablaze, I trow.

Meleager would not have confused the pic- ture so; but what is real and valuable in that song is the sigh in it. Rufinus has the same sigh, but his touch is more pathetic still; he does not compliment his lady as Ben Jonson did when he 'sent her late a rosy wreath:'1—

XIII

Oh I royal rose—of many a flower and sweet,

Mine hands have woven you a garland meet,

And, having woven, lay it at your feet.

Here lilies, here the rosebud, and here too

The windflower with her petals drenched in dew,

And daffodillies cool, and violets blue.

Let this fair garland put your pride to death I

To you that bloom to-day, each blossom saith

' Your beauty, like my beauty, withereth.'

Meleager's glad song comes in again, with no sadness in its tone: —

1 [ " I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honouring thee,

As giving it a hope, that there

It could not wither'd be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent'st it back to me:

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.'1

This is the second stanza of that famous " Song: T0 Cilia," of which " Drink to me, only with thine eyes "

is the first and perhaps best known verse.]

XIV

Now will I weave white violets, daffodils

With myrtle spray,

And lily bells that trembling laughter fills,

And the sweet crocus gay.

With these blue hyacinth, and the lover's rose

That she may wear—

My sun-maiden — each scented flower that blows

Upon her scented hair.

I think we must give Agathias the palm among these. His vintage song, which I quoted already, would be fit pendant for the fresco of the grape-treading in the Campo Santo at Pisa; but here he is quite as fine when he would turn his back upon the wine- cup. He is Ben Jonson.1 We have all heard some of this poem before: —

xv

No wine for me! — Nay, and it be your will,

Kiss first the goblet— I will drink my fill:

How may I, when thy lips have touched it, dare

Be sober still, and that sweet draught forswear?

[" Drink to me, only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And 111 not look for wine.

The thirst, that from the soul doth rise,

Doth ask a drink divine:

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine."]

For the cup steers the kiss from thee to me,

And tells me all the bliss it won of thee.

I venture to transpose the order of the next two songs, to give Meleager's toast to

Heliodora close upon this one (Herrick, after Jonson): —

XVI

Fill to the sun-maiden! and then

Upon the draught her name

Yet once again,' The sun-maiden,'

And be the toast the same.

Ah! yet once more: and give to me

That garland drenched in myrrh:

Her wreath of yesterday shall be

Memorial of her.

In the Palatine Anthology there is a parenthesis with which the song ends, too pretty for me to refrain from giving it, as Mr. Wright has done:—

(And lo I the rose, the lover's love,

— Because it sees her lying

Another's burning heart above—

The very rose is crying!)

Fortunately the next three are short, for I shall have some longer ones to add:—

XVII

Farewell, PhaSsphorus—dawn's herald ray,

But soon return as Hesperus, I pray,

And, darkling, bring back her you take away.

Here is a traditionary one; the fancy is as old and as young as love, and Tennyson's Miller's Daughter is perhaps the amber in which it lives best. Both these epigrams are his, we will say, for he has «Sweet Hesper- Phosphor • in his In Memoriam:—

XVIII

It's ohl to be a wild wind—when my lady's in the sun —

She'd just unbind her neckerchief, and take me breathing in.

It's oh! to be a red rose—just a faintly blushing one—

So she'd pull me with her hand and to her snowy breast I'd win.

This last is Plato's divine one to Aster. Mr. Farrar has done it into an hexameter and pentameter neatly, if not poetically, and I give my rendering with diffidence: —

XIX

Thou gazest on the stars—a star to me

That art—but oh! that I the heavens might be

And with a thousand eyes still gaze on thee I

I must add to these love-songs two or three in a different strain. Here is a very bright one of Rufinus (v. 15): —

xx

Ah! where is now Praxiteles? and where the hands of Heraclite

That wrought of old such images, as made the marble breathe delight?

Who now shall forge the ambrosial hair, the burning glance of Meiite",

Or teach the carven stone how fair the, splendours of her bosom he?

Brave sculptors! would that it were mine to bid you at a lover's nod

For such a beauty raise a shrine, aa lor the statue of a god I

And of Meieager (v. 57):-—

XXI

Love, if swimming in thy light ofttimes burnt the soul

ly will she take her flight: cruel, the is

likethee!

Here is a very characteristic one (v. 182}: —

XXII

Say to Lytsnia, Dorcas, what you're bid<

Your love's proved false: false love can't long he hid.

Tell her so, Dorcas—see! and then aeain

A second and a third time, Dorcas, plain*

Rup, don't delay, but fly! stay^- Dorcas — stay 1

Don*t hurry* Dorcas, till I've said my say.

Add to the former words . . . (that's foolish I no.)

Say nothing then, but this— yes, all. Now go.

Be sure and tell her all. But why send you

Dorcas — when here I am and coming too?

This is the perfection of fancy—it is one of a series which I wish I could include (v. i52):-

XXIII

Fly for me, gnat, my swiftest messenger,

And touch my lady's ear,

Whispering this:

c He waits thee, waking, but thou sleepest yet.

Ah! thoughtless, to forget

Thy votaries I'

Fly to her, singing gnat, oh fly to her!

