The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (50 page)

He sows the teeth at Pallas’s command,
And flings the future people from his hand;
The clods grow warm, and crumble where he sows,
And now the pointed spears advance in rows;
Now nodding plumes appear, and shining crests,
Now the broad shoulders and the rising breasts;
O‘er all the field the breathing harvest swarms,
A growing host, a crop of men and arms.

So through the parting stage a figure rears
Its body up, and limb by limb appears
By just degrees, till all the man arise,
And in his full proportion strikes the eyes.

Cadmus, surprised and startled at the sight
Of his new foes, prepared himself for fight;
When one cried out, “Forbear, fond man, forbear
To mingle in a blind promiscuous war.”
This said, he struck his brother to the ground,
Himself expiring by another’s wound;
Nor did the third his conquest long survive,
Dying ere scarce he had begun to live.

The dire example ran through all the field,
Till heaps of brothers were by brothers kill’d;
The furrows swam in blood, and only five
Of all the vast increase were left alive.
Echion one, at Pallas’s command,
Let fall the guiltless weapon from his hand,
And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes,
Whom Cadmus as his friends and partners takes.
So founds a city on the promised earth,
And gives his new Bœotian empire birth.

Here Cadmus reign’d; and now one would have
guess’d
The royal founder in his exile bless’d:
Long did he live within his new abodes,
Allied by marriage to the deathless gods;
And in a fruitful wife’s embraces old,
A long increase of children’s children told:
But no frail man, however great or high,
Can be concluded bless’d before he die.

Actæon was the first of all his race,
Who grieved his grandsire in his borrow’d face,
Condemn’d by stern Diana to bemoan
The branching horns and visage not his own;
To shun his once loved dogs, to bound away,
And from their huntsman to become their prey.
And yet consider why the change was wrought,
You’ll find it his misfortune, not his fault;
Or, if a fault, it was the fault of chance:
For how can guilt proceed from ignorance?

In a fair chase a shady mountain stood,
Well stored with game, and mark’d with trails of blood;
Here did the huntsmen, till the heat of day,
Pursue the stag, and load themselves with prey;
When thus Actæon calling to the rest:
“My friends,” said he, “our sport is at the best,
The sun is high advanced, and downward sheds
His burning beams directly on our heads;
Then by consent abstain from further spoils,
Call off the dogs, and gather up the toils,
And ere tomorrow’s sun begins his race
Take the cool morning to renew the chase.”
They all consent, and in a cheerful train
The jolly huntsmen, loaden with the slain,
Return in triumph from the sultry plain.

Down in a vale with pine and cypress clad,
Refresh’d with gentle winds, and brown with shade,
The chaste Diana’s private haunt, there stood,
Full in the centre of the darksome wood,
A spacious grotto, all around o‘ergrown
With hoary moss, and arch’d with pumice-stone.
From out its rocky clefts the waters flow,
And trickling swell into a lake below.
Nature had every where so play’d her part,
That every where she seem’d to vie with art.
Here the bright goddess, toil’d and chafed with heat,
Was wont to bathe her in the cool retreat.

Here did she now with all her train resort,
Panting with heat, and breathless from the sport;
Her armour-bearer laid her bow aside,
Some loosed her sandals, some her veil untied;
Each busy nymph her proper part undress‘d,
While Crocale, more handy than the rest,
Gather’d her flowing hair, and in a noose
Bound it together, whilst her own hung loose;
Five of the more ignoble sort, by turns,
Fetch up the water, and unlade the urns.

Now all undress’d the shining goddess stood,
When young Actæon wilder’d in the wood,
To the cool grot by his hard fate betray‘d,
The fountains fill’d with naked nymphs survey’d.
The frighted virgins shriek’d at the surprise,
(The forest echo’d with their piercing cries)
Then in a huddle round their goddess press’d;
She, proudly eminent above the rest,
With blushes glow’d; such blushes as adorn
The ruddy welkin or the purple morn;
And though the crowding nymphs her body hide,
Half backward shrunk, and view’d him from aside.
Surprised, at first she would have snatch’d her bow,
But sees the circling waters round her flow;
These in the hollow of her hand she took,
And dash’d them in his face, while thus she spoke:

“Tell, if thou canst, the wondrous sight disclosed,
A goddess naked to thy view exposed.”

