Текст книги "The Oxford Book of Latin Verse: From the Earliest Fragments to the End of the Vth Century A.D. "

The Selection that follows needs some explanation. I have made no systematic search in the literature of translation: and it is likely enough that I have omitted renderings more beautiful, or more interesting, than some which I have included. I have not tried to do more than to collect together a few old 'favourites' of my own. Moreover I have—save for one or two examples—confined myself to the four principal Latin poets.

I have interpreted the word 'Imitations' rather widely. It is quite possible, for example, that Clough never read Vergil's Lines Written in a Lecture-Room(Catalepton V): yet the poem of Clough which I have brought into connexion with this piece is, I think, a truer translation of it than could be found elsewhere. I will venture to hope, again, that I may be readily forgiven for placing beside Statius' famous Invocation to Sleepsix sonnets on a like subject from six English masters of the sonnet-form.

I have to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to reprint copyright pieces: Messrs. G. Bell & Sons (four versions by Calverley, Nos. 67, 82, 145, 149), Prof. D.A. Slater (versions of Lucretius, Nos. 66, 69, and Catullus, No. 97), Messrs. Blackwood (two pieces by the late Sir Theodore Martin, Nos. 92, 136), Prof. Ellis and Mr. John Murray (version of Catullus, No. 85), The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press and the Executors of the late Sir R.C. Jebb (version of Catullus, No. 74), Mr. L.J. Latham and Messrs. Smith Elder (version of Propertius, No. 179, from Mr. Latham's Odes of Horace and Other Verses), Messrs. George Allen (version of Horace from the Ionicaof the late William Cory, No. 148), Mr. John Murray (version of Horace by Mr. Gladstone, No. 126), Dr. T.H. Warren and Mr. John Murray (version of Vergil, No. 110), Mr. James Rhoades and Messrs. Kegan Paul (version of Vergil, No. 119), Mr. W.H. Fyfe (version of Statius, No. 262).

44

By the side of this Epitaph may be placed Pope's Epitaph upon Mrs. Corbet, with Johnson's comment:

HERE rests a woman good without pretence,

Blest with plain reason and with sober sense.

No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired,

No arts essayed but not to be admired.

Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,

Convinced that Virtue only is our own.

So unaffected, so composed a mind,

So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,

Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;

The saint sustained it, but the woman died.

'The subject of it', says Johnson, 'is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities: yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character, which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be made known and the dignity established.'

66

(Beginning at the third paragraph, Illud in his rebus...)

BUT here's the rub. There soon may come a time

You'll count right reason treason and the prime

Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft

In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.

Think how at Aulis to the Trivian Maid

The hero-kings of Greece their homage paid,

The flower of men, whose impious piety

Iphianassa on the altar laid.

Behold the bride! upon her head the crown

Of ritual, that from either cheek let down

An equal streamer. But cold rapture hers

As on her father's face she marked the frown:

A frown of anguish: at his side the men

Of doom, and in their hands, screened from her ken,

Death; and her countrymen shed tears to see

The lamb, poor victim, in the lions' den.

Then dumb with fear, not tongue-tied with delight,

She drooped to earth. What profited it her plight

She was her father's first-born? Not the less

They took her. Death, not Love, ordained the rite.

His were the bridesmen, and the altar his

To which with quaking limbs in fearfulness

Uplifted then, sans song, sans ritual due,

She was brought home—but not to wedded bliss,

A maid, but marred not married, in the spring

Of life and love's sweet prime, to yield the king

A victim, and the fleet fair voyaging:

Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring.

D.A. Slater.

67

SWEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm-winds,

Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:

Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment:

But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt from.

Sweet too 'tis to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war hosts

Arm them for some great battle, one's self unscathed by the danger:—

Yet still happier this: to possess, impregnably guarded,

Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom:

Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way

Wander amidst Life's path, poor stragglers seeking a highway:

Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon:

Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun and the starlight,

Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.

O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eye-sight!

'Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers

Move ye thro' this thing Life, this fragment! Fools that ye hear not

Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only: that, all pain

Parted and passed from the body, the mind too bask in a blissful

Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over!

Now as regards man's body, a few things only are needful,

(Few, tho' we sum up all), to remove all misery from him,

Aye, and to strew in his path such a lib'ral carpet of pleasures

That scarce Nature herself would at times ask happiness greater.