Yet softly call her, softly, lest he hear

And wake, who sleeps too near,

And all my gains

Be jealous blows. But an thou fetch her me,

A lion's skin to thee,

Gnat, for thy pains,

And a club will I give, in hand to bear.

Could anything be more delicate than that— the notion of dressing a gnat in the attributes- of Herakles after his feat of bringing the, love to the lover? That at least has not come down to us along the centuries in every poet's song. It is unique, a little orchid in the Greek garden of flowers. But the next has a truer note of feeling (v. 174): —

XXIV

Now sleeps my lady, like a gentle flower—

O that I were as sleep without his wing,

Across her eyelids there!

HRYSANTHEMA

-

So not even he that on Zeus' eyes hath power

Should ib*rt with mE

That I should get of her.

This, of regret (xiL 3^): —

XXV

Ah now remember! yes. now remember

Hr.w this good word in the good day* I satd i

1 Beauty is sweetest — beauty ii nttlu.,i.

Not the swiftest bird in aii

Is a twfftcr passenger*'

Lo 1 now to earth your beauty (lowers are shed!

That is a chrysanthemum indeed — a golden

flower, fit winter gathering in the Greek

garden. And this of passion (vt 215}: —

XXVI

I pray thee, Love, for sake of my poor song

To put to sleep this sleepless love of mine!

Yea — for they will not learn — those arrows thine

To smite another, but they do me wrong

Winging their flight for ever at only me.

What though thou slay me? I shall leave this line

Written, whereof the sound shall echo long:

1 Here lies, whose murder was of Love's cruelty.'

But of all that the prince of love-poets did there is nothing that equals this. I have not been quite literal here. Scholars will know why I need handle it delicately, and it tells its own tale of longing (xii. 125): —

XXVII

Love brought by night a vision to my bed,

One that still wore the vesture of a child

But eighteen years of age—who sweetly smiled

Till of the lovely form false hopes were bred

And keen embraces wild.

Ah! for the lost desire that haunts me yet,

Till mine eyes fail in sleep that finds no more

That fleeting ghost 1 Oh lovelorn heart, give o'er—

Cease thy vain dreams of beauty's warmth—forget

The face thou longest for I

All through the Anthology there is nothing rings truer than that.1 Again I have begun and ended with Meleager, but this section was his special sphere, his share in the epitaphs being, though noble, comparatively small.

The first of these — the epitaphs of friendship and love—is Plato's for Aster, finely

i [" You never loved me, and yet to save me,

One unforgetable night you gave me

Sucl&hill embraces as the snow-covered heights

Receive from clouds, in northern, Auroral nights.

Such keen communion as the frozen mere

Has with immaculate moonlight, cold and clear.

And all desire,

Like falling fire,

Died slowly, faded surely, and sank to rest

Against the delicate dullness of your breast."

A modern parallelism, one of a series of love lyrics

from India as " arranged in verse " by Laurance Hope

in The Garden of Kama, 1903.]

done by Shelley,1 of which I write the mere

En glish: —

xxvui

As morning star to man thy light wu shed—

As evening star thou &hinert for the dud!

And then follows one of the only two Mr,

AV right gives of Meleager's:—

XXIX

Tears, lady, though tlion lie ben rat 11 the earth.

The little Love has left for Death, I shed

Tears, bitter tears, o'er thy lamented head,

Poor tribute of my heart and my heart's dearth.

Heavily, heavily, —my dear —my dead! —

In vain to Acheron I mourn thy worth;

Ah I * here's the stem that gave my Lonj^ing hirth?

Now Death hath torn — hath torn it from ita bed*

Y ea, dust hath stained my floweret at her beet;

I pray thee, mother earth, that tenderly

Thou gather her whom all we weep to the* —

And lold her gently, mother, to thy breasi.

That is what he wrote for his sum maiden,

as I called her m the toast. The next is by

Krinna, who lived more than five hundred

years before Meleager, and who died when

she was only nineteen, leaving work that

[** Thou wen the Morning Star among the living,

Ere thy fair light had fled \—

Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving

New tplendour to the dead."]

30 CHRYSANTHEMA

promised, the ancients thought, to equal Homer's, but this one which Mr. Wright gives is only doubtfully hers.

XXX

Pillars and Sirens mine, and mournful urn

That holdest all death's little ashes here,

Bid ' hail' to them that greet my sepulchre,

Strangers or citizens, ere they return.

And say ' her father called this buried maid

Baucis by name—her race was Tenian.'

That they may know my story while they scan

These signs Erinna's hand—my friend's — portrayed.

There is a fine epitaph for Erinna herself,

which will not be out of place here (vii.

13)=-

XXXI

Maiden Erinna, like a minstrel bee,

Culling her flowers fresh with the Muses1 breath,

Death snatched to bridal: ah! a prophet she

Singing so surely ' Thou art jealous, Death.'

But to Callimachus must be given the palm in this section. He was chief librarian at Alexandria, and lived shortly before the first Punic war. M£ya fiipKlov fx£ya ko,k6p9 he said, * a big book is a big evil,' and of all his eight hundred volumes only six hymns and less than a century of epigrams remain. These have been, many of them, quite beautifully translated, but I think this will be welcome under a new guise: —

XXXII

Their prattling Crethis full of blameless laughter

Oft seek the Samian maidens, many an one:

All her sweet gossip at the loom is done.