This said, the man began to disappear
By slow degrees, and ended in a deer.
A rising horn on either brow he wears,
And stretches out his neck, and pricks his ears;
Rough is his skin, with sudden hairs o‘ergrown,
His bosom pants with fears before unknown;
Transform’d at length, he flies away in haste,
And wonders why he flies away so fast.
But, as by chance within a neighb’ring brook,
He saw his branching horns and alter’d look,
Wretched Actæon! in a doleful tone
He tried to speak, but only gave a groan;
And as he wept, within the watery glass
He saw the big round drops, with silent pace,
Run trickling down a savage hairy face.
What should he do? Or seek his old abodes,
Or herd among the deer and skulk in woods?
Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails,
And each by turns his aching heart assails.

As he thus ponders, he behind him spies
His op‘ning hounds, and now he hears their cries:
A gen’rous pack, or to maintain the chase,
Or snuff the vapour from the scented grass.

He bounded off with fear, and swiftly ran
O‘er craggy mountains and the flow’ry plain,
Through brakes and thickets forced his way, and flew
Through many a ring where once he did pursue.
In vain he oft endeavour’d to proclaim
His new misfortune, and to tell his name;
Nor voice, nor words, the brutal tongue supplies,
From shouting men, and horns, and dogs, he flies,
Deafen’d and stunn’d with their promiscuous cries.
When now the fleetest of the pack, that press’d
Close at his heels and sprung before the rest,
Had fasten’d on him, straight another pair
Hung on his wounded haunch, and held him there,
Till all the pack came up, and every hound
Tore the sad huntsman grovelling on the ground,
Who now appear’d but one continued wound.
With dropping tears his bitter fate he moans,
And fills the mountain with his dying groans.
His servants with a piteous look he spies,
And turns about his supplicating eyes.
His servants, ignorant of what had chanced,
With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced,
And call’d their lord, Actæon, to the game;
He shook his head in answer to the name;
He heard, but wish’d he had indeed been gone;
Or only to have stood a looker-on:
But to his grief he finds himself too near,
And feels his ravenous dogs with fury tear
Their wretched master panting in a deer.

Actæon’s sufferings, and Diana’s rage,
Did all the thoughts of men and gods engage;
Some call’d the evils, which Diana wrought,
Too great and disproportion’d to the fault:
Others, again, esteem’d Actæon’s woes
Fit for a virgin goddess to impose.
The hearers into different parts divide,
And reasons are produced on either side.

Juno alone, of all that heard the news,
Nor would condemn the goddess, nor excuse;
She heeded not the justice of the deed,
But joy’d to see the race of Cadmus bleed;
For still she kept Europa in her mind,
And, for her sake, detested all her kind.
Besides, to aggravate her hate, she heard
How Semele, to Jove’s embrace preferr‘d,
Was now grown big with an immortal load,
And carried in her womb a future god.
Thus, terribly incensed, the goddess broke
To sudden fury, and abruptly spoke:

“Are my reproaches of so small a force?
‘Tis time I then pursue another course.
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die,
If I’m indeed the mistress of the sky;
If rightly styled, among the powers above,
The wife and sister of the thundering Jove
(And none can sure a sister’s right deny),
It is decreed the guilty wretch shall die.
She boasts an honour I can hardly claim,
Pregnant she rises to a mother’s name;
While proud and vain she triumphs in her Jove,
And shows the glorious tokens of his love:
But if I’m still the mistress of the skies,
By her own lover the fond beauty dies.”
This said, descending in a yellow cloud,
Before the gates of Semele she stood.

Old Beroë’s decrepit shape she wears,
Her wrinkled visage, and her hoary hairs,
Whilst in her trembling gait she totters on,
And learns to tattle in the nurse’s tone.
The goddess thus disguised in age beguiled
With pleasing stories her false foster-child.
Much did she talk of love, and when she came
To mention to the nymph her lover’s name,
Fetching a sigh, and holding down her head,
“‘Tis well,” says she, “if all be true that’s said.
But trust me, child, I’m much inclined to fear
Some counterfeit in this your Jupiter.
Many an honest well-designing maid
Has been by these pretended gods betray’d.
But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend triumphant, from the ethereal sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity,
Encompass’d round by those celestial charms
With which he fills the immortal Juno’s arms.”