Statues of youth and of beauty may not gleam golden around him,

(Each in his right hand bearing a great lamp lustrously burning,

Whence to the midnight revel a light may be furnishлd always),

Silver may not shine softly, nor gold blaze bright, in his mansion,

Nor to the noise of the tabret his halls gold-cornicлd echo:—

Yet still he, with his fellow, reposed on the velvety greensward,

Near to a rippling stream, by a tall tree canopied over,

Shall, though they lack great riches, enjoy all bodily pleasure:

Chiefliest then when above them a fair sky smiles, and the young year

Flings with a bounteous hand over each green meadow the wild-flowers:—

Not more quickly depart from his bosom fiery fevers,

Who beneath crimson hangings and pictures cunningly broidered

Tosses about, than from him who must lie in beggarly raiment.

Therefore, since to the body avail not riches, avails not

Heraldry's utmost boast, nor the pomp and pride of an empire;

Next shall you own that the mind needs likewise nothing of these things;

Unless—when, peradventure, your armies over the champaign

Spread with a stir and a ferment and bid War's image awaken,

Or when with stir and with ferment a fleet sails forth upon ocean—

Cowed before these brave sights, pale Superstition abandon

Straightway your mind as you gaze, Death seem no longer alarming,

Trouble vacate your bosom and Peace hold holiday in you.

But if (again) all this be a vain impossible fiction,

If of a truth men's fears and the cares which hourly beset them

Heed not the javelin's fury, regard not clashing of broad-swords,

But all boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers of empires

Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling glare of the red gold,

Not from the pomp of the monarch who walks forth purple-apparelled:

These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of reason:

Think too that all man's life through a great Dark laboureth onward.

For as a young boy trembles and in that mystery, Darkness,

Sees all terrible things: so do we too, ev'n in the daylight,

Ofttimes shudder at that which is not more really alarming

Than boys' fears when they waken and say some danger is o'er them.

So this panic of mind, these clouds which gather around us,

Fly not the bright sunbeam, nor the ivory shafts of the daylight:

Nature, rightly revealed, and the Reason only, dispel them.

C.S. Calverley

69

OUT of the night, out of the blinding night

Thy beacon flashes;—hail, beloved light

Of Greece and Grecian; hail, for in the mirk

Thou dost reveal each valley and each height.

Thou art my leader and the footprints thine,

Wherein I plant my own. Thro' storm and shine

Thy love upholds me. Ne'er was rivalry

'Twixt owl and thrush, 'twixt steeds and shambling kine.

The world was thine to read, and having read,

Before thy children's eyes thou didst outspread

The fruitful page of knowledge, all the wealth

Of wisdom, all her plenty for their bread.

As honey-bees thro' flowery glades in June

Rifle the blossoms, so at our high-noon

Of life we gather in melodious glades

The golden honey of thy deathless rune.

And whoso roams benighted, on his ear,

Out of the darkness strikes an echo clear

Of thy triumphant challenge:—'Ye who quail,

Come unto me, for I have cast out fear.'

Thereat the walls o' the world fade far away

And thou, great Nature's seлr, dost display

The miracle of her workings in the void:—

The night is past and reason dawns with day.

Heaven lies about us and we see the hall,

Where never storm-fiend raves nor snow-flakes fall

In webs of winter whiteness to ensnare

The golden summer. Peace is over all;

A canopy of cloudless sky, a glow

Of laughing sunshine; all the flowers that blow

Are there, and there from Nature's teeming breast

Rivers of strength and sweetness ever flow.

The veil of Acheron is rent in twain;

His phantom precincts vanish. Ne'er again

Can Earth conceal the secret:—it is ours;

And all that once was hidden is made plain.

Hail, mighty Master, hail! The world was thine,

For thou hadst read her riddle line by line,

Scroll upon scroll; and now ... oh, ecstasy

Of awe and rapture,... thou hast made her mine.

D.A. Slater.

70

I give a part of this piece in the version of Dryden, beginning from Cerberus et furiae. 'I am not dissatisfied', says Dryden, 'upon the review of anything I have done in this author.'

AS for the Dog, the Furies and their Snakes,

The gloomy Caverns and the burning Lakes,

And all the vain infernal trumpery,

They neither are, nor were, nor e'er can be.

But here on earth the guilty have in view

The mighty pains to mighty mischiefs due,

Racks, prisons, poisons, the Tarpeian Rock,

Stripes, hangmen, pitch and suffocating smoke,

And, last and most, if these were cast behind,

The avenging horror of a conscious mind,

Whose deadly fear anticipates the blow,

And sees no end of punishment and woe,

But looks for more at the last gasp of breath.

This makes a hell on earth, and life a death.

Meantime, when thoughts of death disturb thy head,

Consider: Ancus great and good is dead;

Ancus, thy better far, was born to die,

And thou, dost thoubewail mortality?