She sleeps, below, the sleep that follows after,

Which never a maiden of them all can shun.

The next one is so evidently by Mrs. Browning, that I may be allowed some of her loose rhymes.

XXXIII

Dead! my firstborn? no! to a better country departed,

Living in happy islands that know no maid so light-hearted.

There thou goest rejoicing along the Elysian pasture-?

Soft the flowers around thee—away from every disaster.

Winter nor chills thee, nor summer burns, nor sickness makes sorry;

Thou nor hungerest more nor thirsteth, and robbed of its glory

Seems to thee now this life of ours, for thou dwellest securely—

Innocent, there where the rays of Olympus enhallow thee purely I

This is Meleager*s best, so earnest that I have changed the person in order to retain the • intimate' tone. Herrick, our Meleager, did this one too.

XXXIV

Bridal none but death for bridegroom, dear.

Falls to thee to lay thy girlhood by.

Oh! last eve upon our threshold, clear

Rang the lotus-flutes, and merrily

Echoed back the beaten chamber door.

But this morning breaks no music glad—

Lamentation loud the flutes outpour,

And the bridal god wails hushed and sad.

Yea, the torch, that lit thee to my bed,

Lights thee that last way among the dead.

The next of Leonidas I need not give; it is very matter of fact and not very interesting as a record of daily life. The charm of an epitaph of this description is that it shows how similar was life all those years ago to what it is now. As soon as that epitaph is given as an English verse this charm is to a great extent gone. The next of Callimachus I cannot spare.

XXXV

Now would to God swift ships had ne'er been made I

Then, Sopolis, we had not mourned thy shade—

Dear son of Diocleides seaward sent I

Now somewhere in deep seas thy corse is tost

Hither and thither—and for whom we lost

We find thy name and empty monument.

We pass on to this quaint one by Paulus Silentiarius, one of the latest writers, which Cowper translated strikingly but quite inadmissibly—for he puts all the lines into the mouth of the corpse, whereas the point of

the epigram lies in the interruptions of the traveller.

xxxvi

' My name was'—well I it helps thee not,' my land '— 'tis nought to me!

'My race was brave'—vile had it been, what matter would it be?

' My life and death had fair renown' — If shame, what could it do?

'Here now I lie—what's that to me? and what am I to you?

On the next page this anonymous one is fine: —

XXXVII

Now have I found the harbour t Hope, and thou good Hap, farewell!

We meet no more; mock those on earth that after me shall dwell.

And this of Plato for Dion, the tyrant of Syracuse:—

XXXVIII

Weeping the lot of the Ilian women—for Hecuba weeping —

This was the weft of the Fates spun on the day they were born.

Ah! but from thee, my Dion, thy sacrifice gratefully keeping,

Wide was the hope that the gods, quenching thine honours, have torn.

Thou, while thy citizens praise thee, in the glades of thy land liest sleeping,

Dion, desire of whose love wilders my senses forlorn.

Mr. Johnson's pretty and simple verses

for this one of Callimachus deter one from

trying it again, but the epitaph (upon Hera-

cleitus) is in itself immortal and will shine

through many renderings. It is no mere

exercise of verse-making, but rings with as

true and as restrained a note of sorrow as

Lycidas or Tkyrsis.

XXXIX

One tells me, friend, that we are parted now.

And I recall how often I and thou,

In closest converse, sank the sun to sleep,

And, so remembering, weep.

Halicarnassian host I somewhere thou must

Long, long ago be dust,

Yet live thy nightingales—thine own—for them

Death, that takes all, hath never requiem!

This of Simmias is a little earlier (about

300 B. a). The rendering 'Wind, gentle

evergreen,' with which we are all familiar,

does not seem to me to give at all the tone

or the lilt of the verse.

CHRYSANTHEM

XL

Tenderly, ivy, on Sophocles'grave'right tenderly —

twine

Girlandiag aver the mound network of delicate

Everywhere flourish the flower of the rose, and the

clustering vine

Pour out its branches around, wet with their glitter-

ing sheen.

All fdr the 5 a We of the wisdom and grace it waa tiis to

combine,

Priest of the gay and profound: sweetest of singers

terrene.

We need not linger over the epitaph for

Anacreon after that on Sopfrodeft, and I am

anxious to make this of Leon idas into a.

sonnet.

XLI

Shepherds that on this mountain ridge abide,

Tending your goats and fleecy flocks alway,

A little favour, but most grateful, pay

Cleitagoras, nor be the boon denied!

For sake of mother earth, and by the bride

Of Hades under earth, let sheep, I pray,

Bleat near me, and the shepherd softly play

From the scarred rock across the pasture wide.

Ah! but, in early spring, cull meadowsweet,

Neighbour, and weave a garland for my tomb;

And with ewe's milk be the stone edge bedewed

When the lambs play about their mothers' feet.

So shall you honour well the shades, from whom

Are thanks — and from the dead is gratitude.