The unwary nymph, ensnared with what she said,
Desired of Jove, when next he sought her bed,
To grant a certain gift which she would choose.

“Fear not,” replied the god, “that I’ll refuse
Whate‘er you ask: may Styx confirm my voice,
Choose what you will, and you shall have your choice.”
“Then,” says the nymph, “when next you seek my arms,
May you descend in those celestial charms
With which your Juno’s bosom you inflame,
And fill with transport heaven’s immortal dame.”
The god, surprised, would fain have stopp’d her voice,
But he had sworn, and she had made her choice.

To keep his promise he ascends, and shrouds
His awful brow in whirlwinds and in clouds;
Whilst all around, in terrible array,
His thunders rattle and his lightnings play;
And yet the dazzling lustre to abate,
He set not out in all his pomp and state,
Clad in the mildest lightning of the skies,
And arm’d with thunder of the smallest size:
Not those huge bolts, by which the giants slain
Lay overthrown on the Phlegrean plain;
‘Twas of a lesser mould and lighter weight,
They call it thunder of a second rate;
For the rough Cyclops, who by Jove’s command
Temper’d the bolt, and turn’d it to his hand,
Work’d up less flame and fury in its make,
And quench’d it sooner in the standing lake.
Thus dreadfully adorn’d with horror bright,
The illustrious god, descending from his height,
Came rushing on her in a storm of light.

The mortal dame, too feeble to engage
The lightning’s flashes and the thunder’s rage,
Consumed amidst the glories she desired,
And in the terrible embrace expired.

But to preserve his of spring from the tomb,
Jove took him smoking from his mother’s womb,
And, if on ancient tales we may rely,
Inclosed the abortive infant in his thigh.
Here when the babe had all his time fulfill‘d,
Ino first took him for her foster-child;
Then the Niseans, in their dark abode,
Nursed secretly with milk the thriving god.

Famed far and near for knowing things to come,
From him the inquiring nations sought their doom.
The fair Liriope his answers tried,
And first the unerring prophet justified.
This nymph the god Cephisus had abused,
With all his winding waters circumfused,
And by the Nereid had a lovely boy,
Whom the soft maids ev’n then beheld with joy.

The tender dame, solicitous to know
Whether her child should reach old age or no,
Consults the sage Tiresias; who replies,
“If e‘er he knows himself he surely dies.”
Long lived the dubious mother in suspense,
Till time unriddled all the prophet’s sense.

Narcissus now his sixteenth year began,
Just turn’d of boy, and on the verge of man;
Many a friend the blooming youth caress‘d,
Many a love-sick maid her flame confess’d.
Such was his pride, in vain the friend caress’d,
The love-sick maid in vain her flame confess’d.

Once, in the woods, as he pursued the chase,
The babbling Echo had descried his face,
She, who in other words her silence breaks,
Nor speaks herself but when another speaks.
Echo was then a maid of speech bereft,
Of wonted speech; for though her voice was left,
Juno a curse did on her tongue impose,
To sport with every sentence in the close.
Full often when the goddess might have caught
Jove and her rivals in the very fault,
This nymph with subtile stories would delay
Her coming, till the lovers slipp’d away.
The goddess found out the deceit in time,
And then she cried, “That tongue, for this thy crime,
Which could so many subtile tales produce,
Shall be hereafter but of little use.”
Hence ‘tis she prattles in a fairer tone,
With mimic sounds and accents not her own.

This love-sick virgin, overjoy’d to find
The boy alone, still follow’d him behind;
When glowing warmly at her near approach,
As sulphur blazes at the taper’s touch,
She long’d her hidden passion to reveal
And tell her pains, but had not words to tell;
She can’t begin, but waits for the rebound
To catch his voice, and to return the sound.

The nymph, when nothing could Narcissus move,
Still dash’d with blushes for her slighted love,
Lived in the shady covert of the woods,
In solitary caves and dark abodes,
Where pining wander’d the rejected fair,
Till harass’d out and worn away with care,
The sounding skeleton, of blood bereft,
Besides her bones and voice had nothing left.
Her bones are petrified, her voice is found
In vaults, where still it doubles every sound.