So many monarchs, with their mighty state

Who ruled the world, were over-ruled by Fate.

That haughty King who lorded o'er the main,

And whose stupendous bridge did the wild waves restrain—

In vain they foamed, in vain they threatened wrack,

While his proud legions marched upon their back,—

Him Death, a greater monarch, overcame,

Nor spared his guards the more for their Immortal name.

The Roman chief, the Carthaginian's dread,

Scipio, the Thunder Bolt of War, is dead,

And like a common slave by Fate in triumph led.

The founders of invented arts are lost,

And wits who made eternity their boast.

Where now is Homer, who possessed the throne?

The immortal work remains, the mortal author's gone.

Dryden.

74

DIANA guardeth our estate,

Girls and boys immaculate;

Boys and maidens pure of stain,

Be Diana our refrain.

O Latonia, pledge of love

Glorious to most glorious Jove,

Near the Delian olive-tree

Latona gave thy life to thee,

That thou should'st be for ever queen

Of mountains and of forests green;

Of every deep glen's mystery;

Of all streams and their melody.

Women in travail ask their peace

From thee, our Lady of Release:

Thou art the Watcher of the Ways:

Thou art the Moon with borrowed rays:

And, as thy full or waning tide

Marks how the monthly seasons glide,

Thou, Goddess, sendest wealth of store

To bless the farmer's thrifty floor.

Whatever name delights thine ear,

By that name be thou hallowed here;

And, as of old, be good to us,

The lineage of Romulus.

R.C. Jebb.

82

GEM of all isthmuses and isles that lie,

Fresh or salt water's children, in clear lake

Or ampler ocean: with what joy do I

Approach thee, Sirmio! Oh! am I awake,

Or dream that once again my eye beholds

Thee, and has looked its last on Thynian wolds?

Sweetest of sweets to me that pastime seems,

When the mind drops her burden: when—the pain

Of travel past—our own cot we regain,

And nestle on the pillow of our dreams!

'Tis this one thought that cheers us as we roam.

Hail, O fair Sirmio! Joy, thy lord is here!

Joy too, ye waters of the Garda Mere!

And ring out, all ye laughter-peals of home.

C.S. Calverley.

83

This beautiful and delicate piece remains the despair of the translator. I quote a few lines of Cowley's sometimes rather clumsy version (beginning from Sic, inquit, mea uita):

'MY little life, my all,' said she,

'So may we ever servants be

To this best god, and ne'er retain

Our hated liberty again:

So may thy passion last for me

As I a passion have for thee

Greater and fiercer much than can

Be conceived by thee a man.

Into my marrow is it gone,

Fixt and settled in the bone,

It reigns not only in my heart

But runs like fire through every part.'

She spoke: the god of Love aloud

Sneezed again, and all the crowd

Of little Loves that waited by

Bowed and blest the augury.

Cowley.

85 b

So many critics have compared Catullus to Burns that some of them may be glad to see this North-Italian rendered into the English of the North.

WEEP, weep, ye Loves and Cupids all,

And ilka Man o' decent feelin':

My lassie's lost her wee, wee bird,

And that's a loss, ye'll ken, past healin'.

The lassie lo'ed him like her een:

The darling wee thing lo'ed the ither,

And knew and nestled to her breast,

As ony bairnie to her mither.

Her bosom was his dear, dear haunt—

So dear, he cared na lang to leave it;

He'd nae but gang his ain sma' jaunt,

And flutter piping back bereavit.

The wee thing's gane the shadowy road

That's never travelled back by ony:

Out on ye, Shades! ye're greedy aye

To grab at aught that's brave and bonny.

Puir, foolish, fondling, bonnie bird,

Ye little ken what wark ye're leavin':

Ye've gar'd my lassie's een grow red,

Those bonnie een grow red wi' grievin'.

G.S. Davies.

I append the version of Prof. R. Ellis, which preserves the metre of the original:

WEEP each heavenly Venus, all the Cupids,

Weep all men that have any grace about ye.

Dead the sparrow, in whom my love delighted,

The dear sparrow, in whom my love delighted.

Yea, most precious, above her eyes, she held him,

Sweet, all honey: a bird that ever hail'd her

Lady mistress, as hails the maid a mother;

Nor would move from her arms away: but only

Hopping round her, about her, hence or hither,

Piped his colloquy, piped to none beside her.

Now he wendeth along the mirky pathway,

Whence, they tell us, is hopeless all returning.

Evil on ye, the shades of evil Orcus,

Shades all beauteous happy things devouring,

Such a beauteous happy bird ye took him.