36 CHRYSANTHEMA

I must interpolate one of Meleager's on a

hare which I am afraid Mr. Wright does not

think grave enough for the Golden Treasury

(vii. 207): —

XLII

I was a fleet-foot, long-eared hare,

Snatched early from maternal care

On delicate spring-flowers to fare.

In gentle Fanny's arms I lay,

Nor ever wished myself away,

Nor fretted for my mother aye.

Full many a dainty she supplied.

I lived on clover at her side,

And then, of too much clover, died.

Close to her couch she laid me dead:

In dreamland to be visited

By spectre tombs beside her bed.

Cowper should have done that instead of

the other. The last in the fourth section

is this very graceful one which bears no

master's name.

XLIII

Kind earth, take old Amyntychus to thee

— Mindful of all his labours — tenderly.

For thee he set the olive's sturdy roots,

Many an one, and gave thee vineyard shoots

For beauty, and made thy valleys thick with corn.

And of his hand were water runnels born

CHRVSANTHEMA 37

To feed thee serviceable herbs, beside

Thine apple-bearing orchards fair and wide.

Wherefore on his grey tuiaJ, kind earth, lit light,

Aod make with flowers his spring-tide pasture* bHght.

Nearly all the epigrams in Mr. Wright's

fifth section are from the Anthology of

Planudes, a monk of the fourteenth century

who * Bowdlerified' the old collections and

added others. Two or three only are from

the Palatine Anthology* This first U by

Diotimus, almost a contemporary of CalHm-

achus. It is a noble classic speech for a

statue.

Here am I, very Artemis, but tiiou,

Seeing Zeus' true daughter here Id Ltoiiec revelled,

Ga&e on my maiden boldness, and allow

1 For her were the whole earth mtiiu J

Next is a piece of description by Plato: —

XLV

Then came we to a shadowy grove: and lo \

Cyth era's sod like apples in their ((low T

And he had laid his arrowy quiver by,

AemI his btnt bow,

Hanging them from the leafy trees and hijjh.

And there he lay among the roees filetping

And, sleeping, smiltdt whi]t browny bees were keeping

Court to hut waxen lips for honey's flow

Above where he did He,

38 CHRYSANTHEMA

The little one of Parmenio is not interesting

in English, but this of Agathias is beautiful

(perhaps we ought to call it Mrs. Browning's).

It is for a waxen Faun.

XLVI

' All of its own accord, little Faun, does thy flute go on

ringing?

Why, with ears to the reed, listenest the livelong

day?1

Smiling, he holds his peace: an answer maybe had

come winging,

Only he pays no heed, rapt in oblivion away.

Nay, not the wax withholds him; his whole soul,

charmed with the singing,

Gives back silence for meed, silent rewarding the lay.

This fine description of Niobe and her chil-

dren is the only one of Meleager's which Mr.

Wright gives in this group: —

XLVII

Daughter of Tantalus! hearken my words—a message

to mourn —

Hear from my lips the pitiful tale of thy woe! r

Loosen thine hair, poor mother, that bared'st for deity'»

scorn

Many a boy for Phoebus to mark with his bow.

Now not a son is left thee. Fresh horror! for what do

I see?

Out and alas! a slaughter that spares not the maid.

One in the arms of her mother, and one as she clings

to her knee,

One on the ground, and one at the breast unafraid;

CHRYSANTHEMA

Lhi€ faces death with a shudder erect; one bends on

the dart;

Last, there U one that looks on the daylight alone.

Niober she that erewhiU loved boasting, with fear at

bcr heart

Stands yet quick — a breathing mother of jtont.

But this is the loveliest of the gToup, full of

the care and passion of real grief; —

XLVI1I

Pericles, Anchias' soul To thee they

— For witness of thy prowess hi thu chase —

My column, »n whost Ploiie the sculptor sets

Phy horee, thv do^n thy spears, thy hunting-nets

Mounted on stakes, and eke the Stakes nlonc —

Ah Gud 3 ah God I — for all are only stone I

Al twenty yean tbou sleep'st death's sleep pTv^found,

And undisturbed by beaata that prowl aruiind.

[ shall not do the next one of Leonidas

ibout a drunken Anacreon. Here are two

pretty ones of Meleager instead about a cup

md a picture (v. 171): —

Bright laughs the cup — for ' I have kissed,' it saith,

' Thy lady's laughing mouth.' Too happy cup!

Dh! that, her lips to my lips, at a breath

My lady's kiss would drink my spirit up!

And (v. 149): —

Ah! who hath shown my lady unto me,

Her very self, as if she spake?

40 CHRYSANTHEMA

Who brought to me one of the Graces three

For friendship's sake?

Full surely brings he me a joyful thing,

And for his grace the grace of thanks I bring.

But I must not give Meleager the lion's

share again in this group — that is almost

the last of his I shall be able to put in.

These two of Plato's with which Mr. Wright

finishes the section are admirably contrasted

in tone, and both quite perfect. This is for

a ring: —

LI

See! five oxen graven on a jasper gem!

To the life 1 and feeding one and all of them.

Stay — will they not run away — the beasties? No, the

fold

Of this golden circlet our little herd shall hold.

It is as fanciful as a nursery rhyme. The

other is as joyous and stately as Milton.

LII

Silent! shaggy scaur that Dryads keep.

Silent I rills adown the crags that run.

Silent! mingled bleating of the sheep—

Pan himself the piping has begun.

To his tuneful lip the reed sets he,

Lol the dance awakens at his call.

Let your young feet trip it merrily,

Waternymphs and woodnymphs one and all I

CHRYSANTHEMA 41

Mr. Wright's test section contains what I

might call the epigrams of thought. The

first is Falladas1 — (I had almost written

Shakespeare's). He was a late writer.

LIU

All life'a i stage and farce. Or leant to fliy,

Ji, or bear your sorrows as you may.'

And the next two are his also.

LTV

to earth M I brought — naked It) earth I

Why should 1 labour for nought, seeing haw naked

the end?

And: —

LV

Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we

Live, and a little space the sunlight see —

Even all that live — each being an instrument

To which the generous air its life has lent.

If with the hand one quench our draught of breath,

He sends the stark soul shuddering down to death.

We that are nothing on our pride are fed,

Seeing, but for a little air, we are as dead.

The next beautiful one — quite Tennysonian

[ " Life is a Farce, mere Children's Play,

Go learn to model thine by theirs,

Go learn to trifle Life away,

Or learn to bear a Life of Cares."

JOHN HALL STBVBN9ON, 1762.]

42 CHRYSANTHEMA

—is attributed to iEsopus in the Palatine

Anthology, though Mr. Wright gives it no

master.

LVI

1 Is there no help from life save only death?

Life that such myriad sorrows harboureth

I dare not break, I cannot bear,' — one saith.

1 Sweet are stars, sun, and moon, and sea, and earth,

For service and for beauty these had birth,

But all the rest of life is little worth —

' Yea, all the rest is pain and grief,1 saith he,

1 For if it hap some good thing come to me

An evil end befalls it speedily.'

This of Agathias is most charming in its

ndiveti. Certainly he is the latest of the

epigrammatists. But this complaint of girls

for secluded life might have been written

very few years ago.

LVII

Not such your burden, happy youths, as ours —

Poor women children nurtured daintily —

For ye have comrades, when ill fortune lours,

To hearten you with talk and company f

And ye have games for solace, and may roam

Along the streets and see the painters' shows.

But woe betide us if we stir from home —

And there our thoughts are dull enough, God knows I

The next, by Agathias too, is true now-a-day

and always.

CHRYSANTHEMA 43

At this smooth marble table let us lit

And while away the time with dice a bit!

Don't crow, *ir, if you win — and then, should 1,

Grumble and growl ' It's al! that beastly die;J

For in such trifles is idid's temper plain,

And the dice teat our power to self-rest rain,

ThU one by Poseidippus, some seven hun-

dred years earlier, has been well done by Sir

John Beaumont together with its answer,

attributed to Metrodorus. I am tempted to

do it again though, as it just fits a sonnet

LiX

Show ma some path of Hie! The market-place

Breeds only quarrel and hard bargainings,

Staying at home incessant worry brings,

Of working in the fields one tires apace,

Who goes to sea a constant dread must face,

And, if one travel, fears for precious things

Torment —if one has none, the lacking stings —

So, rich or poor, hard is the traveller's case.

Married, what care! single, what loneliness!

Children bring sorrow — blank the childless life;

Foolish is youth, and old age listless quite.

Here lies the only choice, I must confess —

Not to be born into this world of strife,

Or straight to die, having but just seen the light.

For this next — Ptolemy's, who lived about

two centuries and a half on in the Christian

44 CHRYSANTHEMA

era — I shall borrow a turn of rhyme from

Robert Browning.

LX

I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day.

But when I see the stars, like sand, in orbits turn

alway,

As that divinest sight I heed, I spurn the earth and say

' Now am I even as Zeus, and feed on his ambrosia.'

This is more familiar. The author is un-

known, but the text is as old as Solomon.

LXI

Drink and be merry! for what is the future and what

is the morrow?

No man answereth thee. Labour not thou, neither

run;

Feast as thou may'st, and do good and distribute: but

let not life borrow

Any false worth, for ' to be' —' not to be' — lo! 'tis

all one!

Yea, what is life? an thou take it, thy thrall. 'Tis the

turn of the scale.

But, an thou lose it, another's is all — but thee

nought can avail.

The last but one is a poem of Marcus

Argentarius, also late, full of a beautiful

hedonism.

LXII

The golden stars are quiring in the west,

And in their measure will I dance my best,

But in no dance of man.

CHRYSANTHEMA 45

on my head a. crown of flowen I raise

And strike my funding lyre in Phoebus' praise,

For thta 1b life's best plan,

And the whole firmiinciU were wrong

Had it no crown, no tsong*

This crown, this gong,1 this 'order' of Life

was what made Greek humanity divine.

There H no more concise expression of the

intimacy between daily life and ritual than

that little verse contains in the heart of it

It is the most Greek but, perhaps Mr. Wright

thought, not the most philosophic strain to

end with, and he brings us to a full stop with

Philodetnus1 reEolutionjs.

LXIII

I loved —and you. I played—who hath not been

Steeped in such play? If I was mad, I ween

'Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.

Hence with it all! Then dark my youthful head,

Where now scant locks of whitening hair, instead,

Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.

I gathered roses while the roses blew.

Playtime is past, my play is ended too.

Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue.

There is a note of Herrick again in that.

We found one of Fhilodemus' love-songs in

1 The allusion in the poem is to the constellations

of Orpheus and Ariadne — lute and crown.

.-„ ociisame m

midst of that Syrian c

echo our own longings <

of the golden age of Eli

TROY

THE ARGUMENT

The traveller in the Troad sees, in the sun-

set, as it were a vision of past heroes, and

Helen; who being but a shade of old, after

the story of Herodotus, abideth yet over

against Troy, and is the spirit of beauty and

mother of heroism for all time; though of the

Greek host that came up against the city noth-

ing remains save the broken witness of tombs,

nor aught of the great armies of Xerxes, who

did homage on Ida.

" Is this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burned the topless towers of Ilium? "

Marlowe's Faustus

HMEIS AE KAE02 OION AKOTOMEN

Iliad ii. 486

TROY

ook to the West, the sun lies red and low;

The lazy clouds drift o'er, and shadows grow

Where the grey land slopes idly to the sea:

[Tie air is soft with night's serenity,

knd charmed evening breathes a hush profound

In »v»rv arrA nf tVii* ctnriAfl trrnnnH

50 TROY

This city, which was queen of cities, when

Men walked as gods, and gods befriended men,

Not all discrowned, nor unapparelled, lies

Beneath this sunset of her Asian skies,

Even yet, though prone her listening citadel

She hears afar the sounding Pontos swell,

The ceaseless thunder of nnslumbering seas,

That hymn her heroes to the Chersonese.

But ah! what later hour shall bring to her

Such hearts heroic as these mounds inter?

Scamander sings them, — hushed that healing wave

Where Hector staunched the wound that Ajax gave-

And Ida bears them laurels; all in vain—

They wake them not to victory or pain.

Their gods, their gods are dead, and never more

Shall haunt dark ships upon this hallowed shore,

Shall guide the arrow sped, the javelin hurled,

Or shew Achilles to the wildered world.

Sleep they or wake, who woke so well in life?

Surely, new-bora for some diviner strife

They wield the winds for weapons, and the sides

Sunburnished, are their mailSd panoplies.

Yea now, even now, beneath this Eastern night

The vales are lit, and all the land is bright;

Rays, as of opal and of amethyst

Kindle to forms the ever-nearing mist—

And wizard fancy peoples all the plain

With ghosts that lived as none shall live again.

Ah now, methinks, tall Troy transfigured stands,

Her walls arise, they burst their mouldering bands;

TROY 51

Her dead awake to battle, each his mate

Rouses to onset at the Scaean gate;

The cloudy heavens assume the dense array,

And send their shadowy legions to the fray.

Lo, here the strangers from sublimer realm

Lift the loud shield and don the plume-swept helm;

Their feet are lightnings through the summer air,

And in their crests the spangled stars they wear.

With either conscious host their lot they choose,

They lose the day to win, they win to lose.

Nor fails the hero's heart: their tempest-tread

Scares not the soul of dauntless Diomed.

The clangour stills; we feel the silence stirred

By tender throbbing of some piteous word,

And the low pleading of Andromache

Rings clear against the night; for where is he,

Dear as to her, to us? His life is stayed

For whom that prayer was urged, that plaint was made.

Loud from the walls resounds the chariots' ring,

White clouds of dust the bounding axles fling

To hide the shameless deed; the ground we tread

Is ruddy with the trail of Hector dead! —

Spread wide your glades, Elysian fields, afar;

And let his soul forget Achilles' car,

Recall his wife's embrace, nor reck her doom,

Remember all the glory. . . Through the gloom

Lightens the face he died for. This is she,

Her very self and not a memory;

Aye, this is she who taught her lord to prove,

With such a sacrifice, so little love;

52 TROY

This is no semblance from the sunset made—

She is not dead, that this should be her shade,

Who never was but shadow, stol'n away

From twilit marriage of the dawn with day.

Who art thou if not Helen? — * Nay, for she,

' In lotus-wreathen meadows oversea,

' Sits dreaming on a bank of asphodel,

' And life is glad for her, and all is well.

1 Not in her ear the Libyan songs are loud,

1 Nor she forgets her land, amid the crowd

' Of Apis' worshippers; for, when the night

1 Touches her gracious head with mellower light,

1 Full swift her truant fancies wont to roam

' To Argolis, her surf-resounding home;

' Till forth she wanders, moving pale and fair,

' While night-dews dim the splendours of her hair;

1 Listless her aspect, and her gesture slow;

' The skies are watching, those same skies that know

1 Of all the havoc she has made in Troy,

1 But may not tell her teen to mar her joy.

1 The violet-veine-d eyelids lift—the eyes

' Turn from the helpless heavens and silent skies

1 To mazy Nile, whose rippling water-bars

' Splinter the mirrored gold of stranger stare' —

Who art thou if not Helen? ' I was bora

' Of mist and air,—and by the gods, in acorn,

• Set in this city for a brand of fire,

' Empress alike and handmaid of desire.

' For nought escapes the high gods' boundless ken

' And, seeing the earth was overborne of men

T R O V

' Who dwelt together calmly and at rac.l

'They m.ide tat to bring toil on all of these—

1 A soulless spirit whose Lethean breath

1 Wilted earth's princes to the vales of death,

' Me thinks no woman, that had seen them there

' For her sakt fallen > broad of limbs and fair,

1 With clear eyes fronting death, and unafraid

1 So that the sight of her, like 'jshn, were laid

1 After long vigil, on them, — nay not one

1 Most loved and most unloving 'nedth the sun

' But had frown weary of thu dole alic wrought \

1 To me, poor careless wraith, all the« were nought.

4 Who tain vk-(?rc one with that cool breeze that fill*

'The hollows of the Dryad-haunted hills.'

She sighed, but passed not i Lo, the night aflame

With myriad blaze of starlight, and there came

A glimpse of all the fires that marred the crown

Of heavenward turrets round th' embattled town,

When o'er the city of the gods' desire

Floated the smoke-wrapt torch that lit her pyre;

For one brief hour she brightened all the sky,

And snow-clad mountains blushed to see her die;

i Schol. i} 8t Itrropla irapd, Sratrfvy T(fi to.

Kfarpia ireirotr/KOTt, elirdvri oIjtcjs.

"?jv 8re fj.vpia <p6\a Kara x^va TrXafiueva .

......fiapvartpvov ttX&tos &it)S

Zeus 5 I8<bv £\£r)(T€ Kal ivwvKipals 7rp<nrL5€<r<ri

Kovcfxrat dpdpibtrcjv Tra/ipu)Topa

54 TROY

Then, with her sons, she buried all her shame,

And nought was left her, but a scathless name.

More strange that later gloom which wrapt thy height,

Ida, when through the murk tempestuous night

Reverberate thunder whelmed with baneful fear 1

Proud Xerxes' minions, and the warnings drear

Downshaken from each dusky-feathered pine

Seemed the dread utterance of a voice divine.

The heavens foreshadow doom, the meteors gleam,

Scamander, dazed, denies his sullen stream;

The astounded King his empty worship plies,

And scares each sacred shade with sacrifice.

Vain all his rite—the goddess hides her smile,

(From hands unhallowed goodliest gifts are vile,)

The serpent hosts with reverent horror quail,

Dark fear descends upon their glistening trail;

Till with the dawn they pass. — O dale and hill!

You rest in majesty triumphant still,

Yours is the strength and awe t yea, these are gone,

Their pride is perished and their boasting done;

But yet, for halo, shines on Ida's head

The deathless presence of her holy dead.

Let us arise and go t The breeze awakes,

And, down the eastern summits, morning breaks,

i Cf. in Herod. VII. the account of Xerxes1 sacri-

fice in the Troad before he starts for Abydos, —and

subsequently "rai/ra M xoifjurafjUyouri

4>6pos is rd orpar&ircdov iphretre."

TROY 55

[ere, where amid the ashes of her sons

'he city kneeleth at her orisons*

lers is the fount of poetryb that dries

lever, nor fails throughout the centuries,

ind forth to alien lands fresh channels fling

Tie san^j sweet guerdon from her single spring.

iere dwells the shade of Helen: and though time

lall her by diverse names in many a clime

lie kingdoms fall, but her reign is not done

Vho gives to many, but the gift is one.

rea, though the ages, darkling, pass away,

he holds an ageless empire in her sway,

iath still that beauty of the days of yore

lut with young years is ever young once more 2

ls do* —new sunlight flushing all the lind —

Iris twilit plain, from dawn's magician hand

''ins other aspectj and across the wold

he silver river grows a thread of gold.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

60 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

has been many times reprinted. An almost

complete translation of the Anthology was

also made in 1864 by Major R. G. Macgregor,

Greek Anthology, With Notes Critical and

Explanatory, (London, n. d.). Octavo. Pp.

xvi: 1-740. This has been truly described as

" a work of stupendous industry and fidelity,

which almost redeems the general mediocrity

of the execution."

The above may be said to comprise the

ancient history of the Anthology in English.

The following list deals with what has been

accomplished within our own day and gen-

eration: in itself a convincing proof of an

ever-widening interest in the subject, and of

a scholarship sometimes combined with high

poetic attainment that invites and will amply

repay our closest attention.

Anthologia Grabca: Passages prom thb Greek

Posts selected and arranged with notes bt thi

Rev. Francis St. John Thackeray, M. A. Lon-

don, 1899. i6mo. First published in 1867 and fre-

quently reissued it is concerned with the Greek text

only. In the Notes a few translations will be found.

The Poets of Greece by Edwin Arnold. Lon-

don, 1869. Octavo. Never reprinted but of conaid-

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 61

erable interest. The dedication to the poet's finit wife

contains a Very beautiful quatrain:

Flowers itoia Greek gardens, Faanle!—old turned new,

Doric, j'Eoiic, Attic, planted here;

You made the ha|)pv sunshint, where they grew —

Such as thr growth jsp have tUe besoms, Drar I

Idylls anl> Ecichaus: chiefly from the Geehk

ANTHOLOGY HV RlCHMtU (.iARNBTT. LONDON, lS6q.

Fcap Svn, A later reprint of the " Epigram*" will be

found in Dt. Gametts A Chttpltt from tht Crrrtk

Antholosofx (The Camiiti Scries, Fcap Svo.), London,

4

Studies from the Grbbk Poets nv John Adding-

ton Sykonpb, LoNpaNh i S^3. Octavo, i volet. The

first edition appeared in 1^73, but the thirdly the one

to p*>Mc5ft, living hoen revised, ahi^ aup^Tntmcci by a

chapter containing a fairly literal translation of the

" Mimes " of Herondas. For the Anthology itself see

Vol. II, Pp. 282-343.

S

The Greek Anthology by Lord Neaves. Lon-

don, 1874. nmo. (Ancient Classics for English

Readers.) Reprinted many times here and in England.

The versions drawn upon are from the older writers,

Bland, Merrivale, Wilson, Hay, et ah.

6

Amaranth and Asphodel: Songs from the

Greek Anthology by Alfred J. Butler, M. A.

London, 1881. Fcap 8vo. A little book that is well

worth reprinting. The Preface is most admirably

written.

62 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

7

Sappho: Memoir, Text, Sblbctbd Rsndbi

and a Literal Translation by Henry T

ton Wharton. London, 1885. Fcap 8vo.

second edition, 1887; the third and final edition

8

Sblbctions from thb Grbkk Anthology,

itbd by Graham R. Tomson, (Rosamund M;

Watson). London, [n. d.] 1889. Sq. i6mo. I

delightful little book, (unfortunately without d

title-page, — a trick that deceives no one, and

worthy any self-respecting publisher,) twenty

selections are from Chrysanthema. 11 has also a

of original versions by Miss Alma Strettell, one

translators of The Bard of the Dimborvitza.

9

Thb Goldbn Treasury op Ancibnt C

Pobtry by R. S. Wright, M. A. Second Edi

Revised by Evelyn Abbott, M. A., LL.D.

ford, 1889. Fcap 8vo. Pp. xxiv: 1-540. J

selected translations are given on Pp. 523-540.

Select Epigrams from thb Grbbk Anthg

Editbd with a Rbvisbd Text, Introdw

Translation and Notbs by J. W. Mac

London, 1890. A new edition, revised throuj

was issued London, 1906. Octavo. Pp. zii:

This work has been made still further accessibl

reprint in Longman's Pocket Library (2 vols.)

separately. The Greek text (1 vol.) and the E

translation (x vol.).

Fifty Pobms op Mblbagbr with a Transl.

by Waltbr Hbadlam. London, 1890. Quai

IRLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 63

of Parnassus: FitsT and Last Rhywrs,

iy Andrew Lamg. London anu New York, 1S91.

aBJD. In lllis fedtttkfc (which tnu*L ticji be confounded

vith the London edition of rSSS), .Mr. LanR lids brought

ogether, under the title of The Littk Gartttr{tft *ll of

iia translations fnxn the Anthulogy that lie scattered

0 his earlier volume gf verse.

Pqfts tn English Vftwk nv V a riots

tors. Edited, with iNT

Notes, by William Hydk Applhton.

Sf#i iatno.

M

GHEEK LvaiCPOKTPt: SeLECtBU ANDTHANiiLATED

nv Fn a ncis Bnoo k s* M, A. Lon t>on h 1 5</j, Fcap 8vo+

Long Ago by Michael Fibld. Portland,

Maine, 1897. The only really beautiful extension of

Sappho's fragments into English lyrics based upon the

Greek text and its literal translation by Dr. Wharton.

16

Anthologia Greece Erotica: Thh Love Epi-

srams of Book V of thb Palatine Anthology,

BDITBD, AND PARTLY RENDERED INTO ENGLISH

Verse by W. R. Paton. London, 1898. Fcap 8vo.

64 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

18

Paraphrases and Translations from thb

Greek by thb Earl op Crombr. London, 1903.

Crown 8vo. Based largely upon Mackail's Select

Epigrams.

For collateral reading the following refer-

ences to The Bibelot will prove of consider-

able service: Fragments from Sappho, Vol. I,

Pp. 107-138; A Flower of Laurium, Vol. II,

Pp. 3-32; Three Greek Idyllists, Vol. Ill, Pp.

3-74; Odysseus in Phaacia, ibid, Pp. 345-366;

Echoes from Theocritus, Vol. IV, Pp. 363-

396; Demeter and Persephone, Three Trans-

lations, Vol. V, Pp. 179-204; Lyrics from

Ionica, Vol. VII, Pp. 119-158; A Little Cycle

of Greek Lyrics, Vol. IX, Pp. 59-80. This

last collection was taken from Love in Idle-

ness, a Volume of Poems, London, 1883.

Published anonymously, it is now known to

be the work of H. C. Beeching, J. W. Mackail,

and J. B. B. Nichols. Their later volume,

Love's Looking Glass, London, 1891, is a

book well worth while procuring. Not only

for its classical scholarship but for the pro-

found beauty of its original English verse.

We have traversed as will be seen some-

what wider ground than the Anthology

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 65

occupies, by including several titles of books

dealing with* Greek lyrics in general,—not a

complete list by any means but one that we

believe will be of service to our readers.